Pathways to adolescent social anxiety: Testing interactions between neural social reward function and perceived social threat in daily life.

Recent theories suggest that for youth highly sensitive to incentives, perceiving more social threat may contribute to social anxiety (SA) symptoms. In 129 girls (ages 11-13) oversampled for shy/fearful temperament, we thus examined how interactions between neural responses to social reward (vs. neutral) cues (measured during anticipation of peer feedback) and perceived social threat in daily peer interactions (measured using ecological momentary assessment) predict SA symptoms two years later. No significant interactions emerged when neural reward function was modeled as a latent factor. Secondary analyses showed that higher perceived social threat was associated with more severe SA symptoms two years later only for girls with higher basolateral amygdala (BLA) activation to social reward cues at baseline. Interaction effects were specific to BLA activation to social reward (not threat) cues, though a main effect of BLA activation to social threat (vs. neutral) cues on SA emerged. Unexpectedly, interactions between social threat and BLA activation to social reward cues also predicted generalized anxiety and depression symptoms two years later, suggesting possible transdiagnostic risk pathways. Perceiving high social threat may be particularly detrimental for youth highly sensitive to reward incentives, potentially due to mediating reward learning processes, though this remains to be tested.

More time awake after sleep onset is linked to reduced ventral striatum response to rewards in youth with anxiety.

BACKGROUND: Poor sleep and anxiety disorders are highly comorbid in youth, and each predicts altered ventral striatum (VS) response to rewards, which may impact mental health risk. Contrasting evidence suggests previously reported negative associations between sleep health and VS response may be stronger or weaker in youth with anxiety, indicating sensitivity to win/loss information or blunted reward processing, respectively. We cross-sectionally examined the role of sleep in VS response to rewards among youth with anxiety versus a no-psychiatric-diagnosis comparison (ND) group. We expected a group*sleep interaction on VS response to rewards but did not hypothesize directionality. METHODS: As part of the pretreatment battery for a randomized clinical trial, 74 youth with anxiety and 31 ND youth (ages 9-14 years; n = 55 female) completed a monetary reward task during fMRI. During the same pretreatment window, actigraphy and diary-estimated sleep were collected over 5 days, and participants and their parents each reported participants' total sleep problems. We examined group*sleep interactions on VS response to monetary rewards versus losses via three mixed linear models corresponding to actigraphy, diary, and questionnaires, respectively. RESULTS: Each model indicated group*sleep interactions on VS response to rewards. Actigraphy and diary-estimated time awake after sleep onset predicted reduced VS response in youth with anxiety but not ND youth. Parent-reported sleep problems similarly interacted with group, but simple slopes were nonsignificant. CONCLUSIONS: Wake after sleep onset was associated with blunted reward response in youth with anxiety. These data suggest a potential pathway through which sleep could contribute to perturbed reward function and reward-related psychopathology (e.g., depression) in youth with anxiety.

Daily and average associations of physical activity, social media use, and sleep among adolescent girls during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Adolescents' daily lives have been disrupted during the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. It remains unclear how changes in adolescents' daily physical and social behaviours affect their sleep. The present study examined the daily and average effects of physical activity and social media use (i.e., video chatting, texting, and social networking sites) on adolescent girls' sleep during the COVID-19 pandemic. Adolescent girls aged 12-17 years (N = 93; 69% White) from a larger longitudinal study completed a 10-day daily diary protocol during state-mandated stay-at-home orders. Girls reported on daily sleep (duration, timing, quality), physical activity, and social media use during COVID-19. Multilevel modelling was used to examine the within- and between-person effects of physical activity and social media on sleep duration, timing, and quality during the 10-day period. Between-person associations indicate that youth with greater social media use (texting, video chatting, and social networking) and less physical activity had later sleep timing across the 10-day study period. Only video chatting was associated with shorter sleep duration. There were no within-person effects of physical activity or social media activities on sleep outcomes. Findings indicate that physical activity and social media use may impact later adolescent sleep timing during the COVID-19 pandemic. It will be critical for research to examine the potential long-term costs of delayed sleep timing, and whether targeting specific youth behaviours associated with sleep and circadian disruption improve mental and physical health during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

Neural activity during negative self-evaluation is associated with negative self-concept and depressive symptoms in adolescent girls.

