Using moderated nonlinear factor models to adjust for differential item functioning in the Student-Teacher Relationship Scale from kindergarten to Grade 6.

Prior research has demonstrated that children form developmentally salient relationships with teachers and that these relationships are uniquely predictive of subsequent functioning both in and outside of school. However, prior work estimating trajectories and predictors of teacher-student relationship quality has failed to test and adjust for bias in questionnaire items. The present study used longitudinal data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD; N = 1140) to test and adjust for measurement bias in the Student-Teacher Relationship Scale (STRS; Pianta, 2001) across grades (K-6) and sociodemographic characteristics (i.e., birth sex, race/ethnicity, family income-to-needs ratio, and maternal education) to generate less biased estimates of trajectories of teacher-student relationship quality. Results identified differential item functioning for three of seven STRS items assessing conflict and three of eight STRS items assessing closeness, with items functioning differentially across child grade, birth sex, race/ethnicity, and maternal education level. Comparisons of growth models using non-adjusted and adjusted STRS scores highlight substantive differences between scoring approaches, such that the effects of race/ethnicity, maternal education, and maternal sensitivity on teacher-student relationship quality were masked prior to adjusting for item bias. These findings demonstrate the importance of testing and correcting for item bias in questionnaire-based assessments of teacher-student relationship quality to ensure valid conclusions.

The promise and pitfalls of a strength-based approach to child poverty and neurocognitive development: Implications for policy.

There has been significant progress in understanding the effects of childhood poverty on neurocognitive development. This progress has captured the attention of policymakers and promoted progressive policy reform. However, the prevailing emphasis on the harms associated with childhood poverty may have inadvertently perpetuated a deficit-based narrative, focused on the presumed shortcomings of children and families in poverty. This focus can have unintended consequences for policy (e.g., overlooking strengths) as well as public discourse (e.g., focusing on individual rather than systemic factors). Here, we join scientists across disciplines in arguing for a more well-rounded, "strength-based" approach, which incorporates the positive and/or adaptive developmental responses to experiences of social disadvantage. Specifically, we first show the value of this approach in understanding normative brain development across diverse human environments. We then highlight its application to educational and social policy, explore pitfalls and ethical considerations, and offer practical solutions to conducting strength-based research responsibly. Our paper re-ignites old and recent calls for a strength-based paradigm shift, with a focus on its application to developmental cognitive neuroscience. We also offer a unique perspective from a new generation of early-career researchers engaged in this work, several of whom themselves have grown up in conditions of poverty. Ultimately, we argue that a balanced strength-based scientific approach will be essential to building more effective policies.

Threat experiences moderate the link between hippocampus volume and depression symptoms prospectively in adolescence.

Identifying neuroimaging risk markers for depression has been an elusive goal in psychopathology research. Despite this, smaller hippocampal volume has emerged as a potential risk marker for depression, with recent research suggesting this association is moderated by family income. The current pre-registered study aimed to replicate and extend these findings by examining the moderating role of family income and three dimensions of environmental experience on the link between hippocampus volume and later depression. Data were drawn from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study and were comprised of 6693 youth aged 9-10 years at baseline. Results indicated that psychosocial threat moderated the association between right hippocampus volume and depression symptoms two years later, such that a negative association was evident in low-threat environments (std. beta=0.15, 95% CI [0.05, 0.24]). This interaction remained significant when baseline depression symptoms were included as a covariate, though only in youth endorsing 1 or more depression symptoms at baseline (ß = 0.13, 95% CI = [0.03, 0.22]). These results suggest that hippocampus volume may not be a consistent correlate of depression symptoms in high risk environments and emphasize the importance of including measures of environmental heterogeneity when seeking risk markers for depression.

Cognitive deficits and enhancements in youth from adverse conditions: An integrative assessment using Drift Diffusion Modeling in the ABCD study.

