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Effects of social and nonsocial reward on executive function in preschoolers.

ABSTRACT: INTRODUCTION:Executive function, a set of higher order cognitive skills underlying goal-directed behaviors, develops rapidly during preschool years. Reward increases executive function engagement in adolescents and adults. However, there is still a scarcity of data on how reward affects executive function in young children. The present study examines whether different incentive types contribute differently to executive function performance and neural activity in children. METHODS:Twenty-five preschoolers of 5-6 years old were provided an incentive Go/No-go task, comparing social, nonsocial, and nonreward conditions. Activations in the prefrontal regions during the tasks were measured using functional near-infrared spectroscopy. RESULTS:The results revealed that social reward enhanced right prefrontal activations in young children. In contrast to adult literature, younger children did not show any significant differences in executive function performance across conditions. CONCLUSION:This study expands our understanding of motivation and EF engagement in preschoolers. Specifically, social reward enhanced prefrontal activations in young children. The implications and recommendations for future research are discussed.

SUBMITTER: Lertladaluck K

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7507562 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Effects of social and nonsocial reward on executive function in preschoolers.

Lertladaluck Kanda K Chutabhakdikul Nuanchan N Chevalier Nicolas N Moriguchi Yusuke Y

Brain and behavior 20200730 9

<h4>Introduction</h4>Executive function, a set of higher order cognitive skills underlying goal-directed behaviors, develops rapidly during preschool years. Reward increases executive function engagement in adolescents and adults. However, there is still a scarcity of data on how reward affects executive function in young children. The present study examines whether different incentive types contribute differently to executive function performance and neural activity in children.<h4>Methods</h4> ...[more]

PMID: 32729683

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Project description:Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by impaired predictive abilities; however, the neural mechanisms subsuming reward prediction errors in ASD are poorly understood. In the current study, we investigated neural responses during social and nonsocial reward prediction errors in 22 adolescents with ASD (ages 12-17) and 20 typically developing control adolescents (ages 12-18). Participants performed a reward prediction error task using both social (i.e., faces) and nonsocial (i.e., objects) rewards during a functional magnetic resonance imaging scan. Reward prediction errors were defined in two ways: (a) the signed prediction error, the difference between the experienced and expected reward; and (b) the thresholded unsigned prediction error, the difference between expected and unexpected outcomes regardless of magnitude. During social reward prediction errors, the ASD group demonstrated the following differences relative to the TD group: (a) signed prediction error: decreased activation in the right precentral gyrus and increased activation in the right frontal pole; and (b) thresholded unsigned prediction error: increased activation in the right anterior cingulate gyrus and bilateral precentral gyrus. Groups did not differ in brain activation during nonsocial reward prediction errors. Within the ASD group, exploratory analyses revealed that reaction times and social-communication impairments were related to precentral gyrus activation during social prediction errors. These findings elucidate the neural mechanisms of social reward prediction errors in ASD and suggest that ASD is characterized by greater neural atypicalities during social, relative to nonsocial, reward prediction errors in ASD. Autism Res 2020, 13: 715-728. © 2020 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. LAY SUMMARY: We used brain imaging to evaluate differences in brain activation in adolescents with autism while they performed tasks that involved learning about social and nonsocial information. We found no differences in brain responses during the nonsocial condition, but differences during the social condition of the learning task. This study provides evidence that autism may involve different patterns of brain activation when learning about social information.

Project description:BackgroundResidence in high-crime neighborhoods, especially in childhood, is linked to mental health issues later. Detecting distinct neurobiological processes underlying the effects of this environmental stressor may be critical to identifying prevention and intervention targets. This study examined the relationships of levels of a circulating inflammatory protein with social and monetary reward-related brain function among adolescents who lived in high- versus low-crime neighborhoods during childhood.MethodsA total of 70 participants (mean age = 16.3 years; 57% female) completed measures of inflammatory markers, depression history, and health and 2 functional magnetic resonance imaging tasks assessing responsivity to monetary and social rewards. Multivariate linear regression tested whether individuals with higher interleukin 6, an inflammatory cytokine, who also lived in neighborhoods with higher crime had distinct orbitofrontal cortex and nucleus accumbens activation to monetary reward and social acceptance.ResultsFor adolescents who lived in neighborhoods with more crime, higher interleukin 6 was associated with higher nucleus accumbens responses to social acceptance. We did not detect significant moderating effects of neighborhood crime rates on the associations of interleukin 6 with orbitofrontal cortex responses to social acceptance or orbitofrontal cortex/nucleus accumbens activation during monetary reward anticipation or outcome. These results were obtained before and after adjusting for neighborhood income and other covariates. We did not detect significant moderating effects of neighborhood income.ConclusionsHigh-threat residence environment and specific demands of the social context in childhood may have shaped the effect of peripheral immune activation on reward-related neural function in adolescence. The prevailing view that inflammation-associated behaviors are characterized by blunted responsiveness to reward may be oversimplistic.

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Effects of social and nonsocial reward on executive function in preschoolers.

Publications

Effects of social and nonsocial reward on executive function in preschoolers.

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