Patterns of depression symptoms in relation to stressors and social behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic among older youth and emerging adults in the United States.

Substantial increases in depression at the outset of the pandemic were previously reported in NCANDA, a longitudinal sample of adolescents and young adults. The current NCANDA study examined depression symptoms before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. It evaluated the influence of stressors and social behavior (e.

Prospective associations between Sleep, Sensation-Seeking and Mature Screen Usage in Early Adolescents: Findings from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study.

Study Objectives: Early exposure to mature content is linked to high-risk behaviors. This study aims to prospectively investigate how sleep and sensation-seeking behaviors influence the consumption of mature video games and R-rated movies in early adolescents. A secondary analysis examines the bidirectional relationships between sleep patterns and mature screen usage.

Trauma's distinctive and combined effects on subsequent substance use, mental health, and neurocognitive functioning with the NCANDA sample.

Purpose: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) and potentially traumatic events (PTEs) contribute to increased substance use, mental health issues, and cognitive impairments. However, there's not enough research on how TBI and PTEs combined impact mental heath, substance use, and neurocognition.

Methods: This study leverages a subset of The National Consortium on Alcohol and Neurodevelopment in Adolescence (NCANDA) multi-site dataset with 551 adolescents to assess the combined and distinctive impacts of TBI, PTEs, and TBI+PTEs (prior to age 18) on substance use, mental health, and neurocognitive outcomes at age 18.

Passively sensing smartphone use in teens with rates of use by sex and across operating systems.

Youth screen media activity is a growing concern, though few studies include objective usage data. Through the longitudinal, U.S.

Home access to a weight scale in the Hispanic/Latino population attending a community-based free clinic.

Background: Daily weighing has been shown to help with weight management. In primary care, the majority of virtual visits will ask patients about their weight. However, little is known about whether patients, especially those in the Hispanic/Latino population, have access to a weight scale.

Adolescents' Perceptions of Substance Use Harms are Contingent on Mode of Administration and Type of Substance.

Early vaping research often did not differentiate between substances vaped. The present study investigates risk perceptions for vaped nicotine and vaped cannabis. A school-based census of 9th and 11th graders yielded 431 responses to the California Healthy Kids Survey.

Explanations for the Cloudy Evidence That Theory Benefits Health Promotion.

Persuasive arguments for using theory have been influential in health behavior and health promotion research. The use of theory is expected to improve intervention outcomes and facilitate scientific advancement. However, current empirical evaluations of the benefits of theory have not consistently demonstrated strong effects.

Moderate Alcohol Use Is Associated with Reduced Cardiovascular Risk in Middle-Aged Men Independent of Health, Behavior, Psychosocial, and Earlier Life Factors.

We examined whether the often-reported protective association of alcohol with cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk could arise from confounding. Our sample comprised 908 men (56−67 years), free of prevalent CVD. Participants were categorized into 6 groups: never drinkers, former drinkers, and very light (1−4 drinks in past 14 days), light (5−14 drinks), moderate (15−28 drinks), and at-risk (>28 drinks) drinkers.

Alcohol use and cognitive aging in middle-aged men: The Vietnam Era Twin Study of Aging.

Objective: To determine associations of alcohol use with cognitive aging among middle-aged men.

Method: 1,608 male twins (mean 57 years at baseline) participated in up to three visits over 12 years, from 2003-2007 to 2016-2019. Participants were classified into six groups based on current and past self-reported alcohol use: lifetime abstainers, former drinkers, very light (1-4 drinks in past 14 days), light (5-14 drinks), moderate (15-28 drinks), and at-risk drinkers (>28 drinks in past 14 days).

Comparison of factor analysis models applied to the NCANDA neuropsychological test battery.

The factor structure of neuropsychological functioning among a large sample (N = 831) of American youth (ages 12-21 at baseline) was investigated in order to identify an optimal model. Candidate models were selected based on their potential to provide service to the study of adolescent development and the effects of heavy episodic alcohol consumption. Data on neuropsychological functioning were obtained from the NCANDA study.

Specification curve analysis shows that social media use is linked to poor mental health, especially among girls.

An important 2019 paper applied a novel analytic technique called Specification Curve Analysis (SCA) to data from three large-scale community samples to investigate the association between adolescent technology use and mental health/well-being. The paper concluded that an association exists but is tiny, with median betas between -0.01 and -0.

Involvement of people who inject drugs in injection initiation events: a cross-sectional analysis identifying similarities and differences across three North American settings.

Objectives: People who inject drugs (PWID) play an integral role in facilitating the entry of others into injection drug use (IDU). We sought to assess factors influencing PWID in providing IDU initiation assistance across three distinct North American settings and to generate pooled measures of risk.

Design: We employed data from three PWID cohort studies participating in (PRIMER), for this cross-sectional analysis.

Psychosocial predictors of substance use in adolescents and young adults: Longitudinal risk and protective factors.

Many psychosocial factors have been implicated in the onset and escalation of substance use in adolescence and young adulthood. Typically, each factor explains a small amount of the variance in substance use outcomes, and effects are typically applied across a broad range of ages or computed from cross-sectional data. The current study evaluated the association of factors including social influence (e.

Acceptability, Validity, and Engagement With a Mobile App for Frequent, Continuous Multiyear Assessment of Youth Health Behaviors (mNCANDA): Mixed Methods Study.

