Comparing the multivariate relationships of conceptual adversity models and structural brain development in adolescent girls: A registered report.

Adverse experiences throughout development confer risk for a multitude of negative long-term outcomes, but the processes via which these experiences are neurobiologically embedded are still unclear. Adolescence provides an opportunity to understand how these experiences impact the brain's rapidly changing structure. Two models are central to current adversity conceptualizations: a cumulative risk model, where all types of experiences are combined to represent accumulating stress, and a dimensional model, where certain features of experience (e.g., threat or deprivation) exert unique neurophysiological influence. In this registered report, we extended upon previous research by using a form of representational similarity analysis to examine whether the dimensional and cumulative risk models of adversity predict cortical thinning in frontoparietal and frontotemporal networks and volumetric changes in subcortical regions throughout adolescence. Drawing from a longitudinal sample of 179 adolescent girls (ages 10-13 years at the first wave) from Lane County, Oregon, United States, and up to four waves of follow-up data, we found that operationalizing adversity by similarity in threat and deprivation provided better prediction of brain development than similarity in overall adversity. However, these dimensions do not exhibit unique associations with developmental changes in the hypothesized brain changes. These results underscore the significance of carefully defining adversity and considering its impact on the entire brain. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Mental-Health Trajectories of U.S. Parents With Young Children During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Universal Introduction of Risk.

Parents of young children were a subgroup of the population identified early in the pandemic as experiencing significant mental-health symptoms. Using a longitudinal sample of 3,085 parents from across the United States who had a child or children age 0 to 5, in the present study, we identified parental mental-health trajectories from April to November 2020 predicted by pre-COVID-19 cumulative risk and COVID-19-specific risk factors. Both growth-mixture modeling and latent-growth-curve modeling were used to test the relationship between risk factors and parent mental health. Pre-COVID-19 cumulative risk and COVID-19-specific risks of financial strain, decreased employment, and increased family conflict were salient risk factors predicting poor mental-health trajectories across both modeling approaches. These finding have public-health implications because prolonged exposure to mental-health symptoms in parents constitutes a risk factor for child development.

The promotive and protective effects of parents' perceived changes during the COVID-19 pandemic on emotional well-being among U.S. households with young children: an investigation of family resilience processes.

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic may constitute a traumatic event for families with young children due to its acute onset, the unpredictable and ubiquitous nature, and the highly distressing disruptions it caused in family lives. Despite the prevalent challenges such as material hardships, child care disruptions, and social isolation, some families evinced remarkable resilience in the face of this potentially traumatic event. This study examined domains of changes perceived by parents of young children that were consistent with the post-traumatic growth (PTG) model as factors that facilitate family resilience processes. Methods: This study drew data from the RAPID project, a large ongoing national study that used frequent online surveys to examine the pandemic impact on U.S. households with young children. A subsample of 669 families was leveraged for the current investigation, including 8.07% Black, 9.57% Latino(a), 74.44% non-Latino(a) White families, and 7.92% households of other racial/ethnic backgrounds. In this subsample, 26.36% were below 200% federal poverty level. Results: Approximately half of the parents reported moderate-to-large degrees of changes during the pandemic, and the most prevalent domain of change was appreciation of life, followed by personal strengths, new possibilities, improved relationships, and spiritual growth. Black and Latino(a) parents reported more changes in all five domains than White parents and more spiritual growth than parents of the other racial/ethnic groups. Moreover, parent-reported improved relationships were found to indirectly reduce young children's overall fussiness/defiance and fear/anxiety symptoms through reducing parents' emotional distress. Perceived changes in the new possibilities, personal strengths, and appreciation of life domains were found to serve as protective factors that buffered the indirect impacts of material hardship mean levels on child behavioral symptoms via mitigating parents' emotional distress. Discussion: These findings shed light on resilience processes of a family system in a large-scale, disruptive, and stressful socio-historical event such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The five PTG domains could inform therapeutic and intervention practices in the face of future similar events. Importantly, these findings and the evinced family resilience should not negate the urgent needs of policy and program efforts to address material hardships, financial instabilities, and race/ethnicity-based structural inequalities for families of young children.

Adapting Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Perinatal Depression to Improve Access and Appeal of Preventive Care.

