While the trajectory of self-esteem from adolescence to adulthood varies from person to person, little research has examined how differences in early developmental processes might affect these pathways. This study examined how early motor skill development interacted with preterm birth status to predict self-esteem from adolescence through the early 30s. We addressed this using the oldest known, prospectively followed cohort of extremely low birth weight (<1000 g) survivors (N = 179) and normal birth weight controls (N = 145) in the world, born between 1977 and 1982. Motor skills were measured using a performance-based assessment at age 8 and a retrospective self-report, and self-esteem was reported during three follow-up periods (age 12–16, age 22–26, and age 29–36). We found that birth weight status moderated the association between early motor skills and self-esteem. Stable over three decades, the self-esteem of normal birth weight participants was sensitive to early motor skills such that those with poorer motor functioning manifested lower self-esteem, while those with better motor skills manifested higher self-esteem. Conversely, differences in motor skill development did not affect the self-esteem from adolescence to adulthood in individuals born at extremely low birth weight. Early motor skill development may exert differential effects on self-esteem, depending on whether one is born at term or prematurely.

Greater psychosocial risk in childhood and adolescence predicts poorer cardiometabolic outcomes in adulthood. We assessed whether the timing of psychosocial risk from infancy through adolescence predicts cardiometabolic outcomes in young adulthood. Young adults and their mothers participated in a longitudinal study beginning in infancy in Santiago, Chile (N = 1040). At infancy, 5 years, 10 years, and adolescence, mothers reported on depressive symptoms, stressful experiences, support for child development in the home, father absence, parental education, and socioeconomic status (SES) to create a psychosocial risk composite at each time point. Young adults (52.1% female; 21–27 years) provided fasting serum samples and participated in anthropometric and blood pressure (BP) assessments, including a dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) scan for measuring body fat. Greater infant psychosocial risk was associated with a greater young adult metabolic syndrome score (β = 0.07, 95% confidence intervals (CI): 0.01 to 0.13, p = 0.02), a higher body mass index and waist circumference composite (β = 0.08, 95% CI: 0.03 to 0.13, p = 0.002), and a higher body fat (DXA) composite (β = 0.07, 95% CI: 0.01 to 0.12, p = 0.02). No psychosocial risk measure from any time point was associated with BP. Infant psychosocial risk predicted cardiometabolic outcomes in young adulthood better than psychosocial risk at 5 years, 10 years, or adolescence, mean of psychosocial risk from infancy through adolescence, and maximum of psychosocial risk at any one time. Consistent with the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease model, findings suggest that infancy is a sensitive period for psychosocial risk leading to poorer cardiometabolic outcomes in young adulthood.

Impaired cognitive functioning constitutes an important symptom of major depressive disorder (MDD), potentially associated with elevated cortisol levels. Adverse childhood experiences (ACE) enhance the risk for MDD and can contribute to disturbances in the stress systems, including cortisol and cognitive functions. In healthy participants, cortisol administration as well as acute stress can affect cognitive performance. In the current study, we tested cognitive performance in MDD patients with (N = 32) and without (N = 52) ACE and healthy participants with (N = 22) and without (N = 37) ACE after psychosocial stress induction (Trier Social Stress Test, TSST) and a control condition (Placebo-TSST). MDD predicted lower performance in verbal learning and both selective and sustained attention, while ACE predicted lower performance in psychomotoric speed and working memory. There were no interaction effects of MDD and ACE. After stress, MDD patients were more likely to show lower performance in working memory as well as in selective and sustained attention compared with participants without MDD. Individuals with ACE were more likely to show lower performance in verbal memory after stress compared with individuals without ACE. Our results indicate negative effects of MDD and ACE on distinct cognitive domains. Furthermore, MDD and/or ACE seem to enhance susceptibility for stress-related cognitive impairments.

Understanding differences in social-emotional behavior can help identify atypical development. This study examined the differences in social-emotional development in children at increased risk of an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis (infant siblings of children diagnosed with the disorder). Parents completed the Brief Infant-Toddler Social-Emotional Assessment (BITSEA) to determine its ability to flag children with later-diagnosed ASD in a high-risk (HR) sibling population. Parents of HR (n = 311) and low-risk (LR; no family history of ASD; n = 127) children completed the BITSEA when their children were 18 months old and all children underwent a diagnostic assessment for ASD at age 3 years. All six subscales of the BITSEA (Problems, Competence, ASD Problems, ASD Competence, Total ASD Score, and Red Flags) distinguished between those in the HR group who were diagnosed with ASD (n = 84) compared to non-ASD-diagnosed children (both HR-N and LR). One subscale (BITSEA Competence) differentiated between the HR children not diagnosed with ASD and the LR group. The results suggest that tracking early social-emotional development may have implications for all HR children, as they are at increased risk of ASD but also other developmental or mental health conditions.

