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About this paper symposium
| Panel information |
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| Panel 31. Solicited Content: Integrative Developmental Science |
| Paper #1 | |
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| The Impact of Intergenerational Trauma on Children’s Executive Functioning Development: Moderation by Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia | |
| Author information | Role |
| Kristen L. Rudd, Ph.D., University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, United States | Presenting author |
| Elisabeth C. McLane, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Michael Coccia, University of California, San Francisco, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Nicole R. Bush, University of California, San Francisco, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Abstract | |
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Executive functioning (EF) encompasses a broad set of higher-order cognitive skills that are associated with long term social and academic achievement outcomes (Sasser et al., 2015). EF develops rapidly in early childhood, with preschoolers showing sharp improvements (Best & Miller, 2010), marking the importance of understanding factors that may disrupt typical developmental progressions during this time. Women’s stressful life experiences (SLE) during pregnancy have been associated with postnatal impairments in child functioning (Vanden Bergh et al., 2005). Additionally, early work suggests that women’s experiences of trauma in their own childhoods (i.e., adverse childhood experiences; ACEs) may have lingering effects on their offspring through both biological and behavioral mechanisms (Panisch et al., 2023; Zvara et al., 2021). To our knowledge, no work has examined the unique contributions of women’s exposure to stress during pregnancy and their own childhood on the development of their child’s EF. Given the need to understand individual differences in intergenerational effects, we also evaluated whether children’s physiological regulation served to protect or exacerbate this risk. Physiological regulation is a vital process that supports children’s ability to adaptively respond to stress and challenge. Although previous research has shown respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA; an index of parasympathetic nervous system regulation) may be strongly associated with EF (Clark & Caddell, 2023), no research has examined whether it can function as a protective factor against intergenerational transmission of stress effects. The current study investigated the associations between mother’s exposure to SLE during pregnancy, her own ACEs, and children’s EF development as well as whether children’s resting RSA modified these associations. Mothers from an ongoing longitudinal study on children’s health and development (N = 100) reported information on their pregnancy stressors and ACEs; their children completed task-based EF assessments at age 4- and 5-years-old, and resting RSA was collected during a neutral video task at age 3. Regression analyses identified that children whose mothers experienced more types of SLE during pregnancy had smaller increases in EF from age 4 to 5 (β = 1.627, p = 0.043). Further, a significant interaction effect (β = -1.718, p = 0.001) showed that pregnancy SLE was associated with lower EF, but only for children with higher resting RSA. Specifically, these children had the highest EF when their mothers had lower levels of pregnancy SLE, but the lowest EF when their mothers has high pregnancy SLE, suggesting high resting RSA serves as a sensitivity factor. Mother’s ACEs were not a significant predictor of children’s EF. Our findings suggest pregnancy may be a critical time of fetal development that impacts EF progressions during childhood. In line with biological sensitivity to context models (Ellis et al., 2011), children with higher resting RSA were more sensitive to their gestational environments. Special considerations should be made to support mothers during pregnancy, particularly those at risk for experiencing SLE, as doing so may have a two-generation impact in their children’s developmental outcomes. Further, screening for children’s physiological regulation may identify those most at risk for negative health outcomes in stressful contexts. |
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| Paper #2 | |
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| Associations between maternal stress exposures, postnatal environmental factors, and offspring age 8 executive functions | |
| Author information | Role |
| Dr. Alexandra D. W. Sullivan, Ph.D., University of California, San Francisco, United States | Presenting author |
| Rachel C. Tomlinson, University of California, San Francisco, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Amanda Gassett, University of Washington, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Jessica Arizaga, University of California, San Francisco, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Yu Ni, University of Washington, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Amanda Noroña-Zhou, University of California, San Francisco, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Alexis Sullivan, University of California, San Francisco, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Logan Dearborn, University of Washington, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Michael Coccia, University of California, San Francisco, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Ruby Nguyen, University of Minnesota, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Kecia Carroll, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Karen Derefinko, University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Emily Barrett, Rutgers School of Public Health, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Danielle Roubinov, University of North Carolina, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Brent Collett, University of Washington, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Christine Loftus, University of Washington, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Qi Zhao, University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Kaja LeWinn, University of California, San Francisco, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Nicole Bush, University of California, San Francisco, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Abstract | |
