Maternal education prospectively predicts child neurocognitive function: An environmental influences on child health outcomes study.

A large body of research has established a relation between maternal education and children's neurocognitive functions, such as executive function and language. However, most studies have focused on early childhood and relatively few studies have examined associations with changes in maternal education over time. Consequently, it remains unclear if early maternal education is longitudinally related to neurocognitive functions in children, adolescents, and young adults.

Mediating effect of pubertal stages on the family environment and neurodevelopment: An open-data replication and multiverse analysis of an ABCD Study.

Increasing evidence demonstrates that environmental factors meaningfully impact the development of the brain (Hyde et al., 2020; McEwen and Akil, 2020). Recent work from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study suggests that puberty may indirectly account for some association between the family environment and brain structure and function (Thijssen et al.

Neural heterogeneity underlying late adolescent motivational processing is linked to individual differences in behavioral sensation seeking.

Adolescent risk-taking, including sensation seeking (SS), is often attributed to developmental changes in connectivity among brain regions implicated in cognitive control and reward processing. Despite considerable scientific and popular interest in this neurodevelopmental framework, there are few empirical investigations of adolescent functional connectivity, let alone examinations of its links to SS behavior. The studies that have been done focus on mean-based approaches and leave unanswered questions about individual differences in neurodevelopment and behavior.

Ecological stress, amygdala reactivity, and internalizing symptoms in preadolescence: Is parenting a buffer?

Ecological stress during adolescent development may increase the sensitivity to negative emotional processes that can contribute to the onset and progression of internalizing behaviors during preadolescence. Although a small number of studies have considered the link among the relations between ecological stress, amygdala reactivity, and internalizing symptoms in childhood and adolescence, these studies have largely been small, cross-sectional, and often do not consider unique roles of parenting or sex. In the current study, we evaluated the interrelations between ecological stress, amygdala reactivity, subsequent internalizing symptoms, and the moderating roles of parenting and sex among 9- and 10-year-old preadolescents from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study ®.

Interactions between methodological and interindividual variability: How Monetary Incentive Delay (MID) task contrast maps vary and impact associations with behavior.

Introduction: Phenomena related to reward responsiveness have been extensively studied in their associations with substance use and socioemotional functioning. One important task in this literature is the Monetary Incentive Delay (MID) task. By cueing and delivering performance-contingent reward, the MID task has been demonstrated to elicit robust activation of neural circuits involved in different phases of reward responsiveness.

Conceptualizing protective family context and its effect on substance use: Comparisons across diverse ethnic-racial youth.

: Although family behaviors are known to be important for buffering youth against substance use, research in this area often evaluates a particular type of family interaction and how it shapes adolescents' behaviors, when it is likely that youth experience the co-occurrence of multiple types of family behaviors that may be protective The current study ( = 1716, 10th and 12th graders, 55% female) examined associations between protective family context, a latent variable comprised of five different measures of family behaviors, and past 12 months substance use: alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana, and e-cigarettes. A multi-group measurement invariance assessment supported protective family context as a coherent latent construct with partial (metric) measurement invariance among Black, Latinx, and White youth. A multi-group path model indicated that protective family context was significantly associated with less substance use for all youth, but of varying magnitudes across ethnic-racial groups.

Cortical and subcortical response to the anticipation of reward in high and average/low risk-taking adolescents.

Since the first neurodevelopmental models that sought to explain the influx of risky behaviors during adolescence were proposed, there have been a number of revisions, variations and criticisms. Despite providing a strong multi-disciplinary heuristic to explain the development of risk behavior, extant models have not yet reliably isolated neural systems that underlie risk behaviors in adolescence. To address this gap, we screened 2017 adolescents from an ongoing longitudinal study that assessed 15-health risk behaviors, targeting 104 adolescents (Age Range: 17-to-21.

Adolescent substance use and functional connectivity between the ventral striatum and hippocampus.

Neurodevelopmental explanations for adolescent substance use have focused on heightened sensitivity of mesolimbic circuitry, centered on the ventral striatum (VS). Recent evidence suggests that, relative to adults, adolescents show a stronger link between reinforcement learning and episodic memory for rewarding outcomes and greater functional connectivity between the VS and hippocampus, which may reflect a heightened reward modulation of memory. However, a link between VS-hippocampal circuitry and adolescent substance use has yet to be established.

Adolescent Health Risk Behaviors: Convergent, Discriminant and Predictive Validity of Self-Report and Cognitive Measures.

Self-report and cognitive tasks of reward sensitivity and self-regulation have influenced several developmental models that may explain the heightened engagement in risk behaviors during adolescence. Despite some inconsistencies across studies, few studies have explored the convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity of self-report and cognitive measures of these psychological characteristics in adolescence. The present study evaluated the convergent and discriminant validity of self-report and cognitive measures of reward sensitivity and self-regulation among 2017 adolescents (age M = 16.

Social Inequality in Population Developmental Health: An Equity and Justice Issue.

The conceptual framework for this chapter focuses on outcomes in developmental health as a key indicator of equity. Not all disparities in developmental health are indicators of a failure of equity and justice, but those that are clearly linked to social patterns in theoretically coherent and empirically substantial ways serve as a powerful diagnostic tool. They are especially diagnostic when they point to social factors that are remediable, especially in comparison to societies in which such social disparities are sharply lower (Keating, Siddiqi, & Nguyen, 2013).

