Early childhood impulsivity and parenting predict children's development of externalizing psychopathology.

Parenting and child impulsivity are consistent predictors of children's externalizing symptoms; however, the role of the range of parenting (i.e., variation in parenting across contexts), and its interactions with child impulsivity, are poorly understood. We examined whether characteristic parenting practices and parenting range predicted the course of externalizing symptoms in 409 children (Mage = 3.43 years at baseline, 208 girls) across ages 3, 5, 8, and 11. We assessed parent positive affectivity (PPA), hostility, and parenting structure at child age 3 using three behavioral tasks that varied in context, examining range by modeling a latent difference score for each parenting dimension. Greater PPA range, mean structure, and parenting structure range all predicted fewer symptoms at age 3 for children with higher impulsivity. Lower mean hostility predicted fewer symptoms at age 3 for children with lower impulsivity. Greater PPA, and smaller PPA range, predicted a decrease in symptoms for children higher in impulsivity. Lower hostility range predicted a decrease in symptoms for children with lower impulsivity but predicted maintaining symptoms for children with higher impulsivity. Results demonstrate the differential roles average parenting practices and parenting range play in the development of child externalizing psychopathology, especially in the context of child impulsivity.

The development of depressogenic self-schemas: Associations with children's regional grey matter volume in ventrolateral prefrontal cortex.

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

Associations Between Children's Telomere Length, Parental Intrusiveness, and the Development of Early Externalizing Behaviors.

Shorter telomeres mark cellular aging and are linked to chronic stress exposure as well as negative physical and psychological outcomes. However, it is unclear whether telomere length mediates associations between early stress exposure and later externalizing problems, or whether boys and girls differ in pathways to these concerns. We therefore examined associations between telomere length, early stress via negative caregiving, and children's externalizing symptom development over time in 409 three-year-old children and their parents. Telomere length mediated the association between early parental intrusiveness and later rule-breaking behavior; however, this association was moderated by children's biological sex such that parent intrusiveness was related only to boys' rule-breaking. Findings support the notion that children's telomere length may mark individual differences in responses to negative early caregiving, and highlight a potential mechanism contributing to the development of rule-breaking problems in boys.

A call for renewed attention to construct validity and measurement in psychopathology research.

Psychopathologists have failed to make significant progress toward understanding the causes of psychopathology. Despite the foundational importance of construct validity and measurement to our field, insufficient attention is paid to these concerns in the assessment of psychopathology vulnerabilities prior to their implementation in causal models. I review the current state of construct validity and measurement in psychopathology research, highlighting the lack of consensus regarding how we should define and measure vulnerability constructs. The limited capacity of open science practices to address these definitional and measurement challenges is discussed. Recommendations for progress are made, including the need for consensus agreement on (1) working definitions and (2) measures of vulnerability constructs. Other recommendations include (3) the need to incentivize 'pre-clinical' descriptive work focused on measurement development, (4) the formation of open-access databases designed to facilitate measurement evaluation and development, and (5) increased exploration of the use of novel technologies to facilitate the collection of high-quality measures of vulnerability.

Observational measures of early irritability predict children's psychopathology risk.

Irritability is a transdiagnostic feature of diverse forms of psychopathology and a rapidly growing literature implicates the construct in child maladaptation. However, most irritability measures currently used are drawn from parent-report questionnaires not designed to measure irritability per se; furthermore, parent report methods have several important limitations. We therefore examined the utility of observational ratings of children's irritability in predicting later psychopathology symptoms. Four-hundred and nine 3-year-old children (208 girls) completed observational tasks tapping temperamental emotionality and parents completed questionnaires assessing child irritability and anger. Parent-reported child psychopathology symptoms were assessed concurrently to the irritability assessment and when children were 5 and 8 years old. Children's irritability observed during tasks that did not typically elicit anger predicted their later depressive and hyperactivity symptoms, above and beyond parent-reported irritability and context-appropriate observed anger. Our findings support the use of observational indices of irritability and have implications for the development of observational paradigms designed to assess this construct in childhood.

