Longitudinal trajectories of psychopathology in previously institutionalized (PI) youth were identified and biobehavioral emotion regulation processes were examined as developmental mechanisms that predict these trajectories. Mental health data were collected from PI (N = 132) and nonadopted (NA; N = 175) youth across four time points (participant age ranged from 7- to 21-year-old). Using semiparametric group-based methods, the probability that each individual belonged to a distinct group that followed a specific pattern of behavior across time was estimated. We then tested whether unique aspects of emotion regulation (global, observed, and biological) were differentially associated with membership in externalizing and internalizing trajectory groups using multinomial logistic regression models. Four externalizing trajectories were identified for the PI and NA groups. For PI youth, global, observed, and biological emotion regulation processes were uniquely predictive of more adaptive externalizing trajectories. For NA youth, only parent-reported global emotion regulation was predictive of externalizing patterns. Three internalizing trajectories were identified for PI and NA youth. Generally, only parent-reported global emotion regulation predicted internalizing group membership for both PI and NA youth. Results suggest that biobehavioral emotion regulation processes may be particularly important predictors and potential points of intervention when targeting trajectories of externalizing behaviors in PI children.

The aim of the current study was to examine whether self-control skills in childhood moderate the association between very preterm birth (<32 weeks of gestational age) and emotional problems and peer victimization in adolescence. We used data from four prospective cohort studies, which included 29,378 participants in total (N = 645 very preterm; N = 28,733 full-term). Self-control was mother-reported in childhood at 5–11 years whereas emotional problems and peer victimization were both self- and mother-reported at 12–17 years of age. Findings of individual participant data meta-analysis showed that self-control skills in childhood do not moderate the association between very preterm birth and adolescence emotional problems and peer victimization. It was shown that higher self-control skills in childhood predict lower emotional problems and peer victimization in adolescence similarly in very preterm and full-term borns.

Childhood adversity has been associated with hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis dysregulation, which is associated with mental and physical health consequences. However, associations between childhood adversity and cortisol regulation in the current literature vary in magnitude and direction. This multilevel meta-analysis examines the association between childhood adversity and diurnal cortisol measures, as well as potential moderators of these effects (adversity timing and type, study or sample characteristics). A search was conducted in online databases PsycINFO and PubMed for papers written in English. After screening for exclusion criteria (papers examining animals, pregnant women, people receiving hormonal treatment, people with endocrine disorders, cortisol before age 2 months, or cortisol after an intervention), 303 papers were identified for inclusion. In total, 441 effect sizes were extracted from 156 manuscripts representing 104 studies. A significant overall effect was found between childhood adversity and bedtime cortisol, r = 0.047, 95% CI [0.005, 0.089], t = 2.231, p = 0.028. All other overall and moderation effects were not significant. The lack of overall effects may reflect the importance of the timing and nature of childhood adversity to adversity’s impact on cortisol regulation. Thus, we offer concrete recommendations for testing theoretical models linking early adversity and stress physiology.

Prenatal stress has a significant, but small, negative effect on children’s executive function (EF) in middle and high socioeconomic status (SES) households. Importantly, rates and severity of prenatal stress are higher and protective factors are reduced in lower SES households, suggesting prenatal stress may be particularly detrimental for children’s EF in this population. This study examined whether prenatal stress was linked to 5-year-old’s EF in a predominantly low SES sample and child sex moderated this association, as males may be more vulnerable to adverse prenatal experiences. Participants were 132 mother-child dyads drawn from a prospective prenatal cohort. Mothers reported on their depression symptoms, trait anxiety, perceived stress, everyday discrimination, and sleep quality at enrollment and once each trimester, to form a composite prenatal stress measure. Children’s EF was assessed at age 5 years using the parent-report Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function - Preschool (BRIEF-P) Global Executive Composite subscale and neuropsychological tasks completed by the children. Mixed models revealed higher prenatal stress was associated with lower BRIEF-P scores, indicating better EF, for females only. Higher prenatal stress was associated with lower performance on neuropsychological EF measures for both males and females. Results add to the limited evidence about prenatal stress effects on children’s EF in low SES households.

