A representative community sample of primiparous depressed women and a nondepressed control group were assessed while in interaction with their infants at 2 months postpartum. At 3 months, infants were assessed on the Still-face perturbation of face to face interaction, and a subsample completed an Instrumental Learning paradigm. Compared to nondepressed women, depressed mothers' interactions were both less contingent and less affectively attuned to infant behavior. Postnatal depression did not adversely affect the infant's performance in either the Still-face perturbation or the Instrumental Learning assessment. Maternal responsiveness in interactions at 2 months predicted the infant's performance in the Instrumental Learning assessment but not in the Still-face perturbation. The implications of these findings for theories of infant cognitive and emotional development are discussed.This research was supported by the award of a Medical Research Council Training Fellowship to Charles Stanley. Lynne Murray was supported by a Medical Research Council Senior Research Fellowship. Alan Stein was supported by the Tedworth Trust and the Wellcome Trust. The authors would like to thank Anji West and Agnese Fiori\NCowley for their help with the coding of the assessments, Robbie Paterson for administrative assistance, Richard Hooper for assistance with the statistical analyses and Peter Cooper for collaboration in the planning of the study.

Few studies have examined the associations between environmental conditions and developing infant emotionality or the differential susceptibility to those conditions. The present longitudinal study aims to make a contribution to close that gap. We analyzed whether positive emotionality, negative emotionality/irritability, and withdrawal/fear at the end of the first year of life are predictable from preceding caregiver's depression/anxiety, social support, and sensitivity in the interaction with the infant while controlling for antecedent states of emotionality. Furthermore, the question of whether associations between maternal characteristics and subsequent fear are stronger in the subgroup of infants high in irritability as opposed to those who are low in irritability was investigated. Subjects were 101 healthy firstborn infants and their primary caregivers. Assessments were conducted at infant ages of 4, 8, and 12 months. Depression, anxiety, and the social support of the caregiver were assessed by questionnaire. Sensitivity in the caregiver–infant interaction was assessed by behavior observations within the scope of home visits. Temperament characteristics were observed in standardized laboratory episodes. Whereas negative emotionality and withdrawal/fear were significantly predictable from the maternal characteristics, no predictability could be shown for developing positive emotionality. There were indications of a stronger association between the maternal characteristics and developing withdrawal/fear in irritable infants.The research for this article was supported by a grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) to U. Pauli–Pott and D. Beckmann (Grant PA 543/2-1, 2-2, 2-3). The sample was recruited from the maternity wards of two hospitals in Giessen. The authors thank PD Dr. C. Schubring, Head of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Evangelical Hospital, and Dr. A. Esch, Dr. K. D. Fleck, and Dr. H. J. Meier of St. Josef's Hospital, as well as the neonatal nurses in both hospitals for the friendly cooperation with which they supported the present study. Finally, special thanks are given to the families who participated in the study.

