Internalizing and externalizing problems that emerge during adolescence differentially increase boys’ and girls’ risk for developing psychiatric disorders. It is not clear, however, whether there are sex differences in the intrinsic functional architecture of the brain that underlie changes in the severity of internalizing and externalizing problems in adolescents. Using resting-state fMRI data and self-reports of behavioral problems obtained from 128 adolescents (73 females; 9–14 years old) at two timepoints, we conducted multivoxel pattern analysis to identify resting-state functional connectivity markers at baseline that predict changes in the severity of internalizing and externalizing problems in boys and girls 2 years later. We found sex-differentiated involvement of the default mode network in changes in internalizing and externalizing problems. Whereas changes in internalizing problems were associated with the dorsal medial subsystem in boys and with the medial temporal subsystem in girls, changes in externalizing problems were predicted by hyperconnectivity between core nodes of the DMN and frontoparietal network in boys and hypoconnectivity between the DMN and affective networks in girls. Our results suggest that different neural mechanisms predict changes in internalizing and externalizing problems in adolescent boys and girls and offer insights concerning mechanisms that underlie sex differences in the expression of psychopathology in adolescence.

Sipping, an early form of alcohol initiation, is associated with aspects of psychopathology and personality that reflect long-term risk for harmful alcohol use. In the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development cohort (N = 11,872), sipping by age 9–10 was concurrently associated with impulsivity, other aspects of externalizing, and prodromal schizophrenia symptoms. Still, these associations were cross-sectional in nature, leaving open the possibility that these features of psychopathology and personality might not reflect long-term risk for alcohol consumption and related harm across development. Here, we attempted to replicate baseline concurrent associations across three waves of data to extend concurrent associations to prospective ones. Most cross-sectional associations replicated across waves, such that impulsivity, other aspects of externalizing, reward sensitivity (e.g., surgency, sensation seeking), and prodromal schizophrenia symptoms were associated with increased odds of having sipped alcohol by the age of 12. Nevertheless, not all concurrent associations replicated prospectively; impulsigenic features did not reflect long-term risk for sipping. Thus, some psychopathology features appeared to reflect stable risk factors, whereas others appeared to reflect state-dependent risk factors. All told, sipping might not reflect long-term risk for harmful alcohol use, and the nature of sipping may change across development.

Reactive and control processes – e.g., negative emotionality and immediacy preference – may predict distinct psychopathology trajectories. However, externalizing and internalizing problems change in behavioral manifestation across development and across contexts, thus necessitating the use of different measures and informants across ages. This is the first study that created developmental scales for both internalizing and externalizing problems by putting scores from different informants and measures onto the same scale to examine temperament facets as risk factors. Multidimensional linking allowed us to examine trajectories of internalizing and externalizing problems from ages 2 to 15 years (N = 1,364) using near-annual ratings by mothers, fathers, teachers, other caregivers, and self report. We examined reactive and control processes in early childhood as predictors of the trajectories and as predictors of general versus specific psychopathology in adolescence. Negative emotionality at age 4 predicted general psychopathology and unique externalizing problems at age 15. Wait times on an immediacy preference task at age 4 were negatively associated with age 15 general psychopathology, and positively associated with unique internalizing problems. Findings demonstrate the value of developmental scaling for examining development of psychopathology across a lengthy developmental span and the importance of considering reactive and control processes in development of psychopathology.

Aggressive reactions to peer victimization may be tempered by hormone levels. Grounded on the dualhormone hypothesis (DHH), which proposes that testosterone (T) is associated with aggressive behavior only when cortisol (C) is low, this study assessed whether the combination of T and C moderated adolescents’ aggressive responses to peer victimization. The study involved 577 adolescents (50.4% girls, aged 12–17 years), who completed measures of online and offline victimization and perpetration of aggressive behavior in three waves over the course of one year. Moreover, they provided salivary samples to measure T and C levels. Multilevel analyses showed a three-way interaction between T, C, and victimization levels for both online and offline aggressive behaviors. In both cases, the adolescents with high T and high C or low T and low C responded with more aggressive behaviors when victimized or provoked by peers. The T/C ratio was only associated with aggressive behavior in the girls’ sample. The results are opposite to those predicted by the DHH, but they are consistent with the findings of other studies that examined aggressive behaviors as reactions to provocations. These results suggest that some combinations of T and C predict higher aggressive reactions to peer victimization.

