Associations between disordered eating, internalizing symptoms, and behavioral and neural correlates of response inhibition in preadolescence

Thomas, Kai. S. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7584-2881, Jones, Catherine R.G. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0541-0431, Williams, Marc O. and Vanderwert, Ross E. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2280-8401 2024. Associations between disordered eating, internalizing symptoms, and behavioral and neural correlates of response inhibition in preadolescence. Developmental Psychobiology 66 (3) , e22477. 10.1002/dev.22477

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Abstract

Response inhibition difficulties are reported in individuals with eating disorders (EDs), anxiety, and depression. Although ED symptoms and internalizing symptoms co-occur in preadolescence, there is limited research examining associations between these symptoms and response inhibition in this age group. This study is the first to investigate the associations between behavioral and neural markers of response inhibition, disordered eating (DE), and internalizing symptoms in a community sample of preadolescents. Forty-eight children (M age = 10.95 years, 56.3% male) completed a Go/NoGo task, whereas electroencephalography was recorded. Self-report measures of DE and internalizing symptoms were collected. Higher levels of anxiety and depression were associated with neural markers of suboptimal response inhibition (attenuated P3NoGo amplitudes) in preadolescence. In contrast, higher levels of depression were associated with greater response inhibition at a behavioral level. These findings suggest internalizing symptoms in preadolescence are associated with P3-indexed difficulties in evaluation and monitoring, but these are not sufficient to disrupt behavioral performance on a response inhibition task. This pattern may reflect engagement of compensatory processes to support task performance. DE was not significantly associated with response inhibition, suggesting that difficulties in response inhibition may only be reliably observed in more chronic and severe DE and ED presentations.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Psychology Research Institutes & Centres > Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC)
Publisher:	Wiley
ISSN:	0012-1630
Funders:	ESRC
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	14 February 2024
Date of Acceptance:	9 February 2024
Last Modified:	18 Feb 2025 14:54
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/166315

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