The purpose of this study was to examine child, maternal, and family antecedents of children's early affect dysregulation within the mother–child relationship and later cognitive and socioemotional correlates of affect dysregulation. Children's affect dysregulation at 24 and 36 months was defined in the context of mother–child interactions in semistructured play and toy cleanup. Dyads were classified as dysregulated at each age based on high negative affect. Affect dysregulation was associated with less maternal sensitivity and stimulation, more maternal depressive symptoms, and lower family income over the first 36 months of life. Children with early negative mood, lower Bayley Mental Development Index scores and insecure-avoidant (15 months) or insecure-resistant attachment classifications (36 months) were more likely to be in an affect-dysregulated group. Controlling for family and child variables, affect-dysregulated children had more problematic cognitive, social, and behavioral outcomes at 54 months, kindergarten, and first grade. The findings are discussed in terms of the early role played by parents in assisting children with affect regulation, the reciprocal nature of parent–child interactions, and the contribution of affect regulation to children's later cognitive, social, and behavioral competence.This study is directed by a Steering Committee and supported by NICHD through a cooperative agreement (U10), which calls for scientific collaboration between the grantees and the NICHD staff. Participating investigators, listed in alphabetical order, are Virginia Allhusen, University of California, Irvine; Jay Belsky, University of London; Cathryn L. Booth, University of Washington; Robert Bradley, University of Arkansas, Little Rock; Celia A. Brownell, University of Pittsburgh; Margaret Burchinal, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Susan B. Campbell, University of Pittsburgh; K. Alison Clarke–Stewart, University of California, Irvine; Martha Cox, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Sarah L. Friedman, NICHD, Bethesda, Maryland; Kathyrn Hirsh–Pasek, Temple University; Aletha Huston, University of Texas, Austin; Elizabeth Jaeger, Temple University; Jean F. Kelly, University of Washington; Bonnie Knoke, Research Triangle Institute, Research Triangle, North Carolina; Nancy Marshall, Wellesley College; Kathleen McCartney, Harvard University; Marion O'Brien, University of Kansas; Margaret Tresch Owen, University of Texas, Dallas; Chris Payne, University of North Carolina, Greensboro; Deborah Phillips, National Research Council, Washington, DC; Robert Pianta, University of Virginia; Wendy Robeson, Wellesley College; Susan Spieker, University of Washington; Deborah Lowe Vandell, University of Wisconsin, Madison; and Marsha Weinraub, Temple University. The authors express appreciation to the study coordinators at each site who supervised the data collection, the research assistants who collected the data, and especially the families and child care providers who welcomed the authors into their homes and workplaces and cooperated willingly with repeated requests for information.

An integrative model of the neurophysiology of aggression and social withdrawal is proposed. A detailed overview of the limbic–hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (LHPA) axis is presented first, because we consider it to be a critical system that interacts with a variety of physiological processes to modulate affect-related behaviors. This detailed analysis of the LHPA axis is then used to clarify the research literature that links aggression and social withdrawal to LHPA functioning. We then review the role of amygdala and prefrontal cortex functioning in modulating aggression and social withdrawal. Particular attention is paid to how the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex interact with the LHPA system and the environment to produce specific behavioral tendencies throughout development. A brief overview of the implied methodological and theoretical model is provided. We explain how a detailed understanding of specific physiological processes is essential in order to develop appropriate research protocols. In addition, we suggest that future research should focus on the mapping of distinct integrative biosocial profiles that are related to specific behaviors during different developmental stages.The authors would like to thank Sarah Dunphy–Lelii and Michael MacKenzie for their comments and suggestions during the preparation of this manuscript. This research was partially supported by Research Grants MH59396, HD/DK37431, and MH42251.

This study examined the abilities of 40 Latina mothers and their 6- to 11-year-old children (20 girls, 20 boys) to recognize and produce emotion expressions and how these abilities differed as a function of maternal depressive symptoms. The results indicated that depressively symptomatic mothers were less accurate at recognizing basic emotions (e.g., happy, sad, etc.) and some mixed emotions (e.g., scared/ok combinations) than nonsymptomatic mothers, but there were no group differences for emotion production. In contrast, children of symptomatic mothers posed fewer recognizable sad expressions than their peers. Error pattern analyses also revealed that children of symptomatic mothers were more likely to mistakenly recognize happiness and to avoid posing sadness (across all basic emotions). Children's ability to pose emotions was related to their mothers' emotion production, and this was not moderated by maternal depressive symptoms. The discussion focuses on the possible interpersonal consequences of these biases and deficits in the emotion-related abilities of symptomatic mothers and their children and on the need to conduct research on the familial and cultural processes that might underlie these findings.Portions of this article are based on a dissertation by Maria Sesin submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the doctoral degree at Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology, Yeshiva University. We would like to thank the mothers and children who made this research possible, as well as Marjorie Melendez and Craig Indellicati for their help in preparing the emotion recognition stimuli.

