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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

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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-report) and behavioral performance and neural correlates of error-monitoring (Go/No-Go task). PI children displayed lower Go/No-Go accuracy relative to FC children, and higher levels of ADHD symptoms relative to NA controls. In both FC and PI groups, longer duration of pre-adoptive out-of-home placement was associated with inattention, especially for children with deficits in error-monitoring. Enhancing cognitive control in the form of error monitoring might be a useful intervention target to protect children from some of the negative outcomes associated with adverse early care. Furthermore, results underscore that regardless of type of pre-adoptive care, we should aim to place children in stable/permanent homes as early as possible.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Early Experience, Stress and Neurodevelopment Center (HD P50 MH78105) with Megan R. Gunnar as Director and Nathan Fox as PI of the Electrophysiological Core, by R01 MH080905 to Gunnar, and by the Center for Neurobehavioral Development, University of Minnesota. The authors would like to thank the members of the Minnesota International Adoption Project team for their efforts in collecting these data including Bao Moua and Alyssa Miller, as well as to Connie Lamm for her early help with the ERP task implementation. The authors are grateful to the parents and children for their participation in this project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Baruch Ivcher School of Psychology, Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), Ziama Arkin Infancy Institute, Herzliya, Israel

    Tahl I. Frenkel & Sofie Rousseau

  2. Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, 51 E. River Road, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA

    Bonny Donzella, Kristin A. Frenn & Megan R. Gunnar

  3. Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, 20742, USA

    Nathan A. Fox

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  1. Tahl I. Frenkel
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Correspondence to Megan R. Gunnar.

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All parents were re-consented at the beginning of each research session and the study was approved by the institutional review board of the University of Minnesota.

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Frenkel, T.I., Donzella, B., Frenn, K.A. et al. 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 48, 1115–1128 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-020-00671-2

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