Research on the effects of child maltreatment and exposure to community violence suggests that children who experience these types of traumatic events may be at risk for alterations and biases in attention and memory similar to those that have been observed in adults suffering from traumatic stress reactions. Along these lines, attachment theory posits that representational models of relationships also may act as moderators of similar cognitive biases by selectively guiding children's attention to and processing of interpersonal stimuli. Building upon the trauma and attachment literatures, the present investigation examined the links among trauma, representational models of caregivers, and children's memory for mother-relevant information using an incidental recall task in a sample of maltreated (n = 71) and nonmaltreated (n = 102) children between the ages of 8 and 13 years. Results were consistent with the hypothesis that experiences of trauma and representational models of caregivers are associated with differences in the way children process and retrieve information about positive and negative mother attribute words. In particular, experiences of trauma initially were associated with increased insecurity in children's representational models. Moreover, the interaction of traumatic experience and security of mental representation predicted children's recall for mother attribute words: victimized children with insecure models recalled the highest proportion of negative mother stimuli. Trauma and mental representation did not have a consistent effect on structurally encoded aspects of recall. Results were discussed in terms of the ways in which children who have experienced trauma process information about their worlds. The importance of assessing functioning in multiple developmental domains when studying memory also was discussed.

Electrophysiological kindling and behavioral sensitization to psychomotor stimulants and stress provide paradigms for understanding how repeated acute events can leave neurobiological residues in gene expression, accounting for the observed long-lasting alterations in behavioral responsivity. Kindling helps conceptualize how repeated electrical stimulation of the brain can progressively evoke increased behavioral and convulsive responsivity, leading to spontaneous seizures in the absence of exogenous stimulation following sufficient stimulations. As kindling unfolds, a complex spatiotemporal cascade of events occurs and includes the induction of immediate early genes (e.g., c-fos) and late effector genes (including peptides and growth factors) possibly associated with the observed changes in brain microstructure (e.g., synapse formation, axonal and dendritic sprouting, apoptosis). Behavioral sensitization to psychomotor stimulants and stress has also been shown to induce related but different cascades of effects on immediate early and late effector gene expression. These may be associated with the observed long-lasting alterations in behavioral responsivity based on prior experience. If these types of alterations are put into a developmental context, this would provide a paradigm for understanding how early life events could exert profound and behaviorally relevant biochemical and microstructural effects on the central nervous system of the developing organism. The conceptual overview offered by the sensitization and kindling models suggests that environmentally triggered neurobiological processes do not form a single or static residue but, instead, engage processes related to developmental neurobiology and learning and memory and whose substrate is constantly evolving over an organism's lifetime.

In this 2-year prospective study, psychopathology and competence among drug abusers' offspring were examined in relation to characteristics of their neighborhoods. The sample consisted of 77 children of cocaine and opioid addicts with a mean age of 12.3 years at baseline and 14.2 years at follow-up. Outcomes examined included psychiatric diagnoses, dimensional symptom indices, and aspects of everyday behavioral competence. Links involving neighborhood variables varied by gender, wherein boys reflected greater deterioration than girls when neighborhoods had high crime rates and high proportions of low-income households. Conversely, girls appeared to benefit more than boys from the presence of professional adults in the community. Overall, neighborhood indicators accounted for more variability in changes in child adjustment over time than did indices of maternal psychopathology. Findings are discussed in terms of developmental changes in the salience of exosystemic and familial forces, and implications for interventions are outlined.

The biological sensitivity to context hypothesis posits that high physiological reactivity (i.e., increases in arousal from baseline) constitutes heightened sensitivity to environmental influences, for better or worse. To test this hypothesis, we examined the interactive effects of family cohesion and heart rate reactivity to a public speaking task on aggressive/rule-breaking and prosocial behavior in a large sample of adolescents (N = 679; M age = 16.14). Multivariate analyses revealed small- to medium-sized main effects of lower family cohesion and lower heart rate reactivity on higher levels of aggressive/rule-breaking and lower levels of prosocial behavior. Although there was some evidence of three-way interactions among family cohesion, heart rate reactivity, and sex in predicting these outcome variables, these interactions were not in the direction predicted by the biological sensitivity to context hypothesis. Instead, heightened reactivity appeared to operate as a protective factor against family adversity, rather than as a susceptibility factor. The results of the present study raise the possibility that stress reactivity may no longer operate as a mechanism of differential susceptibility in adolescence.

