Parental criticism is linked to a number of detrimental child outcomes. One mechanism by which parental criticism may increase risk for negative outcomes in children is through children’s neural responses to valenced information in the environment. The goal of the current study, therefore, was to examine the relation between maternal criticism and children’s neural responses to monetary gains and losses. To represent daily environmental experiences of reward and punishment, we focused on reactivity to monetary gains versus losses in a guessing task. Participants were 202 children and their mothers recruited from the community. The average age of the children was 9.71 years (SD = 1.38, range = 7–11), with 52.0% of them male and 72.8% Caucasian. Mothers completed the Five Minute Speech Sample to assess expressed emotion–criticism, and of these dyads 51 mothers were rated as highly critical. In addition, children completed a simple guessing game during which electroencephalography was recorded. Children of critical mothers displayed less neural reactivity to both monetary gain and loss than children without critical mothers. Our results were at least partially independent of children’s and mothers’ current levels of internalizing psychopathology. These findings suggest that children exposed to maternal criticism may exhibit disruptions in adaptive responses to environmental experiences regardless of valence. Targeted interventions aimed at reducing expressed emotion–criticism may lead to changes in a child’s reward responsiveness and risk for psychopathology.

父母的批评​​与许多有害的儿童结果有关。父母的批评​​可能会增加儿童负面结果风险的一种机制是通过儿童对环境中有效信息的神经反应。因此，本研究的目标是检验母亲批评与儿童对金钱得失的神经反应之间的关系。为了代表奖励和惩罚的日常环境体验，我们专注于在猜测任务中对金钱收益与损失的反应。参与者是从社区招募的 202 名儿童和他们的母亲。患儿平均年龄9.71岁（SD = 1.38，范围 = 7–11)，其中 52.0% 为男性，72.8% 为白种人。母亲们完成了五分钟语音样本来评估表达的情感批评，在这些二元组中，有 51 位母亲被评为高度批评。此外，孩子们完成了一个简单的猜谜游戏，并记录了脑电图。与没有挑剔母亲的孩子相比，有挑剔母亲的孩子对金钱得失的神经反应更弱。我们的结果至少部分独立于儿童和母亲当前的心理病理内化水平。这些发现表明，无论效价如何，暴露于母亲批评的儿童对环境体验的适应性反应可能会出现中断。