Cognitive stimulation as a mechanism linking socioeconomic status and neural function supporting working memory: a longitudinal fMRI study.

Childhood experiences of low socioeconomic status are associated with alterations in neural function in the frontoparietal network and ventral visual stream, which may drive differences in working memory. However, the specific features of low socioeconomic status environments that contribute to these disparities remain poorly understood. Here, we examined experiences of cognitive deprivation (i.e. decreased variety and complexity of experience), as opposed to experiences of threat (i.e. violence exposure), as a potential mechanism through which family income contributes to alterations in neural activation during working memory. As part of a longitudinal study, 148 youth between aged 10 and 13 years completed a visuospatial working memory fMRI task. Early childhood low income, chronicity of low income in early childhood, and current income-to-needs were associated with task-related activation in the ventral visual stream and frontoparietal network. The association of family income with decreased activation in the lateral occipital cortex and intraparietal sulcus during working memory was mediated by experiences of cognitive deprivation. Surprisingly, however, family income and deprivation were not significantly related to working memory performance, and only deprivation was associated with academic achievement in this sample. Taken together, these findings suggest that early life low income and associated cognitive deprivation are important factors in neural function supporting working memory.

Child abuse and automatic emotion regulation in children and adolescents.

Child abuse is associated with elevated risk for psychopathology. The current study examined the role of automatic emotion regulation as a potential mechanism linking child abuse with internalizing psychopathology. A sample of 237 youth aged 8-16 years and their caregivers participated. Child abuse severity was assessed by self-report questionnaires, and automatic emotion regulation was assessed using an emotional Stroop task designed to measure adaptation to emotional conflict. A similar task without emotional stimuli was also administered to evaluate whether abuse was uniquely associated with emotion regulation, but not cognitive control applied in a nonemotional context. Internalizing psychopathology was assessed concurrently and at a 2-year longitudinal follow-up. Child abuse severity was associated with lower emotional conflict adaptation but was unrelated to cognitive control. Specifically, the severity of emotional and physical abuse, but not sexual abuse, were associated with lower emotional conflict adaptation. Emotional conflict adaptation was not associated with internalizing psychopathology prospectively. These findings suggest that childhood emotional and physical abuse, in particular, may influence automatic forms of emotion regulation. Future work exploring the socioemotional consequences of altered automatic emotion regulation among youth exposed to child abuse is clearly needed.

Vagal flexibility to negative emotions moderates the relations between environmental risk and adjustment problems in childhood.

Neurobiological and social-contextual influences shape children's adjustment, yet limited biopsychosocial studies have integrated temporal features when modeling physiological regulation of emotion. This study explored whether a common underlying pattern of non-linear change in respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) across emotional scenarios characterized 4-6 year-old children's parasympathetic reactivity (N = 180). Additionally, we tested whether dynamic RSA reactivity was an index of neurobiological susceptibility or a diathesis in the association between socioeconomic status, authoritarian parenting, and the development of externalizing problems (EP) and internalizing problems over two years. There was a shared RSA pattern across all emotions, characterized by more initial RSA suppression and a subsequent return toward baseline, which we call vagal flexibility (VF). VF interacted with parenting to predict EP. More authoritarian parenting predicted increased EP two years later only when VF was low; conversely, when VF was very high, authoritarian mothers reported that their children had fewer EP. Altogether, children's patterns of dynamic RSA change to negative emotions can be characterized by a higher order factor, and the nature by which VF contributes to EP depends on maternal socialization practices, with low VF augmenting and high VF buffering children against the effects of authoritarian parenting.

Associations Between Structural Stigma and Psychopathology Among Early Adolescents.

