Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA.
Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
J Abnorm Child Psychol. 2017 Oct;45(7):1439-1448. doi: 10.1007/s10802-016-0247-4.
Anxiety disorders are among the earliest emerging disorders and most common mental health problem across the lifespan. A common characteristic of individuals with anxiety is poor attentional and cognitive control. Therefore, researchers are interested in how cognitive functioning relates to anxiety in young children. In particular, research has demonstrated associations between anxiety and electrophysiological markers of cognitive control skills such as the error-related negativity (ERN). The nature of the anxiety-ERN relationship is not well understood, however. The purpose of the present study was to examine: 1) the association between the ERN and diagnostically-defined symptoms of different anxiety disorders; and 2) the extent to which disorder-specific symptoms of anxiety moderated the association between ERN and behavioral performance on a Go/No-Go task in a sample of 139 children 5-8 years of age (70 females and 69 males). Results suggest that more separation anxiety disorder (SAD) symptoms are associated with a smaller ΔERN, even after controlling for other anxiety disorder symptoms. Children with more SAD symptoms showed higher error rates and failed to exhibit the expected association between ΔERN and behavioral performance, suggesting ineffective error-monitoring in young children with SAD problems.
焦虑障碍是全生命周期中最早出现的障碍和最常见的心理健康问题之一。焦虑个体的一个共同特征是注意力和认知控制能力差。因此，研究人员对认知功能与幼儿焦虑之间的关系感兴趣。特别是，研究表明焦虑与认知控制技能的电生理标记（如错误相关负波（ERN））之间存在关联。然而，焦虑-ERN 关系的性质尚不清楚。本研究旨在探讨：1）ERN 与不同焦虑障碍的诊断症状之间的关联；2）在一个由 139 名 5-8 岁儿童（70 名女性和 69 名男性）组成的样本中，焦虑障碍的特定症状在多大程度上调节了 ERN 与 Go/No-Go 任务行为表现之间的关联。结果表明，更多的分离焦虑障碍（SAD）症状与较小的 ΔERN 相关，即使在控制了其他焦虑障碍症状后也是如此。有更多 SAD 症状的儿童表现出更高的错误率，并且未能表现出 ΔERN 与行为表现之间的预期关联，这表明 SAD 问题的幼儿存在无效的错误监测。