Although dyadic theory focuses on the impact of a mother’s mental health on her own child and the impact of a child’s mental health on their own mother, commonly used statistical approaches are incapable of distinguishing the desired within-dyad processes from between-dyad effects. Using autoregressive latent trajectory modeling with structured residuals, the current study evaluated within-dyad, bidirectional associations between maternal depressive symptoms and child behavior problems from child age 1–4.5 years among a sample of low-income, Mexican American women (N = 322, M age = 27.8) and their children. Women reported on maternal depressive symptoms and child behavior problems during laboratory visits at child age 1, 1.5, 2, 3, and 4.5 years. Results provide novel evidence of child-driven bidirectional association between maternal depressive symptoms and child behavior problems at the within-dyad level as early as child age 1 year and within-person stability in child behavior problems emerging early in life.

Extrinsic mortality risks calibrating fast life history (LH) represent a species-general principle that applies to almost all animals including humans. However, empirical research also finds exceptions to the LH principle. The present study proposes a maternal socialization hypothesis, whereby we argue that the more human-relevant attachment system adds to the LH principle by up- and down-regulating environmental harshness and unpredictability and their calibration of LH strategies. Based on a longitudinal sample of 259 rural Chinese adolescents and their primary caregivers, the results support the statistical moderating effect of caregiver–child attachment on the relation between childhood environmental adversities (harshness and unpredictability) and LH strategies. Our theorizing and findings point to an additional mechanism likely involved in the organization and possibly the slowdown of human LH.

Adolescence is an important stage for the development of emotion regulation skills, especially for adolescent girls who are at elevated risk for the development of depression and anxiety. Although some emotion regulation strategies are more effective at helping adolescents regulate negative affect on average, research indicates strategy effectiveness varies with the context in which a strategy is deployed. Yet less work has been done examining which contextual factors are associated with adolescents switching emotion regulation strategies in their daily lives. This study examined individual and contextual factors related to negative interpersonal events that are associated with strategy effectiveness, including age, emotional intensity, perceived controllability, and co-regulatory support, and their association with adolescent emotion regulation strategy switching in daily life via ecological momentary assessment. Results indicated that adolescent girls differed in the degree to which they altered their emotion regulation strategies throughout their daily lives, and that switching strategies was associated with age as well as individual and within-person differences in perceived controllability, emotional intensity, and co-regulatory support. This study provides critical proof-of-concept of the utility of emotion regulation strategy switching as a measure of regulatory flexibility and highlights regulatory processes that may hold clues to the mechanisms of developmental psychopathology.

Children who experience parental death are at increased risk for suicide. The Family Bereavement Program (FBP) is an upstream preventive intervention for parentally bereaved families that was found to reduce suicide risk in parentally bereaved youth up to 6 and 15 years later. We tested whether FBP-induced improvements in effective parenting led to changes in multiple proximal factors that prior theory and research implicated in the cascading pathway to suicide risk, namely, aversive self-views, caregiver connectedness, peer connectedness, complicated grief, depressive symptoms, and emotion suppression. The sample was 244 bereaved youth and their surviving caregiver from 156 families. Families were randomized into the FBP (12 group-based sessions for parents, youth, and two joint sessions) or a literature control condition. Multimethod and multiinformant data were collected at baseline, posttest, 6-year and 15-year follow-up assessments. Results showed that program-induced improvements in effective parenting at posttest were associated with reduced aversive self-views and increased caregiver connectedness at the 6-year follow-up, and each mediator was in turn associated with reduced suicide risk at the 6- and 15-year follow-up. The mediated pathways via aversive self-views remained significant while controlling for caregiver connectedness. Self-related concepts may be important targets in upstream suicide prevention for at-risk youth.

The research domain criteria (RDoC) is an innovative approach designed to explore dimensions of human behavior. The aim of this approach is to move beyond the limits of psychiatric categories in the hope of aligning the identification of psychological health and dysfunction with clinical neuroscience. Despite its contributions to adult psychopathology research, RDoC undervalues ontogenetic development, which circumscribes our understanding of the etiologies, trajectories, and maintaining mechanisms of psychopathology risk. In this paper, we argue that integrating temperament research into the RDoC framework will advance our understanding of the mechanistic origins of psychopathology beginning in infancy. In illustrating this approach, we propose the incorporation of core principles of temperament theories into a new “life span considerations” subsection as one option for infusing development into the RDoC matrix. In doing so, researchers and clinicians may ultimately have the tools necessary to support emotional development and reduce a young child's likelihood of psychological dysfunction beginning in the first years of life.