Children's neural reactivity to maternal praise and criticism: Associations with early depressive symptoms and maternal depression.

Caregiving experiences are implicated in children's depression risk; however, children's neural reactivity to positive and negative feedback from mothers, a potential mediator of depression risk, is poorly understood. In a sample of 81 children (Mage = 11.12 years, SDage = 0.63), some of whom were recruited based on a maternal history of depression (n = 29), we used fMRI to characterize children's neural responses to maternal praise and criticism. Maternal history of depression was unrelated to children's brain activity during both the praise and criticism conditions; however, ROI analyses showed that children's self-reported depressive symptoms were negatively associated with functional activity in the left anterior insula and right putamen while hearing maternal criticism. Whole-brain analyses showed that children's depressive symptoms were positively associated with left inferior frontal gyrus activity while listening to maternal praise. These findings complement past work implicating these brain regions in the processing of emotionally salient stimuli, reward processing, and internal speech. Given associations between early depressive symptoms and later disorder, findings suggest that maladaptive neural processing of maternal feedback may contribute to children's early emerging risk for depression.

Resting-state functional connectivity and reading subskills in children.

Individual differences in reading ability have been linked to characteristics of functional connectivity in the brain in both children and adults. However, many previous studies have used single or composite measures of reading, leading to difficulty characterizing the role of functional connectivity in discrete subskills of reading. The present study addresses this issue using resting-state fMRI to examine how resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) related to individual differences in children's reading subskills, including decoding, sight word reading, reading comprehension, and rapid automatized naming (RAN). Findings showed both positive and negative RSFC-behaviour relationships that diverged across different reading subskills. Positive relationships included increasing RSFC among left dorsal and anterior regions with increasing decoding proficiency, and increasing RSFC between the left thalamus and right fusiform gyrus with increasing sight word reading, RAN, and reading comprehension abilities. In contrast, negative relationships suggested greater functional segregation of attentional and reading networks with improved performance on RAN, decoding, and reading comprehension tasks. Importantly, the results suggest that although reading subskills rely to some extent on shared functional networks, there are also distinct functional connections supporting different components of reading ability in children.

Sex Differences in Age of Diagnosis and First Concern among Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

OBJECTIVE: Early identification of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is an essential healthcare priority. Girls may be at risk for late diagnosis, although research is equivocal regarding how sex and other factors relate to ASD identification. The goals of the current investigation were to (1) identify how child sex, cognitive abilities, and demographic factors relate to age of first concern (AOC) and age of diagnosis (AOD), (2) evaluate trends in AOC/AOD over time, and (3) consider whether main effects of sex on AOC/AOD are moderated by cognitive abilities or time. METHOD: Children (N = 365; 20% female; 85.6% identified as White) with ASD participated through the Province of Ontario Neurodevelopmental Disorders (POND) Network. Study records included AOD, date/timing of diagnosis (between 1996 and 2017), age of first parent concern, demographics, and standardized cognitive testing results (24.7% of children had IQ scores below standard scores of 70). RESULTS: Average AOC occurred before 2 years of age whereas average AOD occurred after 5 years of age. Girls did not differ on AOC but had a later AOD than boys. Higher verbal IQ was associated with later AOD more strongly in girls than boys. Regarding time-related changes, average AOC and AOD increased across the study period, more strongly for girls. CONCLUSIONS: Results support that sex is a key factor underlying delays in ASD identification and highlight the urgent need to improve diagnostic practices among girls. Limitations and implications for improving the diagnostic process are discussed.Abbreviations: ASD=autism spectrum disorder; IQ=intelligence quotient; AOC=parental report of age of first concern; AOD=age of diagnosis.

Transactional relations between early child temperament, structured parenting, and child outcomes: A three-wave longitudinal study.

