Predicting autism from young Infants' empathic responding: A prospective study.

Difficulties in empathy are frequent among children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and often considered a core feature of autism. Reduced empathy during the second year of life has been shown to predict subsequent ASD diagnosis. However, links between empathy in the first year and ASD have not yet been investigated.

Prosocial behavior in toddlerhood and early childhood: Consistency across subtypes and over time.

Introduction: Young children show their capacity for compassion and their desire to enhance the welfare of others in multiple ways. The present study sought to address gaps in knowledge regarding prosociality in the early years. Specifically, the study examined whether different subtypes of prosociality are interrelated, whether they are consistent over time, as well as the meaning of young children's spontaneous versus cued prosocial behavior.

Developmental trajectories of empathic concern in infancy and their links to social competence in early childhood.

Background: Empathic concern is an important component of children's social competence. Yet, little is known about the role of the development of concern for others during infancy as a predictor of social competence in early childhood.

Methods: Israeli infants (N = 165, 50% girls) were observed five times, from 3 to 36 months.

Adolescent cortisol and DHEA responses to stress as prospective predictors of emotional and behavioral difficulties: A person-centered approach.

Background: Well-orchestrated cortisol and DHEA stress responsivity is thought to support efficacious stressor management (i.e., coping) and reduce risk for psychopathology during adolescence.

The codevelopment of adolescents' and parents' anxiety and depression: Moderating influences of youth gender and psychophysiology.

Methods: In a 2-year longitudinal study of 220 families, we examined how youth gender and adrenocortical and parasympathetic activity moderated reciprocal, bidirectional relations between parent and youth anxiety and depression problems.

Results: Maternal anxiety predicted subsequent youth anxiety and depression. Maternal depression predicted youth anxiety and, for daughters and youth with low adrenocortical reactivity, youth depression.

Early pubertal maturation and externalizing behaviors: Examination of peer delinquency as mediator and cognitive flexibility as a moderator.

Introduction: While peer delinquency is a known mediator between early pubertal timing and externalizing behaviors, little is known about factors that could protect against the adverse influence of peer delinquency. This study assesses the possible moderating role of cognitive flexibility, which is one index of executive functioning that facilitates flexible and adaptive responses to challenging situations. We assessed the interactive influence of peer delinquency and cognitive flexibility in the association between pubertal maturation and externalizing behaviors in boys and girls.

Caring babies: Concern for others in distress during infancy.

Concern for distressed others is a highly valued human capacity, but little is known about its early ontogeny. Theoretical accounts of empathy development have emphasized stages, but this has been called into question. This study sheds new light on four key issues: onset, consistency, development, and predictive power of early manifestations of concern for others.

Predicting externalizing behavior in toddlerhood from early individual differences in empathy.

Background: From middle childhood onward, there is often a negative link between empathy and externalizing behavior problems. Patterns at younger ages are still unclear, with mixed findings of no association, negative associations, and positive associations. This study examines links between empathy and externalizing problems, beginning in infancy.

The association between toddlerhood empathy deficits and antisocial personality disorder symptoms and psychopathy in adulthood.

The present study examined empathy deficits in toddlerhood (age 14 to 36 months) as predictors of antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) symptoms and psychopathy measured by the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy scale (Levenson, Kiehl, & Fitzpatrick, 1995) in adulthood (age 23 years) in 956 individuals from the Colorado Longitudinal Twin Study. Consistent with the hypothesis that antisocial behavior is associated with "active" rather than "passive" empathy deficits, early disregard for others, not lack of concern for others, predicted later ASPD symptoms. Early disregard for others was also significantly associated with factor 1 of the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale, which includes items assessing interpersonal and affective deficits, but not with factor 2, which includes items assessing impulsivity and poor behavioral control.

Cognitively-Based Compassion Training for parents reduces cortisol in infants and young children.

This study tests a group-based secular contemplative practice intervention, Cognitively-Based Compassion Training (CBCT), with parents of young children. We report on a randomized controlled preliminary efficacy study. Certified teachers administered CBCT for 20 hr across 8 to 10 weeks in two cohorts of parents with infants and young children.

Developmental Differences in Prosocial Behavior Between Preschool and Late Elementary School.

Research points to evidence of innate prosocial tendencies present early in life. As more complex cognitive abilities emerge with development, this may alter the expression and nature of prosocial behaviors over time. Sharing is one important expression of prosocial behavior.

Shared Environment Effects on Children's Emotion Recognition.

Empathy is relevant to many psychiatric conditions. Empathy involves the natural ability to perceive and be sensitive to the emotional states of others. Thus, emotion recognition (ER) abilities are key to understanding empathy.

The Measurement of Positive Valence Forms of Empathy and Their Relation to Anhedonia and Other Depressive Symptomatology.

Construct validity of a brief self-report measure of "positive-valence empathy" (the tendency to exude positive emotion as a means to stimulate positive affect in others, and/or to vicariously share in another's positive emotion; Light et al., 2009) was attained utilizing a sample of 282 healthy adults. Positive-valence empathy may have unique predictive ability for differentiating depression versus depression with anhedonia.

Childhood Affective Indicators of Risk for Adulthood Psychopathology: The New York High-Risk Project Findings.