OBJECTIVE: Ample evidence demonstrates that structural stigma - defined as societal-level conditions, cultural norms, and institutional policies and practices that constrain opportunities, resources, and well-being of stigmatized populations - is associated with psychopathology in adults from marginalized groups. Yet there is limited research on whether structural stigma is similarly associated with internalizing and externalizing symptoms among youth. METHOD: Structural stigma related to sex, sexual orientation, race, and Latinx ethnicity was measured using indicators of state-level policy and aggregated attitudes. Using data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study (N = 10,414; M age = 12 years, SD = 0.66; 48% female, 6.8% lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB), 13.4% Black, 20% Latinx), we examined associations of structural stigma with internalizing and externalizing symptoms among female, LGB, Black, and Latinx youth. RESULTS: LGB youth living in higher (vs. lower) structural stigma states had elevated levels of internalizing and externalizing symptoms. In lower structural stigma states, there were no differences in externalizing symptoms between LGB and heterosexual youth. Similarly, Latinx youth and females living in higher (vs. lower) structural stigma states had elevated levels of externalizing symptoms. In lower structural stigma states, there were no differences in externalizing symptoms between Latinx youth and non-Latinx White youth. Structural stigma related to race was unrelated to internalizing or externalizing symptoms for Black youth. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides novel evidence that macro-level social environments, in the form of structural stigma, contribute to adverse mental health outcomes for marginalized youth and partly explain disparities in externalizing symptoms.

Exposure to Violence as an Environmental Pathway Linking Low Socioeconomic Status with Altered Neural Processing of Threat and Adolescent Psychopathology.

Low childhood socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with increased risk for psychopathology, in part because of heightened exposure to environmental adversity. Adverse experiences can be characterized along dimensions, including threat and deprivation, that contribute to psychopathology via distinct mechanisms. The current study investigated a neural mechanism through which threat and deprivation may contribute to socioeconomic disparities in psychopathology. Participants were 177 youths (83 girls) aged 10-13 years recruited from a cohort followed since the age of 3 years. SES was assessed using the income-to-needs ratio at the age of 3 years. At the age of 10-13 years, retrospective and current exposure to adverse experiences and symptoms of psychopathology were assessed. At this same time point, participants also completed a face processing task (passive viewing of fearful and neutral faces) during an fMRI scan. Lower childhood SES was associated with greater exposure to threat and deprivation experiences. Both threat and deprivation were associated with higher depression symptoms, whereas threat experiences were uniquely linked to posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms. Greater exposure to threat, but not deprivation, was associated with higher activation in dorsomedial pFC to fearful compared with neutral faces. The dorsomedial pFC is a hub of the default mode network thought to be involved in internally directed attention and cognition. Experiences of threat, but not deprivation, are associated with greater engagement of this region in response to threat cues. Threat-related adversity contributes to socioeconomic disparities in adolescent psychopathology through distinct mechanisms from deprivation.

Neural connectivity biotypes: associations with internalizing problems throughout adolescence.

BACKGROUND: Neurophysiological patterns may distinguish which youth are at risk for the well-documented increase in internalizing symptoms during adolescence. Adolescents with internalizing problems exhibit altered resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) of brain regions involved in socio-affective processing. Whether connectivity-based biotypes differentiate adolescents' levels of internalizing problems remains unknown. METHOD: Sixty-eight adolescents (37 females) reported on their internalizing problems at ages 14, 16, and 18 years. A resting-state functional neuroimaging scan was collected at age 16. Time-series data of 15 internalizing-relevant brain regions were entered into the Subgroup-Group Iterative Multi-Model Estimation program to identify subgroups based on RSFC maps. Associations between internalizing problems and connectivity-based biotypes were tested with regression analyses. RESULTS: Two connectivity-based biotypes were found: a Diffusely-connected biotype (N = 46), with long-range fronto-parietal paths, and a Hyper-connected biotype (N = 22), with paths between subcortical and medial frontal areas (e.g. affective and default-mode network regions). Higher levels of past (age 14) internalizing problems predicted a greater likelihood of belonging to the Hyper-connected biotype at age 16. The Hyper-connected biotype showed higher levels of concurrent problems (age 16) and future (age 18) internalizing problems. CONCLUSIONS: Differential patterns of RSFC among socio-affective brain regions were predicted by earlier internalizing problems and predicted future internalizing problems in adolescence. Measuring connectivity-based biotypes in adolescence may offer insight into which youth face an elevated risk for internalizing disorders during this critical developmental period.

Family Risk and Externalizing Problems in Chilean Children: Mediation by Harsh Parenting and Emotional Support.

