The legacy of harsh parenting: Enduring and sleeper effects on trajectories of externalizing and internalizing symptoms.

Guided by developmental models examining the legacy of childhood caregiving environments, we examined the longitudinal pattern of associations between harsh parenting and children's internalizing and externalizing symptoms across late childhood to late adolescence. Participants included 199 youth (48.7% female, 65.

Trajectories of actigraphy-derived sleep duration, quality, and variability from childhood to adolescence: downstream effects on mental health.

Study Objectives: We examined growth trajectories of four actigraphy-derived sleep parameters (sleep minutes, sleep efficiency, and variability in sleep minutes and efficiency across a week of assessments) across childhood and adolescence and examined individual differences in trajectories according to participants' race/ethnicity and sex. We also assessed the predictive effect of growth trajectories of sleep parameters on growth trajectories of mental health outcomes and moderation by race and sex.

Method: Youth (N = 199, 49% female, 65% white, 32% black, 3% biracial) and their parents participated in five waves of data (M ages were 9, 10, 11, 17, and 18 across waves).

Coping Responses in the Context of Family Stress Moderate the Association Between Childhood Anxiety and Adolescent Depressive Symptoms.

Anxiety and depressive symptoms are common and highly interrelated. A relatively consistent temporal pattern of anxious and depressive symptoms has emerged from previous studies, such that the development of anxiety tends to precede and predict the development of depression rather than the other way around. Whether high levels of childhood anxiety predict depressive symptoms in late adolescence may depend, in part, on the ways in which children cope with stressful events.

Neighborhood environment and adolescent sleep: The role of family socioeconomic status.

Objectives: Socioeconomic status (SES) and neighborhood context are influential predictors of adolescent sleep, yet little is known about how they may interact to influence sleep. We examined multiple dimensions of family SES as moderators of associations between neighborhood risk and multiple sleep parameters.

Methods: Participants were 323 adolescents (M = 17.

Relationship between family income and trajectories of adjustment in adolescence: Sleep and physical activity as moderators.

Introduction: Youth from lower-income families experience adjustment problems at higher rates than higher-income peers. While adolescents have little control over family income, they do have some agency over their sleep and physical activity, two factors that have been shown to mitigate the risk of maladjustment. To test this, sleep and physical activity were examined as moderators of the longitudinal relationship between family income (indexed by income-to-needs ratio) and trajectories of adolescent adjustment problems.

Onset of substance use: Deviant peer, sex, and sympathetic nervous system predictors.

We evaluated whether the association between deviant peer affiliation and onset of substance use is conditional upon sex and sympathetic nervous system (SNS) reactivity as measured by pre-ejection period (PEP). Community-sampled adolescents ( = 251; = 15.78 years; 53% female; 66% White, 34% Black) participated in three waves.

Trajectories of sleep problems in childhood: associations with mental health in adolescence.

Study Objectives: We examined initial levels (intercepts) of sleep-wake problems in childhood and changes in sleep-wake problems across late childhood (slopes) as predictors of externalizing behavior problems, depressive symptoms, and anxiety in adolescence. To ascertain the unique effects of childhood sleep problems on adolescent mental health, we controlled for both childhood mental health and adolescent sleep problems.

Methods: Participants were 199 youth (52% boys; 65% White/European American, 35% Black/African American).

Individual differences in attentional control explain the differential expression of threat-related attentional bias among those with posttraumatic stress symptomatology and predict symptom maintenance up to one year later.

Individual differences in attentional control may explain null findings and inconsistent patterns of threat-related attentional bias (ABT) that are common in the posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) literature. At Time 1 (T1), trauma-exposed community participants (N = 89) completed a clinical interview, self-report measures, and an eye-tracking task developed to assess ABT. Participants completed follow-up assessments online 6 (T2) and 12 (T3) months later.

What does a good night's sleep mean? Nonlinear relations between sleep and children's cognitive functioning and mental health.

Study Objectives: We attempted to identify the duration and quality of sleep associated with the optimal child outcomes in key developmental domains including cognitive functioning, academic performance, and mental health. In doing so, we examined nonlinear associations between the sleep and developmental variables. Based on racial/ethnic disparities in children's sleep, we assessed this variable as a moderator of examined relations.

Parenting, deviant peer affiliation, and externalizing behavior during adolescence: processes conditional on sympathetic nervous system reactivity.