Behavioral genetic studies indicate that nongenetic factors play a role in the development of bipolar and major depressive disorders. The trait of neuroticism is common among individuals with major affective disorders. We hypothesized that high neuroticism among parents affects the family environment and parenting practices and thereby increases the risk of psychosocial problems among offspring. This hypothesis is tested in a sample of participants at high and low risk for major affective disorders, which contained parents with bipolar disorder (55), major depression (21), or no mental disorder (148) and their 146 children between 4 and 14 years of age. Parents with high neuroticism scores were characterized by low psychosocial functioning, poor parenting, more dependent stressful life events, and the use of more emotion-focused and less task-oriented coping skills. High neuroticism in parents was associated with internalizing and externalizing problems among the children, as assessed by parent and teacher ratings on the Child Behavior Checklist and clinician ratings. The results suggest that high neuroticism in parents with major affective disorders is associated with inadequate parenting practices and the creation of a stressful family environment, which are subsequently related to psychosocial problems among the offspring.This work was supported by a grant to the Research Team for the Study of the Development of Affective Disorders (Drs. S. Hodgins, A. Schwartzman, L. Serbin, O. Bernazzani, C. Laroche, W. R. Beardslee, G. A. Carlson, and R. Rende) from the Fonds de la Recherche en Santé du Québec and by grants from the combined program of the Conseil Québecois de la Recherche Sociale and Fonds de la Recherche en Santé du Québec (1994–1998) as awarded to S. Hodgins. M. A. Ellenbogen is supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. The authors would like to thank members of the Research Team for the Study of the Development of Affective Disorders and anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on these findings.

Although neurocognitive impairments in theory of mind and in executive functions have both been hypothesized to play a causal role in autism, there has been little research investigating the explanatory power of these impairments with regard to autistic symptomatology. The present study examined the degree to which individual differences in theory of mind and executive functions could explain variations in the severity of autism symptoms. Participants included 31 verbal, school-aged children with autism who were administered a battery of tests assessing the understanding of mental states (knowledge and false belief) and executive control skills (working memory, combined working memory and inhibitory control, and planning) and who were behaviorally evaluated for autism severity in the three core symptom domains. Whereas theory of mind and executive control abilities explained the significant variance beyond that accounted for by language level in communication symptoms, neither explained the significant variance in reciprocal social interaction or repetitive behaviors symptoms. These findings are discussed in terms of a proposed distinction between higher level, cognitive–linguistic aspects of theory of mind and related executive control skills, and more fundamental social–perceptual processes involved in the apprehension of mental state information conveyed through eyes, faces, and voices, which may be more closely linked to autistic deficits in social reciprocity.This research was supported by grants from the National Institute on Child Health and Human Development (RO3 HD37898) to Robert Joseph and from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (PO1 DC03610) to Helen Tager–Flusberg. In addition, this study was conducted as part of the NICHD/NIDCD Collaborative Programs of Excellence in Autism. We thank the following individuals for their assistance in collecting and preparing the data reported in this article: Susan Bacalman, Laura Becker, June Chu, Susan Folstein, Anne Gavin, Margaret Kjelgaard, Lauren McGrath, Echo Meyer, and Shelly Steele. We are especially grateful to the children and families who generously participated in this study.

We investigated the expression and understanding of jealousy in 16 high-functioning children with autism and 17 typically developing children matched for IQ, chronological age, gender, and maternal education. We examined the expression of jealousy via children's behaviors, verbalizations, and affects demonstrated during two jealousy-provoking triadic scenarios (drawing and playing) enacted among the child in the experimental group (autism or typical), that child's main caregiver (mostly mothers), and a familiar peer or sibling. The two scenarios corresponded with the two types of jealousy described in past studies: social-comparison jealousy (drawing scenario) and social-relational jealousy (playing scenario). To tap children's understanding, we asked them to identify jealousy from a picture, to provide examples of times they felt jealous, and to offer suggestions for coping with jealousy. The main results revealed that children with autism expressed jealousy in situations similar to their typical age mates but manifested it in different behaviors. Moreover, children with autism revealed a less coherent understanding of the feeling. We discuss the meaning of the gap between demonstrating and understanding jealousy in light of the two central theoretical views conceptualizing the core emotional deficit in children with autism.The Internal Grants Program of Bar-Ilan University supported this research. The author extends special thanks to the children and families who were willing to take part in this study and expresses her appreciation to Dee B. Ankonina for her editorial contribution and to Dov Har-Even for his statistical assistance. The author would also like to thank Galit Halevy–Tendler for her inspiring remarks, Cory Shulman for her help in data collection, and the four anonymous reviewers for their thought-provoking comments.

