Childhood Unpredictability and Reward Processing #16
Description
Research question(s)
Extract the construct of unpredictability from multiple measures of childhood adversity, including parenting, residential change, and life events;
Examine whether individual differences in reward processing in the Monetary Incentive Delay task, both neurological and behavioral, associated with childhood unpredictability.
Description
Altered brain activation during reward processing following early adversity was shown to underly maladaptive decision making, and thus prove a candidate mediator between early adversity and later behavioral problems. But less is known about what characteristics in early adversity shape reward processing. Increasing evidence has suggested that experiencing reward inconsistencies in the early environment changes children’s reward expectations and subsequent decision-making. However, few existing scales provide a satisfactory measure of this novel construct of childhood unpredictability.
Tools and algorithms to be used
Predictive modeling (regression) of the relationship between childhood unpredictability and behavioral and neuroimaging results of the MID task.
Skills we could use help with (optional)
Use of Python for predictive modeling
Use of Python for neuroimaging data processing
Suggested keywords/tags
Early life adversity, unpredictability, reward processing