Latent class analysis and multigroup mediation were used with 8,860 families in Chile to identify risk groups varying in socioeconomic status, family structure, and maternal depression, to determine whether profiles differed in children's development of externalizing problems (EP) from 35 to 61 months, and maternal parenting that predicted EP. Four groups were identified: one no-risk profile and three risk profiles, impoverished and undereducated, depressed and impoverished, and father-absent and impoverished. All classes differed in EP. Maternal emotional support and harsh parenting were differentially associated with the development of EP across the three risk groups, relative to the low-risk group. Thus, specific constellations of adversities differentially predicted children's EP and socialization processes mediating links between risk and EP. Implications are discussed.

Corporal Punishment and Elevated Neural Response to Threat in Children.

Spanking remains common around the world, despite evidence linking corporal punishment to detrimental child outcomes. This study tested whether children (Mage  = 11.60) who were spanked (N = 40) exhibited altered neural function in response to stimuli that suggest the presence of an environmental threat compared to children who were not spanked (N = 107). Children who were spanked exhibited greater activation in multiple regions of the medial and lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC), including dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, dorsomedial PFC, bilateral frontal pole, and left middle frontal gyrus in response to fearful relative to neutral faces compared to children who were not spanked. These findings suggest that spanking may alter neural responses to environmental threats in a manner similar to more severe forms of maltreatment.

High vagal tone and rapid extinction learning as potential transdiagnostic protective factors following childhood violence exposure.

Childhood exposure to violence is strongly associated with psychopathology. High resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) is associated with lower levels of psychopathology in children exposed to violence. High RSA may help to protect against psychopathology by facilitating fear extinction learning, allowing more flexible autonomic responses to learned threat and safety cues. In this study, 165 youth (79 female, aged 9-17; 86 exposed to violence) completed assessments of violence exposure, RSA, and psychopathology, and a fear extinction learning task; 134 participants returned and completed psychopathology assessments 2 years later. Resting RSA moderated the longitudinal association of violence exposure with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and externalizing psychopathology, such that the association was weaker among youths with higher RSA. Higher skin conductance responses (SCR) during extinction learning to the threat cue (CS+) was associated with higher internalizing symptoms at follow-up and greater SCR to the safety cue (CS-) was associated with higher PTSD, internalizing, and externalizing symptoms, as well as the p-factor, controlling for baseline symptoms. Findings suggest that higher RSA may protect against emergence of psychopathology among children exposed to violence. Moreover, difficulty extinguishing learned threat responses and elevated autonomic responses to safety cues may be associated with risk for future psychopathology.

Direct replication of task-dependent neural activation patterns during sadness introspection in two independent adolescent samples.

Functional neuroimaging results need to replicate to inform sound models of human social cognition and its neural correlates. Introspection, the capacity to reflect on one's thoughts and feelings, is one process required for normative social cognition and emotional functioning. Engaging in introspection draws on a network of brain regions including medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), middle temporal gyri (MTG), and temporoparietal junction (TPJ). Maturation of these regions during adolescence mirrors the behavioral advances seen in adolescent social cognition, but the neural correlates of introspection in adolescence need to replicate to confirm their generalizability and role as a possible mechanism. The current study investigated whether reflecting upon one's own feelings of sadness would activate and replicate similar brain regions in two independent samples of adolescents. Participants included 156 adolescents (50% female) from the California Families Project and 119 adolescent girls from the Pittsburgh Girls Study of Emotion. All participants completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) and underwent a functional magnetic resonance imaging scan while completing the same facial emotion-processing task at age 16-17 years. Both samples showed similar whole-brain activation patterns when engaged in sadness introspection and when judging a nonemotional facial feature. Whole-brain activation was unrelated to ERQ scores in both samples. Neural responsivity to task manipulations replicated in regions recruited for socio-emotional (mPFC, PCC, MTG, TPJ) and attention (dorsolateral PFC, precentral gyri, superior occipital gyrus, superior parietal lobule) processing. These findings demonstrate robust replication of neural engagement during sadness introspection in two independent adolescent samples.

Mechanisms linking childhood trauma exposure and psychopathology: a transdiagnostic model of risk and resilience.