During early life-sensitive periods (i.e., fetal, infancy), the developing stress response system adaptively calibrates to match environmental conditions, whether harsh or supportive. Recent evidence suggests that puberty is another window when the stress system is open to recalibration if environmental conditions have shifted significantly. Whether additional periods of recalibration exist in adulthood remains to be established. The present paper draws parallels between childhood (re)calibration periods and the perinatal period to hypothesize that this phase may be an additional window of stress recalibration in adult life. Specifically, the perinatal period (defined here to include pregnancy, lactation, and early parenthood) is also a developmental switch point characterized by heightened neural plasticity and marked changes in stress system function. After discussing these similarities, lines of empirical evidence needed to substantiate the perinatal stress recalibration hypothesis are proposed, and existing research support is reviewed. Complexities and challenges related to delineating the boundaries of perinatal stress recalibration and empirically testing this hypothesis are discussed, as well as possibilities for future multidisciplinary research. In the theme of this special issue, perinatal stress recalibration may be a mechanism of multilevel, multisystem risk, and resilience, both intra-individually and intergenerationally, with implications for optimizing interventions.

This longitudinal study follows children from dual-earner families in 4 time-points, covering the early childhood period. We examined the influence of work–family conflict (WFC) on maternal relational frustration (RF) towards the child, and investigated the reciprocal relations among maternal RF, children's self-control (SC), and teacher–child (TC) conflict over time. Participants were 214 children (97 girls; M age = 4.00 years), their mothers, and teachers. Mothers reported their own WFC and RF, whereas teachers reported child SC and T-C conflict. Results from a cross-lagged panel model indicated the experience of WFC positively predicted maternal RF. Maternal RF and T-C conflict were negatively related to the child later SC abilities. Conversely, children who displayed SC difficulties were more likely to experience later maternal RF and T-C conflict. There was evidence supporting the bidirectional effects of child SC and T-C conflict across time. Moreover, maternal RF and T-C conflict were indirectly linked, via child SC. The findings are consistent with a transactional view of development, stressing the importance of contextual factors to the quality of caregiving relationships and highlighting the complex and reciprocal relations between child regulatory competence and the quality of relationships with distinct caregivers.

Parental reflective functioning (PRF) plays a protective role in the development of children with histories of early adversity, including adopted children. This is the first study to investigate the developmental trajectories of PRF and children’s socio-emotional problems in the first 4 years after international adoption (N = 48 families, mean age (T1) = 20.7 months) and to examine the mediating role of parenting stress in the relation between PRF and child socio-emotional problems. Multilevel modeling indicated that age at adoption and parent gender moderated the development of PRF and child socio-emotional problems. Moreover, decreases in PRF were associated with more socio-emotional problems in the children. These relations were mediated by parenting stress, and particularly feelings of incompetence and marital dissatisfaction.

Childhood adversity is one of the strongest predictors of adolescent mental illness. Therefore, it is critical that the mechanisms that aid resilient functioning in individuals exposed to childhood adversity are better understood. Here, we examined whether resilient functioning was related to structural brain network topology. We quantified resilient functioning at the individual level as psychosocial functioning adjusted for the severity of childhood adversity in a large sample of adolescents (N = 2406, aged 14–24). Next, we examined nodal degree (the number of connections that brain regions have in a network) using brain-wide cortical thickness measures in a representative subset (N = 275) using a sliding window approach. We found that higher resilient functioning was associated with lower nodal degree of multiple regions including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the medial prefrontal cortex, and the posterior superior temporal sulcus (z > 1.645). During adolescence, decreases in nodal degree are thought to reflect a normative developmental process that is part of the extensive remodeling of structural brain network topology. Prior findings in this sample showed that decreased nodal degree was associated with age, as such our findings of negative associations between nodal degree and resilient functioning may therefore potentially resemble a more mature structural network configuration in individuals with higher resilient functioning.

Recent initiatives have focused on integrating transdiagnostic biobehavioral processes or dispositions with dimensional models of psychopathology. Toward this goal, biobehavioral traits of affiliative capacity (AFF) and inhibitory control (INH) hold particular promise as they demonstrate transdiagnostic stability and predictive validity across developmental stages and differing measurement modalities. The current study employed data from different modes of measurement in a sample of 1830 children aged 5–10 years to test for associations of AFF and INH, individually and interactively, with broad dimensions of psychopathology. Low AFF, assessed via parent-report, evidenced predictive relations with distress- and externalizing-related problems. INH as assessed by cognitive-task performance did not relate itself to either psychopathology dimension, but it moderated the effects observed for low AFF, such that high INH protected against distress symptoms in low-AFF participants, whereas low INH amplified distress and externalizing symptoms in low-AFF participants. Results are discussed in the context of the interface of general trait transdiagnostic risk factors with quantitatively derived dimensional models of psychopathology.