While child self-regulation is shaped by the environment (e.g., the parents' caregiving behaviors), children also play an active role in influencing the care they receive, indicating that children's individual differences should be integrated in models relating early care to children's development. We assessed 409 children's observed temperamental behavioral inhibition (BI), effortful control (EC), and the primary caregiver's parenting at child ages 3 and 5. Parents reported on child behavior problems at child ages 3, 5, and 8. Mediation analyses were conducted to examine relations between child temperament and parenting in predicting child problems. BI at age 3 was positively associated with structured parenting at age 5, which was negatively related to child internalizing and attention-academic problems at age 8. In contrast, parenting at child age 3 did not predict child BI or EC at age 5, nor did age 3 EC predict parenting at age 5. Findings indicate that child behavior may shape the development of caregiving and, in turn, long-term child adjustment, suggesting that studies of caregiving and child outcomes should consider the role of child temperament toward developing more informative models of child-environment interplay.

Psychiatry and developmental psychopathology: Unifying themes and future directions.

In the past 35 years, developmental psychopathology has grown into a flourishing discipline that shares a scientific agenda with contemporary psychiatry. In this editorial, which introduces the special issue, we describe the history of developmental psychopathology, including core principles that bridge allied disciplines. These include (1) emphasis on interdisciplinary research, (2) elucidation of multicausal pathways to seemingly single disorders (phenocopies), (3) description of divergent multifinal outcomes from common etiological start points (pathoplasticity), and (4) research conducted across multiple levels of analysis spanning genes to environments. Next, we discuss neurodevelopmental models of psychopathology, and provide selected examples. We emphasize differential neuromaturation of subcortical and cortical neural networks and connectivity, and how both acute and protracted environmental insults can compromise neural structure and function. To date, developmental psychopathology has placed greater emphasis than psychiatry on neuromaturational models of mental illness. However, this gap is closing rapidly as advances in technology render etiopathophysiologies of psychopathology more interrogable. We end with suggestions for future interdisciplinary research, including the need to evaluate measurement invariance across development, and to construct more valid assessment methods where indicated.

Child sex moderates the relationship between cortisol stress reactivity and symptoms over time.

BACKGROUND: Past work suggests that individual differences in stress reactivity have implications for the development of psychopathology; in particular, females' stress reactivity appears more closely tied to internalizing symptoms than males' reactivity. Conversely, males who are under-reactive to threat may be at risk for externalizing problems. However, little is known about when such differences may emerge, although this knowledge could have implications for early prevention. METHODS: Cortisol reactivity to a laboratory stressor was assessed in 409 three-year-old children (201 boys), along with parent-reported children's internalizing (anxiety and depression) and externalizing (oppositional-defiant and attention problems and hyperactivity) symptoms. Parent-reported symptoms were re-collected at child ages 5 (N = 379) and 8 (N = 364). Multilevel modelling was used to investigate whether the relationship between cortisol reactivity and symptoms differed between boys and girls over time. RESULTS: Girls with lower cortisol reactivity showed a negative association between depressive symptoms and time, while girls with higher reactivity showed no such association. No interaction between sex and cortisol reactivity was found for anxious symptoms. Boys with higher cortisol reactivity showed a negative association between symptoms and time, while boys with lower cortisol reactivity showed no such association. Time and ADHD symptoms were unrelated for boys, regardless of their cortisol reactivity. CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest that the implications of stress reactivity indexed via cortisol vary for boys and girls, as well as for different symptom manifestations.

The serotonin transporter promoter polymorphism moderates the continuity of behavioral inhibition in early childhood.

Persistently elevated behavioral inhibition (BI) in children is a marker of vulnerability to psychopathology. However, little research has considered the joint influences of caregiver and child factors that may moderate the continuity of BI in early childhood, particularly genetic variants that may serve as markers of biological plasticity, such as the serotonin transporter linked polymorphic region (5-HTTLPR). We explored this issue in 371 preschoolers and their caregivers, examining whether parent characteristics (i.e., overinvolvement or anxiety disorder) and child 5-HTTLPR influenced the continuity of BI between ages 3 and 5. Measures were observational ratings of child BI, observational and questionnaire measures of parenting, and parent interviews for anxiety disorder history, and children were genotyped for the 5-HTTLPR. Parent factors did not moderate the association between age 3 and age 5 BI; however, child BI at age 3 interacted with children's 5-HTTLPR variants to predict age 5 BI, such that children with at least one copy of the short allele exhibited less continuity of BI over time relative to children without this putative plasticity variant. Findings are consistent with previous work indicating the 5-HTTLPR short variant increases plasticity to contextual influences, thereby serving to decrease the continuity of BI in early childhood.

