Preschoolers of Mothers with Affective and Anxiety Disorders Show Impairments in Cognitive Inhibition During a Chimeric Animal Stroop

Aims: To determine whether maternal affective and anxiety disorders are associated with cognitive inhibitory deficits in four-year-old children utilizing a chimeric animal stroop task, a childhood adaptation of the traditional stroop task.

Study Design: Blinded Cross-Sectional Study.

Place and Duration of Study: Department of Psychiatry, University of Colorado School of Medicine, data collected from June 2009 to October 2010.

Methodology: Four-year-olds of mothers with (n=29) and without (n=31) a history of affective or anxiety disorders completed a chimeric animal version of the stroop task. Incongruent, neutral, and congruent stimuli were presented over three trial blocks. Mean reaction time and response accuracy were the primary dependent measures.

Results: The increase in the number of incorrect responses to incongruent versus congruent or neutral stimuli was larger for offspring of a mother with a history of an affective or anxiety disorder than without (t=2.4, P=.02); there was no significant main effect of maternal psychiatric illness (F(1, 58)=0.9, P=.34) or a stimulus type by maternal illness (F(1 , 58)=1.1, P=.30) interaction on reaction time.

Conclusion: The association between maternal affective and anxiety disorders and cognitive inhibitory deficit is already identifiable by four years of age.