| Maternal stress exposures during pregnancy and her own childhood are associated with offspring mental health and may also influence offspring executive functions (EF) (Barker, 2007). However, few studies test joint associations between maternal stress exposures during pregnancy and childhood and offspring EF, and these studies generally only include White dyads with limited follow-up beyond early childhood. Further, little is known about postnatal factors that may moderate associations between maternal stress exposures and offspring EF. The current study investigated associations between maternal stress exposures (occurring during pregnancy and mother’s own childhood) and offspring EF at age 8 years, measured via a latent factor derived from three task-based EF assessments. We hypothesized that exposure to pregnancy and maternal childhood stress would be independently associated with worse child EF and that higher quality parenting and postnatal neighborhood quality would buffer the associations between stress and EF. We used ECHO PATHWAYS consortium data from a diverse, multisite, pregnancy cohort of maternal-child dyads (n = 1,322; offspring: 42.4% white, 44.9% Black, 7% American Indian/Alaska Native, 2.1% Asian American & Pacific Islander, 2% multiple race; 6% Hispanic/Latino). We measured maternal pregnancy and childhood stress exposures with select items from two well-established self-reported measures (the PRAMS and TLEQ-indicated Childhood Traumatic Events (CTE)). We assessed moderators using a geo-coded measure of neighborhood quality and three timepoints of observer-rated positive parenting across early childhood (in a subsample of n = 789). We modeled child age 8 EF as a latent factor, derived from three laboratory-based tasks assessing working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility; loadings were all significant and within the acceptable range (λ=.53-.65). Structural equation models tested whether maternal stress exposures were associated with the latent EF factor, adjusting for a robust set of covariates determined a priori. Contrasting study hypotheses, neither maternal pregnancy stress exposures (b=0.002, 95% CI[0.026, 0.031]) nor maternal childhood stress exposures (b=0, 95% CI[0-0.06, 0.06]) were associated with age 8 offspring EF (see Fig. 1). There was a significant interaction between neighborhood quality and CTE (bNEIGHBORHOODxCTE=0.09, 95% CI[0.02, 0.15]). Weak evidence suggested that maternal CTE was negatively related to offspring EF, but only in the context of low neighborhood quality. No other interactions tested were significant (bNEIGHBORHOODxPRAMS=0.01 95% CI[-0.03, 0.04]; bPARENTINGxCTE=0.04, 95% CI[-0.04, 0.11]; bPARENTINGxPRAMS=0.0, 95% CI[-0.03, 0.04]). Follow-up main-effects-only models suggested that geo-coded better neighborhood quality (b=0.09, 95% CI[0.02, 0.17]) and objectively rated positive parenting (b=0.20, 95% CI[0.22, 0.28]) were positively associated with EF. While research has indicated the effects of prenatal maternal stress transmit across generations to affect child mental health, mother-reported stress exposure was not associated with 8-year-old children’s task-based EF in a large, sociodemographically diverse sample. Rather, maternal stress was only negatively associated with offspring EF in the context of lower neighborhood qualities. Follow-up main-effects-only analyses suggested that promotive postnatal environmental characteristics—neighborhood quality and early-childhood parenting– better explained variability in middle childhood EF. Further research should verify whether other measures of positive neighborhood quality may also be protective for potential effects of maternal stress. | |
| Paper #3 | |
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| Efficiency of evidence accumulation as a formal model-based measure of task-general executive functioning in adolescents | |
| Author information | Role |
| Dr. Rachel C. Tomlinson, Ph.D., University of California, San Francisco, United States | Presenting author |
| Alexander S. Weigard, University of Michigan, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Chandra Sripada, University of Michigan, United States | Non-presenting author |
| John Jonides, University of Michigan, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Kelly L. Klump, Michigan State University, United States | Non-presenting author |
| S. Alexandra Burt, Michigan State University, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Luke W. Hyde, University of Michigan, United States | Non-presenting author |
| Abstract | |
| Childhood executive functioning abilities consistently predict important achievement and health outcomes later in life (Robson et al., 2020), including psychopathology (Zelazo, 2020). Within the cognitive psychology literature, there is debate around the measurement of executive functioning (Karr et al., 2018), driven by concerns around test-retest reliability and construct validity of existing measures (Eisenberg et al., 2019; Enkavi et al., 2019). In adults, a computational approach can generate a single task-general executive functioning metric that explains performance across many tasks (Löffler et al., 2024; Weigard & Sripada, 2021), better fits the complex neural processes underlying task performance (Weigard, Brislin, et al., 2021) and improves test-retest reliability (Weigard, Clark, et al., 2021). However, little is known about the reliability, validity, or biological correlates of this model-based, task-general executive functioning metric in children. In a longitudinal study of adolescents oversampled for neighborhood disadvantage (N=637, age 7-19, 54.5% male), we systematically compared a computational measure of task-general executive functioning, Efficiency of Evidence Accumulation (EEA; based on drift diffusion modeling), with traditional summary metrics extracted from the same tasks (Go/No-Go, Stop-Signal). First, we estimated diffusion model parameters using individual-level Bayesian estimation methods, including drift rate (v) which indexes evidence accumulation. We assessed task-generality via cross-task reliability for drift rate and traditional metrics, and calculated EEA latent factor scores from the drift rate parameters. We assessed stability of EEA and traditional metrics via rank-order stability from time 1 to time 2 (1-3 years later). We assessed validity of EEA and traditional metrics via associations with self-report of effortful control and concurrent and prospective associations with parent-report of psychopathology. We assessed biological plausibility via associations with inhibition-related brain activation. Drift rate was the only single-task metric with significant cross-task reliability, and the task-general latent EEA factor converged and loadings for all tasks and conditions were acceptable. The task-general EEA factor demonstrated stability across development that was comparable to traditional metrics and demonstrated predictable improvement with age, in line with the known developmental course of executive functioning (Diamond, 2013). EEA related to self-report effortful control and parent-report attention, externalizing and total problems when accounting for age, sex, and relatedness, following a similar pattern to traditional metrics. EEA, along with one traditional metric (Go/No-Go Standard Deviation of Reaction Time) also correlated with inhibition-related brain activation in the anterior cingulate cortex and the right superior temporal gyrus. Our findings highlight that computational methods may provide some key measurement advantages over more traditional summary metrics of executive functioning performance in adolescents, while also revealing that some traditional metrics (i.e. Standard Deviation of Reaction Time) follow similar patterns of association and provide a reasonable alternative when computational modeling is not possible. Beyond measurement advantages, these findings also provide strong theoretical support for EEA as a computationally rigorous and biologically grounded explanation for task-general executive functioning in adolescents, which promises to advance translational research in the field by facilitating more precise theoretical explanations and stronger links with neurobiology. | |
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Biopsychosocial and Intergenerational Insights into Childhood Executive Functioning: Multi-Method Findings from Deeply-Phenotyped, Diverse Longitudinal Cohorts
Submission Type
Paper Symposium
Description
| Session Title | Biopsychosocial and Intergenerational Insights into Childhood Executive Functioning: Multi-Method Findings from Deeply-Phenotyped, Diverse Longitudinal Cohorts |