Self-concept becomes reliant on social comparison, potentially leading to excessive self-focused attention, persistently negative self-concept and increased risk for depression during early adolescence. Studies have implicated neural activation in cortical midline brain structures in self-related information processing, yet it remains unclear how this activation may underlie subjective self-concept and links to depression in adolescence. We examined these associations by assessing neural activity during negative vs. positive self-referential processing in 39 11-to-13-year-old girls. During a functional neuroimaging task, girls reported on their perceptions of self-concept by rating how true they believed positive and negative personality traits were about them. Girls reported on depressive symptoms at the scan and 6 months later. Activation in the dorsomedial and ventrolateral prefrontal cortexes (dMPFC; VLPFC), and visual association area was significantly associated with subjective self-concept and/or depressive symptoms at the scan or 6 months later. Exploratory models showed higher activation in the dMPFC to Self-negative > Self-positive was indirectly associated with concurrent depressive symptoms through more negative self-concept. Higher activation in the visual association area to Self-positive > Self-negative was associated with lower depressive symptoms at follow-up through more positive self-concept. Findings highlight how differential neural processing of negative versus positive self-relevant information maps onto perceptions of self-concept and adolescent depression.

The link between adolescent girls' interpersonal emotion regulation with parents and peers and depressive symptoms: A real-time investigation.

Adolescents often experience heightened socioemotional sensitivity warranting their use of regulatory strategies. Yet, little is known about how key socializing agents help regulate teens' negative emotions in daily life and implications for long-term adjustment. We examined adolescent girls' interpersonal emotion regulation (IER) with parents and peers in response to negative social interactions, defined as parent and peer involvement in the teen's enactment of emotion regulation strategies. We also tested associations between rates of daily parental and peer IER and depressive symptoms, concurrently and one year later. Adolescent girls (N = 112; Mage = 12.39) at temperamental risk for depressive disorders completed a 16-day ecological momentary assessment protocol measuring reactivity to negative social interactions, parental and peer IER, and current negative affect. Results indicated that adolescents used more adaptive strategies with peers and more maladaptive strategies with parents in daily life. Both parental and peer IER down-regulated negative affect, reflected by girls' decreased likelihood of experiencing continued negative affect. Higher proportions of parental adaptive IER predicted reduced depressive symptoms one year later. Findings suggest that both parents and peers effectively help adolescent girls down-regulate everyday negative emotions; however, parents may offer more enduring benefits for long-term adjustment.

Subgenual Anterior Cingulate Cortex Reactivity to Rejection Vs. Acceptance Predicts Depressive Symptoms among Adolescents with an Anxiety History.

OBJECTIVE: The goal of this study was to examine whether neural sensitivity to negative peer evaluation conveys risk for depression among youth with a history of anxiety. We hypothesized that brain activation in regions that process affective salience in response to rejection, relative to acceptance, from virtual peers would predict depressive symptoms 1 year later and would be associated with ecological momentary assessment (EMA) reports of peer connectedness. METHOD: Participants were 38 adolescents ages 11-16 (50% female) with a history of anxiety, recruited from a previous clinical trial. The study was a prospective naturalistic follow-up of depressive symptoms assessed 2 years (Wave 2) and 3 years (Wave 3) following treatment. At Wave 2, participants completed the Chatroom Interact Task during neuroimaging and 16 days of EMA. RESULTS: Controlling for depressive and anxiety symptoms at Wave 2, subgenual anterior cingulate (sgACC; ß = .39, p = .010) activation to peer rejection (vs. acceptance) predicted depressive symptoms at Wave 3. SgACC activation to rejection (vs. acceptance) was highly negatively correlated with EMA reports of connectedness with peers in daily life (r = - .71, p < .001). CONCLUSION: Findings suggest that elevated sgACC activation to negative, relative to positive, peer evaluation may serve as a risk factor for depressive symptoms among youth with a history of anxiety, perhaps by promoting vigilance or reactivity to social evaluative threats. SgACC activation to simulated peer evaluation appears to have implications for understanding how adolescents experience their daily social environments in ways that could contribute to depressive symptoms.

Therapeutic Alliance, Attendance, and Outcomes in Youths Receiving CBT or Client-Centered Therapy for Anxiety.

