Abstract
Anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorders are common childhood psychiatric disorders. Behavioral inhibition (BI) is a widely studied risk factor for anxiety. Less is known about overcontrol, a related behavioral phenotype characterized by concern for errors, perfectionism, and inflexibility and also associated with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Both BI and overcontrol show associations with aberrant cognitive control and neural error responding (via the error-related negativity; ERN) yet it is unknown whether each imparts differential risk. Understanding whether overcontrol demonstrates independent associations from BI with cognitive functioning, neural error monitoring, and childhood anxiety and obsessive-compulsive presentations could aid in identifying a novel mechanistic treatment target. We assessed BI, overcontrol, cognitive functioning and psychopathology in a cross-sectional sample of 5–6 year old children (N = 126). Children completed an electroencephalogram (EEG) to assess the ERN. Overcontrol was associated with worse cognitive shifting, worse inhibitory control and higher anxiety and obsessive-compulsive symptoms, beyond BI. BI was associated with worse cognitive shifting, better inhibitory control and higher anxiety symptoms, beyond overcontrol. When assessed simultaneously, only overcontrol demonstrated a significant relationship with a blunted ERN. Moreover, overcontrol mediated (cross-sectionally) the well-established relationship between ERN and anxiety and obsessive-compulsive symptoms. BI and overcontrol impart differential risk for child cognitive functioning and anxiety while overcontrol demonstrates additional risk for aberrant neural error monitoring, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive presentations. Overcontrol may also be a mechanistic pathway between the ERN and transdiagnostic anxiety and obsessive-compulsive symptoms. Overcontrol may be a target warranted for early-childhood intervention in anxiety and OCD.
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Data Availability
The data and analytic syntax algorithms that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Change history
11 August 2022
Springer Nature’s version of this paper was updated to remove the duplicate author name ‘Kirsten Gilbert’ and add the middle initial ‘A.’ of Nathan Fox.
16 August 2022
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-022-00961-x
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This work was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (K23MH115074) to KG.
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Kirsten Gilbert, Nathan Fox, Deanna Barch and Joan Luby contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Kirsten Gilbert and Ella Sudit. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Kirsten Gilbert and Ella Sudit and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Gilbert, K., Sudit, E., Fox, N.A. et al. Childhood behavioral inhibition and overcontrol: Relationships with cognitive functioning, error monitoring, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive symptoms. Res Child Adolesc Psychopathol 50, 1629–1642 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-022-00953-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-022-00953-x