Assari Shervin, Akhlaghipour Golnoush
Department of Urban Public Health, Charles R Drew University of Medicine and Science, Los Angeles, CA.
Department of Family Medicine, Charles R Drew University of Medicine and Science, Los Angeles, CA.
Child Teenagers. 2020;3(2):50-71. doi: 10.22158/ct.v3n2p50. Epub 2020 Nov 5.
African American pre-adolescents are at a higher risk of risky behaviors such as aggression, drug use, alcohol use, and subsequent poor outcomes compared to Caucasian pre-adolescents. All these high-risk behaviors are connected to low levels of inhibitory control (IC).
We used the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) data to compare Caucasian and African American pre-adolescents for the effect of age on pre-adolescents IC, a driver of high-risk behaviors.
This cross-sectional analysis included 4,626 pre-adolescents between ages 9 and 10 from the ABCD study. Regression was used to analyze the data. The predictor variable was age measured in months. The main outcome was IC measured by a stop-signal task (SST). Race was the effect modifier.
Overall, age was associated with IC. Race also showed a statistically significant interaction with age on pre-adolescents' IC, indicating weaker effects of age on IC for African American than Caucasian pre-adolescents.
Age-related changes in IC are more pronounced for Caucasian than African American pre-adolescents. To eliminate the racial gap in brain development between African American and Caucasian pre-adolescents, we should address structural and societal barriers that alter age-related development for racial minority pre-adolescents. Social and public policies, rather than health policies, are needed to address structural and societal barriers that hinder African American adolescents' brain development. Interventions should add resources to the urban areas that many African American families live in so their children can have better age-related brain development. Such changes would be essential given IC in pre-adolescents is a predictor of a wide range of behaviors.
与白人青少年相比，非裔美国青少年出现攻击行为、吸毒、酗酒等危险行为以及随后不良后果的风险更高。所有这些高风险行为都与抑制控制（IC）水平较低有关。
我们利用青少年大脑认知发展（ABCD）数据，比较白人和非裔美国青少年年龄对青少年IC（一种高风险行为的驱动因素）的影响。
这项横断面分析纳入了ABCD研究中4626名9至10岁的青少年。采用回归分析数据。预测变量是按月计算的年龄。主要结果是通过停止信号任务（SST）测量的IC。种族是效应修饰因素。
总体而言，年龄与IC相关。种族在青少年IC方面也显示出与年龄有统计学意义的交互作用，表明年龄对非裔美国青少年IC的影响比对白人青少年的影响弱。
与非裔美国青少年相比，白人青少年与IC相关的年龄变化更为明显。为了消除非裔美国青少年和白人青少年在大脑发育方面的种族差距，我们应该解决那些改变少数族裔青少年与年龄相关发育的结构和社会障碍。需要社会和公共政策而非卫生政策来解决阻碍非裔美国青少年大脑发育的结构和社会障碍。干预措施应向许多非裔美国家庭居住的城市地区增加资源，以便他们的孩子能有更好的与年龄相关的大脑发育。鉴于青少年期的IC是多种行为的预测指标，这种改变至关重要。
