Comparison of a one- vs. two-session online version of the Trier Social Stress Test.

In response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, researchers have validated both one-session and two-session online versions of the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST-OL). In a sample of 82 first-generation college students aged 18-25 from across the U.S.

Correction: Using machine learning to understand age and gender classification based on infant temperament.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.

Earlier pubertal timing, not tempo, links time-limited early adversity with psychopathology.

Evolutionary-developmental theories propose that early adverse experiences adaptively shift the timing (i.e., onset) and tempo (i.

Share-the-load vs bring-your-own-judge: The effects of friends on social evaluative stress in early adolescence.

Objective: Parental attachment figures effectively buffer their children's cortisol responses to a socially evaluative stressor, the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST), by providing instrumental and emotional support during the preparation period. The effectiveness of parents as stress buffers wanes in adolescence as youth increase their reliance on peers for support. Yet, in a previous study, when peers played the same supportive role as parents, the cortisol response to the TSST was amplified.

Do Children's Health Behaviors Buffer the Impact of Cumulative Environmental Stress on Emerging Cardiometabolic Risk?

Background: Previous studies have found that exposure to childhood environmental stress is associated with cardiometabolic risk. However, it is not known whether individual health behaviors disrupt this relationship. This study prospectively evaluated the relationship between cumulative environmental stress in a low-income sample and cardiometabolic risk in middle childhood and examined whether child health behaviors attenuated this relationship.

Impacts of early deprivation on behavioral and neural measures of executive function in early adolescence.

Children reared in institutional settings experience early deprivation that has lasting implications for multiple aspects of neurocognitive functioning, including executive function (EF). Changes in brain development are thought to contribute to these persistent EF challenges, but little research has used fMRI to investigate EF-related brain activity in children with a history of early deprivation. This study examined behavioral and neural data from a response conflict task in 12-14-year-olds who spent varying lengths of time in institutional care prior to adoption (N = 84; age at adoption - mean: 15.

Lingering Effects of Early Institutional Rearing and Cytomegalovirus Infection on the Natural Killer Cell Repertoire of Adopted Adolescents.

Adversity during infancy can affect neurobehavioral development and perturb the maturation of physiological systems. Dysregulated immune and inflammatory responses contribute to many of the later effects on health. Whether normalization can occur following a transition to more nurturing, benevolent conditions is unclear.

Cumulative environmental stress and emerging cardiometabolic risk during childhood.

Objective: To prospectively evaluate the relationship between cumulative environmental stress and cardiometabolic risk in middle childhood, and to examine whether hair cortisol, a measure of hypothalamic pituitary adrenal-axis activity, mediates this relationship.

Methods: In a cohort of children from low-income households (n = 320; 59% Hispanic, 23% Black, body mass index (BMI) percentile >50th at enrollment), environmental stressors including family and neighbourhood factors representing disadvantage/deprivation, and cortisol concentrations from hair samples, were measured over five timepoints beginning when children were 2-4 years old. Cardiometabolic risk factors (i.

Early Life Stress Is Associated with Alterations in Lymphocyte Subsets Independent of Increased Inflammation in Adolescents.

Early life stress (ELS) is linked to an elevated risk of poor health and early mortality, with emerging evidence pointing to the pivotal role of the immune system in long-term health outcomes. While recent research has focused on the impact of ELS on inflammation, this study examined the impact of ELS on immune function, including CMV seropositivity, inflammatory cytokines, and lymphocyte cell subsets in an adolescent cohort. This study used data from the Early Life Stress and Cardiometabolic Health in Adolescence Study (N = 191, aged 12 to 21 years, N = 95 exposed to ELS).

Editorial: Placing research in context - what participant and study characteristics should be routinely reported in studies of child and adolescent mental health?

This editorial argues that research findings in child and adolescent psychopathology need to be contextualized with demographic information and location in order to help with interpretation of findings and implications for the services that are available and/or potentially effective. For developmental psychopathology and child and adolescent mental health treatment, the demographic information should include key factors known to influence etiology, treatment effectiveness and service availability. These factors include, but may not be limited to, sex and age, location including country (and city or urban area), socioeconomic class, culture and minoritized status.

The Development of Stress Reactivity and Regulation in Children and Adolescents.

Adversity experienced in early life can have detrimental effects on physical and mental health. One pathway in which these effects occur is through the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, a key physiological stress-mediating system. In this review, we discuss the theoretical perspectives that guide stress reactivity and regulation research, the anatomy and physiology of the axis, developmental changes in the axis and its regulation, brain systems regulating stress, the role of genetic and epigenetics variation in axis development, sensitive periods in stress system calibration, the social regulation of stress (i.

Mental-Health Trajectories of U.S. Parents With Young Children During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Universal Introduction of Risk.

Parents of young children were a subgroup of the population identified early in the pandemic as experiencing significant mental-health symptoms. Using a longitudinal sample of 3,085 parents from across the United States who had a child or children age 0 to 5, in the present study, we identified parental mental-health trajectories from April to November 2020 predicted by pre-COVID-19 cumulative risk and COVID-19-specific risk factors. Both growth-mixture modeling and latent-growth-curve modeling were used to test the relationship between risk factors and parent mental health.

Editorial: Using parenting interventions as treatments and brain development - are we at the end of the beginning yet?

