Does coding internal working models of attachment have to be so hard?

The Child Attachment Interview (CAI) has demonstrated promise in youth, yet widespread use is thwarted by the need for interview transcription, face-to-face training, and reliability certification. The present study sought to examine the empirical basis for these barriers. Thirty-five archival CAIs were re-coded by: (1) expert coders (i.e., trained and reliable) without access to transcripts, (2) trained coders who had not completed reliability training, and (3) novice coders who had no formal training. Agreement with consensus classifications was computed with the expectation of moderate agreement. Results supported coding by experts without transcription of the interview. Near-moderate agreement preliminarily supported the use of trained coders who have not attempted reliability certification with appropriate caveats. While moderate agreement was not achieved for novice raters, findings suggest that self-paced training options for the CAI may hold future promise. These contributions erode a number of significant barriers to the current use of the CAI.

The Role of Core Biopsy versus Vacuum-Assisted Breast Biopsy In Primary Breast Angiosarcoma.

We report the case of a 45-year-old woman with a slow-growing palpable nodule on the left breast, confirmed as a well-defined opacity on mammography, corresponding to a 5 cm hyperechoic lesion on ultrasound, and considered, on the basis of clinical examination and radiological findings, to be consistent with a lipoma. One year later, the patient represented with an enlarged left breast mass and underwent further imaging investigation with subsequent diagnosis of primary breast angiosarcoma obtained via a Vacuum-Assisted Breast Biopsy. The patient developed metastatic disease and succumbed to the disease one year after definitive diagnosis. Primary breast angiosarcoma is a rare malignant vascular neoplasia, characterized by aggressive patterns, poor prognosis, and absence of pathognomonic radiological features. Currently, there are no evidence-based guidelines regarding treatment, even though wide surgical resection followed by chemo- and radiotherapy appears to improve survival.

Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms and Recidivism in Serious Juvenile Offenders: Testing the Mediating Role of Future Orientation.

Evidence suggests delinquent youth are more likely to suffer from posttraumatic stress symptoms and links those symptoms to subsequent aggressive behavior and criminal activity. Research also indicates the impact of decision-making capacity in this context. Specifically, future orientation has been shown to play an important role in adolescent delinquency; less future orientation has been linked with persistent delinquency. Notably, trauma exposure is associated with slower development of future orientation in delinquent youth. Using a sample of serious juvenile offenders, the current study examined the relation between posttraumatic stress symptoms and aggressive reoffending testing the hypothesis that future orientation would mediate that relation. Results did not indicate significant mediation by future orientation in the link between posttraumatic stress symptoms and aggressive reoffending. However, experiencing posttraumatic stress symptoms and low future orientation separately increased the likelihood of aggressive recidivism. Findings highlight the value of comprehensive prevention and intervention efforts, targeting both posttraumatic stress symptoms and future orientation.

Attachment and loss in the context of US immigration: caregiver separation and characteristics of internal working models of attachment in high school students.

Attachment affects a child's well-being across their lifespan. This study aimed to describe internal working models of attachment in immigrant adolescents - an often overlooked population that frequently experiences caregiver separation. Data were collected from a high school for recently immigrated youth. Attachment was assessed using the Child Attachment Interview (CAI; n = 35) and personal experiences of separation from caregivers were assessed using a semi-structured interview (n = 31). Findings indicated 62.1% of respondents experienced the migration of one of their caregivers. Separation from mothers was linked to lower maternal attachment security. Descriptive data supported this result. Despite a small sample size, the current study utilized interview-based methods to provide in-depth characterizations of parental separation and adolescent attachment in an understudied population. Finally, the current study has implications for public policy debates regarding immigrant families, which have recently surged.

Factor structure and clinical utility of the Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory in an inpatient sample.

Previous research on the Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory (YPI; Andershed et al., 2002) has identified a three-factor structure: Interpersonal, Affective, and Behavioral. The present study sought to test this three-factor structure and broader psychometric properties of the YPI in a sample of 328 adolescents undergoing inpatient psychiatric care. Confirmatory factor analyses were used to test the hypothesized three-factor structure of the YPI previously documented in community samples. Exploratory analyses reported on modification indices, gender invariance, and fit of a bifactor model. Additionally, the clinical utility of the YPI was examined by examined the relation between the YPI and the antisocial personality scale of the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI-A-ANT; Morey, 2007). Confirmatory Factor Analysis results did not replicate the previously documented three-factor structure in the inpatient sample; a bifactor model continued to display poor (albeit improved) fit. Still, there was a strong association between the YPI (total and factor scores) and PAI-A-ANT, as such the YPI accurately identified adolescents with clinically significant antisocial traits. A cut-off score is presented for the YPI total score.

Contribution of schools to mental health and resilience in recently immigrated youth.

