Racial Bias in School Discipline and Police Contact: Evidence From the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Social Development (ABCD-SD) Study.

Objective: Black youth are disproportionately exposed to school exclusionary discipline. We examined the impact of race on age at the onset of school disciplinary actions and police contact, and the rate of receiving increasingly severe disciplinary actions.

Method: Youth (N = 2,156) and their caregivers participating in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Social Development (ABCD-SD) study reported on the occurrence and timing of disciplinary events and youths' demographics, delinquency, and neighborhood conditions.

Polygenic risk score for problematic alcohol use predicts heavy drinking and alcohol use disorder symptoms in young adulthood after accounting for adolescent alcohol use and parental alcohol use disorder.

Background: Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified hundreds of loci associated with alcohol-related traits. GWAS permit the calculation of polygenic risk scores (PRS), which aggregate genetic risk for a trait across the genome. To evaluate the usefulness of a PRS for problematic alcohol use (PAU)-which subsumes alcohol use disorder (AUD) and alcohol-related problems-we tested whether this PRS predicted heavy drinking and alcohol problems after accounting for family history of AUD and prior drinking history, robust and established predictors of PAU.

Differential Item Functioning in Reports of Delinquent Behavior Between Black and White Youth: Evidence of Measurement Bias in Self-Reports of Arrest in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study.

Youth self-reports are a mainstay of delinquency assessment; however, making valid inferences about delinquency using these assessments requires equivalent measurement across groups of theoretical interest. We examined whether a brief 10-item delinquency measure exhibited measurement invariance across non-Hispanic White ( = 6,064) and Black ( = 1,666) youth (ages 10-11 years old) in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (ABCD Study®). We detected differential item functioning (DIF) in two items.

Attitudes about police and race in the United States 2020-2021: Mean-level trends and associations with political attitudes, psychiatric problems, and COVID-19 outcomes.

The murder of George Floyd and subsequent mass protest movement in the summer of 2020 brought policing, race, and police brutality to the forefront of American political discourse. We examined mean-levels of attitudes about police and race using online surveys administered at five time points from June 2020 to October 2021 (n ~ 1000 at each wave) to adults living in the United States. There was a small increase in pro-police attitudes over this time (d = .

Personality and peer groups in adolescence: Reciprocal associations and shared genetic and environmental influences.

Objective: Peer groups represent a critical developmental context in adolescence, and there are many well-documented associations between personality and peer behavior at this age. However, the precise nature and direction of these associations are difficult to determine as youth both select into, and are influenced by, their peers.

Method: We thus examined the phenotypic, genetic, and environmental links between antisocial and prosocial peer characteristics and several personality traits from middle childhood to late adolescence (ages 11, 14, and 17 years) in a longitudinal twin sample (N = 3762) using teacher ratings of personality and self-reports of peer characteristics.

To vax or not to vax: Predictors of anti-vax attitudes and COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy prior to widespread vaccine availability.

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is a highly contagious disease responsible for millions of deaths worldwide. Effective vaccines against COVID-19 are now available, however, an extreme form of vaccine hesitancy known as anti-vax attitudes challenge vaccine acceptance and distribution efforts. To understand these anti-vax attitudes and their associated psychological characteristics, we examined several predictors of vaccine hesitancy for COVID-19 and anti-vax attitudes generally.

Polygenic Score for Smoking is associated with Externalizing Psychopathology and Disinhibited Personality Traits but not Internalizing Psychopathology in Adolescence.

We examined whether a polygenic score (PGS) for smoking measured genetic risk for general behavioral disinhibition by estimating its associations with externalizing and internalizing psychopathology and related personality traits at multiple time points in adolescence (ages 11, 14, and 17 years; = 3225). The smoking PGS had strong associations with the stable variance across time for all the externalizing measures (mean standardized = .27), agreeableness ( = -.

The General Factor of Psychopathology in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study: A Comparison of Alternative Modeling Approaches.

Many models of psychopathology include a single general factor of psychopathology (GFP) or " factor" to account for covariation across symptoms. The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study provides a rich opportunity to study the development of the GFP. However, a variety of approaches for modeling the GFP have emerged, raising questions about how modeling choices impact estimated GFP scores.

Polygenic scores for smoking and educational attainment have independent influences on academic success and adjustment in adolescence and educational attainment in adulthood.

Educational success is associated with greater quality of life and depends, in part, on heritable cognitive and non-cognitive traits. We used polygenic scores (PGS) for smoking and educational attainment to examine different genetic influences on facets of academic adjustment in adolescence and educational attainment in adulthood. PGSs were calculated for participants of the Minnesota Twin Family Study (N = 3225) and included as predictors of grades, academic motivation, and discipline problems at ages 11, 14, and 17 years-old, cigarettes per day from ages 14 to 24 years old, and educational attainment in adulthood (mean age 29.

Age, sex, and other demographic trends in sexual behavior in the United States: Initial findings of the sexual behaviors, internet use, and psychological adjustment survey.

It remains unclear how the seemingly ubiquitous use of the internet impacts user's offline personal relationships, particularly those that are romantic or sexual. Therefore, we conducted a national online survey to better understand the associations among internet use, sexual behavior, and adjustment called the Sexual Behaviors, Internet Use, and Psychological Adjustment Survey (SIPS). Here, we report patterns of sexual behavior in a sample of adults (N = 1987; ages 18-70) in the United States to establish its representativeness and consistency with similar recent surveys.

