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Browsing by Author "Chen, Ya-Yun"

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    Family Cohesion Moderates the Relation between Parent–Child Neural Connectivity Pattern Similarity and Youth’s Emotional Adjustment
    Zhou, Zexi; Chen, Ya-Yun; Yang, Beiming; Qu, Yang; Lee, Tae-Ho (Society for Neuroscience, 2023-08-16)
    Despite a recent surge in research examining parent–child neural similarity using fMRI, there remains a need for further investigation into how such similarity may play a role in children’s emotional adjustment. Moreover, no prior studies explored the potential contextual factors that may moderate the link between parent–child neural similarity and children’s developmental outcomes. In this study, 32 parent–youth dyads (parents: Mage = 43.53 years, 72% female; children: Mage = 11.69 years, 41% female) watched an emotion-evoking animated film while being scanned using fMRI. We first quantified how similarly emotion network interacts with other brain regions in responding to the emotion-evoking film between parents and their children. We then examined how such parent–child neural similarity is associated with children’s emotional adjustment, with attention to the moderating role of family cohesion. Results revealed that higher parent–child similarity in functional connectivity pattern during movie viewing was associated with better emotional adjustment, including less negative affect, lower anxiety, and greater ego resilience in youth. Moreover, such associations were significant only among families with higher cohesion, but not among families with lower cohesion. The findings advance our understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying how children thrive by being in sync and attuned with their parents, and provide novel empirical evidence that the effects of parent–child concordance at the neural level on children’s development are contextually dependent.
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    Increasing Screen Exposure Time Harms Inhibitory-Control Network in Developing Children: A Two Years Follow-up of the ABCD Study
    Chen, Ya-Yun (Virginia Tech, 2021-12)
    As virtual experiences are rapidly substituting a significant proportion of in-person interactions during the COVID pandemic, it is critical to monitor the effect of screen exposure time on developing children’s behavior and nervous system. Screen use boosts information accessibility and, therefore, may delay the development of the inhibitory control networks in children, who are vulnerable to immediate reward-orientated tendencies and not yet capable of controlling their impulsivity. Therefore, it was hypothesized that as children become more exposed to screens, the development of the inhibitory control network would be delayed and their reward sensitivity will be augmented. Using the ABCD Study Data Repository, 8,334 children’s behavioral and neural data (aged 9-11) were included. Robust mediation analysis and correlation analysis were used to investigate how Screen Time interacts with children’s reward-orientated tendency (e.g. Behavioral approach system, BAS) and the brain's inhibitory network. Intrinsic Frontoparietal Network-Striatum (FPN-Striatum) connectivity strength was used as neural indices of the inhibitory control quality in children. Results showed that Screen Time significantly mediated the relationship between BAS and both waves of the intrinsic inhibitory process. A higher BAS was linked to a longer Screen Time and weaker inhibitory network connectivity. This complete/full mediation model indicates that Screen Time negatively influenced the strength of FPN-Striatum connectivity. In conclusion, the study revealed specific behavioral and neural correlates of screen exposure using a large database, and suggested that increasing screen exposure time may impair the inhibitory capability and increase impulsivity in children.