Self-referential processing has been linked to internalizing psychopathology in children and adolescents, including depression. Although numerous studies have examined this association, most have focused on the between-person differences in the behavioral (e.g., reaction time [RT]) and neurophysiological (e.g., event-related potentials [ERPs]) indices of self-referential processing. It remains unclear how self-referential processing unfolds dynamically from moment to moment within individuals, and to what extent these within-person fluctuations may be modulated by individual differences in depressive symptoms. Using a multilevel modelling (MLM) approach, the present study examined the trial-level changes in RT and ERP indices (anterior late positive potential [LPP]) of self-referential processing and their associations with depressive symptoms in 115 community-dwelling youths aged 9–12. We found curvilinear patterns in both the anterior LPP and RT, with youths showing an initial decrease followed by a subsequent increase in these measures over the course of the task. Moreover, compared to their lower-symptom peers, youths with higher depressive symptoms showed distinct patterns of changes in the anterior LPP and RT towards endorsed positive words. These findings extend existing evidence on the between-person associations between self-referential processing and depressive symptoms, providing novel insight into how depressive symptoms shape the dynamic, moment-to-moment processing of self-relevant information in youths. Further research is needed to elucidate the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying these trial-level dynamics and their associations with between-person differences in internalizing symptoms.

Reward and motivation are two cognitive processes that drive goal-directed behaviors and are closely linked to the development of psychopathology. One behavioral measure of motivation is effort expenditure - the amount of effort exerted to attain a desirable outcome. In adults, higher effort expenditure has been associated with heightened neural responses to reward cues but diminished responses to reward anticipation and feedback. However, it is unclear whether similar patterns exist in early adolescence, a critical period for the development of reward- and motivation-related processes. Using event-related potentials, we examined the effort-reward relationship in a community sample of 92 10-to-13-year-olds (53 females, Mean/ SD of age = 12.06/1.20 years). Unlike adults, greater effort increased youths’ attention to both reward cues and reward anticipation, indexed by a larger cue-elicited P3 and a larger stimulus-preceding negativity (SPN), respectively. Similar to adults, higher effort was associated with lower valuation of reward feedback, as reflected by a smaller reward positivity (RewP). Effort did not influence the feedback-elicited P3 or late positive potential (LPP). These adolescent-specific patterns may reflect the earlier maturation of the reward system relative to the cognitive control processes during adolescence. Our findings of the neural substrates of effort-based reward processing will contribute to our mechanistic understanding of developmental psychopathology, as alterations in motivation and reward processes have been implicated in conditions such as adolescent depression.

Self-referential information is uniquely salient and preferentially processed even in children. The literature has used the Self-Referent Encoding Task (SRET) combined with ERPs to study the neural substrates of self-referential processing and its role in development. However, no work has implemented a data-driven, comprehensive examination of the ERP correlates of SRET in youths by comparing a self-referential condition with an other-referential condition. Ninety-two 10-to-14-year-old typically developing youths completed an ERP version of the SRET consisting of a self-referential and an other-referential condition, following which they were unexpectedly asked to complete a recognition task of the presented words. A data-driven Principal Components Analysis isolated five SRET-elicited ERPs: P1, P2, N400, and anterior and posterior late positive potential (aLPP, pLPP). Two-way ANOVAs (Referent × Valence) demonstrated a “self-positivity” bias in aLPP, recognition, and memory sensitivity: youths showed an enhanced aLPP, better recognition, and higher memory sensitivity for Self-Positive versus Self-Negative words, whereas no such differences were found between Other-Positive and Other-negative words. Further, a (marginal) “other-negativity” bias was found in pLPP, P2, and recognition: youths displayed an enhanced pLPP and P2 and higher memory sensitivity in the Other-Negative versus Other-Positive condition, whereas no such pattern was observed in the Self conditions. We provided novel evidence on a self-positivity bias that uniquely favored positive self-referential words as well as an other-negativity bias that uniquely favored negative other-referential words. These findings contribute to our mechanistic knowledge of self-referential processing in youths and inform future studies on the role of self-referential processing in socioemotional development.

The ability to detect and monitor errors enables us to maintain optimal performance across tasks. One neurophysiological index of error monitoring is the error-related negativity (ERN), a fronto-central negative deflection peaking between 0-150 ms following an erroneous response. The developmental literature has illustrated age-related differences in the ERN and its association with anxiety during development. However, this literature focuses on the between-person differences of the ERN and cannot speak to whether there exist meaningful within-person changes in the ERN throughout a task. We examined the within-person variations of the ERN in 115 community-dwelling nine-to-12-year-olds (66 girls; Mean age/SD=11.00/1.16 years), a critical period for the development of error processing and anxiety psychopathology. Participants completed an EEG Go/No-Go task and reported their anxiety symptoms. Multilevel growth analyses yielded significant within-person, curvilinear changes in the ERN throughout the task. Youths’ trial-level ERN increased (i.e., became more negative) as more errors were made earlier in the task, but decreased as subsequent errors were committed later in the task. This curvilinear pattern was evident in older, but not younger, youths. Age further interacted with anxiety symptoms: younger youths with higher anxiety showed a continuous increase in the ERN throughout the task, whereas older youths with higher anxiety showed an increase in the ERN with early errors, followed by a decline in the ERN in later error trials. Our study contributed novel evidence for the development of the ERN and the underlying mechanisms of the ERN-anxiety relationship that cannot be captured by between-person approaches.