Existing and emerging evidence indicates that perinatal depression is a key contributor to preventable morbidity and mortality during and after childbearing. Despite this, there are few effective options for prevention and treatment that are readily accessible for and appealing to pregnant people. Aspects of routine health care systems contribute to this situation. Furthermore, societal and health care systems factors create additional barriers for people of color, people living in rural regions, and people living in poverty. Our interprofessional team of perinatal care providers, mental health providers, community partners, health services scientists, health equity scientists, and business leaders developed and are piloting a perinatal mental health preventive intervention designed to increase access and appeal of a program incorporating mindfulness cognitive behavioral therapy with proven efficacy in preventing perinatal depression. In this article, we briefly summarize key systems barriers to delivering preventive care for perinatal depression in standard prenatal care clinics. We then describe Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Perinatal Depression and outline our adaptation of this intervention, Center M. Finally, we identify next steps, challenges, and opportunities for this recent innovation.

Material hardship level and unpredictability in relation to U.S. households' family interactions and emotional well-being: Insights from the COVID-19 pandemic.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has been recognized to provide rare insight to advance the scientific understanding of early life adversity, such as material hardship. During the COVID-19 pandemic, material hardship (i.e., difficulty paying for basic needs) in families of young children has had detrimental effects on caregivers' and children's well-being. In addition to the degree of material hardship, the week-to-week and month-to-month unpredictability of hardship status may add to families' stress and worsen well-being. This study examined the magnitude of and mechanisms underlying the effects of material hardship level and unpredictability on the well-being of U.S. households with young children during the pandemic. METHODS: Data were drawn from the RAPID project, a large ongoing national study that used weekly/biweekly online surveys to investigate the pandemic impact on U.S. households with young children. The current study leveraged data from 4621 families who provided at least three responses between April 2020 and October 2021. RESULTS: Findings indicated that racial/ethnic minorities and lower-income households experienced higher levels of material hardship and unpredictability during the pandemic, compared to their White or higher-income counterparts. Levels of pandemic-related material hardship and hardship unpredictability were both significantly associated with worsened well-being among caregivers and children. Finally, the effects of hardship level and unpredictability on well-being outcomes were partially mediated through disrupted family routines. CONCLUSIONS: The findings from this study highlight that ensuring equal and adequate access to financial resources, as well as promoting financial stability for households with young children are both critical for maintaining functional family dynamics and promoting caregivers' and children's optimal well-being.

Differential neural sensitivity to social inclusion and exclusion in adolescents in foster care.

OBJECTIVES: Adolescents in foster care may exhibit differential patterns of brain functioning that contribute to their pervasive socioemotional challenges. However, there has been limited investigation of implicated neural processes, particularly in the social domain. Thus, the current study investigated neural responses to exclusionary and inclusionary peer interactions in adolescents in foster-care. METHODS: Participants comprised adolescents aged 11-18 years in foster care (N = 69) and a community sample (N = 69). They completed an fMRI adaptation of Cyberball, a virtual ball-throwing paradigm, that included periods of exclusion and over-inclusion. To investigate neural sensitivity to peer social experiences, we quantified neural responses that scaled with consecutive inclusionary and exclusionary interactions (using parametric modulators). RESULTS: Relative to the community sample, adolescents in foster care exhibited increasing response to consecutive exclusionary events in lateral prefrontal regions and decreasing response to consecutive inclusionary events in the intraparietal sulcus and temporo-occipital cortex. Further, exploratory analyses revealed that dorsolateral prefrontal activation to exclusion was related to externalizing problems, particularly in the foster care sample. CONCLUSIONS: Findings highlight greater neural sensitivity to exclusionary, and lesser sensitivity to inclusionary, peer interactions in adolescents in foster care. Engagement of prefrontal clusters may reflect greater salience and emotion regulatory processes during exclusion, while parietal and temporal clusters may reflect reduced attention and behavioural engagement during inclusion. Thus foster care involvement is associated with broad changes in neural responses during peer interactions, and further these potentially relate to externalizing problems that have been identified in this vulnerable population.

Early experience unpredictability in child development as a model for understanding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic: A translational neuroscience perspective.

Extensive evidence links adverse experiences during childhood to a wide range of negative consequences in biological, socioemotional, and cognitive development. Unpredictability is a core element underlying most forms of early adversity; it has been a focus of developmental research for many years and has been receiving increasing attention recently. In this article, we propose a conceptual model to describe how unpredictable and adverse early experiences affect children's neurobiological, behavioral, and psychological development in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We first highlight the critical role of unpredictability in child development by reviewing existing conceptual models of early adversity as they relate to subsequent development across the lifespan. Then, we employ a translational neuroscience framework to summarize the current animal- and human-based evidence on the neurobiological alterations induced by early experience unpredictability. We further argue that the COVID-19 pandemic serves as a global "natural experiment" that provides rare insight to the investigation of the negative developmental consequences of widespread, clustered, and unpredictable adverse events among children. We discuss how the pandemic helps advance the science of unpredictable early adverse experiences. As unpredictability research continues to grow, we highlight several directions for future studies and implications for policymaking and intervention practices.

