Day-to-day bidirectional associations between sleep and emotion states in early childhood: Importance of end-of-day mood for sleep quality.

Objectives: Poor quality sleep can impact emotions and emotion regulation, resulting in a "sleep-mood" cycle where poor sleep affects mood and vice-versa. This relationship is poorly understood during early childhood, when sleep patterns and emotion displays are rapidly changing. This study aimed to understand the day-to-day effects of poor sleep on emotions in preschoolers by using objective (actigraphy) and subjective (ecological momentary assessment) measures to assess both between- and within-child effects.

Self-Reported Gonadal Pubertal Timing Predicts Adolescent Borderline Personality Symptoms: Two Extended Replications With Prospective and Cross-Sectional Data.

The current study investigated the understudied relationship between pubertal timing and borderline personality disorder (BPD) symptoms in males and females. We conducted hierarchical linear regressions in a longitudinal Cohort 1 ( = 117) and a cross-sectional Cohort 2 ( = 127). Cohort 1: Pubertal timing was self-reported at age 10; BPD symptoms and covariates were assessed between ages 13 and 19.

Sleep and circadian rhythms during pregnancy, social disadvantage, and alterations in brain development in neonates.

Pregnant women in poverty may be especially likely to experience sleep and circadian rhythm disturbances, which may have downstream effects on fetal neurodevelopment. However, the associations between sleep and circadian rhythm disturbances, social disadvantage during pregnancy, and neonatal brain structure remains poorly understood. The current study explored the association between maternal sleep and circadian rhythm disturbances during pregnancy and neonatal brain outcomes, examining sleep and circadian rhythm disturbances as a mediator of the effect of social disadvantage during pregnancy on infant structural brain outcomes.

Developmental trajectories of anger and sadness dysregulation in childhood differentially predict later borderline symptoms.

Difficulties with emotion regulation are integral to borderline personality disorder (BPD) and its hypothesized developmental pathway. Here, we prospectively assess trajectories of emotion processing across childhood, how BPD symptoms impact these trajectories, and whether developmental changes are transdiagnostic or specific to BPD, as major depressive (MDD) and conduct disorders (CD) are also characterized by emotion regulation difficulties. This study included 187 children enriched for those with early symptoms of depression and disruptive behaviors from a longitudinal study.

Deficits in doors P300 amplitude during adolescence associated with preschool-onset depression.

The psychophysiological underpinnings of preschool-onset depression (PO-MDD) remain underexplored. Moreover, there is currently a limited understanding of the potential impact that PO-MDD might have on neurobiological functions later in development such as general cognitive domains and reward processing. Thus, the current study sought to examine potential neurophysiological differences, measured via electroencephalography (EEG), in adolescents with and without a history of PO-MDD.

Using A Thin Slice Coding Approach to Assess Preschool Overweight and Obesity.

Obesity is a major public health problem and cause of significant burden across the lifespan. Longitudinal samples, beginning in early childhood offer an advantageous approach to studying obesity, given the potential to observe within-individual changes over time. Yet among the many available longitudinal studies of children, particularly those studying psychological disorders, do not assess for overweight/obesity status or related constructs necessary to compute BMI.

A Dynamic Systems Analysis of Dyadic Flexibility and Shared Affect in Preschoolers with and Without Major Depressive Disorder.

Preschool onset Major Depressive Disorder (PO-MDD) is a severe disorder often leading to chronic impairment and poor outcomes across development. Recent work suggests that the caregiver-child relationship may contribute to PO-MDD symptoms partially through disrupted caregiver-child interactions. The current study uses a dynamic systems approach to investigate whether co-regulation patterns in a dyad with a child experiencing PO-MDD differ from dyads with a child without the disorder.

Parent-child psychotherapy targeting emotion development: unpacking the impact of parental depression on child, parenting and engagement outcomes.

Depression in early childhood increases risk of psychopathology and impairment across the lifespan. Parent-Child Interaction Therapy-Emotion Development (PCIT-ED) effectively treats depression and improves functioning in preschoolers. Parental depression has been associated with inconsistent parenting, depression onset and maintenance in offspring, and decreased treatment efficacy for youth.

Identifying moderating factors during the preschool period in the development of borderline personality disorder: a prospective longitudinal analysis.

Background: Despite a growing literature detailing early childhood risk factors for borderline personality disorder (BPD), few studies have examined moderating factors that might mitigate or exacerbate the effects of those risk factors. The current study examined whether three preschool-age characteristics-impulsivity, emotional lability, and initiative-taking-moderated the relationship between known preschool-age risk factors and adolescent BPD symptoms.

Methods: We performed multilevel modeling analyses in a sample (n = 151) from the Preschool Depression Study, a prospective longitudinal study with assessments from preschool through adolescence.

Maternal emotional intelligence and negative parenting affect are independently associated with callous-unemotional traits in preschoolers.

