Despite evidence that stress exposure increases risk for internalizing symptoms in youth, it remains unclear which youth are most vulnerable. This study examined whether youth's prepandemic late positive potential (LPP), an electrocortical marker of sustained attention to affective stimuli, exacerbated the impact of stress on prospective increases in depression and anxiety symptoms from before to during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Participants were 29 youth (ages 9–16, 82.8% girls) who completed depression and anxiety symptom measures and an affective words task to assess LPP to positive and negative self‐referential stimuli prepandemic onset. Postpandemic onset, approximately 16.03 months (SD = 8.86) after their baseline assessments, youth again completed symptom measures as well as the UCLA Life Stress Interview to assess ongoing social and financial chronic stress. Results indicated a significant interaction between youth LPP to negative words and financial stress. Greater exposure to financial stress during the pandemic predicted greater anxiety symptom increases specifically for youth who demonstrated enhanced prepandemic LPP to negative words. Results were specific to the prediction of anxiety, but not depression, symptoms. If replicated in larger studies, findings highlight enhanced LPP to negative stimuli as a promising target for intervention for youth exposed to greater financial stress.
Guided by developmental psychopathology and dual-risk frameworks, the present study examined the interplay between childhood maltreatment and maternal major depression history in relation to neural reward responsiveness in youth. The sample consisted of 96 youth (ages 9–16; M = 12.29 years, SD = 2.20; 68.8% female) drawn from a large metropolitan city. Youth were recruited based on whether their mothers had a history of major depressive disorder (MDD) and were categorized into two groups: youth with mothers with a history of MDD (high risk; HR; n = 56) and youth with mothers with no history of psychiatric disorders (low risk; LR; n = 40). The reward positivity (RewP), an event-related potential component, was utilized to measure reward responsiveness and the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire measured childhood maltreatment. We found a significant two-way interaction between childhood maltreatment and risk group in relation to RewP. Simple slope analysis revealed that in the HR group, greater childhood maltreatment was significantly associated with reduced RewP. The relationship between childhood maltreatment and RewP was not significant among the LR youth. The present findings demonstrate that the association between childhood maltreatment and blunted reward responsiveness is dependent on whether offspring have mothers with histories of MDD.
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