Irritability and Temperament: Concurrent and Prospective Relationships in Childhood and Adolescence.

Objective: Irritability symptoms are closely associated with, and may reflect, temperament traits, particularly negative affectivity (NA). However, there are few empirical data on the relationships between child temperament and irritability symptoms.

Method: We investigated cross-sectional and longitudinal relationships between irritability symptoms and temperament traits from age 3-15 in a community sample of 609 children and their parents.

Longitudinal Associations Between Reward Responsiveness and Depression Across Adolescence.

Objective: Lower neural response to reward predicts subsequent depression during adolescence. Both pubertal development and biological sex have important effects on reward system development and depression during this period. However, relations among these variables across the transition from childhood to adolescence are not well characterized.

Causal effects of psychostimulants on neural connectivity: a mechanistic, randomized clinical trial.

Background: Psychostimulants are frequently used to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but side effects are common leading to many patients discontinuing treatment. Identifying neural mechanisms by which psychostimulants attenuate symptoms may guide the development of more refined and tolerable therapeutics.

Methods: We conducted a 12-week, randomized, placebo-controlled trial (RCT) of a long-acting amphetamine, lisdexamfetamine (LDEX), in patients with ADHD, ages 6-25 years old.

A Transdiagnostic Perspective on Youth Irritability.

Irritability is increasingly recognized as a significant clinical problem in youth. It is a criterion for multiple diagnoses and predicts the development of a wide range of disorders. Research on etiopathogenesis suggests that genetic and family environmental factors play a role, as do abnormalities in reward and cognitive control circuitry.

Early Predictors of Adolescent Irritability.

Limited research has examined precursors/risk factors for adolescent irritability. This study examines continuity of irritability from early childhood to adolescence and identifies antecedents of adolescent irritability. Across self-reports and mother-reports, evidence was found for continuity of irritability.

Effects of Maternal Depression and Mother-Child Relationship Quality in Early Childhood on Neural Reactivity to Rejection and Peer Stress in Adolescence: A 9-Year Longitudinal Study.

Problems in mother-child relationships are thought to be key to intergenerational transmission of depression. To evaluate neural and behavioral processes involved in these pathways, we tested effects of maternal depression and maternal-child relationship quality in early childhood on neural and interviewer-based indicators of social processes in adolescence. At age 3, children and mothers (=332) completed an observational parenting measure and diagnostic interviews with mothers.

Developmental pathways from preschool irritability to multifinality in early adolescence: the role of diurnal cortisol.

Background: Early irritability predicts a broad spectrum of psychopathology spanning both internalizing and externalizing disorders, rather than any particular disorder or group of disorders (i.e. multifinality).

Stability and change in emotional processing across development: A 6-year longitudinal investigation using event-related potentials.

ERPs reveal the temporal dynamics of emotional processing and are easily assessed in children. Yet, little longitudinal research has examined ERPs sensitive to emotion across development. We aimed to systematically identify timing and spatial distributions of ERPs sensitive to emotion in a longitudinal sample of youth (N = 62) using principal component analysis (PCA) and evaluate stability and change in emotional responses across development.

Stressful life events moderate the effect of neural reward responsiveness in childhood on depressive symptoms in adolescence.

Background: Reward processing deficits have been implicated in the etiology of depression. A blunted reward positivity (RewP), an event-related potential elicited by feedback to monetary gain relative to loss, predicts new onsets and increases in depression symptoms. Etiological models of depression also highlight stressful life events.

Parenting style moderates the effects of exposure to natural disaster-related stress on the neural development of reactivity to threat and reward in children.

Little is known about the effect of natural disasters on children's neural development. Additionally, despite evidence that stress and parenting may both influence the development of neural systems underlying reward and threat processing, few studies have brought together these areas of research. The current investigation examined the effect of parenting styles and hurricane-related stress on the development of neural reactivity to reward and threat in children.

Early Childhood Psychopathology Prospectively Predicts Social Functioning in Early Adolescence.

Psychopathology in school-age children predicts impairment later in development. However, the long-term psychosocial consequences of early childhood psychopathology are less well known. The current study is the first to prospectively examine how a range of diagnoses and symptoms in early childhood predict psychosocial functioning across specific domains during early adolescence 6-9 years later.

Homotypic and heterotypic continuity of internalizing and externalizing symptoms from ages 3 to 12: The moderating role of diurnal cortisol.

Psychological symptoms that arise in early childhood can follow a multitude of patterns into adolescence, including homotypic continuity (i.e., similar symptoms over time) and heterotypic continuity (i.

Sensitivity to Peer Feedback in Young Adolescents with Symptoms of ADHD: Examination of Neurophysiological and Self-Report Measures.

Many youth with ADHD experience peer difficulties, but the mechanisms underlying this dysfunction remain unknown. Very little work has examined neurophysiological measures of social feedback processing in relation to ADHD symptoms. The goal of this study was to examine associations of ADHD symptoms with indicators of sensitivity to social feedback in a laboratory task and self-report of rejection sensitivity.

Prospective predictors of first-onset depressive disorders in adolescent females with anxiety disorders.

Background: Anxious youth are at increased risk for later depressive disorders, but not all anxious youth develop depression. Sequential comorbidity models emphasize shared risk factors and anxiety sequelae, but some anxious youth who later develop depression may have risk factors that are relatively specific to depression, in addition to a liability to anxiety. We examined several variables that appear relatively specific to risk for depression-the personality traits of low positive affectivity and high sadness, and an electrophysiological measure of blunted response to reward - in predicting first-onset depressive disorders and depressive symptoms in clinically anxious adolescent girls.