Background: Longitudinal studies of many health behaviors often rely on infrequent self-report assessments. The measurement of psychoactive substance use among youth is expected to improve with more frequent mobile assessments, which can reduce recall bias. Researchers have used mobile devices for longitudinal research, but studies that last years and assess youth continuously at a fine-grained, temporal level (eg, weekly) are rare.

Farewell to Bright-Line: A Guide to Reporting Quantitative Results Without the S-Word.

Recent calls to end the practice of categorizing findings based on statistical significance have focused on what not to do. Practitioners who subscribe to the conceptual basis behind these calls may be unaccustomed to presenting results in the nuanced and integrative manner that has been recommended as an alternative. This alternative is often presented as a vague proposal.

Alcohol Expectancies Moderate the Association Between School Connectedness and Alcohol Consumption.

Background: In this study, we investigate the moderated association of school connectedness and alcohol expectancies with adolescent drinking.

Methods: Two large community samples were obtained with 2 repeated attempted censuses of all students attending a large suburban school district. Participants completed a self-administered questionnaire that assessed substance use, alcohol expectancies, and school connectedness.

Adolescent Executive Dysfunction in Daily Life: Relationships to Risks, Brain Structure and Substance Use.

During adolescence, problems reflecting cognitive, behavioral and affective dysregulation, such as inattention and emotional dyscontrol, have been observed to be associated with substance use disorder (SUD) risks and outcomes. Prior studies have typically been with small samples, and have typically not included comprehensive measurement of executive dysfunction domains. The relationships of executive dysfunction in daily life with performance based testing of cognitive skills and structural brain characteristics, thought to be the basis for executive functioning, have not been definitively determined.

Altered Brain Developmental Trajectories in Adolescents After Initiating Drinking.

Objective: The authors sought evidence for altered adolescent brain growth trajectory associated with moderate and heavy alcohol use in a large national, multisite, prospective study of adolescents before and after initiation of appreciable alcohol use.

Method: This study examined 483 adolescents (ages 12-21) before initiation of drinking and 1 and 2 years later. At the 2-year assessment, 356 participants continued to meet the study's no/low alcohol consumption entry criteria, 65 had initiated moderate drinking, and 62 had initiated heavy drinking.

Adipokines and severity and progression of coronary artery calcium: Findings from the Rancho Bernardo Study.

Background And Aims: Adipokines are known to predict cardiovascular events, yet their association with coronary artery calcium (CAC), a surrogate marker of coronary atherosclerosis and risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD), is unclear. We aimed at assessing the association between adipokines and the severity and progression of CAC in healthy older adults, and at exploring potential modification by gender.

Methods: 409 men and women from the Rancho Bernardo Study with no known CVD underwent a chest computed tomography scan to determine baseline CAC severity; 329 returned 4.

Effects of prior testing lasting a full year in NCANDA adolescents: Contributions from age, sex, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, site, family history of alcohol or drug abuse, and baseline performance.

Longitudinal study provides a robust method for tracking developmental trajectories. Yet inherent problems of retesting pose challenges in distinguishing biological developmental change from prior testing experience. We examined factors potentially influencing change scores on 16 neuropsychological test composites over 1year in 568 adolescents in the National Consortium on Alcohol and NeuroDevelopment in Adolescence (NCANDA) project.

Influences of Age, Sex, and Moderate Alcohol Drinking on the Intrinsic Functional Architecture of Adolescent Brains.

The transition from adolescent to adult cognition and emotional control requires neurodevelopmental maturation likely involving intrinsic functional networks (IFNs). Normal neurodevelopment may be vulnerable to disruption from environmental insult such as alcohol consumption commonly initiated during adolescence. To test potential disruption to IFN maturation, we used resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) in 581 no-to-low alcohol-consuming and 117 moderate-to-high-drinking youth.

"Cognitive, emotion control, and motor performance of adolescents in the NCANDA study: Contributions from alcohol consumption, age, sex, ethnicity, and family history of addiction": Correction to Sullivan et al. (2016).

Unlabelled: Reports an error in "Cognitive, emotion control, and motor performance of adolescents in the NCANDA study: Contributions from alcohol consumption, age, sex, ethnicity, and family history of addiction" by Edith V. Sullivan, Ty Brumback, Susan F. Tapert, Rosemary Fama, Devin Prouty, Sandra A.

Harmonizing DTI measurements across scanners to examine the development of white matter microstructure in 803 adolescents of the NCANDA study.

Neurodevelopment continues through adolescence, with notable maturation of white matter tracts comprising regional fiber systems progressing at different rates. To identify factors that could contribute to regional differences in white matter microstructure development, large samples of youth spanning adolescence to young adulthood are essential to parse these factors. Recruitment of adequate samples generally relies on multi-site consortia but comes with the challenge of merging data acquired on different platforms.

Cognitive, emotion control, and motor performance of adolescents in the NCANDA study: Contributions from alcohol consumption, age, sex, ethnicity, and family history of addiction.

Objective: To investigate development of cognitive and motor functions in healthy adolescents and to explore whether hazardous drinking affects the normal developmental course of those functions.

Method: Participants were 831 adolescents recruited across 5 United States sites of the National Consortium on Alcohol and NeuroDevelopment in Adolescence 692 met criteria for no/low alcohol exposure, and 139 exceeded drinking thresholds. Cross-sectional, baseline data were collected with computerized and traditional neuropsychological tests assessing 8 functional domains expressed as composite scores.