(PS9-D84) Predicting Anxiety in Adolescents Using Maternal Anxiety Symptoms and Error-related Brain Activity

Research suggests that anxiety symptoms in adolescents are correlated with parental anxiety. However, this association is typically based on subjective reports of parent and child anxiety that may reflect other factors such as demand characteristics and social desirability. Biomarkers of anxiety may provide an alternative avenue for examining cross-generational transmission of emotion regulation. For example, the Error-Related Negativity (ERN), an event-related potential (ERP) component of the electroencephalogram (EEG), may be a potential biomarker for anxiety symptoms and provide a causal link between the symptoms of anxiety in parents and their children. In the current study, we asked 212 adolescents between the ages of 11-14 and their mothers to complete validated self-report measures of anxiety as well as complete a Flanker task designed to evoke the ERN.  In the Flanker task, participants determine the direction of a center arrow flanked by congruent ( > > > > >) or incongruent (< < >< < ) arrows. The participant’s task is to focus on the center arrow and ignore the flanking ones thus generating frequent mistakes.  Participants completed this task while we collected EEG to quantify the ERN. Mothers’ self-reported anxiety, as well as their error sensitivity as measured by the ERN independently predicted their children’s anxiety. Specifically, increases in anxiety and sensitivity to errors predicted increased anxiety in the adolescents. Thus, sensitivity to errors may provide additional unique predictive utility when examining anxiety in adolescents. Furthermore, both parental anxiety and parental error sensitivity may be targets of treatment when attempting to treat adolescents with anxiety.