Parent-child interaction at age 5 months: genetic and environmental contributions and associations with later socio-communicative development.

BACKGROUND: Characteristics of parent-child interaction (PCI) early in life have been associated with later development in the child. Twin studies can help to disentangle child contributions to parent-child interaction, for example, by assessing the influence of the child's genetics on his/her social environment, which includes parental behaviour. METHODS: Infant twins from a community sample [354 monozygotic (MZ), 268 same-sex dizygotic (DZ)] were assessed in terms of PCI at age 5 months. We used the classical twin design to map the aetiology of several parent and child PCI scales and their covariation. We investigated the relations between PCI and later parent-rated child's social communication, language, and autistic traits at ages 2 and 3. RESULTS: Heritability was below 20% for all the included PCI traits. Unique (nonshared) environmental influences substantially overlapped across several PCI scales, suggesting that idiosyncrasies linked to each session shaped the scoring of several traits in a systematic way. Factor analysis revealed three uncorrelated latent factors, which were conceptualized as 'child negative affect', 'positive affective interaction', and 'parent's supportive strategies'. Parents who were rated highly on 'sensitive responsiveness' at 5 months tended to rate their offspring higher in terms of socio-communicative and language development and lower in terms of autistic traits in the second and third years of life. CONCLUSIONS: This study maps the phenotypic and aetiological structure of PCI in early infancy and supports the view that parents' sensitive responsiveness towards their infant is associated with later developmental gains in several domains. We did not find strong evidence of any so-called evocative genetic effects on parents' behaviour. We discuss the results considering the general challenge for lab-based observational PCI measures to capture the richness of parent-child interaction.

A multi-level examination of impulsivity and links to suicide ideation among Native American youth.

BACKGROUND: Despite preliminary evidence that links impulsivity to suicide risk among Native American youth, impulsivity has not been directly studied in relation to suicide ideation (SI) or behaviors in this population. We examined indexes of rapid-response impulsivity (RRI) across multiple levels of analysis (self-report, behavioral, neurobiological) and associations with SI among Native American youth ages 9-10 in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study. METHODS: Data from the sample (n = 284) included self-report (UPPS-P), behavioral (Stop Signal Task), and neurobiological (right inferior frontal gyrus activation) indicators of RRI. RRI indicators were modeled using variable-centered (i.e., traditional multivariable regression) and person-centered (i.e., clustering analyses) approaches in measuring their association with SI. RESULTS: Logistic regression analysis demonstrated that higher negative urgency was associated with higher odds of SI (Adjusted Odds Ratio = 1.23, p = 0.015). Latent profile analysis clustered youth into five profiles based on within-individual variation in RRI indicators. Youth with an elevated self-reported negative and positive urgency profile had higher odds of reporting SI than "normative" youth (Adjusted Odds Ratio = 2.38, p = 0.019). LIMITATIONS: Limitations of this study include the modest sample size particularly regarding SI (14.1 %), potential bias in estimates of lifetime SI, and generalizability to youth from specific Native American communities. CONCLUSIONS: Negative urgency may increase risk for SI among Native American youth in late childhood. Clinical implications, including the potential for person-centered RRI profiles to act as candidate markers of suicide risk and resilience in adolescence and inform safety assessments and planning, are discussed.

Antecedents and risk factors for borderline personality disorder: Etiopathogenic models based on a multi-level meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: Empirically-based developmental psychopathology approach identified three domains involved in the emergence of borderline personality disorder (BPD): i) underlying liabilities to develop psychopathology (i.e., early patterns of internalizing and externalizing manifestations); ii) invalidating relational experiences (e.g., childhood traumatic experiences, maladaptive parenting, problematic peer relationships); iii) regulatory mechanisms of emotions and behaviors. Nevertheless, no studies have quantitatively summarized empirical findings concerning how and to what extent these domains might be temporally associated to the emergence of BPD features from adolescence to adulthood. METHODS: The current multi-level meta-analysis included 106 studies (N = 86,871 participants) assessing the role of previously mentioned antecedents and risk factors for BPD. RESULTS: The analysis showed moderate effect sizes capturing temporal associations between early internalizing/externalizing psychopathological manifestations, different invalidating relational experiences, emotion/behavior regulation processes with later BPD features. The effect sizes of these domains were not statistically different from each other. CONCLUSION: This evidence supports a transactional developmental model of BPD. Consistently, the emergence of BPD could be viewed in the light of dynamic interplays between an underlying liability to psychopathology and invalidating relational experiences across different stages of development, which are progressively reinforced through increasing alterations of emotion and behavior regulation mechanisms.