OBJECTIVE: Positive associations between therapeutic alliance and outcome (e.g. youth symptom severity) have been documented in the youth anxiety literature; however, little is known about the conditions under which early alliance contributes to positive outcomes in youth. The present study examined the relations between therapeutic alliance, session attendance, and outcomes in youths (N = 135; 55.6% female) who participated in a randomized clinical trial testing the efficacy of cognitive-behavioral therapy or client-centered therapy for anxiety. METHOD: We evaluated a conceptual model wherein: (1) early alliance indirectly contributes to positive outcomes by improving session attendance; (2) alliance-outcome associations differ by intervention type, with stronger associations in cognitive-behavioral therapy compared to client-centered therapy; and (3) alliance-outcome associations vary across outcome measurement timepoints, with the effect of early alliance on outcomes decaying over time. RESULTS: Contrary to hypotheses, provider ratings of early alliance predicted greater youth-rated anxiety symptom severity post-treatment (i.e. worse treatment outcomes). Session attendance predicted positive youth-rated outcomes, though there was no indirect effect of early alliance on outcomes through session attendance. CONCLUSIONS: Results show that increasing session attendance is important for enhancing outcomes and do not support early alliance as a predictor of outcomes.

Adolescents' Hormonal Responses to Social Stress and Associations with Adolescent Social Anxiety and Maternal Comfort: A Preliminary Study.

Both social support and social stress can impact adolescent physiology including hormonal responses during the sensitive transition to adolescence. Social support from parents continues to play an important role in socioemotional development during adolescence. Sources of social support and stress may be particularly impactful for adolescents with social anxiety symptoms. The goal of the current study was to examine whether adolescent social anxiety symptoms and maternal comfort moderated adolescents' hormonal response to social stress and support. We evaluated 47 emotionally healthy 11- to 14-year-old adolescents' cortisol and oxytocin reactivity to social stress and support using a modified version of the Trier Social Stress Test for Adolescents that included a maternal comfort paradigm. Findings demonstrated that adolescents showed significant increases in cortisol and significant decreases in oxytocin following the social stress task. Subsequently, we found that adolescents showed significant decreases in cortisol and increases in oxytocin following the maternal comfort paradigm. Adolescents with greater social anxiety symptoms showed higher levels of cortisol at baseline but greater declines in cortisol response following maternal social support. Social anxiety symptoms were unrelated to oxytocin response to social stress or support. Our findings provide further evidence that mothers play a key role in adolescent regulation of physiological response, particularly if the stressor is consistent with adolescents' anxiety. More specifically, our findings suggest that adolescents with higher social anxiety symptoms show greater sensitivity to maternal social support following social stressors. Encouraging parents to continue to serve as a supportive presence during adolescent distress may be helpful for promoting stress recovery during the vulnerable transition to adolescence.

Displays of negative facial affect during parent-adolescent conflict and the bidirectional transmission of social anxiety.

BACKGROUND: Symptoms of social anxiety rise rapidly during adolescence, particularly for girls. Pervasive displays of parental negative affect may increase adolescents' fear of negative evaluation (FNE), thereby increasing risk for social anxiety symptoms. Adolescent displays of negative affect may also exacerbate parents' social anxiety symptoms (via FNE of their child or their parenting skills), yet little research has tested transactional pathways of transmission in families. By early adolescence, rates of parent-child conflict rise, and offspring become increasingly independent in their own displays of negative affect, increasing opportunities for hypothesized transactional pathways between parent-adolescent displays of negative affect and social anxiety symptoms. METHODS: This study included 129 parents and daughters (11-13; no baseline social anxiety disorder), two-thirds of whom were at high risk for social anxiety due to a shy/fearful temperament. We used actor-partner interdependence models (APIM) to test whether displays of negative facial affect, assessed individually for each parent and daughter during a conflict discussion, would predict their partner's social anxiety symptoms two years later. Automated facial affect coding assessed the frequency of negative affect during the discussion. Clinician ratings of social anxiety symptoms were completed at baseline and two-year follow-up. RESULTS: Both parents and daughters who displayed more frequent negative facial affect at baseline had partners with higher follow-up social anxiety symptoms, an effect that was maintained after accounting for actors' and partners' baseline symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: Findings are consistent with intergenerational models positing that parental negative affective behaviors increase risk for adolescent social anxiety symptoms but also suggest that adolescent negative facial affect may exacerbate parental social anxiety symptoms. These bidirectional effects improve understanding of how social anxiety is maintained within a transactional family structure and highlight that displays of negative affect during parent-adolescent interaction may warrant future examination as a potential treatment target for adolescent social anxiety.

Storm Clouds and Silver Linings: Day-to-Day Life in COVID-19 Lockdown and Emotional Health in Adolescent Girls.