There are relatively few investigations of the emotion expressivity of children at risk for the later development of schizophrenia and schizophrenia-spectrum disorders. Using data from the New York High-Risk Project, we compared children's emotional expressivity during a semi-structured videotaped interview. Data were coded for 173 child subjects: 61 with schizophrenic parents (HRSz); 54 with affectively ill parents (HRAff); and 58 with psychiatrically "normal" parents (NC).

The Association Between Toddlerhood Self-Control and Later Externalizing Problems.

Lower self-control is a significant correlate or predictor of a wide range of adult outcomes, and this association may be due to more general tendencies toward childhood externalizing problems. The present study examined the association between toddlerhood self-control expressed within a "don't" compliance task (at 14-36 months) and later externalizing problems (parent-reported externalizing problems from age 4 to 12 years, teacher-reported externalizing problems from age 7 to 12 years, and self-reported conduct disorder symptoms at age 17 years) in a longitudinal, genetically informative study. The slope of self-control, but not its intercept, predicted later teacher-reported, but not parent- or self-reported, externalizing problems.

Parenting Effects are in the Eye of the Beholder: Parent-Adolescent Differences in Perceptions Affects Adolescent Problem Behaviors.

Although it is known that parents and adolescents hold different views regarding adolescent characteristics (e.g., inter-rater agreement on adolescent behaviors between parents and adolescents is low), we know little about parent-adolescent (dis)agreement in their perceptions of parenting.

An examination of the developmental propensity model of conduct problems.

The present study tested specific hypotheses advanced by the developmental propensity model of the etiology of conduct problems in the Colorado Longitudinal Twin Study, a prospective, longitudinal, genetically informative sample. High negative emotionality, low behavioral inhibition, low concern and high disregard for others, and low cognitive ability assessed during toddlerhood (age 14 to 36 months) were examined as predictors of conduct problems in later childhood and adolescence (age 4 to 17 years). Each hypothesized antisocial propensity dimension predicted conduct problems, but some predictions may be context specific or due to method covariance.

Adolescents', mothers', and fathers' gendered coping strategies during conflict: Youth and parent influences on conflict resolution and psychopathology.

We observed gendered coping strategies and conflict resolution outcomes used by adolescents and parents during a conflict discussion task to evaluate associations with current and later adolescent psychopathology. We studied 137 middle- to upper-middle-class, predominantly Caucasian families of adolescents (aged 11-16 years, 65 males) who represented a range of psychological functioning, including normative, subclinical, and clinical levels of problems. Adolescent coping strategies played key roles both in the extent to which parent-adolescent dyads resolved conflict and in the trajectory of psychopathology symptom severity over a 2-year period.

Are Executive Functioning Deficits Concurrently and Predictively Associated with Depressive and Anxiety Symptoms in Adolescents?

The central objective of the current study was to evaluate how executive functions (EF), and specifically cognitive flexibility, were concurrently and predictively associated with anxiety and depressive symptoms in adolescence. Adolescents (N = 220) and their parents participated in this longitudinal investigation. Adolescents' EF was assessed by the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) during the initial assessment, and symptoms of depressive and anxiety disorders were reported by mothers and youths concurrently and 2 years later.

Adolescents' internalizing and externalizing problems predict their affect-specific HPA and HPG axes reactivity.

We examined psychopathology-neuroendocrine associations in relation to the transition into adolescence within a developmental framework that acknowledged the interdependence of the HPA and HPG hormone systems in the regulation of responses to everyday affective contexts. Saliva samples were collected during anxiety and anger inductions from 51 young adolescents (M 13.47, SD = .

Regulating sadness and fear from outside and within: mothers' emotion socialization and adolescents' parasympathetic regulation predict the development of internalizing difficulties.

Multilevel models of developmental psychopathology implicate both characteristics of the individual and their rearing environment in the etiology of internalizing problems and disorders. Maladaptive regulation of fear and sadness, the core of anxiety and depression, arises from the conjoint influences of ineffective parasympathetic regulation of emotion and ineffective emotion socialization experiences. In 171 youths (84 female, M = 13.

Within-adolescent coupled changes in cortisol with DHEA and testosterone in response to three stressors during adolescence.

It is hypothesized that hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal and hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axes function together to maintain adaptive functioning during stressful situations differently in adolescence than the characteristic inverse relations found in adulthood. We examined within-person correlated changes (coupling) in cortisol, DHEA and testosterone in response to parent-adolescent conflict discussion, social performance, and venipuncture paradigms. Data are derived from two samples of boys and girls from the Northeastern US (213 adolescents aged 11-16, M=13.

Within-person coupling of changes in cortisol, testosterone, and DHEA across the day in adolescents.

We comprehensively examined within-person and between-person associations between cortisol and DHEA and cortisol and testosterone across the day. Data are from a sample of 213 adolescents aged 11-16 (M = 13.7, SD = 1.

Autonomic correlates of children's concern and disregard for others.

Psychophysiological research on empathy and prosociality in children has focused most often on cardiac activity, heart rate (HR), and HR deceleration in particular. We examined these processes in 7-year-old children during two empathy mood inductions. We independently assessed children's responses to others' distress in two different contexts: structured probes (simulated pain) and maternal interviews.