The Effectiveness of KEEP for Families of Children with Developmental Delays: Integrating FIND Video Coaching into Parent Management Training-Oregon Model: a Randomized Trial.

Children with developmental delays or disabilities (DD) are at risk for self-regulation difficulties and behaviour problems compared to typically developing children. Intervening early is crucial to prevent long-term adjustment challenges across home and school contexts. Parenting has been identified as a malleable target of intervention for improving children's adaptive functioning across behavioural, emotional and cognitive domains. Although parent management training (PMT) is an identified best-practice, key questions remain about the critical components of interventions and how novel approaches like video feedback may offer additional benefits. Using a pre-test-post-test one group and superiority design, we evaluated the efficacy of two models of the Keeping Parents Trained and Supported (KEEP) preschool program with parent-only components among 175 families with children diagnosed or at-risk for DD. KEEP-P included core PMT (Oregon Model) methods and KEEP-V integrated KEEP with Filming Interactions to Nurture Development video coaching methods for enhancing developmentally supportive interactions. Intervention outcomes on children's behaviour problems and executive functioning, parenting stress and parent-child relationship quality were compared between groups. Both groups demonstrated significant reductions over time in child behavioural problems, developmental problems and parenting stress. Significant improvements were observed in children's executive functioning, parents' sense of competence and mindfulness in parenting. Group differences were observed in parent's sense of competence, with individuals receiving KEEP-P displaying greater increases over time. Higher intervention dosage predicted a greater reduction in stressful child behaviours and greater improvements in children's inhibitory control.

The COVID-19 Pandemic Impact on Households of Young Children With Special Healthcare Needs.

OBJECTIVE: This study examined how the COVID-19 pandemic differently affected households of children with versus without special healthcare needs. We compared caregivers' and children's emotional well-being (Aim 1), the utilization of preventive healthcare services for young children (Aim 2), and the promotive effects of social support on well-being outcomes (Aim 3) during the pandemic between the two groups. METHODS: Data were drawn from an ongoing, large, longitudinal, and national survey that assessed the pandemic impact on households of young children (0-5). Analyses for Aims 1 and 2 were based on 10,572 households, among which 10.96% had children with special healthcare needs. Analyses for Aim 3 were based on a subsample of 821 families, among which 12.54% had children with special healthcare needs. RESULTS: Caregivers of children with special healthcare needs exhibited more emotional distress and reported higher levels of household children's behavioral problems during the pandemic. The percentages of missed preventive healthcare visits and vaccinations were also higher in families of children with special healthcare needs due to structural barriers. Lastly, emotional social support was indirectly related to children's decreased behavioral problems through caregivers' reduced emotional distress, only among households of children without special healthcare needs. In other words, social support alone was not sufficient in promoting caregivers' and children's better well-being outcomes among households of children with special healthcare needs. CONCLUSIONS: The pandemic has caused extensive burdens on families of children with special healthcare needs. Actions from policymakers and early intervention service providers are urgently needed to mitigate these impacts.

The Value of Mechanistic Experiments to Target the Shared Neural Circuitry of Parenting and Addiction: The Potential for Video Feedback Interventions.

Certain neural processes that underlie addiction are also central to parenting, notably stress and reward. Parenting interventions that incorporate the unique context of caregivers with addiction have demonstrated some success: However, real-world implementation of evidence-based interventions can be difficult with this population. Video feedback interventions are an especially promising approach to reach parents who experience barriers to participation, particularly caregivers with addiction. A translational neuroscientific approach to elucidating the mechanisms of change in these interventions will aid the delivery and success of this method and advance theory surrounding parenting in the context of addiction. Along these lines, we provide an example of one video feedback intervention, Filming Interactions to Nurture Development, that will serve as such a mechanistic experiment.

Psychosocial factors associated with preventive pediatric care during the COVID-19 pandemic.