Childhood Anxiety Symptoms as a Predictor of Psychotic Experiences in Adolescence in a High-Risk Cohort for Psychiatric Disorders.

Background and Hypothesis: When occurring in adolescence, psychotic experiences (PE), subclinical psychotic symptoms, can be an early marker of mental illnesses. Studies with high-risk populations for psychosis show that anxiety symptoms often precede the onset of psychosis. Although anxiety symptoms are frequently experienced across the continuum of psychosis, no previous study has analyzed this association using a cross-lagged panel model (CLPM) longitudinally to identify if anxiety can be a predictor of PE over time or vice versa. The aim of the current study was to investigate whether one symptom domain predicts the other over time. Study Design: 2194 children from the Brazilian High-Risk Cohort (BHRC) were evaluated at baseline (T 0), and 76.5% completed a 3-year follow-up (T 1) interview. Childhood anxiety symptoms and PE were assessed using a standardized self-report questionnaire at both time points. Cross-lagged panel models evaluated time-lagged associations between PE and anxiety longitudinally. Study Results: Higher levels of anxiety in childhood predicted an increase in PE levels in adolescence. The cross-lagged effect of anxiety scores at T 0 on PE scores at T 1 was significant (ß = .03, SE = 0.01, P ≤ .001) and PE in childhood did not increase levels of anxiety in adolescence, when controlling for sociodemographic and clinical characteristics. Conclusions: Our findings reinforce that anxiety may represent an early marker of psychosis proneness, not a consequence of already presenting PE, which can help to develop better screening approaches. Therefore, future studies should focus on identifying biological or other clinical markers to increase prediction accuracy.

Developmental psychopathology turns 50: Applying core principles to longitudinal investigation of ADHD in girls and efforts to reduce stigma and discrimination.

The seminal contributions of Dante Cicchetti to the field/paradigm/metaparadigm of developmental psychopathology (DP) - and its continuing ascendance as a guiding force for multidisciplinary investigation of normative and atypical development - are legion. Our aim is to illustrate a number of DP's core principles in the context of (a) prospective longitudinal research on children (particularly girls) with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and (b) theoretical and empirical work dedicated to alleviating the stigma and discrimination toward those experiencing mental health, substance use, and neurodevelopmental challenges. We feature (i) the mutual interplay of perspectives on normative and non-normative development, (ii) reciprocal and transactional processes, and the constructs of equifinaliy and multifinality; (iii) continuities and discontinuities in developmental processes and outcomes, with particular focus on heterotypic continuity; (iv) the inseparability of heritable and environmental risk; (v) multiple levels of analysis, and (vi) the benefits of qualitative perspectives. We highlight that interventions promoting recovery, along with the multi-level facilitation of protective factors/strengths, lie at the heart of both DP and anti-stigma efforts. The ongoing youth mental-health crisis provides a sobering counterpoint to the gains of the DP enterprise over the past half century.

Roles of Loneliness, Stress, and Religiosity in Suicide Ideation Among Nigerian Older Adults.

Suicidal behavior in older adults is a fundamental public health problem globally and the highest suicide rates occur in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). However, there is limited research on suicidality among older adults, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. We sought to find out whether loneliness, stress and religiosity would be associated with suicide ideation in a sample of sub-Saharan African older adults (N = 500; aged 51-70 years, Mage = 58.97, SD = 6.16; 45.6% women). They completed the Beck Suicidal Ideation Scale, the UCLA Loneliness Scale-version 3, Perceived Stress Scale, and Religiosity Scale. Regression results showed that whereas suicidal ideation could be increased by loneliness and stress, religious older adults were less likely to report suicidal ideation. Interventions aimed at managing and protecting the mental health of older adults during their transition to late adulthood should guard them against loneliness and buffer their resilience and coping strategies with the connectedness that religiosity offers.

Multiple Adaptive Attention-Bias-Modification Programs to Alter Normative Increase in the Error-Related Negativity in Adolescents.

In the current article, we examined the impact of two home-delivered attentional-bias-modification (ABM) programs on a biomarker of anxiety (i.e., the error-related negativity [ERN]). The ERN is sensitivity to ABM-related changes; however, it is unclear whether ABM exerts its influence on the ERN and anxiety by increasing general attentional control or by disengaging spatial allocation of attention. In this study, we measured the ERN, anxiety, attention bias, and attention control before and after two versions of ABM training and a waitlist control group in 546 adolescents. An ABM designed to increase attention control modulated the ERN but had no impact on anxiety. An ABM designed to reduce attentional bias changed bias and self-reported anxiety in youths but had no impact on the ERN or parent-reported anxiety. These results suggest that the ERN and normative anxiety may be modified using attention training.

