Neural Markers of Attention at 6 Months Associate With Later Attentional Control Performance.

Attentional control is key to the development of executive functions. Previous research indicates that individual differences in attentional control behaviour may be stable from 6 months. Here, we analyse electroencephalogram data collected from 59 6-month-olds to gain insights into the neural processes underlying attentional control in infancy.

Primary and secondary trauma in adoptive parents.

Aims: Secondary trauma is recognised as one of the negative effects for professionals working with people that have experienced trauma. Research has demonstrated secondary trauma in foster carers but little research has explored trauma symptoms within adoptive parents, facing the emotional impact of parenting a child with adverse early experiences. This study aimed to document the rates of primary and secondary trauma symptoms in adoptive parents.

Evocative effects on the early caregiving environment of genetic factors underlying the development of intellectual and academic ability.

This study examined gene-environment correlation (rGE) in intellectual and academic development in 561 U.S.-based adoptees (57% male; 56% non-Latinx White, 19% multiracial, 13% Black or African American, 11% Latinx) and their birth and adoptive parents between 2003 and 2017.

A systematic review and meta-analysis of the associations between motor milestone timing and motor development in neurodevelopmental conditions.

Early motor skills may be important early markers of neurodevelopmental conditions or predictors of their later onset. To explore this, we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of infant motor skill assessments in those who go on to gain a clinical diagnosis of autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), schizophrenia, language conditions, tic disorders, or developmental coordination disorder (DCD). In total, 63 articles met inclusion criteria.

Post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms following exposure to acute psychological trauma in children aged 8-16 years in South Africa: protocol for the Sinethemba longitudinal study.

Introduction: Children exposed to trauma are vulnerable to developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other adverse mental health outcomes. In low-and middle-income countries (LMICs), children are at increased risk of exposure to severe trauma and co-occurring adversities. However, relative to high-income countries, there is limited evidence of the factors that predict good versus poor psychological recovery following trauma exposure in LMIC children, and the role of caregiver support in these high-adversity communities.

Mary Main's written legacy: a bibliometric analysis.

Mary Main's written work profoundly changed the direction of attachment research through her publications and through her teachings. The current study describes the scientific impact of her her published and unpublished work. We identified 85 such works.

A meta-analytic examination of sensitive responsiveness as a mediator between depression in mothers and psychopathology in children.

The current meta-analysis examined the mediating role of sensitive-responsive parenting in the relationship between depression in mothers and internalizing and externalizing behavior in children. A systematic review of the path of maternal sensitive responsiveness to child psychopathology identified eligible studies. Meta-analytic structural equation modelling (MASEM) allowed for the systematic examination of the magnitude of the indirect effect across 68 studies ( = 15,579) for internalizing and 92 studies ( = 26,218) for externalizing psychopathology.

Reviewing explore/exploit decision-making as a transdiagnostic target for psychosis, depression, and anxiety.

In many everyday decisions, individuals choose between trialling something novel or something they know well. Deciding when to try a new option or stick with an option that is already known to you, known as the "explore/exploit" dilemma, is an important feature of cognition that characterises a range of decision-making contexts encountered by humans. Recent evidence has suggested preferences in explore/exploit biases are associated with psychopathology, although this has typically been examined within individual disorders.

Reciprocal Effects Between Negative Parenting and Children's Callous-Unemotional Traits From Mid to Late Childhood.

Objective: The role of negative parenting in the development of callous-unemotional (CU) traits remains unclear. Both negative parenting and CU traits are influenced by genetic and environmental factors. The authors used genetically informed longitudinal cross-lagged models to examine the extent to which reciprocal effects between negative parenting and children's CU traits in mid-to-late childhood are genetic versus environmental in origin.

Editorial Perspective: The paradox of precision health in early development - building large samples to yield individual-level measures.

Precision health refers to the use of individualised biomarkers or predictive models to provide more tailored information about an individual's likely prognosis. For child psychiatry and psychology, we argue that this approach requires a focus on neurocognitive measures collected in early life and at large scale. However, the large sample sizes necessary to uncover individual-level predictors are currently rare in studies of neurodevelopmental conditions in early childhood.

Commentary: Health anxiety in youth during 'COVID' - some thoughts prompted by Rask et al. (2024).

