Citation

Suor JH, Granros M, Calentino AE, Luan Phan K, Burkhouse KL. Dev. Psychopathol. 2023; 35(1): 168-178.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, Cambridge University Press)

DOI

10.1017/S0954579421000857

PMID

36914290

PMCID

PMC10014903

Abstract

Guided by developmental psychopathology and dual-risk frameworks, the present study examined the interplay between childhood maltreatment and maternal major depression history in relation to neural reward responsiveness in youth. The sample consisted of 96 youth (ages 9-16; M = 12.29 years, SD = 2.20; 68.8% female) drawn from a large metropolitan city. Youth were recruited based on whether their mothers had a history of major depressive disorder (MDD) and were categorized into two groups: youth with mothers with a history of MDD (high risk; HR; n = 56) and youth with mothers with no history of psychiatric disorders (low risk; LR; n = 40). The reward positivity (RewP), an event-related potential component, was utilized to measure reward responsiveness and the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire measured childhood maltreatment. We found a significant two-way interaction between childhood maltreatment and risk group in relation to RewP. Simple slope analysis revealed that in the HR group, greater childhood maltreatment was significantly associated with reduced RewP. The relationship between childhood maltreatment and RewP was not significant among the LR youth. The present findings demonstrate that the association between childhood maltreatment and blunted reward responsiveness is dependent on whether offspring have mothers with histories of MDD.

Language: en

Keywords

Adolescent; Child; Humans; Female; Male; child maltreatment; *Depressive Disorder, Major; *Child Abuse/psychology; Depression/psychology; event-related potentials; maternal depression; Mothers/psychology; Reward; reward positivity