OBJECTIVE: We examined risk and protective factors for emotional health problems in adolescent girls during the COVID-19 pandemic. We investigated pre- to early-pandemic changes in symptoms of anxiety and depression, documented daily activities and perceived positive and negative impacts of the pandemic, and linked perceived positive and negative impacts of the pandemic to real-time changes in emotional health. METHODS: The study was a 10-day daily diary study with 93 U.S. adolescent girls (aged 12-17; 68% White non-Hispanic) at temperamental risk for anxiety and depression, conducted in April/May 2020 when all participants were under state-issued stay-at-home orders. Girls provided daily reports of positive and negative affect, depressive and anxious symptoms, activities, and positive and negative impacts resulting from the pandemic. RESULTS: Girls reported engaging in many activities that may contribute to well-being. Mixed effects analyses revealed positive impacts associated with improved same-day emotional health such as more time for family and relaxation and reduced pressure from school/activities. Negative impacts associated with poorer same-day emotional health included problems with online schooling, lack of space/privacy, lack of a regular schedule, and family conflict. CONCLUSION: Findings highlight the importance of providing in-person or quality online schooling, resources and space for learning, promoting daily routines, and spending time with teens while reducing family conflict. The pandemic also appears to have offered many girls a respite from the chronic stress of modern teen life, with time to relax and engage in creative and healthy pursuits showing benefits for daily emotional health, which should be considered following the return to normal life.

Real-world flexibility in adolescent girls' emotion regulation strategy selection: An investigation of strategy switching.

Adolescence is an important stage for the development of emotion regulation skills, especially for adolescent girls who are at elevated risk for the development of depression and anxiety. Although some emotion regulation strategies are more effective at helping adolescents regulate negative affect on average, research indicates strategy effectiveness varies with the context in which a strategy is deployed. Yet less work has been done examining which contextual factors are associated with adolescents switching emotion regulation strategies in their daily lives. This study examined individual and contextual factors related to negative interpersonal events that are associated with strategy effectiveness, including age, emotional intensity, perceived controllability, and co-regulatory support, and their association with adolescent emotion regulation strategy switching in daily life via ecological momentary assessment. Results indicated that adolescent girls differed in the degree to which they altered their emotion regulation strategies throughout their daily lives, and that switching strategies was associated with age as well as individual and within-person differences in perceived controllability, emotional intensity, and co-regulatory support. This study provides critical proof-of-concept of the utility of emotion regulation strategy switching as a measure of regulatory flexibility and highlights regulatory processes that may hold clues to the mechanisms of developmental psychopathology.

Adolescent girls' intrapersonal and interpersonal parasympathetic regulation during peer support is moderated by trait and state co-rumination.

Effective emotion regulation (ER) is integral to adolescents' mental well-being and socioemotional development. During adolescence, peer interactions have an increasingly salient influence on the development of effective ER, but not all supportive peer interactions support adaptive ER. Co-rumination reflects the tendency to seek ER support by engaging with peers in negatively focused discussion of ongoing problems. We examined associations between co-rumination (state and trait) with measures of individual's autonomic (i.e., respiratory sinus arrhythmia, RSA) and affective regulation (self-report) among 30 female close-friend dyads (ages 11-17; 74% White) while engaged in a support-seeking discussion in the laboratory. We found that trait co-rumination corresponded with RSA withdrawal during peer support, suggesting a potential mechanism by which co-rumination contributes to dysregulated ER. We also examined dyadic patterns of physiological regulation via prospective change actor partner interdependence models (APIM). Partner effects were moderated by behaviorally coded state co-rumination. Dyads with high state co-rumination displayed coupled RSA movement in opposite directions, while dyads with low state co-rumination exhibited coupled RSA movement in the same direction. These findings are consistent with similar physiologic linkages in close relationships observed in other developmental periods. Results highlight the importance of multimodal assessment for characterizing social ER processes across development.

Interpretation Bias and Anticipated Distress in the Face of Ambiguity: Predictors of Change in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Youth Anxiety.

This study examined associations among children's anxiety, interpretation bias, and anticipated distress before and after cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and investigated baseline levels of interpretation bias and anticipated distress as well as changes in these cognitive biases following treatment as predictors of treatment outcome. Clinically anxious youth (N = 39) were treated with brief CBT augmented with a smartphone app. Children completed measures assessing their anxiety, interpretation bias, and anticipated distress at baseline, post-treatment, and 2-month follow-up. Children's anxiety, interpretation bias, and anticipated distress significantly decreased following treatment. Anticipated distress was associated with higher anxiety at all time points; however, interpretation bias was not significantly associated with anxiety before or after treatment. Reductions in anticipated distress following treatment predicted concurrent and prospective reductions in anxiety. Reduced anticipated distress following treatment may contribute to enhanced treatment outcomes and may be more strongly related to the maintenance of youth anxiety than interpretation bias.