Self-control, involving processes such as delaying gratification, concentrating, planning, following instructions, and adapting emotions and behavior to situational requirements and social norms, may have a profound impact on children's adjustment. The importance of self-control suggests that parents are likely to modify their parenting based on children's ability for self-control. We study the effect of children's self-control, a trait partially molded by genetics, on their mothers' parenting, a process of evocative gene–environment correlation. Israeli 3.5-year-old twins (N = 320) participated in a lab session in which their mothers' parenting was observed. DNA was available from most children (N = 228). Mothers described children's self-control in a questionnaire. Boys were lower in self-control and received less positive parenting from their mothers, in comparison with girls. For boys, and not for girls, the serotonin transporter linked polymorphic region gene predicted mothers' levels of positive parenting, an effect mediated by boys' self-control. The implications of this evocative gene–environment correlation and the observed sex differences are discussed.

FK506 binding protein 5 (FKBP5) alters stress response system functioning, and childhood maltreatment is associated with methylation of the FKBP5 gene. Yet it is unknown if maltreatment contributes to change in FKBP5 methylation over time. The current study draws upon a sample of 231 preschoolers, including 123 with child welfare documentation of moderate to severe maltreatment in the past 6 months, to understand if maltreatment contributes to change in FKBP5 methylation over a 6-month period. Review of child protection records and semistructured interviews in the home were used to assess maltreatment and exposure to other contextual stressors, as well as service utilization. Methylation of FKBP5 at two CpG sites in intron 7 was measured from saliva DNA at the time of initial study enrollment, and 6 months following enrollment. Child maltreatment was associated with change in FKBP5 methylation over time, but only when children were exposed to high levels of other contextual stressors. Service utilization was associated with increases in methylation over time, but only among children with the FKPB5 rs1360780 protective CC genotype. Methylation of FKBP5 is sensitive to stress exposure and may be a mechanism linking early adversity to long-term health and developmental outcomes.

This study was designed to expand the investigation of peer-rejected subgroup differences to adolescence. A sample of 501 eighth-grade adolescents (age 13–14 years) were assessed. These students and their classmates (1,082 15–16-year-olds) were assessed at 10th grade. Rejected-antisocial and rejected-nonantisocial subgroups were identified at both time periods using peer ratings of social status and antisocial behavior. They were compared with accepted, accepted-antisocial, and accepted-nonantisocial subgroups. Results are consistent with past research indicating significant heterogeneity within the rejected population. Rejected-antisocial adolescents exhibited elevated problem behavior (substance use and deviant peer involvement), depression, and school adjustment difficulties (low attendance, low achievement, and school discipline problems). Rejected-nonantisocial students in contrast exhibited little problem behavior, but were characterized by low physical attractiveness and lower involvement in athletics. Discussions of psychopathological risk associated with peer rejection must account for the heterogeneity and extreme differences between antisocial and nonantisocial-rejected adolescents. Comparison of antisocial and nonantisocial-rejected children with their respective antisocial and nonantisocial-accepted comparison groups revealed few differences. This calls into question the unique contribution of rejection in the development of psychopathology.

We examined the role of a history of sexual abuse as a predictor of child maltreatment by adolescent mothers in a prospective study of 104 mother-child dyads. Mothers were interviewed about any experienced abuse, and the mother-child dyads were observed in a teaching interaction and in the Strange Situation when the children were 1 year old. Three and a half years later, the mothers were interviewed about their Child Protective Service (CPS) contacts since the birth of their children. The percentage of mothers reporting CPS contacts for their own children was 15.4%, 38.5%, and 83.3%, respectively, for those mothers with no history of sexual abuse, a history of a single incident or brief duration of sexual abuse, and those mothers with a history of chronic sexual abuse (median 24 months duration; test of increasing trend significant at p < .000009). Mothers who reported having been chronically sexually abused as children were significantly more likely to have CPS contacts for their own children, after controlling for history of physical abuse, quality of early teaching interactions, and infant attachment security (both of which also predicted CPS contacts), race, IQ, welfare status at 1 year postpartum, and history of foster care.