This editorial discusses where we stand in understanding how parenting interventions, frequently used in the treatment of child emotional and behavioral disorders, affect the brain systems that contribute to these disorders. It concludes that although we have some evidence from RCTs that improving adverse parenting causally impacts some aspects of brain development, there is almost nothing examining parenting randomized controlled trials to treat child clinical disorders and effects on brain structure or function. It argues that if we are to be a brain science, such studies are needed.

Linking specific biological signatures to different childhood adversities: findings from the HERO project.

Background: Although investigations have begun to differentiate biological and neurobiological responses to a variety of adversities, studies considering both endocrine and immune function in the same datasets are limited.

Methods: Associations between proximal (family functioning, caregiver depression, and anxiety) and distal (SES-D; socioeconomic disadvantage) early-life adversities with salivary inflammatory biomarkers (IL-1β, IL-6, IL-8, and TNF-α) and hair HPA markers (cortisol, cortisone, and dehydroepiandrosterone) were examined in two samples of young U.S.

Early-life stress and current stress predict BMI and height growth trajectories in puberty.

In cross-sectional analyses, early institutional care is associated with shorter stature but not obesity during puberty in children adopted into US families. We examined whether shorter stature and leaner body composition in youth adopted internationally from institutions would continue as puberty progressed. We also examined whether current psychosocial stress would moderate the association between early institutional deprivation and growth during adolescence.

Household Income, Cortisol, and Obesity During Early Childhood: A Prospective Longitudinal Study.

Objective: To prospectively evaluate the relationship between household income, children's cortisol, and body mass index (BMI) trajectories over a 3-year period in early childhood.

Study Design: Household income, child hair cortisol levels, and BMI were measured at baseline, 12-, 24-, and 36-month follow-up visits in the Now Everybody Together for Amazing and Healthful Kids (NET-Works) Study (n = 534, children ages 2-4 years, and household income <$65 000/year at baseline). Relationships were examined between very low household income (<$25 000/year) at baseline, income status over time (remained <$25 000/year or had increasing income), cortisol accumulation from hair samples, and BMI percent of the 95th percentile (BMIp95) trajectories using adjusted linear growth curve modeling.

Race/ethnicity and age associations with hair cortisol concentrations among children studied longitudinally from early through middle childhood.

A total of 513 children were included in this secondary analysis of data from the NET-Works trial of low income children at risk for obesity. The purpose of the analysis was to examine HCC longitudinally over 5 assessments from early through middle childhood with the goal of i) determining if there were racial/ethnic differences in HCC, and if so, how early in childhood these differences could be observed; and (ii) whether racial/ethnic differences in HCC reflected structural and family-level indicators of disadvantage. The sample consisted of children from diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds: Black, including Hispanic Black (N = 156), non-Hispanic White (N = 67) and Non-Black Hispanic (N = 290) children.

Calibration and recalibration of stress response systems across development: Implications for mental and physical health.

Decades of human and animal research demonstrates that stress responsive neuroendocrine systems calibrate to the harshness of environmental conditions during fetal and early postnatal life. Emerging evidence indicates that if conditions change markedly over childhood, the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis may recalibrate during puberty, another period that involves heightened neural plasticity and rapid maturation of neurobehavioral systems. These recent findings have prompted increased interest in the potential for stress system calibration/recalibration over development.

Household food insecurity and obesity risk in preschool-aged children: A three-year prospective study.

Background: Household food insecurity (FI) is a pressing social, economic and public health issue. However, little is known regarding the effect of FI exposure during the first few years of life, the most active postnatal time for neurobiological and physiological development, on patterns of weight gain during early childhood. It is also unknown whether dietary quality would serve as a pathway through which FI affects children's weight development.

Material hardship level and unpredictability in relation to U.S. households' family interactions and emotional well-being: Insights from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has been recognized to provide rare insight to advance the scientific understanding of early life adversity, such as material hardship. During the COVID-19 pandemic, material hardship (i.e.

Translating the Biology of Adversity and Resilience Into New Measures for Pediatric Practice.

As the science of adversity and resilience advances, and public awareness of the health consequences of stress grows, primary care providers are being increasingly asked to address the effects of adverse experiences on child wellbeing. Given limited tools for assessing these effects early in life, the authors explore how enhanced capacity to measure stress activation directly in young children could transform the role and scope of pediatric practice. When employed within a trusted relationship between caregivers and clinicians, selective use of biological measures of stress responses would help address the documented limitations of rating scales of adverse childhood experiences as a primary indicator of individual risk and strengthen the ability to focus on variation in intervention needs, assess their effectiveness, and guide ongoing management.

Using machine learning to understand age and gender classification based on infant temperament.

Age and gender differences are prominent in the temperament literature, with the former particularly salient in infancy and the latter noted as early as the first year of life. This study represents a meta-analysis utilizing Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised (IBQ-R) data collected across multiple laboratories (N = 4438) to overcome limitations of smaller samples in elucidating links among temperament, age, and gender in early childhood. Algorithmic modeling techniques were leveraged to discern the extent to which the 14 IBQ-R subscale scores accurately classified participating children as boys (n = 2,298) and girls (n = 2,093), and into three age groups: youngest (< 24 weeks; n = 1,102), mid-range (24 to 48 weeks; n = 2,557), and oldest (> 48 weeks; n = 779).