Parental Neglect and Childhood Obesity Amidst COVID-19: A Developmental Psychopathology Perspective on Health and Developmental Risks.

The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly impacted the mental health and developmental trajectories of children and adolescents, catalyzing a range of psychological and behavioral issues due to enforced lockdowns and other restrictions. This text explores these impacts through the lens of developmental psychopathology, which integrates clinical psychology and developmental science to examine the emergence and evolution of psychological disorders across a lifespan. This paper highlights how pandemic-related disruptions have exacerbated conditions such as anxiety and depression and, notably, increased childhood obesity due to changes in lifestyle and reductions in physical activity. The analysis includes a discussion of how isolation has not only restricted access to educational and psychological resources but also increased the risk of parental mental illness and related familial stress, thereby intensifying issues of neglect and their consequent impact on child health. By employing a developmental psychopathology framework, this paper argues for the necessity of targeted interventions that address these complex interplays of genetic, environmental, and psychological factors. Such interventions aim to support children through structured educational and health-oriented strategies, ensuring their well-being amidst the ongoing challenges posed by the pandemic. This approach underscores the importance of early, multifaceted strategies involving parents, educators, and healthcare providers to foster healthier developmental outcomes for children facing unprecedented global health crises.

The perceived social support of parents having bipolar disorder impacts their children's mental health: a 10-year longitudinal study.

BACKGROUND: The offspring of parents with bipolar disorder (OBD) are at higher risk of developing psychopathology than the offspring of parents with no affective disorder (control). In addition to genetic predisposition, childhood adversity and a stressful family environment are important risk factors for the OBD. Protective factors in parents, such as social support and coping strategies, may buffer the effects of stress on at-risk children. This study tested whether parents' social support and coping style attenuated the link between risk status (OBD vs. control) and psychopathology in offspring. METHODS: During offspring's middle childhood, parents underwent a diagnostic interview and completed social support and coping style questionnaires. Sixty-nine OBD (39 female) and 69 control (29 female) offspring between ages 13 and 29 completed a diagnostic interview approximately 10 years later. RESULTS: Parents' social support satisfaction moderated the link between offspring risk status and their development of substance use disorder (SUD) symptoms (F(1,131) = 5.90, p = .017). Parents' social network size moderated the link between offspring risk status and their development of anxiety and depression symptoms in an unexpected direction (F(1,131) = 5.07, p = .026). No effects of parents' coping style were found. CONCLUSIONS: Among the OBD, having parents with greater social support satisfaction and, unexpectedly, a smaller social network buffered their development of SUD and depression and anxiety symptoms by early adulthood. Parents' social support may thus have a protective function for children in these high-risk families.

An Examination of the Relations Between Effortful Control in Early Childhood and Risk for Later Externalizing Psychopathology: A Bi-factor Structural Equation Modeling Approach.

Deficits in effortful control (EC) contribute to patterns of maladaptation across development; however, little is known about how specific subfactors of EC differentially predict children's externalizing psychopathology. Using a longitudinal sample of 206 children (47.8% female, 42.6% Caucasian), the current study employed a bi-factor structural equation modeling approach to examine the concurrent and longitudinal associations between EC and its subfactors (i.e., attentional focusing, low-intensity pleasure, perceptual sensitivity, inhibitory control) and conduct problems, attention deficit disordered behaviors (ADD), and callous-unemotional (CU) traits at 36 and 84 months, respectively. Results indicated that increased general EC at 36 months predicted reduced CU traits and ADD at 84 months. Attentional focusing was the only subfactor to uniquely predict later CU traits, suggesting that strong attentional abilities attenuate risk for CU trait development. The implications for research and practice are discussed.

To be or not to be flexible: A hierarchical model of affective flexibility in typical development and internalizing problems.

Affective flexibility is defined as a complex executive function which enables individuals to successfully alternate between distinct emotional and non-emotional features of a given situation in order to attain a specific goal. A large body of research has focused exclusively on flexibility in a non-emotional context, although most of our interactions with our environment are emotionally satiated. Our main aim was to propose a hierarchical framework to describe this construct from a macro-level perspective to a more nuanced and micro-level perspective, including three different levels of affective flexibility: elementary, shifting, and generative. Next, we employed this hierarchical framework to examine the role played by affective flexibility in typical development and different forms of developmental psychopathology. Lastly, we discuss how this knowledge could inform future prevention and intervention programs aimed at reducing cognitive vulnerability to developmental psychopathology.