BACKGROUND: Transdiagnostic processes confer risk for multiple types of psychopathology and explain the co-occurrence of different disorders. For this reason, transdiagnostic processes provide ideal targets for early intervention and treatment. Childhood trauma exposure is associated with elevated risk for virtually all commonly occurring forms of psychopathology. We articulate a transdiagnostic model of the developmental mechanisms that explain the strong links between childhood trauma and psychopathology as well as protective factors that promote resilience against multiple forms of psychopathology. MAIN BODY: We present a model of transdiagnostic mechanisms spanning three broad domains: social information processing, emotional processing, and accelerated biological aging. Changes in social information processing that prioritize threat-related information-such as heightened perceptual sensitivity to threat, misclassification of negative and neutral emotions as anger, and attention biases towards threat-related cues-have been consistently observed in children who have experienced trauma. Patterns of emotional processing common in children exposed to trauma include elevated emotional reactivity to threat-related stimuli, low emotional awareness, and difficulties with emotional learning and emotion regulation. More recently, a pattern of accelerated aging across multiple biological metrics, including pubertal development and cellular aging, has been found in trauma-exposed children. Although these changes in social information processing, emotional responding, and the pace of biological aging reflect developmental adaptations that may promote safety and provide other benefits for children raised in dangerous environments, they have been consistently associated with the emergence of multiple forms of internalizing and externalizing psychopathology and explain the link between childhood trauma exposure and transdiagnostic psychopathology. Children with higher levels of social support, particularly from caregivers, are less likely to develop psychopathology following trauma exposure. Caregiver buffering of threat-related processing may be one mechanism explaining this protective effect. CONCLUSION: Childhood trauma exposure is a powerful transdiagnostic risk factor associated with elevated risk for multiple forms of psychopathology across development. Changes in threat-related social and emotional processing and accelerated biological aging serve as transdiagnostic mechanisms linking childhood trauma with psychopathology. These transdiagnostic mechanisms represent critical targets for early interventions aimed at preventing the emergence of psychopathology in children who have experienced trauma.

Girls' brain structural connectivity in late adolescence relates to history of depression symptoms.

BACKGROUND: Girls' depressive symptoms typically increase in adolescence, with individual differences in course and severity being key risk factors for impaired emotional functioning in young adulthood. Given the continued brain white matter (WM) maturation that occurs in adolescence, the present study tested whether structural connectivity patterns in late adolescence are associated with variation in the course of depression symptom severity throughout adolescence. METHOD: Participants were girls (N = 115) enrolled in a multiyear prospective cohort study of risk for depression. Initial depression severity (intercept) at age 10 and change in severity (linear slope) across ages 10-19 were examined in relation to WM tractography collected at age 19. Network-based statistic analyses were used to identify clusters showing variation in structural connectivity in association with depressive symptom intercept, slope, and their interaction. RESULTS: Higher initial depressive severity and steeper positive slope (separately) were associated with greater structural connectivity between temporal, subcortical socioaffective, and occipital regions. Intercept showed more connectivity associations than slope. The interaction effect indicated that higher initial symptom severity and a steeper negative slope (i.e., alleviating symptoms) were related to greater connectivity between cognitive control regions. Moderately severe symptoms that worsened over time were followed by greater connectivity between self-referential and cognitive regions (e.g., posterior cingulate and frontal gyrus). CONCLUSIONS: Higher depressive symptom severity in early adolescence and increasing symptom severity over time may forecast structural connectivity differences in late adolescence, particularly in pathways involving cognitive and emotion-processing regions. Understanding how clinical course relates to neurobiological correlates may inform new treatment approaches to adolescent depression.

Reduced hippocampal and amygdala volume as a mechanism underlying stress sensitization to depression following childhood trauma.

BACKGROUND: Stressful life events are more likely to trigger depression among individuals exposed to childhood adversity. However, the mechanisms underlying this stress sensitization remain largely unknown. Any such mechanism must be altered by childhood adversity and interact with recent stressful life events, magnifying their association with depression. AIM: This study investigated whether reduced hippocampal and amygdala volume are potential mechanisms underlying stress sensitization following childhood violence exposure. METHOD: A sample of 149 youth (aged 8-17 years), with (N = 75) and without (N = 74) exposure to physical abuse, sexual abuse, or domestic violence participated. Participants completed a structural MRI scan and assessments of depression. Approximately 2 years later, stressful life events were assessed along with depression symptoms in 120 participants (57 violence exposed). RESULTS: Childhood violence exposure was associated with smaller hippocampal and amygdala volume. Stressful life events occurring during the follow-up period predicted worsening depression over time, and this association was magnified among those with smaller hippocampal and amygdala volumes. Significant moderated mediation models revealed the indirect effects of violence exposure on increasing depression over time through hippocampal and amygdala volumes, particularly among youths who experienced more stressful life events. CONCLUSIONS: These results provide evidence for reduced hippocampal and amygdala volume as potential mechanisms of stress sensitization to depression following exposure to violence. More broadly, these patterns suggest that hippocampal and amygdala-mediated emotional and cognitive processes may confer vulnerability to stressful life events among children who have experienced violence.

