P300 Event-Related Potentials Mediate the Relationship Between Child Physical Abuse and Externalizing Behavior.

Naixue Cui,Catherine C Mcdonald,Therese S Richmond,Cynthia A Connolly,Jianghong Liu,Alexandra L Hanlon,Adrian Raine

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.720094

Abstract

The psychophysiological mechanism linking early childhood experiences to behavior problems remains unclear. This study aimed to examine the association of child physical abuse with P300 event-related potentials (ERP), and to test the mediating effect of P300 amplitude and latency in the relationship between child physical abuse and externalizing behaviors. Cross-sectional secondary data were obtained from 155 children (55.5% boys, mean age: 11.28 ± 0.57 years) who participated in the China Jintan Child Cohort Study. Children self-reported maternal and paternal physical abuse and externalizing behaviors, as well as P300 were obtained in 2013. Additionally, parents and teachers reported child externalizing behaviors in preschool in 2007. P300 were recorded during a standard novel auditory oddball task. Path analysis shows that after controlling for child sex, socioeconomic status, area of residence, IQ, and child externalizing behavior in preschool, children exposed to maternal physical abuse exhibited increased novelty P300 amplitude, which links to more externalizing behavior. Novelty P300 amplitude partially mediated the relationship between maternal physical abuse and externalizing behavior. These findings are the first to document the partial mediating effect of P300 amplitude on the abuse-externalizing relationship and are consistent with the view that physical abuse affects the attention bias to novel cues that likely places them at increased risk for the development and maintenance of externalizing behavior.

Highlights

The relationship between child physical abuse and behavior problems has been well documented in the literature across cultures (Fry et al, 2012; Gershoff et al, 2012; Pace et al, 2019)
Altered neurocognitive development related to child physical abuse is suggested to be a potential pathway (McCrory et al, 2012; Kavanaugh et al, 2017), which is supported by the empirical evidence of the mediating effect of neurocognition measured by neuropsychological tasks or functional magnetic resonance imaging in the relationship between child maltreatment and externalizing behavior (Xing et al, 2018; Hallowell et al, 2019)
Paternal physical abuse was dropped from the path model because it was significantly related to neither the mediator nor the externalizing behavior

Summary

Introduction

The relationship between child physical abuse and behavior problems has been well documented in the literature across cultures (Fry et al, 2012; Gershoff et al, 2012; Pace et al, 2019). Altered neurocognitive development related to child physical abuse is suggested to be a potential pathway (McCrory et al, 2012; Kavanaugh et al, 2017), which is supported by the empirical evidence of the mediating effect of neurocognition measured by neuropsychological tasks or functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in the relationship between child maltreatment and externalizing behavior (Xing et al, 2018; Hallowell et al, 2019). The P3a is elicited by novel stimuli (i.e., stimuli with low probability, task-irrelevant, but contextual salience) and is commonly regarded as reflecting a bottom-up process of attention orienting to prepare the organism for deviant events in the environment (Debener et al, 2002; Polich, 2007). P300 has been extensively studied in relation to both child maltreatment and externalizing behavior, respectively

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