The Serotonin Transporter Promoter Variant, Stress, and Attentional Biases in Middle Childhood.

Although evidence suggests that 5-HTTLPR variants may shape risk for depression, the influence is likely complex, and involves effects on endophenotypes. We examined associations between 5-HTTLPR and biases in attention to affective stimuli in a sample of girls and a sample of both boys and girls. Children with at least one short (S) variant of the 5-HTTLPR polymorphism had lower positive attentional bias scores in both samples. This association was qualified by an interaction with stress in one sample, such that links between the S allele and decreased positive attentional bias was significant only when life stress was elevated. This difference in findings between the two samples was explained by sex differences in samples; the GXE interaction was significant only in boys. Findings are discussed in the context of sex differences in GXE.

Longitudinal Associations Between Reactive and Regulatory Temperament Traits and Depressive Symptoms in Middle Childhood.

Although a large literature has examined the role of temperament in adult and adolescent depression, few studies have investigated interactions between reactive and regulatory temperament traits in shaping depressive symptoms in children over time. Child temperament measures (laboratory observations and maternal reports) and depressive symptoms were collected from 205 seven-year-olds (46% boys), who were followed up 1 (N=181) and 2 (N=171) years later. Child participants were Caucasian (87.80%), Asian (1.95%), or other ethnicity (7.80%); 2.45% of the sample was missing ethnicity data. Multilevel modeling was used to investigate within- and between-person variance in intercepts and slopes of child depressive symptoms. A steeper increase in depressive symptoms was found for children lower in laboratory-assessed effortful control (EC). Lower mother-reported surgency and higher mother-reported NE predicted increases in child depressive symptoms in the context of lower mother-reported EC. Our findings implicate EC as having main and moderating effects related to depressive symptoms in middle childhood. We emphasize the importance of developing prevention programs that enhance EC-like abilities.

Hair cortisol concentrations in higher- and lower-stress mother-daughter dyads: A pilot study of associations and moderators.

Hair cortisol concentrations (HCC) are receiving increased attention as a novel biomarker of psychophysiological responses to chronic stress, with potential relevance for psychopathology risk research. We examined the validity of HCC as a marker of psychosocial stress in mother (M(age) = 37.87 years)-daughter (M(age) = 7.62 years) dyads characterized by higher (n = 30) or lower (n = 30) maternal chronic stress. Additionally, we examined whether early care moderated similarity of HCC levels within dyads. Higher-stress mothers had significantly lower HCC compared to lower-stress mothers, consistent with other research showing that chronic stress leads to blunted HPA axis activity over time. Further, HCC in daughters were significantly and positively associated with previously assessed salivary cortisol stress reactivity. Finally, mother-daughter HCC associations were significantly moderated by negative parenting styles, such that associations became stronger as quality of parenting decreased. Findings overall indicate that HCC may be a useful marker of cortisol responses to chronic stress.

Stability of self-referent encoding task performance and associations with change in depressive symptoms from early to middle childhood.

Depressed individuals exhibit memory biases on the self-referent encoding task (SRET), such that those with depression exhibit poorer recall of positive, and enhanced recall of negative, trait adjectives (referred to as positive and negative processing biases). However, it is unclear when SRET biases emerge, whether they are stable, and if biases predict, or are predicted by, depressive symptoms. To address this, a community sample of 434 children completed the SRET and a depressive symptoms measure at ages 6 and 9. Negative and positive processing exhibited low, but significant, stability. At ages 6 and 9, depressive symptoms correlated with higher negative, and lower positive, SRET processing. Importantly, lower positive processing at age 6 predicted increased symptoms at age 9. However, negative processing at age 6 did not predict depressive symptoms at age 9, and depressive symptoms at age 6 did not predict SRET processing scores at age 9. This suggests that less positive processing may reflect vulnerability for future depressive symptoms.