Tuning of brain-autonomic coupling by prior threat exposure: Implications for internalizing problems in Mexican-origin adolescents.

Exposure to threat increases the risk for internalizing problems in adolescence. Deficits in integrating bodily cues into representations of emotion are thought to contribute to internalizing problems. Given the role of the medial prefrontal cortex in regulating bodily responses and integrating them into representations of emotional states, coordination between activity in the medial prefrontal cortex and autonomic nervous system responses may be influenced by past threat exposure with consequences for the emergence of internalizing problems. A sample of 179 Mexican-origin adolescents (88 female) reported on neighborhood and school crime, peer victimization, and discrimination when they were 10-16 years old. At age 17, participants underwent a functional neuroimaging scan during which they viewed pictures of emotional faces while respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and skin conductance responses were measured. Adolescents also reported symptoms of internalizing problems. Greater exposure to threats across adolescence was associated with more internalizing problems. Threat exposure was also associated with stronger negative coupling between the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and RSA. Stronger negative ventromedial prefrontal cortex-RSA coupling was associated with fewer internalizing problems. These results suggest the degree of coordinated activity between the brain and parasympathetic nervous system is both enhanced by threat experiences and decreased in adolescents with more internalizing problems.

Difficulties with emotion regulation as a transdiagnostic mechanism linking child maltreatment with the emergence of psychopathology.

Childhood maltreatment is associated with increased risk for most forms of psychopathology. We examine emotion dysregulation as a transdiagnostic mechanism linking maltreatment with general psychopathology. A sample of 262 children and adolescents participated; 162 (61.8%) experienced abuse or exposure to domestic violence. We assessed four emotion regulation processes (cognitive reappraisal, attention bias to threat, expressive suppression, and rumination) and emotional reactivity. Psychopathology symptoms were assessed concurrently and at a 2-year longitudinal follow-up. A general psychopathology factor (p factor), representing co-occurrence of psychopathology symptoms across multiple internalizing and externalizing domains, was estimated using confirmatory factor analysis. Maltreatment was associated with heightened emotional reactivity and greater use of expressive suppression and rumination. The association of maltreatment with attention bias varied across development, with maltreated children exhibiting a bias toward threat and adolescents a bias away from threat. Greater emotional reactivity and engagement in rumination mediated the longitudinal association between maltreatment and increased general psychopathology over time. Emotion dysregulation following childhood maltreatment occurs at multiple stages of the emotion generation process, in some cases varies across development, and serves as a transdiagnostic mechanism linking child maltreatment with general psychopathology.

Adolescents' brain-autonomic coupling during emotion processing.

Autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity is a core component of emotion processing. The limbic system and medial prefrontal cortex play important roles in the regulation of ANS activity. However, the integration of brain activity and ANS activity has yet to be investigated in adolescents despite independent evidence of adolescents' heightened neural and physiological sensitivity to emotional stimuli. The present study examined the relations of ANS activity in the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) and sympathetic nervous system (SNS) with brain activity during emotional face processing in adolescents. 135 adolescents (65 female; M = 17.15 yr, SD = 0.42) completed an emotional faces task during an fMRI scan while electrocardiography and skin conductance were recorded simultaneously. Using linear mixed-effect modelling, we tested the effect of change in respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), a measure of PNS activity, and number of skin conductance responses (SCRs), a measure of SNS activity, on neural activity while adolescents viewed emotional faces. Greater RSA withdrawal, indicating decreased PNS activity, was associated with increased activation in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). More SCRs, indicating greater SNS activity, were associated with decreased activation in several regions including the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and increased activation in the left hippocampus. Left hippocampus-SCR coupling and vmPFC-RSA coupling predicted baseline SCR and RSA respectively. These findings implicate the hippocampus for potentiating SNS activity, document that regulation of SNS and PNS activity are coordinated with distinct regions of the medial prefrontal cortex, and suggest potential developmental differences in vmPFC regulation of PNS activity between adolescents and adults.