To test the transmission of mental health difficulties from mother to child, we examined mediation through emotion reminiscing conversations and child language. Maternal depression symptoms were measured at 9 months post-partum, and child mental health outcomes were measured at age 8 years. Emotion reminiscing conversations between 1,234 mother-child pairs (624 boys, 610 girls) were recorded as part of a large, diverse, longitudinal cohort Growing Up in New Zealand. The 1,234 reminiscing conversations were transcribed and coded for maternal elaboration and emotion resolution quality (mother and child). The coded reminiscing variables did not mediate the pathway from maternal depression to child mental health outcomes; however, each maternal reminiscing variable together with child language skill serially mediated the relationship from maternal depression symptoms to child-reported anxiety and depression symptoms, and parent-reported child externalizing symptoms. Language as a skill and it’s use as a tool for making shared meaning from past events are highlighted as possible mechanisms for the intergenerational transmission of mental health difficulties. These findings point to potential opportunities for early interventions, including prevention of and support for postnatal depression, family intervention in reminiscing training, and supporting child language development.

Infants’ difficulty, typically characterized as proneness to negative emotionality, is commonly considered a risk for future maladaptive developmental trajectories, mostly because it often foreshadows increased parental power assertion, typically linked to future negative child outcomes. However, growing evidence of divergent developmental paths that unfold from infant difficulty has invigorated research on causes of such multifinality. Kochanska et al. (2019) proposed that parent and child Internal Working Models (IWMs) of each other are key, with the parent’s IWM of the child moderating the link between child difficulty and parental power assertion, and the child’s IWM of the parent moderating the link between power assertion and child outcomes. In Children and Parents Study (200 community mothers, fathers, and children), child difficulty was observed at 8 months, parents’ power assertion at 16 months, and children’s outcomes rated by parents at age 3. Parents’ IWMs were assessed with a mentalization measure at 8 months and children’s IWMs were coded from semi-projective narratives at age 3. The cascade from infant difficulty to maternal power assertion to negative child outcomes was present only when both the mother’s and the child’s IWMs of each other were negative. We did not support the model for father-child dyads.

Evidence suggests bidirectional relations between stress, sleep, and depressive symptoms in adolescence and young adulthood. Less research has disaggregated within- and between-person variance in these associations over time or within Latino/a college students. This study examined longitudinal, within-person reciprocal relations between stress, sleep, and depressive symptoms among 181 Latino/a adolescents (Mage = 18.10; SD = 0.41, 35% male) transitioning to college. Participants were assessed in their senior year of high school and annually until their fourth year of college. A random intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM) was used to parse out within- and between-person sources of variance. Results indicated overall (between-person) relations among depressive symptoms and school/college stress and sleep problems. There were reciprocal within-person links between stress and sleep problems across the first two years of college. Within-person increases in depressive symptoms during the second year of college predicted more stress than usual in the third year, which predicted increased depressive symptoms in the fourth year. More sleep problems than usual in the third year of college predicted higher stress in the fourth year. Findings provide evidence for within-person cross-lagged relations among various domains of adjustment during college and may inform future prevention efforts for incoming Latino/a college students targeting mental health and sleep problems.

The proopiomelanocortin (POMC) molecule has been implicated in models of self-injurious behavior (SIB) in neurodevelopmental disorders, but it has never been specifically sequenced in search of base specific polymorphisms. The empirical focus of this preliminary study was to sequence the POMC gene in 11 children (mean age = 41.8 months, range = 12–60 months; 73% male) with clinical concerns regarding global developmental delay, 5 with reported self-injury. Genomic DNA was extracted from blood samples, and the POMC gene was amplified by specific oligonucleotide primers via polymerase chain reaction. The amplified gene products were sequenced by the University of Minnesota Genomic Center, and the results were analyzed using Sequencher software. A single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), 1130 C>T, was found in the 3’ untranslated region (UTR) of two samples (one of whom had SIB). The program TargetScanHuman was used to predict the function of this mutation. Variant c.1130 C<T was predicted to be located in the target site of two microRNAs (miRNAs; hsa-mir-3715 and hsa-mir-1909), and the variant allele T may result in an increased minimum free energy for the two miRNAs. Further work with much larger samples is needed to continue the investigation of POMC’s possible function as a risk factor for the development of SIB in children with developmental delay/disability. The findings presented in this study show that the SNP found in the 3’ UTR could alter the binding of miRNAs to POMC 3'UTR, thus, increasing POMC expression and affecting several biological systems with high relevance to the biology of self-injury. There was a significant difference in β-endorphin levels between SIB (M = 169.25 pg/mL) and no SIB (M = 273.5 pg/mL, SD = 15.2) cases (p < .01). Intervention implications are tied to prior observations of individual differences among SIB responders and nonresponders to treatment with the opioid antagonist naltrexone. Stratifying individuals with SIB by POMC mutation status may provide a potential tailoring-like variable to guide the selection of who is more (or less) likely to respond to opiate antagonist treatment. Currently, opioid antagonistic treatment for SIB is empiric (trial and error).