BACKGROUND: Identifying the factors that predict non-adherence to recommended preventive pediatric care is necessary for the development of successful interventions to improve compliance. PURPOSE: Given the substantial decline in well-child visits and influenza vaccinations, we sought to examine sociodemographic (i.e., parent age, education, employment status, child age, insurance coverage, household size, race and ethnicity, income, COVID-19 incidence in state) and psychosocial (i.e., child temperament, parent mental health, parent personality traits) factors associated with preventative pediatric care (well-child visits, influenza vaccines) during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: As part of a larger, ongoing study, 1875 parents (96% mothers, 65% age 35 or younger, 58% with a college degree) reported whether they had missed any recommended or scheduled well-child visits since the pandemic and whether they had vaccinated their child against the flu. Using data collected during fall 2020, we examine differences in these health outcomes across social/demographic factors and psychological profiles. In addition, we use lasso logistic regression models to (1) estimate the accuracy with which we can predict adherence from these characteristics and (2) identify factors most strongly, independently associated with adherence. RESULTS: Parent psychological factors were associated with outcomes above and beyond known demographic and social factors. For example, parent industriousness and orderliness were associated with greater likelihoods of attending well-child visits and vaccinating children, while parent conservatism and creativity were associated with lower rates. We also replicate prior work documenting that health insurance, income, and household size are major factors in receiving adequate pediatric care. CONCLUSIONS: Adherence to preventive pediatric care varies as a function of psychological factors, suggesting that the current system of pediatric care favors some psychological profiles over others. However, the specific traits associated with non-adherence point to potentially fruitful interventions, specifically around increasing functional proximity.

Characterizing the impact of adversity, abuse, and neglect on adolescent amygdala resting-state functional connectivity.

Characterizing typologies of childhood adversity may inform the development of risk profiles and corresponding interventions aimed at mitigating its lifelong consequences. A neurobiological grounding of these typologies requires systematic comparisons of neural structure and function among individuals with different exposure histories. Using seed-to-whole brain analyses, this study examined associations between childhood adversity and amygdala resting-state functional connectivity (rs-fc) in adolescents aged 11-19 years across three independent studies (N = 223; 127 adversity group) in both general and dimensional models of adversity (comparing abuse and neglect). In a general model, adversity was associated with altered amygdala rs-fc with clusters within the left anterior lateral prefrontal cortex. In a dimensional model, abuse was associated with altered amygdala rs-fc within the orbitofrontal cortex, dorsal precuneus, posterior cingulate cortex, and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex/anterior mid-cingulate cortex, as well as within the dorsal attention, visual, and somatomotor networks. Neglect was associated with altered amygdala rs-fc with the hippocampus, supplementary motor cortex, temporoparietal junction, and regions within the dorsal attention network. Both general and dimensional models revealed unique regions, potentially reflecting pathways by which distinct histories of adversity may influence adolescent behavior, cognition, and psychopathology.

Effects of a school readiness intervention on electrophysiological indices of external response monitoring in children in foster care.

This study examined the impact of a school readiness intervention on external response monitoring in children in foster care. Behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) data were collected during a flanker task from children who received the Kids In Transition to School (KITS) Program (n = 26) and children who received services as usual (n = 19) before and after the intervention. While there were no significant group differences on the behavioral data, the ERP data for the two groups of children significantly differed. Specifically, in contrast to the children who received services as usual, the children who received the KITS Program displayed greater amplitude differences between positive and negative performance feedback over time for the N1, which reflects early attention processes, and feedback-related negativity, which reflects evaluation processes. In addition, although the two groups did not differ on amplitude differences between positive and negative performance feedback for these ERP components before the intervention, the children who received the KITS Program displayed greater amplitude differences than the children who received services as usual after the intervention. These results suggest that the KITS Program had an effect on responsivity to external performance feedback, which may be beneficial during the transition into kindergarten.

Stress system reactivity moderates the association between cumulative risk and children's externalizing symptoms.

This study examined children's stress system reactivity via the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis (HPAA) during an acute stressor as moderators of predicted relations between cumulative risk (CR) and mental health symptoms in a sociodemographically diverse sample of young children (n = 58). We employed a reliable stressor paradigm to allow assessment of individual differences in respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) and pre-ejection period (PEP), indexing ANS reactivity, and salivary cortisol, indexing HPAA reactivity. Children's behaviours were assessed using the Child Behaviour Checklist (CBCL). Cumulative risk was indexed by eight parent-reported sociodemographic and psychosocial risk factors. There was a significant main effect of CR on externalizing but not internalizing behaviours. Significant moderations emerged showing that among children with high CR, less RSA withdrawal during the acute stressor and less cortisol recovery following the stressor were associated with to greater externalizing behaviours. Among children with low CR, RSA and cortisol recovery were unrelated to internalizing or externalizing symptoms. Cortisol and PEP reactivity were not significant moderators. Results highlight the relevance of stress system function for understanding differential susceptibility to the early emergence of externalizing symptoms, linked to cumulative risk exposure.

