Psychopathology assessed across the lifespan often can be summarized with a few broad dimensions: internalizing, externalizing, and psychosis/thought disorder. Extensive overlap between internalizing and externalizing symptoms has garnered interest in bifactor models comprised of a general co-occurring factor and specific internalizing and externalizing factors. We focus on internalizing and externalizing symptoms and compare a bifactor model to a correlated two-factor model of psychopathology at three timepoints in a large adolescent community sample (N = 387; 55 % female; 83% Caucasian; M age = 12.1 at wave 1) using self- and parent-reports. Each model was tested within each time-point with 25–28 validators. The bifactor models demonstrated better fit to the data. Child report had stronger invariance across time. Parent report had stronger reliability over time. Cross-informant correlations between the factors at each wave indicated that the bifactor model had slightly poorer convergent validity but stronger discriminant validity than the two-factor model. With notable exceptions, this pattern of results replicated across informants and waves. The overlap between internalizing and externalizing pathology is systematically and, sometimes, non-linearly related to risk factors and maladaptive outcomes. Strengths and weaknesses to modeling psychopathology as two or three factors and clinical and developmental design implications are discussed.

Parental mentalization, as the ability to understand mental states (e.g., desires) behind their children’s actions, may play a relevant role in the prevention of future externalizing problems. We conducted a meta-analysis to examine the relationship between parental mentalization and children’s externalizing problems. Six electronic databases were searched for studies, published in English or Spanish, linking empirically those two variables. Participants included caregivers and children between 0 and 18 years. The filtering process yielded 42 studies with 52 effect sizes. Random-effect analysis revealed higher parental mentalization associated with fewer externalizing problems, with an effect size of r = −.19 (95% CI [−.25, −.13]). Due to high heterogeneity (I2 = 83.750), further analyses were conducted to explore factors affecting such association. Parenting experience and children’s developmental stage moderated the relationship, but approaches to operationalize mentalization (MM or PRF), sample type (clinical/at-risk vs. community), and reporting figure (primary caregiver vs. other informants) did not. The study highlights the significance of parental mentalization as a potential contributor to the prevention of externalizing behaviors among infants, children, and adolescents. Our findings may underscore practical implications for equipping caregivers with mentalization skills, helping them to answer appropriately to their children needs.

Polygenic scores (PGSs) have garnered increasing attention in the clinical sciences due to their robust prediction signals for psychopathology, including externalizing (EXT) behaviors. However, studies leveraging PGSs have rarely accounted for the phenotypic and developmental heterogeneity in EXT outcomes. We used the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (analytic N = 4,416), spanning ages 13 to 41, to examine associations between EXT PGSs and trajectories of antisocial behaviors (ASB) and substance use behaviors (SUB) identified via growth mixture modeling. Four trajectories of ASB were identified: High Decline (3.6% of the sample), Moderate (18.9%), Adolescence-Peaked (10.6%), and Low (67%), while three were identified for SUB: High Use (35.2%), Typical Use (41.7%), and Low Use (23%). EXT PGSs were consistently associated with persistent trajectories of ASB and SUB (High Decline and High Use, respectively), relative to comparison groups. EXT PGSs were also associated with the Low Use trajectory of SUB, relative to the comparison group. Results suggest PGSs may be sensitive to developmental typologies of EXT, where PGSs are more strongly predictive of chronicity in addition to (or possibly rather than) absolute severity.

Understanding how youth perceive household economic hardship and how it relates to their behavior is vital given associations between hardship and behavioral development. Yet, most studies ignore youth’s own perceptions of economic hardship, instead relying solely on caregiver reports. Moreover, the literature has tended to treat economic hardship as a stable force over time, rather than a volatile one that varies month-to-month. This study addressed extant limitations by collecting monthly measures of economic hardship, specifically caregiver- and youth-reported material deprivation and youth-reported financial stress, and youth internalizing and externalizing problems from 104 youth–caregiver dyads (youth: 14–16 years, 55% female, 37% Black, 43% White) over nine months. We examined month-to-month variability of these constructs and how youth-reports of material deprivation and financial stress predicted their behavior problems, controlling for caregiver-reports of material deprivation. We found that hardship measures varied month-to-month (ICCs = 0.69–0.73), and youth-reported material deprivation positively predicted internalizing when examining both within- and between-individual variability (β = .19–.47). Youth-reported financial stress positively predicted within-individual variation in externalizing (β = .18), while youth reports of material deprivation predicted externalizing when looking between families (β = .41). Caregiver-reported material deprivation was unrelated to youth behavior when accounting for youth perceptions of economic hardship.