Given the high risk of psychopathology among recently immigrated Central American adolescents, the aim of this study was to examine several putative protective factors: parental attachment, peer attachment, and school engagement. Based on prior research with other immigrant groups, parental and peer attachment were expected to correlate with reduced mental health problems, increased prosocial behavior, and increased resilience. However, the current study sought to add to existing data regarding putative protective factors by testing the incremental contribution of school engagement over and above existing support from parents and peers. The present study included 78 recently immigrated adolescents from Central America who were enrolled at a public high school for recent immigrants. Findings revealed that school engagement made a significant, positive contribution to mental health and resilience for youth above and beyond the effects of parental and peer attachment. Specifically, school engagement (i.e., subscales Behavioral Engagement, Emotional Disaffection, and Active Behavioral Disaffection) uniquely contributed to models predicting externalizing psychopathology, prosocial behavior, and resilience. In sum, the findings of this study preliminarily suggest that fostering school engagement may have protective effects for recently immigrated youth above and beyond traditional (i.e., peer, family) supports. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Pilot data supporting an attachment-based theory of adolescent social media use.

BACKGROUND: Adolescents have virtually universal access to social media. Despite ample research linking attachment to social functioning in youth, neither this empirical research nor related theory has been extended to the virtual social context. The broad aim of this study was to test an attachment-based model of social media use in adolescents in order to address a gap in the literature during this developmental stage and examine attachment and the related process of mentalizing as correlates of online behavior. METHOD: Online social comparison/feedback-seeking was selected as an outcome variable due to its known negative effects on adolescents. Analyses were conducted in a sample of 68 adolescents ranging in age from 15 to 18. RESULTS: No evidence of a main effect of parent-child attachment on social comparison/feedback-seeking was found, but a significant mediational effect indicated that more insecure parent-child attachment is linked with hypermentalizing errors (i.e., overinterpretation of others' mental states) and that such errors explain increased social comparison/feedback-seeking. CONCLUSIONS: The current study confirmed previously documented relations between parent-child attachment and hypermentalization as well as research demonstrating that parent-child attachment acts on an adolescent's social world - in this case their virtual social world - through anomalous mentalization.

Psychometric evaluation of the Inventory of Interpersonal Problems 32.

The Inventory of Interpersonal Problems 32 (IIP-32; Horowitz, Aiden, Wiggins, & Pincus, 2000) is a brief, 32-item, self-report questionnaire used to screen for interpersonal problems. While studies of the IIP-32's psychometric properties have been conducted in other nations, and studies have examined the psychometric properties of the IIP-32's circumplex structure, no studies have examined the factor-analytic structure in the United States since the original standardization sample. The aim of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of the IIP-32 in American college women for the first time and explore its structural validity as a circumplex measure and its concurrent validity with measures of attachment. The current study found that internal consistency estimates and interscale correlations were generally high and confirmed the proposed circumplex structure. In addition, concurrent validity was evidenced by confirming theorized relations between attachment and the IIP-32 subscales. However, IIP-32 subscales were limited with regard to divergent validity.

Trauma and Aggression: Investigating the Mediating Role of Mentalizing in Female and Male Inpatient Adolescents.

High rates of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms and elevated levels of aggression are common among youth in inpatient psychiatric settings. Several models link trauma exposure to aggression through anomalous mental state reasoning. Some theoretical frameworks linking trauma to aggression specify that the over-attribution of hostile mental states contributes to the development of aggressive behavior whereas other theories suggest that an inhibition of mental state reasoning leads to aggressive behavior. Using a sample of inpatient adolescents, the current study examined relations between PTSD symptoms and four forms of aggression, exploring the role of both over- and under-mentalizing (i.e., hypo- and hypermentalizing) as mediators and gender as a moderator. The results suggest that hypermentalizing, but not hypomentalizing, mediates the relation between trauma and aggression, extending prior research related to inpatient adolescents for the first time. Evidence of moderated mediation was noted, such that this mediational relation was evident for females but not males. The current study offers support for differential underlying causes of aggression among males and females with PTSD symptoms.

Reproductive Steroid Regulation of Mood and Behavior.

In this article, we examine evidence supporting the role of reproductive steroids in the regulation of mood and behavior in women and the nature of that role. In the first half of the article, we review evidence for the following: (i) the reproductive system is designed to regulate behavior; (ii) from the subcellular to cellular to circuit to behavior, reproductive steroids are powerful neuroregulators; (iii) affective disorders are disorders of behavioral state; and (iv) reproductive steroids affect virtually every system implicated in the pathophysiology of depression. In the second half of the article, we discuss the diagnosis of the three reproductive endocrine-related mood disorders (premenstrual dysphoric disorder, postpartum depression, and perimenopausal depression) and present evidence supporting the relevance of reproductive steroids to these conditions. Existing evidence suggests that changes in reproductive steroid levels during specific reproductive states (i.e., the premenstrual phase of the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, parturition, and the menopause transition) trigger affective dysregulation in susceptible women, thus suggesting the etiopathogenic relevance of these hormonal changes in reproductive mood disorders. Understanding the source of individual susceptibility is critical to both preventing the onset of illness and developing novel, individualized treatments for reproductive-related affective dysregulation. © 2016 American Physiological Society. Compr Physiol 6:1135-1160, 2016e.