Behavioral Inhibition and Dual Mechanisms of Anxiety Risk: Disentangling Neural Correlates of Proactive and Reactive Control

Abstract

Background: Behavioral inhibition (BI) is a temperament style characterized by heightened reactivity and negative affect in response to novel people and situations, and it is a strong predictor of anxiety problems later in life. However, not all BI children develop anxiety problems and mounting evidence suggests that how one manages their cognitive resources (cognitive control) influences anxiety risk. The present study tests whether more (proactive control) or less (reactive control) planful cognitive strategies moderate relations between BI and anxiety. Methods: Participants included 144 adolescents (55.9% female) whose temperament was assessed during toddlerhood. In adolescence (mean age = 15.4 years), participants completed an AX Continuous Performance Test while EEG was recorded in order to disentangle neural activity related to proactive (cue-locked P3b) and reactive (probe-locked N2) control. Results: BI was associated with greater total anxiety scores only among adolescents with smaller ΔP3bs and larger ΔN2s - a pattern consistent with decreased reliance on proactive strategies and increased reliance on reactive strategies. Additionally, a larger ΔP3b was associated with greater total anxiety scores. Conclusions: BI relates to risk for anxiety specifically among adolescents who rely less on proactive strategies and more on reactive control strategies. Results further suggest that proactive control differentiates a BI-related etiological pathway to anxiety from a more general pathway to anxiety occurring regardless of BI level. Thus, developmental context (i.e., temperament) moderates the association between anxiety and proactive control. The present study is the first to characterize how proactive and reactive control uniquely relate to pathways toward anxiety risk.

Annual Research Review: Developmental pathways linking early behavioral inhibition to later anxiety

“…In contrast to behavioral measures, neural measures permit characterization of activity during the individual cue-locked and probe-locked time windows and thus may provide more specific measures of control processes. Valadez et al (2021) examined ERPs drawn from EEG data that were simultaneously collected during the 15-year administration of the AX-CPT. Using separate cue-and probe-locked ERPs, they found that BI was associated with anxiety only among youth who tended not to differentiate between cues during the earlier cue period (indicating a less proactive strategy) but instead differentiated between them during the later probe period (indicating a more reactive strategy).…”