The growing interdisciplinarity of developmental psychopathology: Implications for science and training.

The field of developmental psychopathology has grown exponentially over the past decades, and has become increasingly multifaceted. The initial focus on understanding abnormal child psychology has broadened to the study of the origins of psychopathology, with the goals of preventing and alleviating disorder and promoting healthy development. In this paper, we discuss how technological advances and global events have expanded the questions that researchers in developmental psychopathology can address. We do so by describing a longitudinal study that we have been conducting for the past dozen years. We originally planned to examine the effects of early adversity on trajectories of brain development, endocrine function, and depressive symptoms across puberty; it has since become an interdisciplinary study encompassing diverse domains like inflammation, sleep, biological aging, the environment, and child functioning post-pandemic, that we believe will advance our understanding of neurobehavioral development. This increase in the breadth in our study emerged from an expansion of the field; we encourage researchers to embrace these dynamic changes. In this context, we discuss challenges, opportunities, and institutional changes related to the growing interdisciplinarity of the field with respect to training the next generation of investigators to mitigate the burden of mental illness in youth.

Toward a multi-level approach to the study of the intergenerational transmission of trauma: Current findings and future directions.

A central goal in the field of developmental psychopathology is to evaluate the complex, dynamic transactions occurring among biological, psychological, and broader social-cultural contexts that predict adaptive and maladaptive outcomes across ontogeny. Here, I briefly review research on the effects of a history of childhood maltreatment on parental, child, and dyadic functioning, along with more recent studies on the intergenerational transmission of trauma. Because the experience and sequelae of child maltreatment and the intergenerational transmission of trauma are embedded in complex biopsychosocial contexts, this research is best conceptualized in a developmental psychopathology framework. Moreover, there is a pressing need for investigators in this area of study to adopt dynamic, multi-level perspectives as well as using developmentally guided, sophisticated research methods. Other directions for research in this field are suggested, including the implementation of collaborative interdisciplinary team science approaches, as well as community-based participatory research, to increase representation, inclusion, and equity of community stakeholders. A greater focus on cultural and global perspectives is also recommended.

Antecedents of major depressive, bipolar, and psychotic disorders: A systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective studies.

Major depressive, bipolar, or psychotic disorders are preceded by earlier manifestations in behaviours and experiences. We present a synthesis of evidence on associations between person-level antecedents (behaviour, performance, psychopathology) in childhood, adolescence, or early adulthood and later onsets of major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, or psychotic disorder based on prospective studies published up to September 16, 2022. We screened 11,342 records, identified 460 eligible publications, and extracted 570 risk ratios quantifying the relationships between 52 antecedents and onsets in 198 unique samples with prospective follow-up of 122,766 individuals from a mean age of 12.4 to a mean age of 24.8 for 1522,426 person years of follow-up. We completed meta-analyses of 12 antecedents with adequate data. Psychotic symptoms, depressive symptoms, anxiety, disruptive behaviors, affective lability, and sleep problems were transdiagnostic antecedents associated with onsets of depressive, bipolar, and psychotic disorders. Attention-deficit/hyperactivity and hypomanic symptoms specifically predicted bipolar disorder. While transdiagnostic and diagnosis-specific antecedents inform targeted prevention and help understand pathogenic mechanisms, extensive gaps in evidence indicate potential for improving early risk identification.

The long and winding road: Pathways from basic research to implementation and evaluation.

In this article, we celebrate Dante Cicchetti's extensive contributions to the discipline of developmental psychopathology. In his seminal article, he articulated why developmental psychopathology was imperative to create research portfolios that could inform the causes, consequences, and trajectories for adults often initiated by early lived experiences (Cicchetti, 1984). In this three-part article, we share our transdisciplinary efforts to use developmental psychopathology as a foundational theory from which to develop, implement, and evaluate interventions for populations who experienced early adversity or who were at risk for child abuse and neglect. After describing interventions conducted at Mt. Hope Family Center that spanned over three decades, we highlight the criticality of disseminating results and address policy implications of this work. We conclude by discussing future directions to facilitate work in developmental psychopathology. Currently, one of three national National Institute of Child Health and Human Development-funded child abuse and neglect centers, we look forward to continuing to build upon Dante's efforts to disseminate this important work to improve society for our children, our nation's often most vulnerable and forgotten citizens.

