Institut des Sciences Cognitives - Marc Jeannerod, CNRS UMR5229, Bron 69500, France.
Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, Université de Lyon, 69100, France.
Proc Biol Sci. 2023 Apr 12;290(1996):20221993. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2022.1993.
Executive function (EF) describes a group of cognitive processes underlying the organization and control of goal-directed behaviour. Environmental experience appears to play a crucial role in EF development, with early psychosocial deprivation often linked to EF impairment. However, many questions remain concerning the developmental trajectories of EF after exposure to deprivation, especially concerning specific mechanisms. Accordingly, using an 'A-not-B' paradigm and a macaque model of early psychosocial deprivation, we investigated how early deprivation influences EF development longitudinally from adolescence into early adulthood. The contribution of working memory and inhibitory control mechanisms were examined specifically via the fitting of a computational model of decision making to the choice behaviour of each individual. As predicted, peer-reared animals (i.e. those exposed to early psychosocial deprivation) performed worse than mother-reared animals across time, with the fitted model parameters yielding novel insights into the functional decomposition of group-level EF differences underlying task performance. Results indicated differential trajectories of inhibitory control and working memory development in the two groups. Such findings not only extend our knowledge of how early deprivation influences EF longitudinally, but also provide support for the utility of computational modelling to elucidate specific mechanisms linking early psychosocial deprivation to long-term poor outcomes.
执行功能（EF）描述了一组认知过程，这些过程是目标导向行为的组织和控制的基础。环境经验似乎在 EF 发展中起着至关重要的作用，早期心理社会剥夺通常与 EF 损伤有关。然而，关于在经历剥夺后 EF 的发展轨迹仍有许多问题需要研究，特别是关于具体机制的问题。因此，我们使用了“非 A 到 B”范式和猕猴早期心理社会剥夺模型，从青春期到成年早期，从纵向角度研究了早期剥夺如何影响 EF 的发展。通过为每个个体的选择行为拟合决策制定的计算模型，具体检查了工作记忆和抑制控制机制的贡献。正如预测的那样，与母亲抚养的动物相比，同伴抚养的动物（即经历过早期心理社会剥夺的动物）随着时间的推移表现更差，拟合模型参数为理解任务表现背后的群体水平 EF 差异的功能分解提供了新的见解。结果表明，两组动物的抑制控制和工作记忆发展轨迹不同。这些发现不仅扩展了我们对早期剥夺如何纵向影响 EF 的认识，还支持了计算建模在阐明将早期心理社会剥夺与长期不良结果联系起来的具体机制方面的效用。