Research suggests that unsupportive parenting practices are consistent but modest risk factors for children’s behavioral and social problems, emphasizing the importance in identifying sources of variability in children’s vulnerability. To address this research direction, this study examined children’s callous-unemotional (CU) traits (i.e., affective indifference; lack of guilt or empathy), as a moderator of the associations among maternal and paternal unsupportive parenting and their externalizing symptoms. Participants included 240 mothers, partners, and their children (Mage = 4.6 years; 56% girls) from diverse backgrounds (48% Black; 16% Latinx) who took part in a longitudinal multi-method study with two measurement occasions spaced 2 years apart. Findings from structural equation modeling indicated the prospective association between observational assessments of unsupportive maternal (but not paternal) parenting and residualized changes in teacher reports children’s externalizing problems over 2 years was significantly moderated by maternal reports of children’s callous-unemotional traits (β = −.21, p < .05). Follow-up analyses of the interaction provided support for differential susceptibility. These findings highlight that children with elevated CU traits may experience diminished susceptibility to parenting, while children with lower levels of CU traits may exhibit plasticity in response to socialization environments.

Maternal depression is associated with instability within the family environment and increases in offspring substance use across adolescence. Rates of delay discounting, or the tendency to select smaller rewards that are immediately available relative to larger, but delayed rewards, are also associated with steeper increases in substance use among youth. Moreover, recent research suggests that early unstable environments may reinforce youths’ propensity towards opportunistic decision making and delay discounting specifically. The current prospective, longitudinal study examined links between maternal depressive symptoms, adolescent delay discounting, and subsequent substance use. Participants included 247 adolescents and their mothers who were assessed annually over a 6-year period (from ages 13 to 19 years). Results supported a small but significant mediation effect. Specifically, maternal depressive symptoms predicted increases in adolescent delay discounting, which, in turn, predicted steeper increases in adolescent substance use over time. Thus, youth decision making may represent a mechanism linking maternal depression and adolescent risk behaviors. Findings indicate the potential for interventions targeting parental psychopathology to prevent subsequent adolescent substance use.

Theoretical models of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder implicate neurocognitive dysfunction, yet neurocognitive functioning covers a range of abilities that may not all be linked with inattention. This study (a) investigated the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) heritability (h2SNP) of inattention and aspects of neurocognitive efficiency (memory, social cognition, executive function, and complex cognition) based on additive genome-wide effects; (b) examined if there were shared genetic effects among inattention and each aspect of neurocognitive efficiency; and (c) conducted an exploratory genome-wide association study to identify genetic regions associated with inattention. The sample included 3,563 participants of the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort, a general population sample aged 8–21 years who completed the Penn Neurocognitive Battery. Data on inattention was obtained with the Kiddie Schedule of Affective Disorders (adapted). Genomic relatedness matrix restricted maximum likelihood was implemented in genome-wide complex trait analysis. Analyses revealed significant h2SNP for inattention (20%, SE = 0.08), social cognition (13%, SE = 0.08), memory (17%, SE = 0.08), executive function (25%, SE = 0.08), and complex cognition (24%, SE = 0.08). There was a positive genetic correlation (0.67, SE = 0.37) and a negative residual covariance (−0.23, SE = 0.06) between inattention and social cognition. No SNPs reached genome-wide significance for inattention. Results suggest specificity in genetic overlap among inattention and different aspects of neurocognitive efficiency.