Deficits in emotion intelligence (EI) are a key component of early-childhood callous-unemotional (CU) traits. Children's EI may be influenced by their mother's EI through both familial genetic and environmental mechanisms; however, no study has directly tested the role of maternal EI in the development of CU traits. This study investigated whether maternal EI had a direct relationship with children's CU traits when controlling for the potential influence of parenting affect and other psychiatric diagnoses.

The physical home environment and sleep: What matters most for sleep in early childhood.

The physical home environment is thought to play a crucial role in facilitating healthy sleep in young children. However, relatively little is known about how various features of the physical home environment are associated with sleep in early childhood, and some of the recommendations clinicians make for improving child sleep environments are based on limited research evidence. The present study examined how observer and parent descriptions of the child's physical home environment were associated with child sleep, measured using actigraphy and parent's reports, across a year in early childhood.

Children's Maternal Representations Moderate the Efficacy of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy-Emotion Development (PCIT-ED) Treatment For Preschool Depression.

A randomized controlled trial (RCT) demonstrated that a novel psychotherapy, Parent-Child Interaction Therapy-Emotion Development (PCIT-ED), effectively treats preschool-onset depression. However, little is known about which children benefit most from PCIT-ED. As positive parent-level factors are associated with lesser depressive symptoms, this study explored the potential moderating role of positive parenting relationships on PCIT-ED efficacy.

Preschool sleep and depression interact to predict gray matter volume trajectories across late childhood to adolescence.

There is a close relationship between sleep and depression, and certain maladaptive outcomes of sleep problems may only be apparent in individuals with heightened levels of depression. In a sample enriched for preschool depression, we examined how sleep and depression in early childhood interact to predict later trajectories of gray matter volume. Participants (N = 161) were recruited and assessed during preschool (ages 3-6 years) and were later assessed with five waves of structural brain imaging, spanning from late childhood to adolescence.

The reward positivity shows increased amplitude and decreased latency with increasing age in early childhood.

The reward positivity (RewP) is a widely studied measure of neural response to rewards, yet little is known about normative developmental characteristics of the RewP during early childhood. The present study utilized a pooled community sample of 309 4- to 6-year-old children who participated in the Doors guessing game to examine the latency and amplitude of the RewP. Peak detection of the gain-loss difference waveform was conducted for electrodes Fz, Cz, Pz, Oz and the mean activity in a 100 ms window centered around this peak was analyzed.

Early Childhood Socioeconomic Status and Cognitive and Adaptive Outcomes at the Transition to Adulthood: The Mediating Role of Gray Matter Development Across Five Scan Waves.

Background: Early low socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with poor outcomes in childhood, many of which endure into adulthood. It is critical to determine how early low SES relates to trajectories of brain development and whether these mediate relationships to poor outcomes. We use data from a unique 17-year longitudinal study with five waves of structural brain imaging to prospectively examine relationships between preschool SES and cognitive, social, academic, and psychiatric outcomes in early adulthood.

Bivariate latent change score analysis of peer relations from early childhood to adolescence: Leading or lagging indicators of psychopathology.

Understanding longitudinal associations between problematic peer relations and psychopathology are needed to inform public health. Three models have been proposed: poor peer relations i) lead or are a risk factor for psychopathology; ii) lag or are a consequence of psychopathology; iii) both lead and lag psychopathology. Another model is that poor peer relations lead or lag psychopathology depending upon the developmental period.

A Brief Early Childhood Screening Tool for Psychopathology Risk in Primary Care: The Moderating Role of Poverty.

Objectives: To evaluate the Preschool Feeling Checklist (PFC) utility for predicting later mental disorders and functioning for children and assess whether the PFC's predictive utility differs as a function of childhood poverty.

Study Design: We analyzed data from a prospective longitudinal study of preschoolers in St Louis. Preschoolers (N = 287) were recruited from primary care sites and were assessed annually for 10-15 years.

Neural Indicators of Anhedonia: Predictors and Mechanisms of Treatment Change in a Randomized Clinical Trial in Early Childhood Depression.

Background: Early childhood depression is associated with anhedonia and reduced event-related potential (ERP) responses to rewarding or pleasant stimuli. Whether these neural measures are indicators of target engagement or treatment outcome is not yet known.

Methods: We measured ERP responses to win and loss feedback in a guessing task and to pleasant versus neutral pictures in young (4.

Preschool Age Predictors of Adolescent Borderline Personality Symptoms.

Objective: Developmental models of borderline personality disorder (BPD) have highlighted the interplay of psychological variables (ie, impulsivity and emotional reactivity) with social risk factors, including invalidating parenting and childhood trauma. Prospective longitudinal studies have demonstrated the association of BPD with social, familial, and psychological antecedents. However, to date, few of these studies have studied the interaction of multiple risk domains and their potential manifestations in the preschool period.