Neural response to prosocial scenes relates to subsequent giving behavior in adolescents: A pilot study.

Adolescence is characterized by extensive neural development and sensitivity to social context, both of which contribute to engaging in prosocial behaviors. Although it is established that prosocial behaviors are linked to positive outcomes in adulthood, little is known about the neural correlates of adolescents' prosociality. Identifying whether the brain is differentially responsive to varying types of social input may be important for fostering prosocial behavior. We report pilot results using new stimuli and an ecologically valid donation paradigm indicating (1) brain regions typically recruited during socioemotional processing evinced differential activation when adolescents evaluated prosocial compared with social or noninteractive scenes (N = 20, ages 13-17 years, MAge = 15.30 years), and (2) individual differences in temporoparietal junction recruitment when viewing others' prosocial behaviors were related to adolescents' own charitable giving. These novel findings have significant implications for understanding how the adolescent brain processes prosocial acts and for informing ways to support adolescents to engage in prosocial behaviors in their daily lives.

Adolescent Externalizing Problems: Contributions of Community Crime Exposure and Neural Function During Emotion Introspection in Mexican-Origin Youth.

Models of the etiology of adolescent antisocial behavior suggest that externalizing problems may reflect a susceptibility to crime exposure and a diminished capacity for emotion introspection. In this study, adolescents of Mexican origin completed a neuroimaging task that involved rating their subjective feelings of sadness in response to emotional facial expressions or a nonemotional aspect of each face. At lower levels of neural activity during sadness introspection in posterior cingulate and left temporoparietal junction, and in left amygdala, brain regions involved in mentalizing and emotion, respectively, a stronger positive association between community crime exposure and externalizing problems was found. The specification of emotion introspection as a psychological process showing neural variation may help inform targeted interventions to positively affect adolescent behavior.

A research agenda for understanding how social inequality is linked to brain structure and function.

Consistent evidence documents powerful effects of social inequality on health, well-being and academic achievement. Yet research on whether social inequality may also be linked to brain structure and function has, until recently, been rare. Here we describe three methodological approaches that can be used to study this question-single site, single study; multi-site, single study; and spatial meta-analysis. We review empirical work that, using these approaches, has observed associations between neural outcomes and structural measures of social inequality-including structural stigma, community-level prejudice, gender inequality, neighbourhood disadvantage and the generosity of the social safety net for low-income families. We evaluate the relative strengths and limitations of these approaches, discuss ethical considerations and outline directions for future research. In doing so, we advocate for a paradigm shift in cognitive neuroscience that explicitly incorporates upstream structural and contextual factors, which we argue holds promise for uncovering the neural correlates of social inequality.

Parasympathetic regulation and support from family and friends predict prosocial development in U.S. Mexican-origin adolescents.

Both parasympathetic nervous system regulation and receipt of social support from close relationships contribute to prosocial development, although few studies have examined their combined influences in adolescence and particularly within racially and ethnically minoritized populations. In this longitudinal study of 229 U.S. Mexican-origin adolescents (48% female-identifying), youths reported on receipt of social support from family and friends from 10 to 16 years, had their baseline respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) measured at 17 years, reported their prosocial behavior and completed the Mind in the Eyes test to assess cognitive empathy at 17 and 19 years, and reported their prosocial civic behavior (i.e., community activity) at 19 years. Family social support predicted prosocial behavior at 17 years, and friend social support predicted prosocial civic behavior at 19 years. Compared to youths with lower or higher baseline RSA, youths with moderate RSA reported more prosocial civic behavior, had greater cognitive empathy, and tended to report more general prosocial behavior at 19 years. The quadratic association between baseline RSA and cognitive empathy was stronger for youths with greater family social support. These findings are the first to extend the evidence that moderate baseline parasympathetic nervous system activity supports prosocial development into late adolescence and with the U.S. Mexican-origin community, and these findings address calls for more integrative biopsychosocial studies of prosociality. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).