The present study tested several predictions related to the theory that girls with conduct disorder (CD) follow a single delayed onset pathway. The following hypotheses were tested among a high-risk, stratified random sample of youth who used public services during a 6-month period: boys will be more likely to have childhood onset CD (COCD) than girls; girls with COCD will be less common than girls with adolescent onset CD (AOCD); COCD girls, AOCD girls, and COCD boys will be similar in terms of risk profiles and AOCD boys will have a less severe risk profile than COCD girls; and risk factors that differentiate between COCD and AOCD among males will not differentiate between COCD and AOCD among females. Among those youth who met the criteria for CD, males were significantly more likely to have COCD than females. However, close to half of females with CD met the criteria for the COCD subtype. Of the seven risk factors that were examined, girls with COCD scored higher than COCD boys on three factors and higher than AOCD girls on four factors; however, only one significant difference was found between AOCD girls and COCD boys. Finally, risk factors appeared to differentiate between COCD and AOCD groups in a similar way among males and females. These findings suggest that COCD is not rare among females in public service sectors, COCD girls can be distinguished from AOCD girls in terms of risk factors, and risk factors for COCD among males are also relevant to females.The Patterns of Youth Mental Health Care in Public Service Systems Study is supported by National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Grant U01 MH55282. Preparation of this article was supported by Research Scientist Development Awards K01MH01767 and K01MH01924. The authors are most grateful for the comments and suggestions on this manuscript that were provided by Dr. Persephanie Silverthorn and Dr. Theodore Beauchaine.

The present study takes a developmental approach to subgrouping and examines the trajectories of substance use from early adolescence through young adulthood among a community sample of 481 individuals. The patterns of use were examined, subgroups were identified separately for men and women and for alcohol and marijuana, and psychosocial predictors and psychopathology outcomes that differentiated the groups were identified. The results revealed three substantially overlapping subgroups for both alcohol and marijuana: early onset, late onset, and nonuser. Although the general patterns of which dependent variables were related to group were similar for alcohol and marijuana, a closer examination revealed important subgroup differences. For alcohol use, the early-onset group was more dysfunctional in terms of predictors and outcomes whereas the late-onset and nonuser groups were better adjusted. In contrast, for marijuana, the early- and late-onset groups were both more dysfunctional than the nonuser group. In a final analysis, we examined the predictive utility of our developmental approach to subgrouping compared to a traditional, static approach.This research was supported by NIH National Research Service Award DA07304 from NIDA, Grant DA05312-10 from NIDA, NIH General Clinical Research Center Grant M01 RR026202, and a University of Kentucky Research Challenge Trust Fund Fellowship awarded to Kate Flory.

The “unresolved” state of mind with respect to loss or trauma as assessed in the Adult Attachment Interview is common in clinical and forensic groups, as well as in mothers whose infants are classified as disorganized in their attachment relationship to them. However, questions remain about what the unresolved state represents and what factors predict the unresolved state. This case controlled study reports on 64 women who had suffered stillbirth and who were pregnant with their next child. The study explores attachment, psychiatric, and social factors associated with the unresolved state or higher unresolved scores with respect to stillbirth. Women who had experienced stillbirth were more likely to be unresolved than control women. Although a similar number of stillbirth and control women had experienced childhood trauma, only women who had experienced stillbirth were unresolved with respect to this trauma, suggesting the unresolved state may be evoked or reevoked by subsequent traumatic loss. Higher unresolved scores in relation to stillbirth were predicted by childhood trauma, poor support from family after the loss, and having a funeral for the infant. The results are discussed in terms of the woman's sense of being causal in the loss.This study was funded by South Thames West R&D, Tommy's Campaign, and the Simenauer Trust (Institute of Psycho-Analysis, London). We thank the Editor and four anonymous referees for their extremely helpful suggestions, many of which we adopted. We also thank the nursing and medical staff and the mothers who generously gave their time to the study.