The study examined whether reciprocal friendship quantity or quality can mitigate genetic vulnerability for depression symptoms in children. The sample comprised 168 monozygotic twin pairs and 126 same-sex dizygotic twin pairs assessed in Grade 4 (mean age = 10.04 years). Friendship participation was measured via reciprocal nominations of close friendships within the classroom. Friendship quality was measured through self-reports. Depression symptoms were measured through teacher and peer reports. Genetic vulnerability for depression symptoms was unrelated to friendship participation or the number of reciprocal friends, but it was negatively related to positive friendship quality. In line with gene–environment interaction, genetic risk effects on depression symptoms were mitigated in girls who had at least one close reciprocal friend. In boys, only moderate main effects of genetic vulnerability and friendship participation were found but no interaction between them. However, among boys with at least one reciprocal friend, a greater number of friends was related to fewer depression symptoms whereas no cumulative effect of friendship was found for girls. Finally, positive friendship quality was related to fewer depression symptoms in girls and boys even when controlling for genetic risk. The findings emphasize the importance of teaching social interactional skills that promote high-quality friendship relations to help prevent the development of depression symptoms in children.

This study examined relations among parent adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), parent mental distress, child social–emotional functioning, and parent emotional availability (EA) among parents and children served by an Early Head Start program in an American Indian community. The majority of parents and children in the study were American Indian/Alaska Native. American Indian/Alaska Native communities experience relatively high rates of trauma, socioeconomic disparities, and mental health challenges. In this context, young children may be especially vulnerable to early life stress. Further, a strong body of literature demonstrates the long-term effects of ACEs on individuals’ mental health, as well as their child's social–emotional functioning. In this study we examined a model to test the relation of parent ACEs to children's social–emotional functioning, with an indirect effect via a latent “mental distress” variable consisting of parent depression, anxiety, and parenting-related distress. Results supported this model, suggesting that parent ACEs related to children's social–emotional problems by way of parent mental distress. However, when a categorical measure of parent EA was added as a moderator, the model only remained significant in the low EA parent group. These results provided evidence for a “buffering” effect of high parent EA on the relation between parent ACEs, parent mental distress, and children's social–emotional problems.

Children's early emotion regulation strategies (ERS) have been related to externalizing problems; however, most studies have included predominantly European American, middle-class children. The current study explores whether ERS use may have differential outcomes as a function of the mother's ethnic culture. The study utilizes two diverse samples of low-income male toddlers to examine observed ERS during a delay of gratification task in relation to maternal and teacher reports of children's externalizing behavior 2 to 6 years later. Although the frequencies of ERS were comparable between ethnic groups in both samples, the use of physical comfort seeking and self-soothing was positively related to African American children's later externalizing behavior but negatively related to externalizing behavior for European American children in Sample 1. Data from Sample 2 appear to support this pattern for self-soothing in maternal, but not teacher, report of externalizing behavior. Within group differences by income were examined as a possible explanatory factor accounting for the ethnic differences, but it was not supported. Alternative explanations are discussed to explain the pattern of findings.

This article describes the evolution of a psychosocial intervention, pairing, from its initial utilization as an interpersonally oriented therapy for severely emotionally disturbed pre- and early adolescents in a special needs school, to its current usage as a public school prevention technique for at-risk youngsters, both aggressive and withdrawn, who are living under conditions of poverty and limited community supports. The evolution of the intervention is described parallel to both the evolution of its theoretical foundations and its associated empirical analysis and evaluation. Given that our approach to both intervention and basic research is clinical-developmental (each part of the discipline influencing the other), the facilitation of greater social competence through the intervention provides the impetus for our research inquiry into the nature of psychosocial development. A generic evaluation model that integrates both outcome behavior and psychosocial development is described as it is applied to the evaluation of this specific intervention's effectiveness.

Recent work on psychopathology supports a connection between repeated childhood maltreatment and disturbances in self-definition and -regulation. This study tested the hypothesis that chronic childhood sexual abuse is associated with developmentally complex affective splitting of representations of self-with-others, including both a negativity bias in evaluating core self and a high degree of affective splitting of scripts for self-in-relationships. Sixteen inpatient adolescent girls with affective disorders participated in the Self-in-Relationships Interview to produce and analyze a self-diagram; seven had been victims of prolonged sexual abuse, and nine had not. The results supported the hypothesis, showing two powerful differences in splitting between the groups, (a) The abused girls placed negative characteristics as central to their core self and also produced an unusually large overall number of negatives. The nonabused girls regarded negative characteristics as mostly peripheral in their self-diagram and produced fewer negatives, (b) The abused girls showed a form of complex dissociative coordination called polarized qffective splitting, which was not produced by the nonabused group. They also showed slightly higher developmental levels in general than the nonabused group, thus contradicting the traditional view that maltreatment produces splitting through developmental fixation or regression. Psychopathology from abuse arises along a complex, distinctive developmental pathway, not as a result of a delay or failure of development.

Several studies suggest that neighborhood deprivation is a unique risk factor in child and adolescent development of problem behavior. We sought to examine whether previously established intervention effects of the Family Check-Up (FCU) on child conduct problems at age 7.5 would persist through age 9.5, and whether neighborhood deprivation would moderate these effects. In addition, we examined whether improvements in parent–child interaction during early childhood associated with the FCU would be related to later reductions in child aggression among families living in the highest risk neighborhoods. Using a multisite cohort of at-risk children identified on the basis of family, child, and socioeconomic risk and randomly assigned to the FCU, intervention effects were found to be moderated by neighborhood deprivation, such that they were only directly present for those living at moderate versus extreme levels of neighborhood deprivation. In addition, improvements in child aggression were evident for children living in extreme neighborhood deprivation when parents improved the quality of their parent–child interaction during the toddler period (i.e., moderated mediation). Implications of the findings are discussed in relation to the possibilities and possible limitations in prevention of early problem behavior for those children living in extreme and moderate levels of poverty.

Much research has examined Moffitt's developmental taxonomy, focusing almost exclusively on the distinction between life-course persistent and adolescence-limited offenders. Of interest, a handful of studies have identified a group of individuals whose early childhood years were marked by extensive antisocial behavior but who seemed to recover and desist (at least from severe offending) in adolescence and early adulthood. We use data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development to examine the adult adjustment outcomes of different groups of offenders, including a recoveries group, in late middle adulthood, offering the most comprehensive investigation of this particular group to date. Findings indicate that abstainers comprise the largest group of males followed by adolescence-limited offenders, recoveries, and life-course persistent offenders. Furthermore, the results reveal that a host of adult adjustment problems measured at ages 32 and 48 in a number of life-course domains are differentially distributed across these four offender groups. In addition, the recoveries and life-course persistent offenders often show the greatest number of adult adjustment problems relative to the adolescence-limited offenders and abstainers.

The purpose of the present research was to examine Deese–Roediger–McDermott false memory for trauma-related and nontrauma-related lists in adolescents and adults with and without documented histories of child sexual abuse (CSA). Individual differences in psychopathology and adult attachment were also explored. Participants were administered free recall and recognition tests after hearing CSA, negative, neutral, and positive Deese–Roediger–McDermott lists. In free recall, CSA and negative lists produced the most false memory. In sharp contrast, for recognition, CSA lists enjoyed the highest d′ scores. CSA-group adolescents who evinced greater posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms had higher rates of false memory compared to (a) non-CSA group adolescents with higher PTSD symptom scores (free recall), and (b) CSA-group adolescents with lower PTSD symptom scores (recognition). Regression analyses revealed that individuals with higher PTSD scores and greater fearful-avoidant attachment tendencies showed less proficient memory monitoring for CSA lists. Implications for trauma and memory development and for translational research are discussed.

The present study extends prior research on the link between neighborhood disadvantage and chronic illness by testing an integrated model in which neighborhood characteristics exert effects on health conditions through accelerated cardiometabolic aging. Hypotheses were tested using a sample of 408 African Americans from the Family and Community Health Study. Using four waves of data spanning young adulthood (ages 18–29), we first found durable effects of neighborhood disadvantage on accelerated cardiometabolic aging and chronic illness. Then, we used marginal structural modeling to adjust for potential neighborhood selection effects. As expected, accelerated cardiometabolic aging was the biopsychosocial mechanism that mediated much of the association between neighborhood disadvantage and chronic illness. This finding provides additional support for the view that neighborhood disadvantage can influence morbidity and mortality by creating social contexts that becomes biologically embedded. Perceived neighborhood collective efficacy served to buffer the relationship between neighborhood disadvantage and biological aging, identifying neighborhood-level resilience factor. Overall, our results indicate that neighborhood context serves as a fundamental cause of weathering and accelerated biological aging. Residing in a disadvantaged neighborhood increases biological wear and tear that ultimately leads to onset of chronic illness, but access to perceived collective efficacy buffers the impact of these neighborhood effects. From an intervention standpoint, identifying such an integrated model may help inform future health-promoting interventions.

Cognitive strategies that adolescents use to cope with negative emotions might show distinct profiles of cognitive emotion regulation strategies, which could be differentially associated with depressive symptoms. In total, 411 Dutch adolescents who had experienced at least one stressful life event that required some coping strategy participated in this study, including 334 nonclinical and 77 clinically depressed adolescents (12–21 years). A person-centered approach with Latent Profile Analysis was used to identify underlying profiles of cognitive emotion regulation based on the adolescents’ reports of their use of cognitive emotion regulation strategies when they were confronted with stressful life events. Nine different strategies, five adaptive and four maladaptive, were used as indicators. Four profiles with distinct features were found in the nonclinical sample, as well as in the combined sample of nonclinical and clinically depressed adolescents: Low Regulators, High Regulators, Maladaptive Regulators, and Adaptive Regulators. In both samples, the High Regulators profile was most commonly used, followed by the Adaptive, Maladaptive, and Low Regulators profile. Maladaptive Regulators endorsed higher levels of depressive symptoms relative to Low, High, and Adaptive Regulators. The findings underscore the utility of using a person-centered approach in order to identify patterns of cognitive emotion regulation deficits in psychopathology.

Early-onset conduct problems (CP) are a key predictor of adult criminality and poor mental health. While previous studies suggest that both genetic and environmental risks play an important role in the development of early-onset CP, little is known about potential biological processes underlying these associations. In this study, we examined prospective associations between DNA methylation (cord blood at birth) and trajectories of CP (4–13 years), using data drawn from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. Methylomic variation at seven loci across the genome (false discovery rate < 0.05) differentiated children who go on to develop early-onset (n = 174) versus low (n = 86) CP, including sites in the vicinity of the monoglyceride lipase (MGLL) gene (involved in endocannabinoid signaling and pain perception). Subthreshold associations in the vicinity of three candidate genes for CP (monoamine oxidase A [MAOA], brain-derived neurotrophic factor [BDNF], and FK506 binding protein 5 [FKBP5]) were also identified. Within the early-onset CP group, methylation levels of the identified sites did not distinguish children who will go on to persist versus desist in CP behavior over time. Overall, we found that several of the identified sites correlated with prenatal exposures, and none were linked to known genetic methylation quantitative trait loci. Findings contribute to a better understanding of epigenetic patterns associated with early-onset CP.

We introduce the construct of perceived containment, defined as children's beliefs about adults' capacity to impose firm limits and to prevail if there is a conflict in goals. We propose that children's containment beliefs represent an important but understudied factor in the development and maintenance of childhood aggression. Children's ratings on the Perceived Containment Questionnaire (PCQ) were inversely related to parent and teacher ratings of externalizing problems. Moreover, this relation was found to be independent of the quality of parental discipline. We also found evidence that perceived containment moderated the relation between overly harsh, inept discipline and children's externalizing behaviors: ineffective discipline was directly related to externalizing problems in children with relatively high PCQ scores but was unrelated to externalizing problems in children with relatively low PCQ scores. For the latter group of children, the affective quality of the mother–child relationship was a better predictor of problem behavior. These findings provide additional support for Kochanska's (1993) model of differential socialization and for Frick's (1998) assertions concerning meaningful subgroups of aggressive children.