Emotional disorders in children are often associated with low self-concept and problems with peers, and in many cases externalizing symptoms. Super Skills for Life (SSL) is a transdiagnostic treatment for emotional problems in children that has also shown benefits in other comorbid symptoms. This study aimed to examine, for the first time, the effect of SSL on a clinical sample of Spanish children aged 8–12 years with a major emotional disorder and comorbid externalizing symptoms and low self-concept. A quasi-experimental design with two groups, pretest and posttest, was carried out. Thirty-eight children received the SSL intervention, and 36 children were assigned to a wait-list control (WLC) group. Children in SSL showed statistically fewer posttest emotional symptoms (p < .001), peer problems (p = .002), and overall internalizing and externalizing difficulties (p = .005) compared to children in WLC, in addition to higher posttest self-concept (p = .002). There were no differences in the postinterventional changes between boys and girls in internalizing and externalizing symptoms. However, significant differences were found in some facets of self-concept. The results of this study suggest that the SSL protocol may be useful in Spanish clinical contexts. Still, more research is needed to overcome some of the inherent limitations.

Although multiple domains of risk are theorized to predict adolescent delinquency, father-specific risk in the context of other risks is under-researched. Using the low-income Future of Families and Child Wellbeing cohort (48% Black, 27% Hispanic, 21% White, 51% boy, N = 4,255), the current study addressed three research questions. (1) are father-, mother-, child-, and family-level cumulative risk during early childhood associated with adolescent delinquent behavior?, (2) does child self-control in middle childhood mediate the associations between fathers’ and mothers’ cumulative risk and adolescent delinquent behavior, and do quality of parent’s relationships with children and parental monitoring in middle childhood mediate the association between child cumulative risk and delinquent behavior?, (3) do parenting, quality of parent-child relationships in middle childhood, and child sex at birth moderate the associations among fathers’, mothers’, children’s, and family risk and adolescent delinquent behavior? Results indicated father, child, and mother risk at ages 3–5 were significantly and positively associated with youth-reported delinquent behavior. Higher levels of family risk were associated with less delinquency when 9-year-olds felt closer to fathers than when they felt less close. Children’s self-control at age 9 mediated the associations between father and child risk and delinquent behavior.

Little effort has been made to integrate developmental cascades with maternal/paternal parenting in a single investigation. The present study seeks to test cascading effects among academic and internalizing/externalizing symptoms and their associations with maternal/paternal parenting across three time points from 8 to 10 years. Data for this investigation came from a nationally representative prospective cohort study of children born in April through July of 2008 in South Korea who were followed up annually. The sample included 1,598 families (48.5% girls). Parents rated their parenting and teachers rated children’s internalizing/externalizing problems and academic performance. Structural equation modeling showed that externalizing problems were negatively related to academic performance. Academic performance was negatively related to internalizing problems and positively related to maternal/paternal authoritative parenting, which in turn led to children’s higher academic performance. Bidirectional relations were found between academic performance and externalizing problems and between paternal authoritative parenting and children’s internalizing problems. Findings suggested cascading effects and their associations with parenting were not attributable to child gender, intelligence, or socioeconomic differences. These findings lend support to adjustment erosion and academic incompetence models and underscore the need for greater attention to the role that fathering may play in children’s development and mothering.

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms are associated with myriad adverse outcomes, including interpersonal difficulties, but factors that moderate the developmental course and functional impact of ADHD over time are not well understood. The present study evaluated developmental contributions of the triarchic neurobehavioral traits (boldness, meanness, and disinhibition) to ADHD symptomatology and its subdimensions from adolescence to young adulthood. Participants were twins and triplets assessed at ages 14, 17, and 19 (initial N = 1,185, 51.2% female). Path analyses using negative binomial regression revealed that boldness at age 14 was associated with more ADHD symptoms cross-sectionally (especially hyperactivity/impulsivity), but fewer symptoms (especially inattention) at age 19 in the prospective analysis. Notably, inclusion of interpersonal problems at ages 14 and 17 as covariates reduced the latter effect to nonsignificant. Disinhibition concurrently and prospectively predicted higher levels of ADHD symptoms, including both subdimensions, and the prospective effects were partially mediated by greater social impairment at age 17. Meanness prospectively (but not concurrently) predicted higher levels of hyperactivity/impulsivity symptoms. Sex moderated certain associations of meanness and disinhibition with ADHD symptoms. These findings highlight how fundamental neurobehavioral traits shape both psychopathology and adaptive outcomes in the developmental course of ADHD.