Differences in child and adult biopsychosocial characteristics associated with regular cannabis use in individuals with and without cannabis use disorder.

Background: Regular cannabis use, even without cannabis use disorder (CUD), is associated with numerous biopsychosocial problems. Biopsychosocial risk factors that precede regular use and CUD might reflect broader pre-existing risk factors rather than the consequence of cannabis use. We aimed to (1) replicate prior work differentiating psychosocial problems associated with regular cannabis use with or without CUD relative to no-use in adulthood, and (2) test if these use groups differed in biopsychosocial functioning in early and middle childhood.

Differentiated nomological networks of internalizing, externalizing, and the general factor of psychopathology (' factor') in emerging adolescence in the ABCD study.

Background: Structural models of psychopathology consistently identify internalizing (INT) and externalizing (EXT) specific factors as well as a superordinate factor that captures their shared variance, the factor. Questions remain, however, about the meaning of these data-driven dimensions and the interpretability and distinguishability of the larger nomological networks in which they are embedded.

Methods: The sample consisted of 10 645 youth aged 9-10 years participating in the multisite Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study.

Co-development of alcohol use problems and antisocial peer affiliation from ages 11 to 34: selection, socialization and genetic and environmental influences.

Background And Aims: Social context is an important factor in determining the developmental trajectory of alcohol use. We examined the co-development between alcohol use problems and antisocial peer affiliation. We also estimated the genetic and environmental influences on alcohol use problems, antisocial peer affiliation and their co-development over time.

Latent variable modeling of item-based factor scales: Comment on Triarchic or septarchic?-Uncovering the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure's (TriPM) Structure, by Roy et al.

We critique Roy et al.'s (2020; this issue) approach to characterizing the item-level factor structure of the three scales of the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure (TriPM), in light of the manner in which the TriPM scales were developed, the purposes they were designed to serve, and the growing body of evidence supporting their construct validity. We focus on three major points: (1) The TriPM scales are item-based factor scales - i.

P3 amplitude reductions are associated with shared variance between internalizing and externalizing psychopathology.

P3 amplitude reductions, commonly elicited in oddball paradigms, have been associated with both internalizing (e.g., depression and anxiety) and externalizing problems (e.

Adolescent Sexual Development and Peer Groups: Reciprocal Associations and Shared Genetic and Environmental Influences.

Peer groups influence the emergence of sexual behaviors in adolescence, but many details regarding the mechanisms underlying these effects have yet to be described. We examined the phenotypic, genetic, and environmental links between both antisocial and prosocial peer characteristics, and several sexual behaviors from middle childhood to late adolescence (ages 11, 14, and 17 years) using a longitudinal twin sample (N = 3762). Antisocial peers predicted greater engagement in both normative (e.

Sex, drugs, and early emerging risk: Examining the association between sexual debut and substance use across adolescence.

Sexual debut, or first intercourse, predicts problem behaviors such as substance use. This association could reflect a direct effect of debut itself, general developmental trends, or the fact that some youth are more predisposed to a wide array of problem behaviors (e.g.

Sexual Development in Adolescence: An Examination of Genetic and Environmental Influences.

Sexual development entails many experiences and is a major feature of adolescence. Most relevant behavioral genetic studies, however, focus primarily on sexual behaviors associated with health risks. We took a more normative, developmental perspective by examining genetic and environmental influences on five sexual behaviors ranging from dating to pregnancy in middle (M  = 14.

Personality, romantic relationships, and alcohol use disorder symptoms in adolescence and young adulthood: An evaluation of personality × social context interplay.

Prior research has shown that person-level characteristics (e.g., temperament, personality) correlate and interact with social-contextual factors (e.

The gender risk-severity paradox for alcohol use disorder from adolescence through young adulthood.

A large proportion of the public health costs of alcohol use disorder (AUD) can be accounted for by a small percentage of severe cases with a chronic course starting in adolescence and persisting into adulthood. However, chronicity may be a less effective marker of AUD severity in women than men due to a gender wherein comparable levels of risk exposure yield more co-occurring problems for women than men with AUD. To model this paradox, we compared trajectories of alcohol and drug use problems, depression symptoms, and antisocial behavior from ages 17 to 29 in men and women with a persistent, desistent, or no history of AUD.

Formulation of a measurement model for the boldness construct of psychopathy.

We describe efforts to formulate a quantitative measurement model for boldness, a construct that has been intensively discussed and investigated in the psychopathy literature in recent years. Although the Fearless Dominance factor of the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI-FD) has served as a major referent for studying this dispositional construct, boldness was not explicitly targeted in developing the PPI, creating the need for a formal measurement model for this construct. Using an exploratory approach to test construction and multiple waves of data collection and analysis involving 1,791 participants, we created nine unidimensional scales (comprising a total of 130 items) for assessing correlated but thematically distinct facets of boldness, and characterized their higher-order structure.

Higher average potency across the United States is associated with progression to first cannabis use disorder symptom.

Objective: To determine if higher potency cannabis is associated with earlier progression to regular cannabis use, daily cannabis use, and cannabis use disorder symptom onset.

Methods: Data sources were the Michigan Longitudinal Study, an ongoing prospective, high-risk family study investigating the course and predictors for substance use disorders among youth beginning prior to school entry and time-parallel national average trends in delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (i.e.