Externalizing psychopathology is a strong risk factor for substance use, whereas the role of internalizing manifestations of distress, and anxiety in particular, in predicting substance use remains unclear. Studies have suggested that anxiety may be either a protective or risk factor for substance use. The present study aimed to clarify evidence for anxiety-specific associations with substance use, examining sex and developmental period (adolescence vs. adulthood) as potential moderators that may help explain conflicting results in the literature. In a longitudinal twin sample, cross-sectional associations of anxiety with substance use differed in adolescents and adults and in girls/women and boys/men. Controlling for externalizing psychopathology and depression, anxiety was associated with reduced substance use in adolescent girls and increased substance use in adult women. In contrast, anxiety-specific associations with substance use were not significant in boys and men. Possible explanations for these contrasting results across development and sex are discussed.

Youth in the juvenile justice system evince high rates of mental health symptoms, including anxiety and depression. How these symptom profiles change after first contact with the justice system and – importantly – how they are related to re-offending remains unclear. Here, we use latent growth curve modeling to characterize univariate and multivariate growth of anxiety, depression, and re-offending in 1216 male adolescents over 5 years following their first arrest. Overall, the group showed significant linear and quadratic growth in internalizing symptoms and offending behaviors over time such that levels decreased initially after first arrest followed by a small but significant upturn occurring a few years later. Crucially, multivariate growth models revealed strong positive relationships between the rates of growth in internalizing symptoms and offending behaviors such that improvements in mental health related to greater decreases in offending, and vice versa. These results highlight the reciprocal nature of internalizing and externalizing problems in adolescence, underscoring the importance of considering mental health alongside offending in the juvenile justice system.

Cross-species evidence suggests that the ability to exert control over a stressor is a key dimension of stress exposure that may sensitize frontostriatal-amygdala circuitry to promote more adaptive responses to subsequent stressors. The present study examined neural correlates of stressor controllability in young adults. Participants (N = 56; M age = 23.74, range = 18–30 years) completed either the controllable or uncontrollable stress condition of the first of two novel stressor controllability tasks during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) acquisition. Participants in the uncontrollable stress condition were yoked to age- and sex-matched participants in the controllable stress condition. All participants were subsequently exposed to uncontrollable stress in the second task, which is the focus of fMRI analyses reported here. A whole-brain searchlight classification analysis revealed that patterns of activity in the right dorsal anterior insula (dAI) during subsequent exposure to uncontrollable stress could be used to classify participants' initial exposure to either controllable or uncontrollable stress with a peak of 73% accuracy. Previous experience of exerting control over a stressor may change the computations performed within the right dAI during subsequent stress exposure, shedding further light on the neural underpinnings of stressor controllability.

According to differential susceptibility theory (DST), some children may be more sensitive to both positive and negative features of the environment. However, research has generated a list of widely disparate temperamental traits that may reflect differential susceptibility to the environment. In addition, findings have implicated these temperament × environment interactions in predicting a wide variety of child outcomes. This study uses a novel evolutionary model of temperament to examine whether differential susceptibility operates in a domain-general or domain-specific manner. Using a racially and socioeconomically diverse sample of 243 preschoolers and their parents (56% female; 48% African American), we examined the interactions between maternal and paternal parenting quality and two evolutionary informed temperament profiles (i.e., Hawks and Doves) in predicting changes in teacher-reported conduct problems and depressive symptoms from preschool to first grade. Results suggest that differential susceptibility operates in a domain-specific fashion. Specifically, the “Hawk” temperament was differentially susceptible to maternal parenting in predicting externalizing problems. In contrast, the “Dove” temperament was susceptible to both paternal and maternal parenting quality in predicting changes in depressive symptoms. Findings provide support for an integrative framework that synthesizes DST with an evolutionary, function-based approach to temperament.