Background: This study examined associations between permissive parenting, deviant peer affiliations, and externalizing behavior across mid to late adolescence in a plausible indirect effects model of change over time with deviant peer affiliation serving as the mediator. We also evaluated potential conditional indirect effects wherein these relationships may be moderated by sex and sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activity, indexed by skin conductance level (SCL) reactivity.

Method: Participants included 242 community-sampled adolescents (M = 15.

Marital conflict and trajectories of adolescent adjustment: The role of autonomic nervous system coordination.

The present study investigates how coordination between stress responsivity of the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) and sympathetic nervous system (SNS) moderates the prospective effects of marital conflict on internalizing and externalizing symptoms across adolescence. Although an important avenue for psychophysiological research concerns how PNS and SNS responses jointly influence adjustment in the context of stress, these processes have rarely been studied in adolescence or longitudinally. Participants were 252 youth (53% female, 66% European American, 34% African American) who participated in laboratory assessments when they were 16, 17, and 18 years old.

Deviant Peer Behavior and Adolescent Delinquency: Protective Effects of Inhibitory Control, Planning, or Decision Making?

We examined relations between adolescent perceptions of deviant peer behavior and delinquency as moderated by inhibitory control, planning, and decision making in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development at age 15 (N = 991). Adolescents reported perceptions of deviant peer behavior. Inhibitory control, planning, and decision making were assessed behaviorally.

Resting high-frequency heart rate variability moderates the association between early-life adversity and body adiposity.

This study investigates resting high-frequency heart rate variability as a moderator of the association between early-life adversity and two measures of body adiposity. Data were collected from 149 young adults attending a large university in the Midwestern United States ( = 18.8 years; 45% black; 55% white; 56% female).

Approaches to modeling the development of physiological stress responsivity.

Influential biopsychosocial theories have proposed that some developmental periods in the lifespan are potential pivot points or opportunities for recalibration of stress response systems. To date, however, there have been few longitudinal studies of physiological stress responsivity and no studies comparing change in physiological stress responsivity across developmental periods. Our goals were to (a) address conceptual and methodological issues in studying the development of physiological stress responsivity within and between individuals, and (b) provide an exemplar for evaluating development of responsivity to stress in the parasympathetic nervous system, comparing respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) responsivity from middle to late childhood with middle to late adolescence.

Transition to College and Adherence to Prescribed Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Medication.

Objective: As youth with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) transition to adulthood, they must learn how to manage their ADHD treatment independently. This may be challenging because many of the skills necessary to adhere to treatment (e.g.

Sleep and cognitive functioning in childhood: Ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and sex as moderators.

We examined children's sleep at age 9 as a predictor of developmental trajectories of cognitive performance from ages 9 to 11 years. The effects of sleep on cognition are not uniform and thus we tested race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status (SES), and sex as moderators of these associations. At the first assessment, 282 children aged 9.

Codevelopment Between Key Personality Traits and Alcohol Use Disorder From Adolescence Through Young Adulthood.

Objective: Personality traits related to negative emotionality and low constraint are strong correlates of alcohol use disorder (AUD), but few studies have evaluated the prospective interplay between these traits and AUD symptoms from adolescence to young adulthood.

Method: The Minnesota Twin Family Study (N = 2,769) was used to examine the developmental interplay between AUD symptoms and three personality measures of constraint, negative emotionality, and aggressive undercontrol from ages 17 to 29.

Results: Results from random-intercept, cross-lagged panel models showed that low constraint and aggressive undercontrol predicted subsequent rank-order increases in AUD symptoms from ages 17 to 24.

Trajectories of sleep and cardiac sympathetic activity indexed by pre-ejection period in childhood.

Fragmented and insufficient sleep has been implicated in disrupted autonomic nervous system activity during resting state conditions in typically developing children. Towards explication of these relations over development, the current study tested reciprocal relations between the development of sleep parameters (efficiency, duration, latency) and cardiac sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activity indexed by pre-ejection period (PEP) during waking-resting state conditions throughout middle and late childhood. Whether sleep derives changes in PEP or vice versa was examined.

Links between autonomic activity and implicit learning.

The somatic marker hypothesis posits that autonomic activity occurring in response to specific stimuli aids in implicit learning, the learning of information without explicit awareness of what has been learned. This study investigated whether respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), a measure of autonomic nervous system activity, predicted changes in implicit learning. The interaction of resting RSA and RSA reactivity (change in RSA during the implicit learning task) was associated with changes in implicit learning, with those who had higher resting RSA and greater RSA withdrawal during the task performing better.