Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences, Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit, MI, USA.
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA, USA.
Dev Sci. 2021 Jan;24(1):e13000. doi: 10.1111/desc.13000. Epub 2020 Jul 28.
Risk for adverse outcomes, including the onset of mental illness, increases during adolescence. This increase may be linked to both new exposures, such as violence at home or in the community, or to physiological changes driven by puberty. There are significant sex differences in adolescent risk, for instance, anxiety disorders are significantly more prevalent in girls than boys. Fear learning is linked to mental health and may develop during adolescence, but the role of puberty in adolescent-specific change has not yet been systematically evaluated. We conducted a longitudinal study of fear learning that tested fear-potentiated startle (FPS) in 78 children (40 girls) aged 8-16 years. Participants completed two to three visits that included a differential fear conditioning task and self-report of both pubertal status and violence exposure. We tested for effects of sex, pubertal status, and violence exposure on FPS over time with latent growth curve models. We also examined the association between FPS and later anxiety symptoms. We found significant changes in FPS to the threat cue, but not the safety cue, across visits. Higher pubertal status was significantly associated with increased FPS to threat cues at each visit, whereas sex and violence exposure were not. FPS to threat during the baseline visit also predicted later anxiety symptoms. These findings suggest that puberty drives increased fear response to threat cues similarly for girls and boys, and that this effect may not be significantly impacted by individual differences in violence exposure during early adolescence.
不良结果的风险，包括精神疾病的发作，在青春期会增加。这种增加可能与新的暴露有关，例如家庭或社区中的暴力，也可能与青春期驱动的生理变化有关。青春期的风险存在显著的性别差异，例如，焦虑症在女孩中的患病率明显高于男孩。恐惧学习与心理健康有关，可能在青春期发展，但青春期在青少年特有的变化中的作用尚未得到系统评估。我们进行了一项恐惧学习的纵向研究，在 78 名 8-16 岁的儿童（40 名女孩）中测试了恐惧增强的惊跳反应（FPS）。参与者完成了两到三次访问，其中包括差异恐惧条件反射任务和青春期状态和暴力暴露的自我报告。我们使用潜在增长曲线模型测试了性别、青春期状态和暴力暴露对 FPS 的时间影响。我们还检查了 FPS 与后来的焦虑症状之间的关联。我们发现，在访问过程中，对威胁线索的 FPS 显著变化，但对安全线索没有变化。较高的青春期状态与每次访问时对威胁线索的 FPS 增加显著相关，而性别和暴力暴露则没有。基线访问时对威胁的 FPS 也预测了以后的焦虑症状。这些发现表明，青春期对威胁线索的恐惧反应会增加，对女孩和男孩都是如此，而个体在青春期早期的暴力暴露差异对这种影响的影响可能并不显著。