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented youth and families with a broad spectrum of unique stressors. Given that adolescents are at increased risk for mental health and emotional difficulties, it is critical to explore family processes that confer resilience for youth in the face of stress. The current study investigated caregiver emotion regulation (ER) as a familial factor contributing to youth ER and risk for psychopathology following stressful life events. In a longitudinal sample of 224 youth (Mage = 12.65 years) and their caregivers, we examined whether caregiver and youth engagement in ER strategies early in the pandemic mediated the associations of pandemic-related stress with youth internalizing and externalizing symptoms six months later. Leveraging serial mediation analysis, we demonstrated that caregiver and youth rumination, but not expressive suppression or cognitive reappraisal, mediated the prospective associations of pandemic-related stress with youth internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Greater exposure to pandemic-related stressors was associated with greater caregiver rumination, which, in turn, related to greater rumination in youth, and higher levels of youth internalizing and externalizing symptoms thereafter. Family interventions that target caregiver ER, specifically rumination, may buffer against the consequences of stress on youth engagement in maladaptive ER strategies and risk for psychopathology.

Stress affects executive functions and exploring the association between stress-induced physiological reactivity and executive functions could highlight the potential mechanism of the stress-cognitive function link. Our study examined the linear and nonlinear associations between cardiovascular stress reactivity and cool and hot executive functions among adolescents. In November 2021 (T1), 273 Chinese adolescents between 11 and 14 (Mage = 12.93, SDage = 0.79) underwent a speech task during which their cardiovascular data were recorded, and they completed a Flanker task and an Emotional Stroop task. In May 2023 (T2), 253 adolescents again completed the Flanker and Emotional Stroop tasks. Cool and hot executive functions were assessed using the intra-individual reaction time variability of the Flanker task and Emotional Stroop task, respectively. Results showed that cardiovascular stress reactivity was positively linearly associated with cool executive functions at T1 and quadratically (inverted U-shaped) associated with cool executive functions at T1 and hot executive functions at T1 and T2. These findings suggest that compared to very high and very low cardiovascular reactivity, moderate to high cardiovascular reactivity to a structured social challenge is associated with better cool and hot executive functions.

Moral emotions such as shame, guilt and pride are crucial to young children’s social-emotional development. Due to the restrictions caused by hearing loss in accessing the social world, deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children may encounter extra difficulties in their development of moral emotions. However, little research so far has investigated the development trajectory of moral emotions during preschool years in DHH children. The present study used a longitudinal design to explore the development trajectories of shame, guilt, and pride, in a sample of 259 Chinese DHH and typically hearing (TH) preschoolers aged 2 to 6 years old. The results indicated that according to parent reports, DHH children manifested lower levels of guilt and pride compared to their TH peers, yet the manifested levels of shame, guilt, and pride increased throughout the preschool time at a similar pace in all children. Moreover, whilst guilt and pride contributed to increasing levels of psychosocial functioning over the preschool years, shame contributed to lower social competence and more externalizing behaviors in DHH and TH preschoolers. The outcomes imply that early interventions and adjustment to hearing loss could be useful to safeguard the social development of children with severe hearing loss, and cultural variances shall be taken into consideration when studying moral emotions in a Chinese cultural background.

Child socioemotional difficulties emerge as early as infancy, increase over time, and place children at risk for future internalizing and externalizing symptoms. The aim of the present study was to investigate pathways that originate within the interparental relationship during pregnancy and unfold during infancy that mitigate risk for toddler socioemotional difficulties and to examine the differential effects of these pathways for children with varying degrees of temperamental fearfulness. Specifically, we examined whether dyadic mutually responsive orientation (MRO; i.e., a system of attunement, reciprocity, cooperation, and warmth) observed in the prenatal interparental relationship and in both mother-infant and father-infant relationships predicted child socioemotional functioning at age 2. Findings revealed a significant direct effect of observed prenatal interparental MRO on mother-infant and father-infant MRO. Results also demonstrated an indirect effect of prenatal interparental MRO on socioemotional functioning via father-infant MRO. Temperamental fearfulness did not interact with interparental MRO, mother-infant MRO, or father-infant MRO to impact socioemotional functioning. Taken together, findings suggest high interparental MRO during pregnancy contributes to similar relational qualities in the parent-infant relationship and mitigates the risk for toddler socioemotional difficulties. Further, results underscore the importance of integrating fathers into prevention and intervention efforts when they are part of the family system.

