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The goal of the present study was to investigate the role of early social deprivation in shaping the effectiveness of parent support to alleviate hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA)-axis-stress responses of children (ages 8.9-11, M = 9.83 years, SD = 0.55). The sample was equally divided between children who had been adopted internationally from orphanage care by age 5 (n = 40) and an age- and gender-matched group of nonadopted (NA) children (n = 40). On average, internationally adopted children were invited to the laboratory 7.6 years postadoption (SD = 1.45). We experimentally manipulated the provision of parent support during the 5-min speech preparation period before a modified Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) and examined its effect on levels of salivary cortisol secreted in response to this laboratory stressor. All participants were randomly assigned to receive support from their parent or a stranger. Analyses revealed a significant interaction of support condition and group such that parent support significantly dampened the cortisol-stress response in NA children compared with support from a stranger, whereas the cortisol response curves of postinstitutionalized (PI) children did not differ between the parent- and stranger-support conditions. Cortisol reactivity for PI children in both conditions was lower than that of NA children in the stranger-support condition. Social deprivation during the first few years of life may shape neurobehavioral development in ways that reduce selective responses to caregivers versus strangers.

Background: Children reared in deprived environments, such as institutions for the care of orphaned or abandoned children, are at increased risk for attention and behavior regulation difficulties. This study examined the neurobehavioral correlates of executive attention in post institutionalized (PI) children. Methods: The performance and event-related potentials (ERPs) of 10- and 11-year-old internationally adopted PI children on two executive attention tasks, Go/No-go and Flanker, were compared with two groups: children internationally adopted early from foster care (PF) and nonadopted children (NA). Results: Behavioral measures suggested problems with sustained attention, with PIs performing more poorly on Go trials and not on No-go trials of the Go/No-go and made more errors on both congruent and incongruent trials on the Flanker. ERPs suggested differences in inhibitory control and error monitoring, as PIs had smaller N2 amplitude on Go/No-go and smaller error-related negativity on Flanker. Conclusions: This pattern of results raises questions regarding the nature of attention difficulties for PI children. The behavioral errors are not specific to executive attention and instead likely reflect difficulties in overall sustained attention. The ERP results are consistent with neural activity related to deficits in inhibitory control (N2) and error monitoring (error-related negativity). Questions emerge regarding the similarity of attention regulatory difficulties in PIs to those experienced by non-PI children with ADHD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]