title: Cortical activity and children's rituals, habits and other repetitive behavior: a visual P300 study.
abstract: This study examines the link between children's repetitive, ritualistic, behavior and cortical brain activity. Twelve typically developing children between the ages of 6 and 12 years were administered two visual P300, oddball tasks with a 32-electrode electroencephalogram (EEG) system. One of the oddball tasks was specifically designed to reflect sensitivity to asymmetry, a phenomenon common in children and in a variety of disorders involving compulsive behavior. Parents completed the Childhood Routines Inventory. Children's repetitive, compulsive-like behaviors were strongly associated with faster processing of an asymmetrical target stimulus, even when accounting for their P300 latencies on a control task. The research punctuates the continuity between observed brain-behavior links in clinical disorders such as OCD and autism spectrum disorders, and normative variants of repetitive behavior.
authors.affiliation: Program in Neuroscience, Bucknell University, USA. dwevans@bucknell.edu
authors.forename: David W
authors.initials: DW
authors.lastname: Evans
authors.forename: Ashley
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Maliken
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D002562:Ceremonial Behavior; D002648:Child; D018913:Event-Related Potentials, P300 / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006184:Habits; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010290:Parents / Q000523:psychology; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D011930:Reaction Time; D013239:Stereotyped Behavior / Q000502:physiology*