Neighborhood crime risk and racial/ethnic differences in children’s
neural reactivity to emotional stimuli
Abstract
Research has shown that exposure to higher rates of neighborhood
disadvantage and contextual threat increases risk for the development of
psychopathology in youth, with some evidence that these effects may
differ across racial/ethnic groups. Although studies have shown that
direct exposure to stress impacts neural responses to threat-relevant
stimuli, less is known about how neighborhood characteristics more
generally (e.g., living in neighborhood characterized by high crime
risk, whether or not the individual directly experiences any crime) may
impact children’s neural responses to threat. To address this question,
we examined links between census-derived indices of neighborhood crime
and neural reactivity to emotional stimuli in a sample of 100 children
(Mage = 9.64, 54% girls, 65% non-Hispanic White) and whether these
relations differ for children from minority backgrounds compared to
non-Hispanic White children. Focusing on the late positive potential
(LPP) event-related potential (ERP) component, we examined neural
reactivity to threat-relevant stimuli (fearful faces) as well as
non-threat relevant negative (sad faces) and positive (happy faces)
stimuli across low, medium, and high intensities (morph levels). We
found that levels of neighborhood crime were associated with LPP
response to high intensity fearful, but not happy or sad, faces, but
only among children from racial/ethnic minority backgrounds. This
suggests that levels of crime within one’s neighborhood may be a more
salient stressor for children from minority racial-ethnic groups than
for non-Hispanic White children.