Childhood adversity can lead to cognitive deficits or enhancements, depending on many factors. Though progress has been made, two challenges prevent us from integrating and better understanding these patterns. First, studies commonly use and interpret raw performance differences, such as response times, which conflate different stages of cognitive processing. Second, most studies either isolate or aggregate abilities, obscuring the degree to which individual differences reflect task-general (shared) or task-specific (unique) processes. We addressed these challenges using Drift Diffusion Modeling (DDM) and structural equation modeling (SEM). Leveraging a large, representative sample of 9-10 year-olds from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, we examined how two forms of adversity-material deprivation and household threat-were associated with performance on tasks measuring processing speed, inhibition, attention shifting, and mental rotation. Using DDM, we decomposed performance on each task into three distinct stages of processing: speed of information uptake, response caution, and stimulus encoding/response execution. Using SEM, we isolated task-general and task-specific variances in each processing stage and estimated their associations with the two forms of adversity. Youth with more exposure to household threat (but not material deprivation) showed slower task-general processing speed, but showed intact task-specific abilities. In addition, youth with more exposure to household threat tended to respond more cautiously in general. These findings suggest that traditional assessments might overestimate the extent to which childhood adversity reduces specific abilities. By combining DDM and SEM approaches, we can develop a more nuanced understanding of how adversity affects different aspects of youth's cognitive performance. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT: To understand how childhood adversity shapes cognitive abilities, the field needs analytical approaches that can jointly document and explain patterns of lowered and enhanced performance. Using Drift Diffusion Modeling and Structural Equation Modeling, we analyzed associations between adversity and processing speed, inhibition, attention shifting, and mental rotation. Household threat, but not material deprivation, was mostly associated with slower task-general processing speed and more response caution. In contrast, task-specific abilities were largely intact. Researchers might overestimate the impact of childhood adversity on specific abilities and underestimate the impact on general processing speed and response caution using traditional measures.

Measurement invariance of maternal depressive symptoms across the first 2 years since birth and across racial group, education, income, primiparity, and age.

Up to 19% of postpartum mothers experience depressive symptoms, which are associated with infant development. Thus, research examining postpartum depression has implications for mothers' and infants' well-being. However, this research relies on the often-untested assumption of measurement invariance-that measures capture the same construct across time and sociodemographic characteristics. In the absence of invariance, measurement bias may confound differences across time and group, contributing to invalid inferences. In a sociodemographically diverse (40.7% African American, 58.9% White; 67.9% below two times the federal poverty line; 19.4% with less than high school education), rural, longitudinal sample (N = 1,275) of mothers, we used moderated nonlinear factor analysis (MNLFA) to examine measurement invariance of the Brief Symptom Inventory-18 (BSI-18) Depressive Symptoms subscale across time since birth, racial group, education, income, primiparity, and maternal age at childbirth. We identified evidence of differential item functioning (DIF; i.e., measurement noninvariance) as a function of racial group and education. Subsequent analyses indicated, however, that the DIF-induced bias had minimal impacts on substantive comparisons examining change over time since birth and group differences. Thus, the presence of measurement noninvariance does not appear to bias substantive comparisons using the BSI-18 Depressive Symptoms subscale across the first 2 years since birth in a sample comprising primarily African American and White mothers living in predominately rural, low-income communities. This study demonstrates the importance of assessing measurement invariance and highlights MNLFA for evaluating the impact of noninvariance as a preliminary step that increases confidence in the validity of substantive inferences. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Measurement matters: An individual differences examination of family socioeconomic factors, latent dimensions of children's experiences, and resting state functional brain connectivity in the ABCD sample.

The variation in experiences between high and low-socioeconomic status contexts are posited to play a crucial role in shaping the developing brain and may explain differences in child outcomes. Yet, examinations of SES and brain development have largely been limited to distal proxies of these experiences (e.g., income comparisons). The current study sought to disentangle the effects of multiple socioeconomic indices and dimensions of more proximal experiences on resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) in a sample of 7834 youth (aged 9-10 years) from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. We applied moderated nonlinear factor analysis (MNLFA) to establish measurement invariance among three latent environmental dimensions of experience (material/economic deprivation, caregiver social support, and psychosocial threat). Results revealed measurement biases as a function of child age, sex, racial group, family income, and parental education, which were statistically adjusted in the final MNLFA scores. Mixed-effects models demonstrated that socioeconomic indices and psychosocial threat differentially predicted variation in frontolimbic networks, and threat statistically moderated the association between income and connectivity between the dorsal and ventral attention networks. Findings illuminate the importance of reducing measurement biases to gain a more socioculturally-valid understanding of the complex and nuanced links between socioeconomic context, children's experiences, and neurodevelopment.