Changes in Affective Network Variability Among Youth Treated for Anxiety Disorders.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has been shown to be an efficacious treatment for youth anxiety, but we need to know more about the process of change. Affective network variability, or the "spread" of positive and negative emotions activated across a given time period, has been found to be positively associated with anxiety disorder symptomatology, but it is not yet known how this construct changes in response to intervention or its association with anxiety-focused treatment outcomes. The present study used a dynamical systems framework to model ecological momentary assessment (EMA) data collected via a cellular telephone from 114 youth aged 9-14 years (Mage = 10.94, SD = 1.46) who were seeking treatment for a primary anxiety disorder. We examined patterns of affective network variability over time and across (a) CBT and (b) client-centered therapy (CCT) to determine whether affective network changes were specific to CBT or due to nonspecific factors. Associations between treatment outcomes and patterns of affect at pretreatment and over the course of the treatments were also examined. Results revealed significant decreases in affective network variability over the course of treatment for youth who received CBT, but not for youth who received CCT. Changes in affective network variability over the course of treatment did not predict treatment outcomes. Findings provide initial support for the dynamical systems approach to examining changes that occur during treatment. Implications and future research are discussed.

Exploring the Impact of Maternal and Paternal Acceptance on Adolescent Girls' Emotion Regulation.

Maternal acceptance is associated with youth emotion regulation (a correlate of depression among adolescent girls); however, less is known about the impact of fathers. In this prospective study, we examined effects of maternal and paternal acceptance on youth sadness inhibition (a facet of emotion dysregulation) among adolescent girls (n = 82; Mage = 13.28; 43% from minoritized racial/ethnic groups) over 1 year. Youth varied on depression risk, which was assessed via clinical diagnostic interviews. Bivariate results showed that maternal acceptance was associated with lower youth sadness inhibition at baseline and 1-year follow-up, while paternal acceptance was only associated with lower youth sadness inhibition at 1-year follow-up. Step-wise regressions showed that paternal acceptance was inversely associated with youth sadness inhibition over time, above and beyond effects of youth age, baseline sadness inhibition, depression risk, and maternal acceptance. Findings highlight the importance of examining both mothers' and fathers' impact on adolescent girls' development of emotion regulation.

Neural Responses to Social Reward Predict Depressive Symptoms in Adolescent Girls During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

OBJECTIVE: Adolescent depression is increasing during the COVID-19 pandemic, possibly related to dramatic social changes. Individual-level factors that contribute to social functioning, such as temperament and neural reactivity to social feedback, may confer risk for or resilience against depressive symptoms during the pandemic. METHODS: Ninety-three girls (12-17 years) oversampled for high shy/fearful temperament were recruited from a longitudinal study for a follow-up COVID-19 study. During the parent study (2016-2018), participants completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging task eliciting neural activity to performance-related social feedback. Depressive symptoms were assessed during the parent study and COVID-19 follow-up (April-May 2020). In 65 participants with complete data, we examined how interactions between temperament and neural activation to social reward or punishment in a socio-affective brain network predict depressive symptoms during COVID-19. RESULTS: Depressive symptoms increased during COVID-19. Significant interactions between temperament and caudate, putamen, and insula activation to social reward were found. Girls high in shy/fearful temperament showed negative associations between neural activation to social reward and COVID-19 depressive symptoms, whereas girls lower in shy/fearful temperament showed positive associations. CONCLUSIONS: Girls high in shy/fearful temperament with reduced neural activation to social reward may be less likely to engage socially, which could be detrimental during the pandemic when social interactions are limited. In contrast, girls lower in shy/fearful temperament with heightened neural reactivity to social reward may be highly motivated to engage socially, which could also be detrimental with limited social opportunities. In both cases, improving social connection during the pandemic may attenuate or prevent depressive symptoms.

Into the Unknown: Examining Neural Representations of Parent-Adolescent Interactions.

The parent-adolescent relationship is important for adolescents' emotion regulation (ER), yet little is known regarding the neural patterns of dyadic ER that occur during parent-adolescent interactions. A novel measure that can be used to examine such patterns is cross-brain connectivity (CBC)-concurrent and time-lagged connectivity between two individuals' brain regions. This study sought to provide evidence of CBC and explore associations between CBC, parenting, and adolescent internalizing symptoms. Thirty-five adolescents (mean age = 15 years, 69% female, 72% Non-Hispanic White, 17% Black, 11% Hispanic or Latino) and one biological parent (94% female) completed an fMRI hyperscanning conflict discussion task. Results revealed CBC between emotion-related brain regions. Exploratory analyses indicated CBC is associated with parenting and adolescent depressive symptoms.