The present study examined the intergenerational transmission of internalizing and externalizing symptom severity, which indexes comorbidity, and symptom directionality, which indicates differentiation toward externalizing versus internalizing problems. Data are from 854 male and female, same-sex adult twin pairs born between 1926 and 1971 (32–60 years old, M = 44.9 years, SD = 4.9 years) from the Twin and Offspring Study in Sweden and their adolescent offspring (11–22 years old, M = 15.7 years, SD = 2.4 years, 52% female). Children-of-twins models revealed additive (9%) and dominant (45%) genetic and nonshared environmental (47%) influences on twins’ symptom severity, and additive genetic (39%) and nonshared environmental (61%) influences on twins’ symptom directionality. Both comorbid problems and preponderance of symptoms of a particular – internalizing versus externalizing – spectrum were correlated across parent and child generations, although associations were modest especially for directionality (i.e., transmission of specific symptom type). By interpreting findings alongside a recent study of adolescent twins, we demonstrate that the intergenerational transmission of symptom severity and symptom directionality are both unlikely to be attributable to genetic transmission, are both likely to be influenced by direct phenotypic transmission and/or nonpassive rGE, and the intergenerational transmission of symptom severity is also likely to be influenced by passive rGE.

Based on numerous suggestions in the literature, we evaluated lexical decision (LD) as a putative endophenotype for reading comprehension by investigating heritability estimates and segregation analyses parameter estimates for both of these phenotypes. Specifically, in a segregation analysis of a large sample of families, we established that there is little to no overlap between genes contributing to LD and reading comprehension and that the genetic mechanism behind LD derived from this analysis appears to be more complex than that for reading comprehension. We conclude that in our sample, LD is not a good candidate as an endophenotype for reading comprehension, despite previous suggestions from the literature. Based on this conclusion, we discuss the role and benefit of the endophenotype approach in studies of complex human cognitive functions.

This study tests a model of young adult romantic quality as a moderator of the effects of early caregiving on anxious–depressed symptoms over a 9-year period in adulthood. Participants (n = 93) were a subsample from a longitudinal study of risk and adaptation. Quality of early caregiving was measured using observational data collected at five points in the first 4 years of life. Young adult romantic relationship quality was assessed from interviews with participants at age 23. Self-report anxious–depressed symptoms were measured at ages 23, 26, and 32. The results indicated that romantic quality moderated early caregiving to predict symptom levels across this period, with evidence for inoculation, amplification, and compensation effects. A discriminant analysis examining young adult work competence as a moderator provided further evidence for the distinctiveness of romantic relationships in changing the association between early caregiving and adult internalizing symptoms.

We examined whether Research Domain Criteria (RDoC)-informed measures of prenatal stress predicted newborn neurobehavior and whether these effects differed by newborn sex. Multilevel, prenatal markers of prenatal stress were obtained from 162 pregnant women. Markers of the Negative Valence System included physiological functioning (respiratory sinus arrhythmia [RSA] and electrodermal [EDA] reactivity to a speech task, hair cortisol), self-reported stress (state anxiety, pregnancy-specific anxiety, daily stress, childhood trauma, economic hardship, and family resources), and interviewer-rated stress (episodic stress, chronic stress). Markers of the Arousal/Regulatory System included physiological functioning (baseline RSA, RSA, and EDA responses to infant cries) and self-reported affect intensity, urgency, emotion regulation strategies, and dispositional mindfulness. Newborns’ arousal and attention were assessed via the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) Network Neurobehavioral Scale. Path analyses showed that high maternal episodic and daily stress, low economic hardship, few emotion regulation strategies, and high baseline RSA predicted female newborns’ low attention; maternal mindfulness predicted female newborns’ high arousal. As for male newborns, high episodic stress predicted low arousal, and high pregnancy-specific anxiety predicted high attention. Findings suggest that RDoC-informed markers of prenatal stress could aid detection of variance in newborn neurobehavioral outcomes within hours after birth. Implications for intergenerational transmission of risk for psychopathology are discussed.