Expectations of Social Consequences Impact Anticipated Involvement in Health-Risk Behavior During Adolescence.

This study examined how individual differences in expectations of social consequences relate to individuals' expected involvement in health-risk behaviors (HRBs). A total of 122 adolescents (aged 11-17) reported their expected involvement in a number of risk behaviors and whether or not they expect to be liked more or less by engaging in the behavior: the expected social benefit. Higher perceived social benefit was associated with higher anticipated involvement in said behavior. This relationship was stronger for adolescents who reported a higher degree of peer victimization, supporting the hypothesis that experiencing victimization increases the social value of peer interactions. Findings suggest that adolescents incorporate expectations of social consequences when making decisions regarding their involvement in HRBs.

Using item response theory to evaluate the Children's Behavior Questionnaire: Considerations of general functioning and assessment length.

Although the Children's Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ; Rothbart, Ahadi, Hershey, & Fisher, 2001) is the most popular assessment for childhood temperament, its psychometric qualities have yet to be examined using Item Response Theory (IRT) methods. These methods highlight in detail the specific contributions of individual items for measuring different facets of temperament. Importantly, with 16 scales for tapping distinct aspects of child functioning (195 items total), the CBQ's length can be prohibitive in many contexts. The detailed information about item functioning provided by IRT methods is therefore especially useful. The current study used IRT methods to analyze the CBQ's 16 temperament scales and identify potentially redundant items. An abbreviated "IRT form" was generated based on these results and evaluated across four independent validation samples. The IRT form was compared to the original and short CBQ forms (Putnam & Rothbart, 2006). Results provide fine-grained detail on the CBQ's psychometric functioning and suggest it is possible to remove up to 39% of the original form's items while largely preserving the measurement precision and content coverage of each scale. This study provides considerable psychometric information about the CBQ's items and scales and highlights future avenues for creating even more efficient high-quality temperament assessments. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Advancing preventive interventions for pregnant women who are opioid using via the integration of addiction and mental health research.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: This review examines how research focused on treatment for opioid use in perinatal populations and preventive interventions for postpartum psychopathology have remained separate, despite significant overlap. RECENT FINDINGS: Guidelines for best practice in caring for pregnant women with opioid use disorder suggest the use of medication-assisted treatment with additional comprehensive care, including behavioral and mental health interventions. However, intervention research often mutually excludes these two populations, with studies of behavioral interventions for opioid use excluding women with psychopathology and research on preventive interventions for postpartum psychopathology excluding women who are substance using. SUMMARY: There is a limited evidence-base to inform the selection of appropriate preventive interventions for pregnant women with opioid use disorder that can address opioid use and/or treatment adherence and concurrent mental health risks. We argue it is critical to integrate research on pregnant women who are opioid using and preventive perinatal mental health interventions to catalyze pivotal change in how we address the opioid epidemic within this growing population.

Feeling left out or just surprised? Neural correlates of social exclusion and overinclusion in adolescence.

Social belonging is an important human drive that influences mood and behavior. Neural responses to social exclusion are well-characterized, but the specificity of these responses to processing rejection-related affective distress is unknown. The present study compares neural responses to exclusion and overinclusion, a condition that similarly violates fairness expectations but does not involve rejection, with a focus on implications for models of dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and anterior insula (AI) function. In an fMRI adaptation of the Cyberball paradigm with adolescents aged 11.1-17.7 years (N = 69), we employed parametric modulators to examine scaling of neural signal with cumulative exclusion and inclusion events, an approach that overcomes arbitrary definitions of condition onsets/offsets imposed on fluid, continuous gameplay. We identified positive scaling of dACC and posterior insula response with cumulative exclusion events, but these same regions exhibited trending signal decreases with cumulative inclusion events. Furthermore, areas within the dACC and insula also responded to context incongruency (throws to the participant in the exclusion run; throws between computer players in the overinclusion run). These findings caution against interpretations that responses in these regions uniquely reflect the affective distress of exclusion within social interaction paradigms. We further identified that the left ventrolateral PFC, rostromedial PFC, and left intraparietal sulcus responded similarly to cumulative exclusion and inclusion. These findings shed light on which neural regions exhibit patterns of differential sensitivity to exclusion or overinclusion, as well as those that are more broadly engaged by both types of social interaction.