title: Affective Processing in Pediatric Bipolar Disorder and Offspring of Bipolar Parents.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Bipolar disorder (BD) is characterized by biased processing of emotional information. However, little research in this area has been conducted in youth with BD and at-risk individuals. The goal of this study was to determine whether children with BD displayed comparable or more severe manifestations of this bias relative to offspring of parents with BD.
  
  
  METHODS
  The sample (n = 57 children and adolescents) included 18 individuals with BD (age: 13.63 ± 2.99; 8 females), 16 offspring of parents with BD (age: 11.83 ± 2.96; 9 females) and 23 healthy controls (HC) (age: 12.789 ± 3.087; 8 females). All participants performed the Affective Go/No-Go (AGN) and the Rapid Visual Processing (RVP) tasks of the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB).
  
  
  RESULTS
  Relative to HC, individuals with BD responded faster to correct trials and committed an elevated number of commission errors across all affective conditions of the AGN task. By contrast, BD offspring showed intact performance accuracy but quicker response times than HC. Post-hoc analyses revealed that this behavioral pattern was observed in BD offspring with mental health problems but not in healthy BD offspring. Overall, mean reaction times and total number of errors in the RVP task were comparable across groups.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  In line with previous findings, subjects with BD encountered difficulties in processing affective information. The tendency toward faster but accurate responses to affective stimuli observed in BD offspring may be a marker of attentional bias toward affective information and constitute a vulnerability marker for mood disorder.
authors.affiliation: 1 Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston , Houston, Texas.
authors.forename: Isabelle E
authors.initials: IE
authors.lastname: Bauer
authors.affiliation: 2 Cleveland Clinic, Pediatric Institute , Cleveland, Ohio.
authors.forename: Thomas W
authors.initials: TW
authors.lastname: Frazier
authors.affiliation: 1 Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston , Houston, Texas.
authors.forename: Thomas D
authors.initials: TD
authors.lastname: Meyer
authors.affiliation: 3 Psychology Department, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill , Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Youngstrom
authors.affiliation: 1 Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston , Houston, Texas.
authors.forename: Giovana B
authors.initials: GB
authors.lastname: Zunta-Soares
authors.affiliation: 1 Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston , Houston, Texas.
authors.forename: Jair C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Soares
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001714:Bipolar Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D016241:Child of Impaired Parents / Q000523:psychology*; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008606:Mental Processes; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D011930:Reaction Time