This study used a structural equation mixture model to examine associations between child maltreatment, polygenic risk, and indices of adaptive functioning. Children aged 6 to 13 years (N = 1,004), half maltreated, half nonmaltreated, were recruited to attend a research day camp. Multi-informant indicators of prosocial behavior, antisocial behavior, withdrawn behavior, and depression were collected and used in a latent class analysis. Four classes emerged, characterizing “well-adjusted,” “externalizing,” “internalizing,” and “socially dominant” groups. Twelve genetic variants, previously reported in the Gene × Environment literature, were modeled as one weighted polygenic risk score. Large main effects between maltreatment and adaptive functioning were observed (Wald = 35.3, df = 3, p < .0001), along with evidence of a small Gene × Environment effect (Wald = 13.5, df = 3, p = .004), adjusting for sex, age, and covariate interaction effects.

Maternal depressive symptoms (MDS) have been linked to both child internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. Theory suggests that child attachment security may be a protective factor against the negative effects of MDS. This study examined child attachment security as a buffer of the link between MDS and child internalizing and externalizing behavior problems at two time points in a predominantly African American sample. Participants included mothers (N = 164; M age = 29.68 years; 76% African American) and their preschool-aged children (60% girls; M age = 44.67 months) recruited from four Head Start centers in low-income neighborhoods in Baltimore, Maryland. MDS were concurrently associated with child internalizing and externalizing behavior problems at both time points. No significant main effects of child attachment security on behavior problems emerged; however, child attachment moderated the association between MDS and child internalizing behavior problems at Time 2, such that MDS predicted greater child internalizing problems when attachment security was low, and the effect was attenuated when attachment security was high. No interaction emerged for child externalizing problems. Findings suggest that secure attachment in early childhood can serve as a protective factor in the context of parental risk. We discuss implications for intervention and the intergenerational transmission of psychopathology.

Anxiety symptoms in childhood and adolescence can have a long-term negative impact on mental and physical health. Although studies have shown dysregulation of the hypothalamus–pituitary–adrenal axis is associated with anxiety disorders, it is unclear how and in what direction children's experiences of anxiety symptoms, which include physiological and cognitive–emotional dimensions, impact the functioning of the hypothalamus–pituitary–adrenal axis over time. We hypothesized that higher physiological symptoms would be contemporaneously associated with hypercortisolism, whereas cognitive–emotional symptoms would be more chronic, reflecting traitlike stability, and would predict hypocortisolism over time. One hundred twenty children from the Concordia Longitudinal Risk Research Project were followed in successive data collection waves approximately 3 years apart from childhood through midadolescence. Between ages 10–12 and 13–15, children completed self-report questionnaires of anxiety symptoms and provided salivary cortisol samples at 2-hr intervals over 2 consecutive days. The results from hierarchical linear modeling showed that higher physiological symptoms were concurrently associated with hypercortisolism, involving cortisol levels that remained elevated over the day. In contrast, longitudinal results over the 3 years between data collection waves showed that chronic worry and social concerns predicted hypocortisolism, showing a low and blunted diurnal cortisol profile. These results have implications for broadening our understanding of the links between anxiety, the stress response system, and health across the course of development.

Potential long-term associations between repetitive negative thinking and mother-infant interactions have received little attention. The current longitudinal study including N = 62 mother-infant dyads investigated both maternal and infant behavior in face-to-face interactions as a function of pre- and postnatal maternal repetitive negative thinking when infants were aged around 4 months. We hypothesised that mothers with a strong tendency to engage in repetitive negative thinking would react less contingently to their infants’ behavior compared to mothers with a weak tendency to engage in repetitive negative thinking. Furthermore, we hypothesised that infants of mothers high in repetitive negative thinking would differ from infants of mothers low in repetitive negative thinking in their reactions in the still-face task. Contrary to expectations, there was no difference in maternal contingency between mothers high versus low in repetitive negative thinking. However, infant behavior in the still-face task differed as a function of maternal repetitive negative thinking status. Specifically, infants of mothers high in repetitive negative thinking spent more time with object/environment engagement than infants of mothers who were low in repetitive negative thinking, and they also protested less frequently. These findings are discussed in terms of their relevance for the intergenerational transmission of mental disorders.

In the last decade, an abundance of research has utilized the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) research domain criteria (RDoC) framework to examine mechanisms underlying anxiety and depression in youth. However, relatively little work has examined how these mechanistic intrapersonal processes intersect with context during childhood and adolescence. The current paper covers reviews and meta-analyses that have linked RDoC-relevant constructs to ecological systems in internalizing problems in youth. Specifically, cognitive, biological, and affective factors within the RDoC framework were examined. Based on these reviews and some of the original empirical research they cover, we highlight the integral role of ecological factors to the RDoC framework in predicting onset and maintenance of internalizing problems in youth. Specific recommendations are provided for researchers using the RDoC framework to inform future research integrating ecological systems and development. We advocate for future research and research funding to focus on better integration of the environment and development into the RDoC framework.