Early childhood mental health consultation (ECMHC) has been promoted by the federal government as a promising model for reducing early childhood expulsions and suspensions and is now implemented by numerous states. Despite growing ECMHC proliferation, this study is only the second randomized controlled trial of ECMHC, extending the methodologies of the first to include assessment of effects on random peers. Classrooms were assigned randomly to treatment or waitlist-control condition (n = 51 classrooms, 57 preschool teachers, and 190 preschoolers). Evaluation measures were collected at both pretreatment and posttreatment, following approximately six consultation visits. Classroom and teacher outcomes were evaluated with ordinary least squares regressions, while hierarchical linear modeling was used to evaluate child-level outcomes, accounting for the nested study design. Treatment children (both the target children who prompted the referral for ECMHC and random peers) evidenced significant improvements in social and emotional skills. Promising trend findings were noted for child behavior problem reduction and teacher pedagogical approach and locus of control. No significant effects were found on likelihood of expulsion and classroom mental health climate. This is the first ECMHC to demonstrate effects on nontarget peers in a rigorous randomized controlled trial. Programmatic and methodologic limitations and implications are discussed.

This study evaluated a school-based intervention to enhance adolescent peer relationships and improve functional outcomes, building upon Ed Zigler’s seminal contribution in recognizing the potential of academic contexts to enhance social and emotional development. Adolescents (N = 610) primarily from economically or racially/ethnically marginalized groups were assessed preintervention, postintervention, and at 4-month follow-up in a randomized controlled trial. At program completion, intervention participants reported significantly increased quality of peer relationships; by 4-month follow-up, this increased quality was also observable by peers outside of the program, and program participants also displayed higher levels of academic engagement and lower levels of depressive symptoms. These latter effects appear to have potentially been mediated via participants’ increased use of social support. The potential of the Connection Project intervention specifically, and of broader efforts to activate adolescent peer relationships as potent sources of social support and growth more generally within the secondary school context, is discussed.

Motivated by Edward Zigler's proposition that programs serving children (birth through 12 years) can have long-term effects on well-being and development, we used data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (N = 1,258) to test two pathways by which early care and education (ECE) are linked to after-school organized activities in middle childhood and to problem behaviors in late adolescence and adulthood. In support of an activities pathway, we found children with more ECE hours and more epochs in center-based ECE settings from 1 to 54 months had more epochs in after-school organized activities from kindergarten to 5th grade, which then predicted less impulsivity and less police contact at age 26. In support of a child pathway, we found that more ECE hours and more epochs in center-based ECE settings were linked to externalizing problems in early childhood, which then predicted higher problem behaviors in middle childhood, late adolescence, and adulthood. Together, these pathways underscored the potential of direct and indirect links of ECE and after-school organized activities in relation to later development.

More than 50 years of randomized clinical trials for youth psychotherapies have resulted in moderate effect sizes for treatments targeting the most common mental health problems in children and adolescents (i.e., anxiety, depression, conduct problems, and attention disorders). Despite having psychotherapies that are effective for many children, there has been a dearth of progress in identifying the contextual factors that likely influence who will respond to a given psychotherapy, and under what conditions. The developmental psychopathology evidence base consistently demonstrates that psychosocial risk exposures (e.g., childhood adversities, interpersonal stressors, family dysfunction) significantly influence the onset and course of youth psychopathology. However, the developmental psychopathology framework remains to be well integrated into treatment development and psychotherapy research. We argue that advances in basic developmental psychopathology research carry promising implications for the design and content of youth psychotherapies. Research probing the effects of psychosocial risks on youth development can enrich efforts to identify contextual factors in psychotherapy effectiveness and to personalize treatment. In this article we review empirically supported and hypothesized influences of individual- and family-level risk factors on youth psychotherapy outcomes, and we propose a framework for leveraging developmental psychopathology to strengthen psychotherapies.

Edward Zigler's groundbreaking research on child development resulted in the historic Head Start program. It is useful to examine the theoretical implications of his work by applying a human development theoretical perspective. Phenomenological variant of ecological systems theory (PVEST) is a strengths-based theoretical framework that engages the variability of resource access and coping strategies that promote positive identity development for diverse children. While skill acquisition is a key focus of human capital theory's engagement of early childhood needs, this article highlights the on-going status of human vulnerability that undergirds identity development over the life course. The authors note that “inequality presence denial” combines with high-risk contexts, framed by geography and psychohistoric moments (e.g., The Great Recession, COVID-19), to alter diverse children's developmental pathways. The acknowledgement of “morbid risk” motivates the urgency for research that builds upon Zigler's innovations and privileges human development imperatives. The case study explores these concepts by examining the challenges and assets available to mothers in a low-income community. The article's closing notes developments in the field of economics that ameliorate human capital theory's conceptual limitations, underscoring human development's theoretical strength in motivating research and policies that are maximally responsive to children's positive identity development.