Parents still matter! Parental warmth predicts adolescent brain function and anxiety and depressive symptoms 2 years later.

Anxiety is the most prevalent psychological disorder among youth, and even following treatment, it confers risk for anxiety relapse and the development of depression. Anxiety disorders are associated with heightened response to negative affective stimuli in the brain networks that underlie emotion processing. One factor that can attenuate the symptoms of anxiety and depression in high-risk youth is parental warmth. The current study investigates whether parental warmth helps to protect against future anxiety and depressive symptoms in adolescents with histories of anxiety and whether neural functioning in the brain regions that are implicated in emotion processing and regulation can account for this link. Following treatment for anxiety disorder (Time 1), 30 adolescents (M age = 11.58, SD = 1.26) reported on maternal warmth, and 2 years later (Time 2) they participated in a functional neuroimaging task where they listened to prerecorded criticism and neutral statements from a parent. Higher maternal warmth predicted lower neural activation during criticism, compared with the response during neutral statements, in the left amygdala, bilateral insula, subgenual anterior cingulate (sgACC), right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, and anterior cingulate cortex. Maternal warmth was associated with adolescents' anxiety and depressive symptoms due to the indirect effects of sgACC activation, suggesting that parenting may attenuate risk for internalizing through its effects on brain function.

Adolescent girls' physiological reactivity to real-world peer feedback: A pilot study to validate a Peer Expressed Emotion task.

Peer feedback becomes highly salient during adolescence, especially for girls. The way in which adolescents react to social feedback is associated with psychosocial adjustment and mental health. Consequently, researchers are increasingly interested in understanding the physiological and neural underpinnings of adolescent response to feedback by simulating the experience of rejection and acceptance using computer-based paradigms. However, these paradigms typically use nonfamiliar peers and the facade of internet chatrooms or games to present artificial peer feedback. The current study piloted the use of a novel and potentially more ecologically valid peer expressed emotion paradigm in which participants listen to prerecorded clips of ostensible personalized feedback made by their close friend. Physiological data measuring autonomic nervous system response were collected as an index of emotional reactivity/arousal and cognitive-affective processing. Results show promising preliminary evidence validating the task for future use. Participants (N = 18 girls, aged 11-17 years) reported feeling more positive following praise, relative to critical and neutral feedback, and reported feeling more upset following criticism, relative to praise and neutral feedback. Girls exhibited greater pupillary dilation, skin conductance levels (N = 17), and/or heart rate (N = 17) while listening to affectively charged, peer feedback compared with neutral yet personally relevant statements. Girls also exhibited variable physiological response when listening to praising versus critical feedback. Findings from this pilot study validate the use of this novel Peer Expressed Emotion task for the investigation of adolescents' emotional and physiological reactivity in response to real-world peer evaluation. However, it is important to recognize that this study provides only preliminary findings and that future research is needed to replicate the results in larger samples.

Using mobile eye-tracking technology to examine adolescent daughters' attention to maternal affect during a conflict discussion.

Attention to socio-emotional stimuli (i.e., affect-biased attention) is an integral component of emotion regulation and human communication. Given the strong link between maternal affect and adolescent behavior, maternal affect may be a critical influence on adolescent affect-biased attention during mother-child interaction. However, prior methodological constraints have precluded fine-grained examinations of factors such as maternal affect on adolescent attention during real-world social interaction. Therefore, this pilot study capitalized on previously validated technological advances by using mobile eye-tracking and facial affect coding software to quantify the influence of maternal affect on adolescents' attention to the mother during a conflict discussion. Results from 7,500 to 9,000 time points sampled for each mother-daughter dyad (n = 28) indicated that both negative and positive maternal affect, relative to neutral, elicited more adolescent attentional avoidance of the mother (ORs = 2.68-9.20), suggesting that typically developing adolescents may seek to avoid focusing on maternal affect of either valence during a conflict discussion. By examining the moment-to-moment association between in vivo displays of maternal affect and subsequent adolescent attention toward the mother's face, these results provide preliminary evidence that maternal affect moderates adolescent attention. Our findings are consistent with cross-species approach-avoidance models suggesting that offspring respond to affectively charged conversations with greater behavioral avoidance or deference.