Researchers continue to count the short- and longer-term mental health costs for children and adolescents of the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated exceptional restrictions imposed by governments on their lives in an attempt to control the pandemic and its impacts. Despite being at low risk of serious physical illness from COVID-19 themselves, some studies have reported a decline in the mental health of many young people during the pandemic. Some have suggested that this could even create a risk for long-term morbidity.

Trial protocol for the Building Resilience through Socio-Emotional Training (ReSET) programme: a cluster randomised controlled trial of a new transdiagnostic preventative intervention for adolescents.

Background: Adolescence is a period of heightened vulnerability to developing mental health problems, and rates of mental health disorder in this age group have increased in the last decade. Preventing mental health problems developing before they become entrenched, particularly in adolescents who are at high risk, is an important research and clinical target. Here, we report the protocol for the trial of the 'Building Resilience through Socioemotional Training' (ReSET) intervention.

Analysis of the health economics portfolio funded by the National Institutes of Health in response to published guidance.

Health services, economics, and outcomes research (referred to as health economics research hereinafter) is one of the interdisciplinary sciences that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) supports in order to pursue its overall mission to improve health. In 2015, NIH guidance was published to clarify the type of health economics research that NIH would continue to fund. This analysis aimed to determine if there were changes in the number of health economics applications received and funded by NIH after the release of the guidance.

Phenotypic and Genetic Associations Between Preschool Fine Motor Skills and Later Neurodevelopment, Psychopathology, and Educational Achievement.

Background: Fine motor skills are heritable and comprise important milestones in development, and some evidence suggests that impairments in fine motor skills are associated with neurodevelopmental conditions, psychiatric disorders, and poor educational outcomes.

Methods: In a preregistered study of 9625 preschool children from TEDS (Twins Early Development Study), fine motor assessments (drawing, block building, folding, and questionnaires) were conducted at 2, 3, and 4 years of age. A cross-age fine motor score was derived using principal component analysis.

Disentangling genetic and environmental influences on early language development: The interplay of genetic propensity for negative emotionality and surgency, and parenting behavior effects on early language skills in an adoption study.

Parenting and children's temperament are important influences on language development. However, temperament may reflect prior parenting, and parenting effects may reflect genes common to parents and children. In 561 U.

'Children awaken by playing: a qualitative exploration of caregivers' norms, beliefs and practices related to young children's learning and early childhood development in rural Burkina Faso.

Introduction: Evidence suggests that responsive caregiving and early learning activities positively impact developmental outcomes, with positive effects throughout the life course. Early childhood development interventions should align with local values, beliefs and resources but there has been little research of caregiver beliefs and perspectives on development and learning, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. This qualitative study explored norms, beliefs, practices and aspirations around child development of caregivers of young children in rural Burkina Faso.

Adverse childhood experiences: a meta-analysis of prevalence and moderators among half a million adults in 206 studies.

Exposure to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), including maltreatment and family dysfunction, is a major contributor to the global burden of disease and disability. With a large body of international literature on ACEs having emerged over the past 25 years, it is timely to now synthetize the available evidence to estimate the global prevalence of ACEs and, through a series of moderator analyses, determine which populations are at higher risk. We searched studies published between January 1, 1998 and August 5, 2021 in Medline, PsycINFO and Embase.

The providential randomisation of genotypes.

When building causal knowledge in behavioural genetics, the natural randomisation of genotypes at conception (approximately analogous to the artificial randomisation occurring in randomised controlled trials) facilitates the discovery of genetic causes. More importantly, the randomisation of genetic material within families also enables a better identification of (environmental) risk factors and aetiological pathways to diseases and behaviours.

The impact of family interventions on communication in the context of anxiety and depression in those aged 14-24 years: systematic review of randomised control trials.

Background: The ability to communicate is integral to all human relationships. Previous research has specifically highlighted communication within families as both a risk and protective factor for anxiety disorders and/or depression. Yet, there is limited understanding about whether communication is amenable to intervention in the context of adolescent psychopathology, and whether doing so improves outcomes.

Exploring biomedical and traditional care pathways for people with psychosis in Karachi, Pakistan.

Background: Psychosis is known to have an adverse impact on an individual's quality of life, social and occupational functioning. A lack of treatment options for psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia contributes to adverse outcomes for individuals. A significant proportion of people with psychosis consult both formal and traditional routes of care.