Creating a sustainable action-oriented engagement infrastructure-a UMN-MIDB perspective.

Following the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, Minneapolis represented the epicenter of protests that would reverberate internationally and re-instantiate a reckoning of the systemic and institutional racism that plagues American society. Also in the summer of 2020, and after several years of planning, the University of Minnesota (UMN) launched the Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain (MIDB), an interdisciplinary clinical and community research enterprise designed to create knowledge and engage all members of our community. In what follows, we describe the mission of the MIDB Community Engagement and Education (CEEd) Core and adjacent efforts within the UMN neuroscience and psychology community. Inherent to these efforts is the explicit attempt to de-center the dominant academic voice and affirm knowledge creation is augmented by diverse voices within and outside of traditional academic institutions. We describe several initiatives, including the Neuroscience Opportunities for Discovery and Equity (NODE) network, the NextGen Psych Scholars Program (NPSP), the Young Scientist Program, among others as exemplars of our approach. Developing and fortifying sustainable pathways for authentic community-academic partnerships are of central importance to enhance mutually beneficial scientific discovery. We posit that traditional academic approaches to community engagement to benefit the institution are severely constrained and perpetuate inherently exploitative power dynamics between academic institutions and communities.

Capturing Environmental Dimensions of Adversity and Resources in the Context of Poverty Across Infancy Through Early Adolescence: A Moderated Nonlinear Factor Model.

Income, education, and cumulative-risk indices likely obscure meaningful heterogeneity in the mechanisms through which poverty impacts child outcomes. This study draws from contemporary theory to specify multiple dimensions of poverty-related adversity and resources, with the aim of better capturing these nuances. Using data from the Family Life Project (N = 1,292), we leveraged moderated nonlinear factor analysis (Bauer, 2017) to establish group- and longitudinally invariant environmental measures from infancy to early adolescence. Results indicated three latent factors-material deprivation, psychosocial threat, and sociocognitive resources-were distinct from each other and from family income. Each was largely invariant across site, racial group, and development and showed convergent and discriminant relations with age-twelve criterion measures. Implications for ensuring socioculturally valid measurements of poverty are discussed.

Validation of an online version of the Trier Social Stress Test in a study of adolescents.

INTRODUCTION: The Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) is the most widely used protocol for activating a stress response of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis and other stress-mediating systems. A number of variants of the TSST exist, including ones for children, groups, and virtual reality. All of these versions, though, require in-person assessment. The COVID-19 pandemic has made in-person assessment impossible or extremely difficult and potentially dangerous. The purpose of this study was to validate a completely remote, online, version of the TSST for children. METHOD: A sample of 68 (27 female) 15- and 16-year old participants were administered the TSST-Online (TSST-OL) during the late afternoon hours (3-6 p.m. start time). The participants, judges (one male, one female), and experimenter (female) all joined the assessment from their own homes via the online platform, ZOOM™. Two sessions were conducted, one to obtain consent, explain procedures, work with the family to arrange the computer and room set-up for the TSST-OL and one within two weeks to conduct the procedure. The participants were trained to take their own saliva samples and a saliva sampling kit was mailed to the home in between the first and second session. The samples were then mailed to the researchers within a day of collection. The participant was observed during saliva collection to determine correct procedures were followed. Salivary cortisol, salivary α-amylase and self-reports of stress were measured multiple times over the second session. RESULTS: rmANOVAs yielded a significant effect of trials, for cortisol, F(1.37,90.46) = 15.13, p = .001, sAA, F(2.75,146.68) = 6.91, p = .001, and self-rated stress, F(3.43,222.69) = 118.73, p = .001. There were no significant sex by trials interactions for any measure, although females reported more stress than males, F(1,65) = 9.14, p = .004. For cortisol, from baseline to expected peak (30 min after the onset of speech preparation), the Cohen's effect size was dz = 0.57. Using 1.5 nmol/l (or 0.54 µg/dl) as the criterion for a response (Miller, Plessow, Kirschaum, & Stalder, 2013), 63% of the participants produced a significant increase in cortisol. CONCLUSIONS: The responses to the TSST-OL are consistent with in-person responses among children and adolescents (see recent meta-analysis (Seddon et al., 2020). The protocol is a viable way of assessing reactivity of the HPA axis and other stress systems without needing to bring the participant into the research laboratory. This method will be useful during periods of widespread infection. It should also work to study populations who all live too far from the research laboratory to be assessed in person.