Cognitive theories of depression contend that biased cognitive information processing plays a causal role in the development of depression. Extensive research shows that deeper processing of negative and/or shallower processing of positive self-descriptors (i.e., negative and positive self-schemas) predicts current and future depression in adults and children. However, the neural correlates of the development of self-referent encoding are poorly understood. We examined children's self-referential processing using the self-referent encoding task (SRET) collected from 74 children at ages 6, 9, and 12; around age 10, these children also contributed structural magnetic resonance imaging data. From age 6 to age 12, both positive and negative self-referential processing showed mean-level growth, with positive self-schemas increasing relatively faster than negative ones. Further, voxel-based morphometry showed that slower growth in positive self-schemas was associated with lower regional gray matter volume (GMV) in ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC). Our results suggest that smaller regional GMV within vlPFC, a critical region for regulatory control in affective processing and emotion development, may have implications for the development of depressogenic self-referential processing in mid-to-late childhood.

Environmental and biological factors contribute to sleep development during infancy. Parenting plays a particularly important role in modulating infant sleep, potentially via the serotonin system, which is itself involved in regulating infant sleep. We hypothesized that maternal neglect and serotonin system dysregulation would be associated with daytime sleep in infant rhesus monkeys. Subjects were nursery-reared infant rhesus macaques (n = 287). During the first month of life, daytime sleep-wake states were rated bihourly (0800–2100). Infants were considered neglected (n = 16) if before nursery-rearing, their mother repeatedly failed to retrieve them. Serotonin transporter genotype and concentrations of cerebrospinal fluid 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid (5-HIAA) were used as markers of central serotonin system functioning. t tests showed that neglected infants were observed sleeping less frequently, weighed less, and had higher 5-HIAA than non-neglected nursery-reared infants. Regression revealed that serotonin transporter genotype moderated the relationship between 5-HIAA and daytime sleep: in subjects possessing the Ls genotype, there was a positive correlation between 5-HIAA and daytime sleep, whereas in subjects possessing the LL genotype there was no association. These results highlight the pivotal roles that parents and the serotonin system play in sleep development. Daytime sleep alterations observed in neglected infants may partially derive from serotonin system dysregulation.

In their commentary, Beauchaine and Slep (2018) raise important issues regarding research on behavioral parenting training (BPT). In this reply we highlight key points of agreement and respond to issues that we feel require clarification. BPT has been repeatedly proven effective in decreasing disruptive child behavior (also in the work of our research team). Yet, there is much to learn about for whom and how BPT is effective. Specifically, assessing the how (i.e., mediation) comes with many challenges. One of these challenges is taking into account the timeline of change, and being able to infer causal mechanisms of change. We argue that cross-lagged panel models (which we, and many other scholars, used) are a valid and valuable method for testing mediation. At the same time, our results raise important questions, specifically about the timing and form of expected changes in parenting and child behavior after BPT. For example, are these changes linear and gradual or do they happen more suddenly? To select the appropriate design, assessment tools, and statistical models to test mediation, we need to state detailed hypotheses on what changes when. An important next step might be to assess multiple putative mediators on different timescales, not only before and after, but specifically also during BPT.

The event-related potential (ERP) data reported here in 2005 by Parker, Nelson, and The Bucharest Early Intervention Project Core Group were collected in Bucharest, Romania, between April 2001 and November 2003. We recently discovered that during a 4-month period (July–October 2001) the channel for the right mastoid electrode (M2) was mistakenly exchanged with the channel for the right occipital electrode (O2) at the connection to the amplifier. This Erratum presents the key comparisons between the results as originally reported and as reanalyzed given the corrected data.

Depression is often associated with social withdrawal. However, especially among children from traumatic backgrounds, dysphoric affect may also be manifested by increased demands for social contact. The present research employed intensive observations, children's self-reports, and therapist and staff ratings to investigate associations between affect regulation and interpersonal behavior among 32 emotionally disturbed children (ages 7 to 12 years) in residential or day treatment. As predicted, children who reported dysphoric moods on the Children's Depression Inventory (Kovacs, 1980/81) were most socially engaged and presented themselves as relatively vulnerable and dependent on others. These children not only expressed more overt sadness but also exhibited higher rates of excited/hyperactive behavior. The subgroup of children who were most prone to deny even normative levels of negative affect were least interpersonally involved as well as least impulsive. The results highlight the importance of individual differences in coping with traumatic relationship histories and the need for further study of the interplay between affect and interpersonal behavior in childhood psychopathology.