The current study advances past research by studying the impact of juvenile justice decision making with a geographically and ethnically diverse sample (N = 1,216) of adolescent boys (ages 13–17 years) for the 5 years following their first arrest. Importantly, all youth in the study were arrested for an eligible offense of moderate severity (e.g., assault, theft) to evaluate whether the initial decision to formally (i.e., sentenced before a judge) or informally (i.e., diverted to community service) process the youth led to differences in outcomes. The current study also advanced past research by using a statistical approach that controlled for a host of potential preexisting vulnerabilities that could influence both the processing decision and the youth's outcomes. Our findings indicated that youth who were formally processed during adolescence were more likely to be re-arrested, more likely to be incarcerated, engaged in more violence, reported a greater affiliation with delinquent peers, reported lower school enrollment, were less likely to graduate high school within 5 years, reported less ability to suppress aggression, and had lower perceptions of opportunities than informally processed youth. Importantly, these findings were not moderated by the age of the youth at his first arrest or his race and ethnicity. These results have important implications for juvenile justice policy by indicating that formally processing youth not only is costly, but it can reduce public safety and reduce the adolescent's later potential contributions to society.

An estimated 12 million girls aged 15–19 years, and 777,000 girls younger than 15 give birth globally each year. Contexts of war and displacement increase the likelihood of early marriage and childbearing. Given the developmentally sensitive periods of early childhood and adolescence, adolescent motherhood in conflict-affected contexts may put a family at risk intergenerationally. We propose that the specifics of normative neuroendocrine development during adolescence, including increased sensitivity to stress, pose additional risks to adolescent girls and their young children in the face of war and displacement, with potential lifelong consequences for health and development. This paper proposes a developmental, dual-generational framework for research and policies to better understand and address the needs of adolescent mothers and their small children. We draw from the literature on developmental stress physiology, adolescent parenthood in contexts of war and displacement internationally, and developmental cultural neurobiology. We also identify culturally meaningful sources of resilience and provide a review of the existing literature on interventions supporting adolescent mothers and their offspring. We aim to honor Edward Zigler's groundbreaking life and career by integrating basic developmental science with applied intervention and policy.

The work of Ed Zigler spans decades of research all singularly dedicated to using science to improve the lives of children facing different challenges. The focus of this article is on one of Zigler's numerous lines of work: advocating for the practice of mental age (MA) matching in empirical research, wherein groups of individuals are matched on the basis of developmental level, rather than chronological age. While MA matching practices represented a paradigm shift that provided the seeds from which the developmental approach to developmental disability sprouted, it is not without its own limits. Here, we examine and test the underlying assumption of linearity inherent in MA matching using three commonly used IQ measures. Results provide practical constraints of using MA matching, a solution which we hope refines future clinical and empirical practices, furthering Zigler's legacy of continued commitment to compassionate, meaningful, and rigorous science in the service of children.

Supportive forensic interviews conducted in accordance with the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Revised Protocol (RP) help many alleged victims describe abusive experiences. When children remain reluctant to make allegations, the RP guides interviewers to (a) focus on rapport building and nonsuggestive support in a first interview, and (b) plan a second interview to allow continued rapport building before exploring for possible abuse. We explored the dynamics of such two-session RP interviews. Of 204 children who remained reluctant in an initial interview, we focused on 104 who made allegations when re-interviewed a few days later. A structural equation model revealed that interviewer support during the first session predicted children's cooperation during the rapport-building phase of the second session, which, in turn, predicted more spontaneous allegations, which were associated with the interviewers’ enhanced use of open-ended questions. Together, these factors mediated the effects of support on children's free recall of forensically important information. This highlighted the importance of emphasizing rapport with reluctant children, confirming that some children may need more time to build rapport even with supportive interviewers.

Exposure to childhood adversity is a powerful risk factor for psychopathology. Despite extensive efforts, we have not yet identified effective or scalable interventions that prevent the emergence of mental health problems in children who have experienced adversity. In this modified Delphi study, we identified intervention strategies for effectively targeting both the neurodevelopmental mechanisms linking childhood adversity and psychopathology – including heightened emotional reactivity, difficulties with emotion regulation, blunted reward processing, and social information processing biases, as well as a range of psychopathology symptoms. We iteratively synthesized information from experts in the field and relevant meta-analyses through three surveys, first with experts in intervention development, prevention, and childhood adversity (n = 32), and then within our study team (n = 8). The results produced increasing stability and good consensus on intervention strategy recommendations for specific neurodevelopmental mechanisms and symptom presentations and on strength of evidence ratings of intervention strategies targeting youth and parents. More broadly, our findings highlight how intervention decision making can be informed by meta-analyses, enhanced by aggregate group feedback, saturated before consensus, and persistently subjective or even contradictory. Ultimately, the results converged on several promising intervention strategies for prevention programming with adversity-exposed youth, which will be tested in an upcoming clinical trial.