"If they focus on giving us a chance in life we can actually do something in this world": Poverty, inequality, and youths' critical consciousness.

Critical consciousness (CC) has emerged as a framework for understanding how low-income and racial/ethnic minority youth recognize, interpret, and work to change the experiences and systems of oppression that they face in their daily lives. Despite this, relatively little is known about how youths' experiences with economic hardship and structural oppression shape how they "read their world" and motivate participation in critical action behaviors. We explore this issue using a mixed-methods design and present our findings in two studies. In Study 1 we examine the types of issues that a sample of low-income and predominantly racial/ethnic minority youth (ages 13-17) living in the Chicago area discuss when asked to reflect on issues that are important to them. The most commonly mentioned themes were community violence (59%), prejudice and intolerance (31%), world issues (25%), and economic disparities (18%). In Study 2 we examine youths' quantitative reports of engaging in critical action behavior; more than 65% had participated in at least one activity targeting social change in the previous 6 months. We then examined relationships between youths' experiences with poverty within their households and neighborhoods, neighborhood income inequality, and exposure to violence and youths' likelihood of participating in critical action behaviors. Greater exposure to violence and neighborhood income inequality were related to an increased likelihood of engaging in critical action behaviors. This work highlights the diverse ways that low-income and racial/ethnic minority youth reflect on societal inequality and their commitment to effecting change through sociopolitical participation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Developing a neurobehavioral animal model of poverty: Drawing cross-species connections between environments of scarcity-adversity, parenting quality, and infant outcome.

Children reared in impoverished environments are at risk for enduring psychological and physical health problems. Mechanisms by which poverty affects development, however, remain unclear. To explore one potential mechanism of poverty's impact on social-emotional and cognitive development, an experimental examination of a rodent model of scarcity-adversity was conducted and compared to results from a longitudinal study of human infants and families followed from birth (N = 1,292) who faced high levels of poverty-related scarcity-adversity. Cross-species results supported the hypothesis that altered caregiving is one pathway by which poverty adversely impacts development. Rodent mothers assigned to the scarcity-adversity condition exhibited decreased sensitive parenting and increased negative parenting relative to mothers assigned to the control condition. Furthermore, scarcity-adversity reared pups exhibited decreased developmental competence as indicated by disrupted nipple attachment, distress vocalization when in physical contact with an anesthetized mother, and reduced preference for maternal odor with corresponding changes in brain activation. Human results indicated that scarcity-adversity was inversely correlated with sensitive parenting and positively correlated with negative parenting, and that parenting fully mediated the association of poverty-related risk with infant indicators of developmental competence. Findings are discussed from the perspective of the usefulness of bidirectional-translational research to inform interventions for at-risk families.

Parenting in poverty: Attention bias and anxiety interact to predict parents' perceptions of daily parenting hassles.

Research has long acknowledged the centrality of parents' subjective experiences in the caregiving role for the organization of parenting behaviors and family functioning. Recent scientific advances in cognitive process models and in the neurobiology of parenting indicate that parenting is shaped in part by conscious and nonconscious cognitive processes. This study extends a growing literature on neurocognitive models of parenting by exploring the extent to which attention processes in parents operate independently and interactively with intrapsychic processes, proximal interpersonal stressors, and the larger socioeconomic context to predict perceptions of parenting hassles in primarily low-income Latino/a parents of young children living in urban areas of concentrated disadvantage (N = 185). Analyses indicated that parent reports of anxiety, intimate partner violence, and perceptions of financial hardship each uniquely predicted parents' perceptions of daily parenting hassles. Parents' attentional bias toward threat interacted with anxiety symptoms such that parents experiencing high levels of attention bias toward threat in combination with high levels of anxiety reported significantly more daily parenting hassles. Findings from the current study provide insight into the ways in which neurocognitive processes affect one aspect of parenting, with implications for programs and policies designed to support parenting for families in poverty. (PsycINFO Database Record