Parental depression and child cognitive vulnerability predict children's cortisol reactivity.

Risk for depression is expressed across multiple levels of analysis. For example, parental depression and cognitive vulnerability are known markers of depression risk, but no study has examined their interactive effects on children's cortisol reactivity, a likely mediator of early depression risk. We examined relations across these different levels of vulnerability using cross-sectional and longitudinal methods in two community samples of children. Children were assessed for cognitive vulnerability using self-reports (Study 1; n = 244) and tasks tapping memory and attentional bias (Study 2; n = 205), and their parents were assessed for depression history using structured clinical interviews. In both samples, children participated in standardized stress tasks and cortisol reactivity was assessed. Cross-sectionally and longitudinally, parental depression history and child cognitive vulnerability interacted to predict children's cortisol reactivity; associations between parent depression and elevated child cortisol activity were found when children also showed elevated depressotypic attributions as well as attentional and memory biases. Findings indicate that models of children's emerging depression risk may benefit from the examination of the interactive effects of multiple sources of vulnerability across levels of analysis.

Latent structure and measurement invariance of the Depression Self-Rating Scale for Children across sex and age.

Measurement tools from which valid interpretations can be made are critical for assessing early emerging depressive symptoms, as depressive symptoms in childhood are associated with increased risk for early-onset depressive disorder, recurrence, suicidality, and other psychopathology. The Depression Self-Rating Scale for Children (DSRS) is a widely used self-report scale assessing youth depressive symptoms. The relatively few studies investigating the DSRS' latent structure have yielded mixed results, and measurement invariance (MI) based on sex and age has not been examined. We examined the factor structure and MI of the DSRS across sex and age in a community sample of 6-9-year-olds (N = 352; Mage = 7.57 years, SD = .70). Consistent with the largest prior structural study of the DSRS, a two-factor structure, with factors reflecting elevated negative affect (NA) and low positive affect (PA), showed strong model fit. Although this structure was consistent across sex and age (i.e., configural invariance), loadings of DSRS items varied across sex and age (i.e., metric noninvariance). Allowing the loadings of items contributing to noninvariance to vary across groups improved model fit. Implications for the clinical and research utility of the DSRS and suggestions for future research are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The role of parenting and dopamine D4 receptor gene polymorphisms in children's inhibitory control.

Temperamental effortful control has important implications for children's development. Although genetic factors and parenting may influence effortful control, few studies have examined interplay between the two in predicting its development. The current study investigated associations between parenting and a facet of children's effortful control, inhibitory control (IC), and whether these associations were moderated by whether children had a 7-repeat variant of the DRD4 exon III VNTR. A community sample of 409 3-year-olds completed behavioural tasks to assess IC, and observational measures of parenting were also collected. Negative parenting was associated with lower child IC. The association between children's IC and positive parenting was moderated by children's DRD4 7-repeat status, such that children with at least one 7-repeat allele displayed lower IC than children without this allele when positive parenting was lower. These effects appeared to be primarily influenced by parent support and engagement. Results extend recent findings suggesting that some genetic polymorphisms may increase vulnerability to contextual influences.

Effortful control and parenting: associations with HPA axis reactivity in early childhood.

While activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis is an adaptive response to stress, excessive HPA axis reactivity may be an important marker of childhood vulnerability to psychopathology. Parenting, including parent affect during parent-child interactions, may play an important role in shaping the developing HPA system; however, the association of parent affect may be moderated by child factors, especially children's emerging self-regulatory skills. We therefore tested the relationship between parent affectivity and 160 preschoolers' cortisol reactivity during a laboratory visit, examining children's effortful control (EC) as a moderator. Greater parent negative affectivity was related to greater initial and increasing cortisol over time, but only when children were low in EC. Higher parent positive affectivity was related to a higher baseline cortisol for children with low EC and lower baseline cortisol for children with high EC. Results indicate that children's EC moderates the extent to which parent affect shapes stress reactive systems in early childhood.