Self-concept becomes reliant on social comparison, potentially leading to excessive self-focused attention, persistently negative self-concept and increased risk for depression during early adolescence. Studies have implicated neural activation in cortical midline brain structures in self-related information processing, yet it remains unclear how this activation may underlie subjective self-concept and links to depression in adolescence. We examined these associations by assessing neural activity during negative vs. positive self-referential processing in 39 11-to-13-year-old girls. During a functional neuroimaging task, girls reported on their perceptions of self-concept by rating how true they believed positive and negative personality traits were about them. Girls reported on depressive symptoms at the scan and 6 months later. Activation in the dorsomedial and ventrolateral prefrontal cortexes (dMPFC; VLPFC), and visual association area was significantly associated with subjective self-concept and/or depressive symptoms at the scan or 6 months later. Exploratory models showed higher activation in the dMPFC to Self-negative > Self-positive was indirectly associated with concurrent depressive symptoms through more negative self-concept. Higher activation in the visual association area to Self-positive > Self-negative was associated with lower depressive symptoms at follow-up through more positive self-concept. Findings highlight how differential neural processing of negative versus positive self-relevant information maps onto perceptions of self-concept and adolescent depression.

Research has shown experimentally that if children are taught to use language to create distance (socially, physically, and temporarily) when they revisit a potentially traumatic experience they reduce the intensity of their emotions. Building on this, this study was carried out to explore whether children with better spatial skills are better at such downregulation because of their very aptitude in understanding the concept of distance. Using data from a general-population birth cohort in the UK, the study examined the bidirectional association between emotional dysregulation and spatial ability among children aged 5 and 7 years. The findings reveal a significant reciprocal relationship even after adjusting for family, contextual, and individual confounders including verbal ability: spatial skills at age 5 years were inversely related to emotional dysregulation at age 7 years, and conversely, greater emotional dysregulation at age 5 years was associated with poorer spatial ability at age 7 years. The two paths were equally strong and there was no evidence of differences between them on the basis of sex. Our results suggest that enhancing spatial abilities could be a potential avenue for supporting emotion regulation in middle childhood.

Greater maternal depressive symptoms are consistently associated with higher levels of behavioral difficulties in children, emerging in early childhood and with long-lasting consequences for children’s development. Interventions promoting early relational health have been shown to have benefits for children’s behavior; however, these impacts are not always realized in the context of maternal depression. This study examined whether tiered programs could address this limitation by focusing on both parenting, through universal primary prevention, and psychosocial stressors and parent mental health, through tailored secondary prevention. Analysis of a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of the Smart Beginnings (SB) intervention was conducted to determine whether SB attenuated the association between maternal depression and early childhood internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Maternal depression significantly predicted both internalizing and externalizing behaviors in linear regression models. Further, there was a significant interaction between maternal depression and treatment group, such that among mothers with higher depressive symptoms, the SB treatment attenuated the magnitude of the association between depression and child behavior. Findings suggest that while parenting support is important for all families, it may be particularly critical for those with higher levels of depression and underscores the need to consider multidimensional family processes in both research and clinical practice.

Young people with childhood adversity (CA) were at increased risk to experience mental health problems during the COVID-19 pandemic. Pre-pandemic research identified high-quality friendship support as a protective factor that can buffer against the emergence of mental health problems in young people with CA. This longitudinal study investigated friendship buffering effects on mental health symptoms before and at three timepoints during the pandemic in 102 young people (aged 16–26) with low to moderate CA. Multilevel analyses revealed a continuous increase in depression symptoms following the outbreak. Friendship quality was perceived as elevated during lockdowns and returned to pre-pandemic baseline levels during reopening. A stress-sensitizing effect of CA on social functioning was evident, as social thinning occurred following the outbreak. Bivariate latent change score modeling revealed that before and during the pandemic, young people with greater friendship quality self-reported lower depression symptoms and vice versa. Furthermore, sequential mediation analysis showed that high-quality friendships before the pandemic buffered depression symptoms during the pandemic through reducing perceived stress. These findings highlight the importance of fostering stable and supportive friendships in young people with CA and suggest that through reducing stress perceptions high-quality friendships can mitigate mental health problems during times of multidimensional stress.

This study aimed to examine the relationship between parental attachment, peer attachments, and automatic thoughts with adolescent mindfulness skills in Iranian adolescents, drawing on internal working models and social cognitive theory. The data was collected from a sample of Iranian adolescents in Tehran using standardized measurement instruments previously developed by researchers. The collected data was analyzed using both simple and multiple regression analyses. The results revealed a positive and significant association between parental attachment and peer attachments with adolescent mindfulness skills. Conversely, automatic thoughts were found to have a negative impact on adolescent mindfulness skills. These findings suggest that strengthening attachments can contribute to the enhancement of mindfulness skills in adolescents, while addressing automatic thoughts is crucial in preventing the erosion of mindfulness skills. Consequently, experts can design interventions that focus on improving attachments and addressing automatic thoughts to promote adolescent mindfulness skills.