Transformative Role of Epigenetics in Child Development Research: Commentary on the Special Section.

Lester, Conradt, and Marsit (2016) have assembled a set of articles that bring to readers of Child Development the scope and impact of the exponentially growing research on epigenetics and child development. This commentary aims to place this work in a broader context of theory and research by (a) providing a conceptual framework for developmental scientists who may be only moderately familiar with this emergent field; (b) considering these contributions in relation to the current status of work, highlighting its transformative nature; (c) suggesting cautions to keep in mind, while simultaneously clarifying that these do not undermine important new insights; and (d) identifying the prospects for future work that builds on the progress reflected in this special section.

Planning in middle childhood: early predictors and later outcomes.

Data from 1,364 children and families who participated in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development's Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development were analyzed to track the early correlates and later academic outcomes of planning during middle childhood. Maternal education, through its effect on parenting quality when children were 54 months old, predicts their concurrent performance on sustained attention, inhibition, and short-term verbal memory tests. This performance predicts planning in first grade, which predicts third-grade reading and mathematics attainment, but not the rate of growth in academic skills from first to fifth grades.

What is a representative brain? Neuroscience meets population science.

The last decades of neuroscience research have produced immense progress in the methods available to understand brain structure and function. Social, cognitive, clinical, affective, economic, communication, and developmental neurosciences have begun to map the relationships between neuro-psychological processes and behavioral outcomes, yielding a new understanding of human behavior and promising interventions. However, a limitation of this fast moving research is that most findings are based on small samples of convenience.

A comparative study of population health in the United States and Canada during the neoliberal era, 1980-2008.

This article draws on the vast evidence that suggests, on one hand, that socioeconomic inequalities in health are present in every society in which they have been measured and, on the other hand, that the size of inequalities varies substantially across societies. We conduct a comparative case study of the United States and Canada to explore the role of neoliberalism as a force that has created inequalities in socioeconomic resources (and thus in health) in both societies and the roles of other societal forces (political, economic, and social) that have provided a buffer, thereby lessening socioeconomic inequalities or their effects on health. Our findings suggest that, from 1980 to 2008, while both the United States and Canada underwent significant neoliberal reforms, Canada showed more resilience in terms of health inequalities as a result of differences in: (a) the degree of income inequality, itself resulting from differences in features of the labor market and tax and transfer policies, (b) equality in the provision of social goods such as health care and education, and (c) the extent of social cohesiveness across race/ethnic- and class-based groups.

Pregnancy recruitment for population research: the National Children's Study vanguard experience in Wayne County, Michigan.

Background: To obtain a probability sample of pregnancies, the National Children's Study conducted door-to-door recruitment in randomly selected neighbourhoods in randomly selected counties in 2009-10. In 2011, an experiment was conducted in 10 US counties, in which the two-stage geographic sample was maintained, but participants were recruited in prenatal care provider offices. We describe our experience recruiting pregnant women this way in Wayne County, Michigan, a county where geographically eligible women attended 147 prenatal care settings, and comprised just 2% of total county pregnancies.

Gendered motivational processes affecting high school mathematics participation, educational aspirations, and career plans: a comparison of samples from Australia, Canada, and the United States.

In this international, longitudinal study, we explored gender differences in, and gendered relationships among, math-related motivations emphasized in the Eccles (Parsons) et al. (1983) expectancy-value framework, high school math participation, educational aspirations, and career plans. Participants were from Australia, Canada, and the United States (Ns = 358, 471, 418, respectively) in Grades 9/10 at Time 1 and Grades 11/12 at Time 2.

Cost-Benefit Analysis Mediation of the Relationship Between Sensation Seeking and Risk Behavior.

Risk behavior during adolescence results in substantial morbidity and mortality. Sensation seeking consistently relates to engagement in risk behavior, but the psychological mediators of this relationship remain unclear. The current study demonstrates that adolescents' judgments of the costs versus benefits of risk behavior were a significant mediator of this relationship.

Adolescent drivers: a developmental perspective on risk, proficiency, and safety.

Despite considerable improvement in the rates of crashes, injuries, and fatalities among adolescent drivers, attributable in part to effective interventions such as graduated driver licensing, these rates and their associated health risks remain unacceptably high. To understand the sources of risky driving among teens, as well as to identify potential avenues for further advances in prevention, this article presents a review of the relevant features of contemporary research on adolescent development. Current research offers significant advances in the understanding of the sources of safe driving, proficient driving, and risky driving among adolescents.

Young children's social information processing: family antecedents and behavioral correlates.

Little research has examined whether social information processing (SIP) measures from early childhood predict externalizing problems beyond the shared association with familial risk markers. In the present study, family antecedents and first-grade externalizing behaviors were studied in relation to preschool and 1st-grade SIP using data from the U.S.

Understanding adolescent development: implications for driving safety.

Problem: The implementation of Graduated Driver Licensing (GDL) programs has significantly improved the crash and fatality rates of novice teen drivers, but these rates remain unacceptably high.

Method: A review of adolescent development research was undertaken to identify potential areas of improvement.

Results: Research support for GDL was found to be strong, particularly regarding early acquisition of expertise in driving safety (beyond driving skill), and to limitations that reduce opportunities for distraction.