Early Childhood Abuse and Inhibition

Child maltreatment is a prevalent issue among adolescent females. Threatening experiences are predictors for atypical neurobiological development which leads to maladaptive cognition and behavior during adolescent time periods. A subset of cognition is inhibition which encompasses both motor and reward inhibition. Childhood abuse alters reward sensitivity and processing allowing us to predict a decrease in the ability to inhibit rewarded responses compared to motor responses. A MID and CARIT task were used to measure both reward and motor inhibition. Self-reported child maltreatment and violence measures were then used to predict reward versus motor inhibition which were quantified as accuracy measures resulting from the CARIT task. Community violence marginally predicted a decrease in effective reward inhibition compared to motor inhibition. Reported maltreatment did not predict effective motor inhibition. This allows us to see the effect of abuse specifically on reward inhibition while also controlling for other outcomes of abuse such as psychopathology. Understanding the predictors of maladaptive behavior is useful in order to modify risky adolescent behavior appropriately. Future research should look at onset and frequency of maltreatment and the differing effects of specific forms of adversity.Bachelor of Scienc