Ingmar H. A. Franken

Cognitive control allows individuals to regulate their thoughts and behavior in pursuit of their goals and to adapt to changing environmental demands. Neural measures related to cognitive control include the error-related negativity (ERN), error positivity (Pe), and NoGo P3. These Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) develop over time and are associated with social context and psychopathological symptoms. Therefore, the goal of the current cross-sectional study was to clarify the age-effects of cognitive control, its sensitivity to social observation, and its associations with internalizing and externalizing symptoms in a large community sample. A total of 399 adolescents (aged 10-20 years (M = 16.2, SD = 2.60), 42.8% boys/54.7% girls/2.5% other) participated in a (Social) Go/No-Go task as part of the first wave of the Growing Up Together. in Society project. First, our findings showed that ERN amplitudes increased with age, while Pe amplitudes decreased. The NoGo P3 showed an inverted U-shape, with amplitudes increasing first and declining later across age. Second, we found that Pe and NoGo P3 increased under social observation, while the ERN remained stable across conditions. Third, no association between the ERN and neither internalizing nor externalizing symptoms was found, while the Pe and NoGo P3 amplitudes were smaller for adolescents with high externalizing symptoms and the NoGo P3 was reduced for adolescents with high internalizing symptoms. These findings underscore the importance of considering both developmental stage and social context when studying neural mechanisms of cognitive control.

Background. Drinking intentions consistently predict alcohol consumption, but findings for behavioral measures such as inhibitory control are mixed, particularly in earlier stages of use.Methods. 142 recreational alcohol users (40 males, 102 females; M = 33.30 years, SD = 14.76) completed a four-day EMA study with three daily prompts assessing alcohol use, craving, perceived control, and planned use, directly followed by a mobile Go/No-Go task assessing inhibitory control. Bayesian multilevel models examined whether inhibition errors, planned use, craving, and perceived control predicted drinking at momentary and daily timescales.Results. Momentary evidence indicated a positive association between planned use and drinking between (β = 0.18, 95% CrI [0.03, 0.31]) and within-persons (β = 0.31, 95% CrI [0.20, 0.42]), while negative within-person effects emerged for craving (β = -0.12, 95% CrI [-0.23, -0.02]) and perceived control (β = -0.41, 95% CrI [-0.52, -0.28]). Daily evidence found that planned use was positively associated with daily drinking (β = 0.84, 95% CrI [0.44, 1.24]), whereas perceived control was negatively associated with drinking (β = -0.78, 95% CrI [-1.21, -0.36]). No credible evidence was found for within-person effects on daily alcohol use.Conclusions. Findings suggest that alcohol use in recreational drinkers, may be driven by intentions and self-regulatory beliefs, as opposed to momentary or daily lapses with inhibition. A negative within-person association between momentary craving and alcohol use, despite a positive linear study trend, may reflect a mismatch between the reference windows measuring craving (right now) and drinking (night before, last two hours).

Background and aims: Personality traits have been consistently linked to alcohol use. High neuroticism and extraversion and low agreeableness and conscientiousness are known risk factors for both alcohol use frequency and problematic use across the lifespan. These associations have mostly been studied in the sufficient causality domain (“if X, then probably Y”), whereas little is known about these relationships in the necessary causality one (“if not X, then not Y”). Knowing that a variable is a necessary cause for an outcome helps identify who will be at risk for the outcome and who will be virtually immune. The aim of this study was to test whether personality traits in childhood, adolescence and emerging adulthood might serve as necessary conditions for problematic alcohol use in adulthood. Design: The study is part of the “Flemish Study on Parenting, Personality, and Development”, and it is a 23‐year longitudinal study across four time points [childhood (T1), adolescence (T2), emerging adulthood (T3), adulthood (T4)]. Setting: Flanders (Belgium). Participants: At T1, the total sample consisted of 306 participants (age = 7.8 ± 1.13 years, and 59.15% females), at T2 of 289 participants (age = 15.78 ± 1.16 years, 59.86% females), at T3 of 290 participants (age = 21.78 ± 1.15 years, 59.66% females) and at T4 of 306 participants (age = 30.08 ± 1.13 years, 59.15% females). Measurements: Personality traits were assessed in childhood, adolescence and emerging adulthood using the Hierarchical Personality Inventory for Children (HiPIC) and were related to problematic alcohol use, measured through the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT), in adulthood. Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA) was used to test whether specific traits were necessary for the outcome, and to what extent. Findings: Conscientiousness emerged as a developmentally stable necessary condition for problematic alcohol use in adulthood (childhood: d = 0.31, P = 0.050; adolescence: d = 0.33, P = 0.052; emerging adulthood: d = 0.33, P = 0.023; all large effects). No other personality traits reached statistical significance. Conclusions: It is possible to identify, already in childhood and through the lifespan, personality characteristics that distinguish individuals vulnerable to developing problematic alcohol use in adulthood from those who are not. Specifically, lower levels of conscientiousness appear to be necessary to be at risk of potentially developing problematic alcohol use in adulthood, whereas high levels of conscientiousness appear to lead to virtual immunity.

High infant behavioral inhibition (BI) increases risk for social difficulties and anxiety, suggesting long-term consequences for adult socioemotional development. Infant BI and social anxiety also affect error processing. Whether this association extends to social contexts remains unclear. In this prospective, 30-year longitudinal study, we investigated the long-term association between infant BI and self-reported social anxiety, and the association that infant BI and social anxiety show with adult brain and behavioral measures of social error processing. To examine the role of social observation in error processing, participants performed a social flanker task during magnetic resonance imaging. We expected pregenual anterior cingulate activity to be associated with social error processing in participants who scored high on social anxiety and infant temperament. The final sample included data from 24 participants (50% male, mean age 29.50 years). Infant BI was not related to self-reported adult social anxiety scores. We found an interaction effect of temperament and social anxiety on activity in the middle cingulate cortex, temporal and precentral gyrus. Also, we found a main effect of social vs. alone condition on activity in middle cingulate cortex. For all regions, activity was stronger during the processing of correct vs. error trials in the social condition. Contrary to our hypotheses, the findings were in white matter, as the observed activity disappeared after applying a grey matter mask. These preliminary results might suggest that the brain devotes more performance monitoring processing to facilitate better performance during social observation. While preliminary, these findings raise the possibility that early temperamental traits may shape neural sensitivity to social performance contexts in adulthood, particularly in the presence of social anxiety. Future research integrating clinical, self-report, behavioral, and neuroimaging data will be essential for building a more comprehensive understanding of social error processing across development.

This study investigates both the developmental trajectory of flanker task performance in children and the association with the development of teacher-reported problem behavior. Five waves of flanker performance and behavioral and emotional problems were drawn from a large longitudinal sample of elementary school children in the Netherlands (1424 children, ages 7 to 12 years). Latent growth curve modeling (LGM) identified a piecewise decrease in flanker response time: the steepest decline was found from 7 to 9 years old. Boys had lower levels of response time at age 7 than girls. Children showed a linear decrease in behavioral and emotional problems over time. Parallel LGMs revealed that lower levels of initial flanker response time were associated with a stronger decrease in anxiety problems and oppositional defiant problem behavior. A faster decline in response time was associated with a faster decline in depression problems, attention deficit hyperactivity-, and oppositional defiant-related behavior. Results offer insight into the normative development of performance monitoring in childhood and the link between behavioral measures of performance monitoring and behavioral and emotional problems.