53. Highly Psychosis-Prone Adolescents Show Increased Capture by Distractor Stimuli and More Effort to Inhibit Emotional Stimuli Than Typically Developing Controls

Abstract

Background: 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q) occurs in ∼1 in 2000 live births. Those with 22q can experience impaired attention and executive function, as well as high rates of anxiety (≥56% lifetime prevalence). Critically, those with 22q have a 30% risk for schizophrenia. Since anxiety is a major risk factor for psychosis in this group, we examined attention and response inhibition to emotional stimuli in youth with 22q. Methods: Adolescents with 22q (n = 24) and Typically Developing (TD; n = 9) controls participated in two pairs of event related potential (ERP) experiments, each of which had a neutral and an emotional variant. In the Distractor Target (DT) participants responded to a central, colored target stimulus while ignoring lateral distractors. We examined the N2PC component, which indexes capture by distracting stimuli, and the PD com-ponent, which indexes successful suppression of distractors. In the emo-tional (eDT) variant, participants responded to target emotions presented using emotional face targets and distractors. In the Go-NoGo (GNG) task, youth pressed a button for frequent images of moles but not for infrequent vegetables. We examined the N2, which indexes confict detection necessary to inhibit prepotent responses. In the emotional (eGNG) variant, participants responded to frequent emotional (angry or happy) faces but not to infrequent calm faces. Results: In the DT the 22q group showed more attentional capture (N2PC) than did the TD group (P