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Attentional bias to threat in children at-risk for emotional disorders: role of gender and type of maternal emotional disorder

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Abstract

Previous studies suggested that threat biases underlie familial risk for emotional disorders in children. However, major questions remain concerning the moderating role of the offspring gender and the type of parental emotional disorder on this association. This study addresses these questions in a large sample of boys and girls. Participants were 6–12 years old (at screening) typically developing children participating in the High Risk Cohort Study for Psychiatric Disorders (n = 1280; 606 girls, 674 boys). Children were stratified according to maternal emotional disorder (none; mood disorder; anxiety disorder; comorbid anxiety/mood disorder) and gender. Attention biases were assessed using a dot-probe paradigm with threat, happy and neutral faces. A significant gender-by-parental emotional disorder interaction predicted threat bias, independent of anxiety and depression symptoms in children. Daughters of mothers with an emotional disorder showed increased attention to threat compared with daughters of disorder-free mothers, irrespective of the type of maternal emotion disorder. In contrast, attention bias to threat in boys only occurred in mothers with a non-comorbid mood disorder. No group differences were found for biases for happy-face cues. Gender and type of maternal emotional disorder predict attention bias in disorder-free children. This highlights the need for longitudinal research to clarify whether this pattern of threat-attention bias in children relates to the risk of developing anxiety and mood disorders later in life.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the children and families for their participation, which made this research possible; the other members of the high-risk cohort research team; Dr Robert Goodman for his research support regarding the Development and Well-Being Assessment (DAWBA) instrument procedures and Dr Bacy Fleitlich-Bilyk for her clinical supervision. We also thank the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Intramural Research Program. This work received funding from the following Brazilian government agencies: the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), the Brazilian Federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Postgraduate Education (CAPES) and the Foundation for Research Support of the State of São Paulo (FAPESP).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hospital de Clınicas de Porto Alegre, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Ramiro Barcelos, 2350, Room 2202, Porto Alegre, 90035-003, Brazil

    Rachel Montagner, Marcelo S. Czykiel, Luis A. Rohde, Gisele G. Manfro & Giovanni A. Salum

  2. Southampton University, Southampton, UK

    Karin Mogg & Brendan P. Bradley

  3. National Institute of Mental Health Intramural Research Program, Bethesda, MD, USA

    Daniel S. Pine

  4. São Paulo University, São Paulo, Brazil

    Euripedes Constantino Miguel & Luis A. Rohde

  5. National Institute of Developmental Psychiatry for Children and Adolescents (INPD, CNPq), São Paulo, Brazil

    Euripedes Constantino Miguel, Luis A. Rohde, Gisele G. Manfro & Giovanni A. Salum

Authors
  1. Rachel Montagner
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  2. Karin Mogg
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  3. Brendan P. Bradley
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  4. Daniel S. Pine
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  5. Marcelo S. Czykiel
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  6. Euripedes Constantino Miguel
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  8. Gisele G. Manfro
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  9. Giovanni A. Salum
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rachel Montagner.

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Conflict of interest

Rachel Montagner, Karin Mogg and Brendan P. Bradley declare no potential conflicts of interest. Daniel S. Pine is funded by the National Institute of Mental Health NIMH. Marcelo S. Czykiel receives funding for scientific initiation from Foundation for Research of the State of Rio Grande do Sul (FAPERGS). Gisele G. Manfro and Eurípedes C. Miguel Filho are in receipt of a senior research CNPq scholarship. Luis Augusto Rohde was on the speakers’ bureau and/or acted as consultant for Eli-Lilly, Janssen-Cilag, Novartis and Shire in the last 3 years. The ADHD and Juvenile Bipolar Disorder Outpatient Programs chaired by him received unrestricted educational and research support from the following pharmaceutical companies in the last 3 years: Eli-Lilly, Janssen-Cilag, Novartis, and Shire. He also receives research support from Brazilian government institutions (CNPq, FAPERGS, CAPES and Clinical Hospital of Porto Alegre-HCPA), authorship royalties from Oxford Press and ArtMed and received travel awards for taking part of 2014 APA and 2015 WFADHD meetings from Shire. Giovanni A. Salum is in receipt of a CAPES/FAPERGS post-doctoral scholarship.

Ethical standard

The study was approved by the ethics committee of the University of São Paulo and was performed in accordance with the ethical standards laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments. All parents gave informed consent prior to inclusion in the study and children assented to the study procedures.

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Montagner, R., Mogg, K., Bradley, B.P. et al. Attentional bias to threat in children at-risk for emotional disorders: role of gender and type of maternal emotional disorder. Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry 25, 735–742 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-015-0792-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-015-0792-3

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