Neural Response to Reward and Pathological Personality Dimensions in Adolescent and Young Adult Females

The reward positivity (RewP), an event-related potential component that indexes reinforcement learning and reward sensitivity, has been associated with both depressive and anxiety disorders—as well as risk and course—during adolescence. However, few studies have examined whether the RewP is associated with transdiagnostic dimensions that might explain similar results across different disorders, symptoms, and traits. In a sample of adolescent and young adult females, the present study attempted to replicate an existing hierarchical structure of internalizing psychopathology and examined the relationship between neural response to reward and multiple psychopathology dimensions. A sample of 153 16–24-year-old assigned-sex females (age M = 20.7, 81.7% White/Caucasian) completed a computerized reward task while we recorded electroencephalography to measure the RewP and the self-report Comprehensive Assessment of Traits relevant to Personality Disorder. We first conducted a confirmatory factor analysis to replicate a higher-order model of psychopathology. We next employed structural equation modeling to examine the relationship between the RewP and both higher-order (negative emotionality, detachment) and lower-order (traits) dimensions of psychopathology. A larger RewP was associated with greater higher-order negative emotionality, which accounted for the relationships between the RewP and lower-order traits. The RewP was not associated with higher-order detachment, but a more blunted RewP was associated with greater lower-order emotional detachment. Age did not moderate any relationships between the RewP and pathological personality. The neural response to reward demonstrates discriminant relationships with negative emotionality and detachment dimensions in adolescent and young adult females.