The future of neuroscience in developmental psychopathology.

Developmental psychopathology started as an intersection of fields and is now a field itself. As we contemplate the future of this field, we consider the ways in which a newer, interdisciplinary field - human developmental neuroscience - can inform, and be informed by, developmental psychopathology. To do so, we outline principles of developmental psychopathology and how they are and/or can be implemented in developmental neuroscience. In turn, we highlight how the collaboration between these fields can lead to richer models and more impactful translation. In doing so, we describe the ways in which models from developmental psychopathology can enrich developmental neuroscience and future directions for developmental psychopathology.

Childhood unpredictability research within the developmental psychopathology framework: Advances, implications, and future directions.

Greater unpredictability in childhood from the level of the caregiver-child dyad to broader family, home, or environmental instability is consistently associated with disruptions in cognitive, socioemotional, behavioral, and biological development in humans. These findings are bolstered by experimental research in non-human animal models suggesting that early life unpredictability is an important environmental signal to the developing organism that shapes neurodevelopment and behavior. Research on childhood unpredictability has surged in the past several years, guided in part by theoretical grounding from the developmental psychopathology framework (shaped largely by Dr. Dante Cicchetti's innovative work). The current review focuses on future directions for unpredictability research, including probing intergenerational effects, the role of predictability in resilience, cultural and contextual considerations, and novel developmental outcomes that should be tested in relation to childhood unpredictability. We urge the integration of multidisciplinary perspectives and collaborations into future research on unpredictability. We also provide ideas for translating this research to real-world practice and policy and encourage high-quality research testing whether incorporating predictability into interventions and policy improves developmental outcomes, which would support further dissemination of these findings.

Person-centered methods to advance developmental psychopathology.

Dante Cicchetti's remarkable contributions to the field of developmental psychopathology include the advancement of key principles such as the interplay of typical and atypical development, multifinality and equifinality, the dynamic processes of resilience, and the integration of multiple levels of analysis into developmental theories. In this paper we assert that person-centered data analytic methods are particularly well-suited to advancing these tenets of developmental psychopathology. We illustrate their utility with a brief novel empirical study focused on underlying patterns of childhood neuroendocrine regulation and prospective links with emerging adult functioning. Results indicate that a childhood neuroendocrine profile marked by high diurnal cortisol paired with low diurnal DHEA was uniquely associated with more adaptive functioning in emerging adulthood. We discuss these findings, and person-centered methods more broadly, within the future of developmental psychopathology.

Beyond form: The value of systems conceptualizations of function in increasing precision and novelty in the study of developmental psychopathology.

Developmental psychopathology has successfully advanced an understanding of risk and protective factors in multivariate models. However, many areas have relied on top-down approaches that define psychological constructs based largely or solely on their physical form. In this paper, we first describe how top-down approaches have significantly hindered progress by generating generic risk and protective models that yield little more than the conclusion that axiomatically positive and negative factors respectively beget an interchangeable array of positive and negative child sequelae. To advance precision and novelty as central priorities, we describe behavioral systems frameworks rooted in evolutionary theory that infuse both form (i.e., what it looks like) and function (what it is designed to do) into psychological constructs. We further address how this paradigm has generated new growing points for developmental models of interparental relationships and parenting. In the final section, we provide recommendations for expanding this approach to other areas of developmental psychopathology. Throughout the paper, we document how the focus on functional patterns of behavior in well-defined developmental contexts advance precision and novelty in understanding children's response processes to threats, opportunities, and challenges in associations between their developmental histories and their psychological sequelae.

The next generation of developmental psychopathology research: Including broader perspectives and becoming more precise.

The current Special Issue marks a major milestone in the history of developmental psychopathology; as the final issue edited by Cicchetti, we have an opportunity to reflect on the remarkable progress of the discipline across the last four decades, as well as challenges and future directions for the field. With contemporary issues in mind, including rising rates of psychopathology, health disparities, and international conflict, as well as rapid growth and accessibility of digital and mobile technologies, the discipline of developmental psychopathology is poised to advance multidisciplinary, developmentally- and contextually- informed research, and to make substantial progress in supporting the healthy development of individuals around the world. We highlight key future directions and challenges for the next generation of developmental psychopathology research including further investigation of culture at multiple levels of analysis, incorporation of macro-level influences into developmental psychopathology research, methods advances to address heterogeneity in translational research, precision mental health, and the extension of developmental psychopathology research across the lifespan.