A longitudinal examination of event-related potentials sensitive to monetary reward and loss feedback from late childhood to middle adolescence.

Brain regions involved in reward processing undergo developmental changes from childhood to adolescence, and alterations in reward-related brain function are thought to contribute to the development of psychopathology. Event-related potentials (ERPs), such as the reward positivity (RewP) component, are valid measures of reward responsiveness that are easily assessed across development and provide insight into temporal dynamics of reward processing. Little work has systematically examined developmental changes in ERPs sensitive to reward.

Social processing in early adolescence: Associations between neurophysiological, self-report, and behavioral measures.

Peer relationships play a major role in adolescent development, but few methods exist for measuring social processing at the neurophysiological level. This study extends our pilot study of Island Getaway, a task for eliciting event-related potentials (ERPs) to peer feedback. We differentiated ERPs using principal components analysis (PCA) and examined associations with behavioral and self-report measures in young adolescents (N=412).

Neural responses to social and monetary reward in early adolescence and emerging adulthood.

Reward processing is often considered to be a monolithic construct, with different incentive types eliciting equivalent neural and behavioral responses. The majority of the literature on reward processing has used monetary incentives to elicit reward-related activity, yet social incentives may be particularly important due to their powerful ability to shape behavior. Findings from studies comparing social and monetary rewards have identified both overlapping and distinct responses.

Depression symptom dimensions and asymmetrical frontal cortical activity while anticipating reward.

Unipolar depression has been characterized as involving diminished approach motivation and reward sensitivity. A psychophysiological indicator of approach motivation involves an asymmetry in frontal EEG activity, such that greater left relative to right frontal cortical activity indicates increased approach motivation. Consistent with the perspective of reduced approach motivation tendencies, depression has been associated with decreased relative left frontal cortical activity.

Parental depressive history, parenting styles, and child psychopathology over 6 years: The contribution of each parent's depressive history to the other's parenting styles.

The link between parental depressive history and parenting styles is well established, as is the association of parenting with child psychopathology. However, little research has examined whether a depressive history in one parent predicts the parenting style of the other parent. As well, relatively little research has tested transactional models of the parenting-child psychopathology relationship in the context of parents' depressive histories.

Predictors and Outcomes of Childhood Primary Enuresis.

Objective: Although enuresis is relatively common in early childhood, research exploring its antecedents and implications is surprisingly limited, perhaps because the condition typically remits in middle childhood.

Method: We examined the prevalence, predictors, prognostic factors, and outcomes of primary enuresis in a large (N = 559) multi-method, multi-informant prospective study with a community-based sample of children followed from age 3 years to age 9 years.

Results: We found that 12.

Neurophysiological Processing of Emotion in Children of Mothers with a History of Depression: the Moderating Role of Preschool Persistent Irritability.

Research on emotion-processing biases in offspring of depressed parents has produced a variety of findings. Child persistent irritability may be a useful clinical feature that demarcates subgroups of offspring with distinct patterns of emotion processing. The present study examined whether early persistent irritability moderated the relationship between maternal lifetime history of a depressive disorder and appetitive- and aversive-emotion processing in 338 never-depressed pre-adolescent children (43.

Hurricane Sandy Exposure Alters the Development of Neural Reactivity to Negative Stimuli in Children.

This study examined whether exposure to Hurricane Sandy-related stressors altered children's brain response to emotional information. An average of 8 months (M  = 9.19) before and 9 months after (M  = 10.

Behavioral observations of positive and negative valence systems in early childhood predict physiological measures of emotional processing three years later.

Background: The Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) constructs of Positive Valence Systems (PVS) and Negative Valence Systems (NVS) are presumed to manifest behaviorally through early-emerging temperamental negative affectivity (NA) and positive affectivity (PA). The late positive potential (LPP) is a physiological measure of attention towards both negative and positive emotional stimuli; however, its associations with behavioral aspects of PVS and NVS have yet to be examined.

Methods: In a community sample of children (N = 340), we examined longitudinal relationships between observational measures of temperamental PA and NA assessed at age 6, and the LPP to both pleasant and unpleasant images assessed at age 9.

Transdiagnostic factors and pathways to multifinality: The error-related negativity predicts whether preschool irritability is associated with internalizing versus externalizing symptoms at age 9.

There is increasing interest among developmental psychopathologists in broad transdiagnostic factors that give rise to a wide array of clinical presentations (multifinality), but little is known about how these processes lead to particular psychopathological manifestations over the course of development. We examined whether individual differences in the error-related negativity (ΔERN), a neural indicator of error monitoring, predicts whether early persistent irritability, a prototypical transdiagnostic construct, is associated with later internalizing versus externalizing outcomes. When children were 3 years old, mothers were interviewed about children's persistent irritability and completed questionnaires about their children's psychopathology.

Executive Function and Temperamental Fear Concurrently Predict Deception in School-Aged Children.

The decision to intentionally withhold truthful information, or deception, is a key component of moral development and may be a precursor to more serious anti-social tendencies. Two factors, executive function and temperamental fear are each thought to influence childhood deception. Few studies, however, have explored deception in relation to both of these factors simultaneously.