Instrumental learning and cognitive flexibility processes are impaired in children exposed to early life stress.

ABSTRACT: Children who experience severe early life stress show persistent deficits in many aspects of cognitive and social adaptation. Early stress might be associated with these broad changes in functioning because it impairs general learning mechanisms. To explore this possibility, we examined whether individuals who experienced abusive caregiving in childhood had difficulties with instrumental learning and/or cognitive flexibility as adolescents. Fifty-three 14-17-year-old adolescents (31 exposed to high levels of childhood stress, 22 control) completed an fMRI task that required them to first learn associations in the environment and then update those pairings. Adolescents with histories of early life stress eventually learned to pair stimuli with both positive and negative outcomes, but did so

SUBMITTER: Harms MB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5908766 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature