An increasing number of researchers and policymakers have been moved to study and intervene in the lives of children affected by violent conflicts (Masten, 2014). According to a United Nations Children's Fund (2009) report, over 1 billion children under the age of 18 are growing up in regions where acts of political violence and armed conflict are, as Ladds and Cairns (1996, p. 15) put it, “a common occurrence—a fact of life.” In recent years, the United Nations Children's Fund, advocacy and human rights groups, journalists, and researchers have drawn public attention to the high rates of child casualties in these regions, and to the plights of those children still caught in the crossfire. It has thus become clear that both the challenges and the stakes are higher than ever to promote the safety and well-being of affected children around the world (Masten & Narayan, 2012; Tol, Jordans, Kohrt, Betancourt, & Komproe, 2012).

This study explored how coping with war-related traumatic events in Sierra Leone impacted mental health outcomes among 529 youth (aged 10–17 at baseline; 25% female) using longitudinal data from three time points (Time 1 in 2002, Time 2 in 2004, and Time 3 in 2008). We examined two types of coping items (approach and avoidance); used multiple regression models to test their relations with long-term mental health outcomes (internalizing behaviors, externalizing behaviors, adaptive/prosocial behaviors, and posttraumatic stress symptoms); and used mediation analyses to test whether coping explained the relation between previous war exposures (being raped, death of parent(s), or killing/injuring someone during the war) and those outcomes. We found that avoidance coping items were associated with lower internalizing and posttraumatic stress behaviors at Time 3, and provided some evidence of mediating the relation between death of parent(s) during the war and the two outcomes mentioned above. Approach coping was associated with higher Time 3 adaptive/prosocial behaviors, whereas avoidance coping was associated with lower Time 3 adaptive/prosocial behaviors. Avoidance coping may be a protective factor against mental illness, whereas approach coping may be a promotive factor for adaptive/prosocial behaviors in war-affected societies. This study has important implications for designing and implementing mental health interventions for youth in postconflict settings.

Over 1 billion children worldwide are exposed to political violence and armed conflict. The current conclusions are qualified by limited longitudinal research testing sophisticated process-oriented explanatory models for child adjustment outcomes. In this study, consistent with a developmental psychopathology perspective emphasizing the value of process-oriented longitudinal study of child adjustment in developmental and social–ecological contexts, we tested emotional insecurity about the community as a dynamic, within-person mediating process for relations between sectarian community violence and child adjustment. Specifically, this study explored children's emotional insecurity at a person-oriented level of analysis assessed over 5 consecutive years, with child gender examined as a moderator of indirect effects between sectarian community violence and child adjustment. In the context of a five-wave longitudinal research design, participants included 928 mother–child dyads in Belfast (453 boys, 475 girls) drawn from socially deprived, ethnically homogenous areas that had experienced political violence. Youth ranged in age from 10 to 20 years and were 13.24 (SD = 1.83) years old on average at the initial time point. Greater insecurity about the community measured over multiple time points mediated relations between sectarian community violence and youth's total adjustment problems. The pathway from sectarian community violence to emotional insecurity about the community was moderated by child gender, with relations to emotional insecurity about the community stronger for girls than for boys. The results suggest that ameliorating children's insecurity about community in contexts of political violence is an important goal toward improving adolescents' well-being and adjustment. These results are discussed in terms of their translational research implications, consistent with a developmental psychopathology model for the interface between basic and intervention research.

We examine the hypothesis that children's exposure to ethnic–political conflict and violence over the course of a year stimulates their increased aggression toward their own in-group peers in subsequent years. In addition, we examine what social cognitive and emotional processes mediate these effects and how these effects are moderated by gender, age, and ethnic group. To accomplish these aims, we collected three waves of data from 901 Israeli and 600 Palestinian youths (three age cohorts: 8, 11, and 14 years old) and their parents at 1-year intervals. Exposure to ethnic–political violence was correlated with aggression at in-group peers among all age cohorts. Using a cross-lagged structural equation model from Year 1 to Year 3, we found that the relation between exposure and aggression is more plausibly due to exposure to ethnic–political violence stimulating later aggression at peers than vice versa, and this effect was not moderated significantly by gender, age cohort, or ethnic group. Using three-wave structural equation models, we then showed that this effect was significantly mediated by changes in normative beliefs about aggression, aggressive script rehearsal, and emotional distress produced by the exposure. Again the best fitting model did not allow for moderation by gender, age cohort, or ethnic group. The findings are consistent with recent theorizing that exposure to violence leads to changes both in emotional processes promoting aggression and in the acquisition through observational learning of social cognitions promoting aggression.

Improving children's learning and development in conflict-affected countries is critically important for breaking the intergenerational transmission of violence and poverty. Yet there is currently a stunning lack of rigorous evidence as to whether and how programs to improve learning and development in conflict-affected countries actually work to bolster children's academic learning and socioemotional development. This study tests a theory of change derived from the fields of developmental psychopathology and social ecology about how a school-based universal socioemotional learning program, the International Rescue Committee's Learning to Read in a Healing Classroom (LRHC), impacts children's learning and development. The study was implemented in three conflict-affected provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and employed a cluster-randomized waitlist control design to estimate impact. Using multilevel structural equation modeling techniques, we found support for the central pathways in the LRHC theory of change. Specifically, we found that LRHC differentially impacted dimensions of the quality of the school and classroom environment at the end of the first year of the intervention, and that in turn these dimensions of quality were differentially associated with child academic and socioemotional outcomes. Future implications and directions are discussed.

The methodological and epistemological challenges that research on ethnopolitical violence faces are examined. This research area is fundamentally important for political reasons and for understanding, as well as subsequent interventions to ameliorate, youths’ responses to ethnopolitical violence. Advances in methods are reviewed that can overcome the obstacles placed by the various challenges. These issues are discussed in the context of the articles that comprise this Special Section.

Articles in this timely Special Section represent an important milestone in the developmental science on children and youth involved in political violence and armed conflict. With millions of children worldwide affected by past and present wars and conflicts, there is an urgent and growing need for research to inform efforts to understand, prevent, and mitigate the possible harm of such violence to individual children, families, communities, and societies, for present as well as future generations. The four programs of research highlighted in this Special Section illustrate key advances and challenges in contemporary development research on young people growing up in the midst or aftermath of political violence. These studies are longitudinal, methodologically sophisticated, and grounded in socioecological systems models that align well with current models of risk and resilience in developmental psychopathology. These studies collectively mark a critically important shift to process-focused research that holds great promise for translational applications. Nonetheless, given the scope of the international crisis of children and youth affected by political violence and its sequelae, there is an urgent global need for greater mobilization of resources to support translational science and effective evidence-based action.

The reader might get the impression that the four projects described in this Special Section proceeded in a systematic and predictable way. Of course, those of us engaged in each research project encountered pitfalls and challenges along the way. A main goal of this Special Section is to provide pathways and encouragement for those who may be interested in advancing high-quality research on this topic. In this paper, we describe a set of practical and ethical challenges that we encountered in conducting our longitudinal, process-oriented, and translational research with conflict-affected youth, and we illustrate how problems can be solved with the goal of maintaining the internal and external validity of the research designs. We are hopeful that by describing the challenges of our work, and how we overcame them, which are seldom treated in this or any other literature on research on child development in high-risk contexts, we can offer a realistic and encouraging picture of conducting methodologically sound research in conflict-affected contexts.

Velocardiofacial syndrome, also known as 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11DS), is associated with an increased risk of major psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia. The emergence of psychotic symptoms in individuals with schizophrenia in the general population is often preceded by a premorbid period of poor or worsening social and/or academic functioning. Our current study evaluated premorbid adjustment (via the Cannon–Spoor Premorbid Adjustment Scale [PAS]) and psychotic symptoms (via the Structured Interview for Prodromal Symptoms and the Kiddie Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-Age Children—Present and Lifetime Version) in youth with 22q11DS (N = 96), unaffected siblings (N = 40), and community controls (N = 50). The PAS scores indicated greater maladjustment during all developmental periods in individuals with 22q11DS compared to the controls. Many participants with 22q11DS had chronically poor (n = 33) or deteriorating (n = 6) PAS scores. In 22q11DS, chronically poor PAS trajectories and poor childhood and early adolescence academic domain and total PAS scores significantly increased the risk of prodromal symptoms or overt psychosis. Taking into account the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) genotype, the best predictor of (prodromal) psychosis was the early adolescence academic domain score, which yielded higher sensitivity and specificity in the subgroup of youth with 22q11DS and the high-activity (valine) allele. PAS scores may help identify individuals at higher risk for psychosis.

This study tested the prospective association between observational indicators of temperament, which were obtained across multiple assessments when children were 6–36 months of age, and parent and teacher reports of children's attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) behaviors, when children were in first grade. Data were drawn from the Family Life Project and included 1,074 children for whom temperament and either parent- or teacher-reported ADHD behavioral data were available. The results of variable-centered regression models indicated that individual differences in temperament regulation, but not temperamental reactivity, was uniquely predictive of parent- and teacher-reported ADHD behaviors. Latent profile analyses were used to characterize configurations of temperamental reactivity and regulation. Person-centered regression models were subsequently estimated in which temperamental profile membership replaced continuous indicators of temperamental reactivity and regulation as predictors. The results of person-centered regression models indicated that temperamental reactivity and regulation both contributed (both alone and in combination) to the prediction of subsequent ADHD behaviors. In general, the predictive associations from early temperament to later ADHD were of modest magnitude (R 2 = .10–.17). Results are discussed with respect to interest in the early identification of children who are at elevated risk for later ADHD.

The present study utilizes longitudinal data from a high-risk community sample to examine the unique effects of genetic risk, parental knowledge about the daily activities of adolescents, and peer substance use on emerging adult substance use disorders (SUDs). These effects are examined over and above a polygenic risk score. In addition, this polygenic risk score is used to examine gene–environment correlation and interaction. The results show that during older adolescence, higher adolescent genetic risk for SUDs predicts less parental knowledge, but this relation is nonsignificant in younger adolescence. Parental knowledge (using mother report) mediates the effects of parental alcohol use disorder (AUD) and adolescent genetic risk on risk for SUD, and peer substance use mediates the effect of parent AUD on offspring SUD. Finally, there are significant gene–environment interactions such that, for those at the highest levels of genetic risk, less parental knowledge and more peer substance use confers greater risk for SUDs. However, for those at medium and low genetic risk, these effects are attenuated. These findings suggest that the evocative effects of adolescent genetic risk on parenting increase with age across adolescence. They also suggest that some of the most important environmental risk factors for SUDs exert effects that vary across level of genetic propensity.

This study aimed to specify the neural mechanisms underlying the link between low household income and diminished executive control in the preschool period. Specifically, we examined whether individual differences in the neural processes associated with executive attention and inhibitory control accounted for income differences observed in performance on a neuropsychological battery of executive control tasks. The study utilized a sample of preschool-aged children (N = 118) whose families represented the full range of income, with 32% of families at/near poverty, 32% lower income, and 36% middle to upper income. Children completed a neuropsychological battery of executive control tasks and then completed two computerized executive control tasks while EEG data were collected. We predicted that differences in the event-related potential (ERP) correlates of executive attention and inhibitory control would account for income differences observed on the executive control battery. Income and ERP measures were related to performance on the executive control battery. However, income was unrelated to ERP measures. The findings suggest that income differences observed in executive control during the preschool period might relate to processes other than executive attention and inhibitory control.

Gene × Environment interaction contributes to externalizing disorders in childhood and adolescence, but little is known about whether such effects are long lasting or present in adulthood. We examined gene–environment interplay in the concurrent and prospective associations between antisocial peer affiliation and externalizing disorders (antisocial behavior and substance use disorders) at ages 17, 20, 24, and 29. The sample included 1,382 same-sex twin pairs participating in the Minnesota Twin Family Study. We detected a Gene × Environment interaction at age 17, such that additive genetic influences on antisocial behavior and substance use disorders were greater in the context of greater antisocial peer affiliation. This Gene × Environment interaction was not present for antisocial behavior symptoms after age 17, but it was for substance use disorder symptoms through age 29 (though effect sizes were largest at age 17). The results suggest adolescence is a critical period for the development of externalizing disorders wherein exposure to greater environmental adversity is associated with a greater expression of genetic risk. This form of Gene × Environment interaction may persist through young adulthood for substance use disorders, but it appears to be limited to adolescence for antisocial behavior.

Peer drinking norms are arguably one of the strongest correlates of adolescent drinking. Prospective studies indicate that adolescents tend to select peers based on drinking (peer selection) and their peers' drinking is associated with changes in adolescent drinking over time (peer socialization). The present study investigated whether the peer selection and socialization processes in adolescent drinking differed as a function of the dopamine receptor D4 (DRD4) variable number tandem repeat genotype in two independent prospective data sets. The first sample was 174 high school students drawn from a two-wave 6-month prospective study. The second sample was 237 college students drawn from a three-wave annual prospective study. Multigroup cross-lagged panel analyses of the high school student sample indicated stronger socialization via peer drinking norms among carriers, whereas analyses of the college student sample indicated stronger drinking-based peer selection in the junior year among carriers, compared to noncarriers. Although replication and meta-analytic synthesis are needed, these findings suggest that in part genetically determined peer selection (carriers of the DRD4 seven-repeat allele tend to associate with peers who have more favorable attitudes toward drinking and greater alcohol use) and peer socialization (carriers' subsequent drinking behaviors are more strongly associated with their peer drinking norms) may differ across adolescent developmental stages.

Although prevailing theories of antisocial behavior (ASB) emphasize distinct developmental trajectories, few studies have explored gene–environment interplay underlying membership in empirically derived trajectories. To improve knowledge about the development of overt (e.g., aggression) and covert (e.g., delinquency) ASB, we tested the association of the 44-base pair promoter polymorphism in the serotonin transporter linked polymorphic region gene (5-HTTLPR), perceived parental support (e.g., closeness and warmth), and their interaction with ASB trajectories derived using latent class growth analysis in 2,558 adolescents followed prospectively into adulthood from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Three distinct trajectories emerged for overt (low desisting, adolescent peak, and late onset) and covert ASB (high stable, low stable, and nonoffending). Controlling for sex, parental support inversely predicted membership in the adolescent-peak overt ASB trajectory (vs. low desisting), but was unrelated to class membership for covert ASB. Furthermore, the 5-HTTLPR genotype significantly moderated the association of parental support on overt ASB trajectory membership. It is interesting that the pattern of Gene × Environment interaction differed by trajectory class: whereas short allele carriers were more sensitive to parental support in predicting the late-onset trajectory, the long/long genotype functioned as a potential “plasticity genotype” for the adolescent-peak trajectory group. We discuss these preliminary findings in the context of the differential susceptibility hypothesis and discuss the need for future studies to integrate gene–environment interplay and prospective longitudinal designs.

The co-occurring development of internalizing and externalizing problems were examined in an inception cohort of 392 children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at age 3 who were assessed on four occasions. Results indicated that internalizing and externalizing problems were stable over time and highly comorbid. Joint trajectory analysis suggested that 13% of the sample followed a dual high-risk trajectory. High risk was not found to be associated with intellectual ability or autism spectrum disorder symptom severity but was linked to lower income and gender: more girls than boys were found in the high/stable internalizing problems trajectory. The results suggest that 1 in 4 preschoolers followed a trajectory of internalizing or externalizing problems (or a combination of the two) that could be characterized as clinically elevated.