Moderating the Risk for Attention Deficits in Children with Pre-Adoptive Adversity: The Protective Role of Shorter Duration of out of Home Placement and Children's Enhanced Error Monitoring.

Moderating the Risk for Attention Deficits in Children with Pre-Adoptive Adversity: The Protective Role of Shorter Duration of out of Home Placement and Children's Enhanced Error Monitoring. J Abnorm Child Psychol. 2020 Jun 30;: Authors: Frenkel TI, Donzella B, Frenn KA, Rousseau S, Fox NA, Gunnar MR Abstract Early institutional-deprivation has been found to increase risk for inattention/hyperactivity (ADHD). Notably, studies suggest that children with a history of adversity evidencing an enhanced ERP (the error-related-negativity; ERN) may be protected against attention problems. However, such protective effects of the ERN have been studied in children whom typically experienced residential instability. It is unknown whether error-monitoring is similarly protective for children with stable post-deprivation placements. The present study examined the protective effect of the ERN in a sample of children who experienced at least 3-years of stable, relatively enriched caregiving after being internationally-adopted as infants/toddlers from institutional-care. We included two groups of children adopted internationally before age three, one group adopted from institutional-care (PI:n = 80) and one comparison group adopted from foster-care (FC;n = 44). A second comparison group consisted of non-adopted children (NA;n = 48) from demographically comparable families. At five-years of age, we assessed child ADHD symptoms (parent-repo...
Source: Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: J Abnorm Child Psychol Source Type: research