Longitudinal Pathways From Maltreatment to Substance Use Through Delay Discounting During Adolescence and Into Young Adulthood.

Objective: Children and adolescents exposed to maltreatment are at a greater risk for substance use disorders in adulthood. However, developmental processes that explain how maltreatment experiences may influence substance use behaviors remain unclear. We investigated whether delay discounting (ie, the preference for immediate over delayed rewards), a critical indicator of self-regulation, serves as a key mechanism linking maltreatment and substance use.

Negative Affect, Sensation Seeking, and Adolescent Substance Use Development: The Moderating Role of Executive Function.

It is unknown how the Addictions Neuroclinical Assessment markers-negative affect, sensation seeking, and executive function-contribute to substance use development. This study examined whether associations of negative affect and sensation seeking with substance use vary by executive function. Participants were 167 adolescents (47% female) who participated annually for four years (M = 14.

Longitudinal Associations Among Socioeconomic Status, Delay Discounting, and Substance Use in Adolescence.

It is unclear how delay discounting and substance use develop across adolescence and whether contextual factors alter their trajectories. The present study used a longitudinal design to examine whether socioeconomic status is related to developmental trajectories of delay discounting and substance use across adolescence. The sample included 167 adolescents (M = 14 at Time 1; 53% male) and their parents who participated annually across four years.

Maltreatment and brain development: The effects of abuse and neglect on longitudinal trajectories of neural activation during risk processing and cognitive control.

The profound effects of child maltreatment on brain functioning have been documented. Yet, little is known about whether distinct maltreatment experiences are differentially related to underlying neural processes of risky decision making: valuation and control. Using conditional growth curve modeling, we compared a cumulative approach versus a dimensional approach (relative effects of abuse and neglect) to examine the link between child maltreatment and brain development.

Socioeconomic Risk for Adolescent Cognitive Control and Emerging Risk-Taking Behaviors.

This study examined whether cognitive control mediated the association between socioeconomic status (SES; composite of income-to-needs ratio and parent education) and changes in risk-taking behaviors. The sample included 167 dyads of adolescents (53% male; M  = 14.07 years at Time 1) and their parents, assessed annually across 4 years.

Bidirectional links between adolescent brain function and substance use moderated by cognitive control.

Background: No clear consensus exists as to whether neurodevelopmental abnormalities among substance users reflect predisposing neural risk factors, neurotoxic effects of substances, or both. Using a longitudinal design, we examined developmental patterns of the bidirectional links between neural mechanisms and substance use throughout adolescence.

Method: 167 adolescents (aged 13-14 years at Time 1, 53% male) were assessed annually four times.

Religious Social Support Protects against Social Risks for Adolescent Substance Use.

We used a social developmental perspective to identify how prominent social contexts influence substance use during adolescence. Longitudinal data were collected annually from 167 parent-adolescent dyads over four years. We investigated whether parent substance use was related to adolescent substance use directly and indirectly via peer substance use and whether these associations were moderated by religious social support.

Intergenerational transmission of delay discounting: The mediating role of household chaos.

Introduction: Adolescence is a period when impulsive decision making may be especially vulnerable to environmental influences. Impulsive decision making is often assessed using a delay discounting paradigm, which measures the preference for smaller rewards sooner over larger rewards with a delay. Research is needed to clarify the relationship between parents' and adolescents' delay discounting and to identify related environmental processes that might facilitate the intergenerational transmission of delay discounting.

Longitudinal pathways linking family risk, neural risk processing, delay discounting, and adolescent substance use.

Background: Current theories in neuroscience emphasize the crucial role of individual differences in the brain contributing to the development of risk taking during adolescence. Yet, little is known about developmental pathways through which family risk factors are related to neural processing of risk during decision making, ultimately contributing to health risk behaviors. Using a longitudinal design, we tested whether neural risk processing, as affected by family multi-risk index, predicted delay discounting and substance use.