Acute stress impairs children's sustained attention with increased vulnerability for children of mothers reporting higher parenting stress

Abstract

Despite evidence that acute stress impairs attention in adults, there has been minimal research in children. Here, the effects of acute stress on Go/No-go performance were examined in young children (M age = 5.41 years). Given the critical role of the parent-child relationship to children's self-regulatory development, the extent to which parenting stress predicts children's cognitive vulnerability to acute stress and autonomic reactivity was also investigated. A between-groups design (n = 58 stress, n = 26 control) was used with oversampling of the stressor-exposed children to examine individual differences. The Parenting Stress Index and subscales were employed as a measure of parenting stress. Acute stress impaired children's sustained attention, but not inhibitory control. Higher parenting stress was associated with vulnerability to attentional impairment. Parenting distress was also positively associated with sympathetic reactivity to acute stress, but neither sympathetic nor parasympathetic reactivity was associated with attentional impairment. A conceptual model of pathways through which repetitive acute stress may contribute to self-regulatory difficulties is presented, including the potential buffering role of caregivers. K E Y W O R D Sacute stress, parenting stress, sustained attention | 533 ROOS et al.

Elevations in EEG Power Spectra During a Go/No-go Task Following Acute Psychosocial Stress in Preschool Children

“…Go/No-go task. Children performed a child-friendly version of a zoo-themed Go/No-go task (Grabell et al, 2017;Grammer et al, 2014), adapted to include negative feedback on Go trails and positive or negative feedback on No-go trials (see Roos et al, 2019). First, children were told a short story about animals escaping a zoo.…”

“…Eighty-four mother-child dyads volunteered to participate through community recruitment in a city in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. Children (age, M = 5.38 years, SD = .65, range = 4.20 to 6.71 years) were randomly assigned to a Control (n = 26, 14 female) or Stressor condition (n = 58, 33 female), with more children in the Stressor condition to permit examination of within-condition individual differences (see Roos et al, 2019). Pre-enrollment screening excluded children with a history of psychiatric disorders, developmental delays, or serious health problems.…”

“…The amygdala has been implicating in responding to threats, and the PFC is involved in decision making, emotion regulation, and autonomic nervous system (ANS) function (McEwen & Gianaros, 2010). The extent to which individuals differ in the engagement of the ANS in response to stress may influence susceptibility to the cognitive and neurological effects of acute stress (Roos et al, 2019).…”

Functional Alterations and Cerebral Variations in Humans Exposed to Early Life Stress

“…Attention was found to be impaired in all study participants, whether they had been abused (15), neglected (45,59), exposed to the combination of physical abuse with neglect (55), or exposed to family trauma ( 61). An investigation found that children exposed to an acute stressful experimental event had their sustained attention altered, and the vulnerability of attention increased when they were exposed to parental stress (60).…”

Developmental science aimed at reducing inequality: Maximizing the social impact of research on executive function in context

“…Undoubtedly, recent scholarship examining children's EF in the context of family socioeconomic status has powerfully advanced our understanding of the deleterious impact of poverty on cardiovascular and endocrine health (including increased risk of hypertension, diabetes, etc.). In addition, it has also focused attention on the way stress affects the developing brain (Brito & Noble, ; Hanson et al, ; Roos et al, ). Findings of the costs of poverty to early development have helped us to now recognize the stress associated with material insufficiency as “toxic” in the same ways that we now recognize the impact of airborne pollutants on children's respiratory health (Lupien, McEwen, Gunnar, & Heim, ; Shonkoff, Boyce & McEwen, ).…”