Resolving trauma may contribute to mental health and parenting in mother with histories of childhood maltreatment. The concept of trauma-specific reflective functioning (T-RF) was developed to assess the complexity of thought processes regarding trauma. The study aimed to validate the T-RF scale applied to the Trauma Meaning-Making Interview by examining its psychometric properties, associations with measures of trauma-processing strategies, maternal reflective functioning and mental health (depression and post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD]), as well as evaluating whether T-RF offered a unique contribution to maternal insightfulness. Good construct validity of the T-RF scale was confirmed in a sample of 112 mothers with histories of childhood maltreatment using an independent coding system of trauma-processing. Better mentalization of trauma was prospectively associated with higher parental reflective functioning and mothers with high T-RF were much more likely to be insightful regarding the child’s mental states than non-reflective mothers and mothers with limited T-RF. The association between T-RF and insightfulness was observed even when controlling for maternal reflective functioning, trauma-processing strategies, maternal education and sociodemographic risk. T-RF was associated neither with depression, PTSD nor the characteristics of trauma. Findings suggest that mentalizing trauma would be an important protective factor in the intergenerational trajectories of trauma.

Co-occurring autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have been associated with poorer social skills. Most studies examining the association of ADHD symptoms and social skills in autism employ categorical and cross-sectional designs, which provide a narrow view of the development of ADHD symptoms. Using group-based trajectory modeling, we identified five trajectories of caregiver-reported attention problems in an inception cohort of autistic children (N = 393) followed from age 2–5 years (T1) to age 10.5–11 years (T8): Low-Stable (LS; 15.5% of participants), Low-Decreasing (LD; 25.2%), Low-Increasing (LI; 19.2%), Moderate-Decreasing (MD; 32.9%), and High-Stable (HS; 7.2%). Child FSIQ and caregiver age at baseline were lower and caregiver depression at baseline was higher for participants in the MD group than the LS group. Psychotropic medication use was associated with higher attention problems. The MD and HS groups had similar mean Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales, Second Edition (VABS-II) Socialization standard scores at T8, which were lower than other groups. The LI group had lower Socialization scores than the LS group. Results support that a decline in caregiver-reported attention problems is common but not universal in autistic children and that even moderate/subclinical attention problems may relate to social skills outcomes in autism.

Early life adversity (ELA) and youth chronic health conditions have been examined as separate contributors to psychopathology. However, little work has specifically examined early life health adversity (ELHA) and its association with risk for internalizing disorders. This study seeks to examine the relationship between ELHA and internalizing disorders across adolescence. A sample of 705 Australian mother–youth dyads participated in a prospective longitudinal study. Mothers reported child health indicators at youth ages three-to-four days, six months, and five years and completed a psychiatric interview at 15 years. Youth completed a psychiatric interview, as well as measures of current health status, at age 20. ELHA was positively associated with both youth anxiety and depressive disorders from ages 15 to 20. When independently accounting for the role of (a) current health status and (b) exposure to traditionally conceptualized forms of ELA, these findings remained statistically significant for anxiety but not depressive disorders. ELHA interacted with maternal depression, such that ELHA was only associated with youth depressive disorders in cases where mothers themselves had experienced depression. Routine mental health screenings may be warranted for youth who experience ELHA and their mothers. Pediatric primary care may be an ideal setting for implementing prevention and intervention efforts.

Meta-analyses demonstrate that the quality of early attachment is modestly associated with peer social competence (r = .19) and externalizing behavior (r = −.15), but weakly associated with internalizing symptoms (r = −.07) across early development (Groh et al., Child Development Perspectives, 11(1), 70–76, 2017). Nonetheless, these reviews suffer from limitations that undermine confidence in reported estimates, including evidence for publication bias and the lack of comprehensive assessments of outcome measures from longitudinal studies in the literature. Moreover, theoretical claims regarding the specificity of the predictive significance of early attachment variation for socioemotional versus academic outcomes had not been evaluated when the analyses for this report were registered (but see Dagan et al., Child Development, 1–20, 2023; Deneault et al., Developmental Review, 70, 101093, 2023). To address these limitations, we conducted a set of registered analyses to evaluate the predictive validity of infant attachment in two landmark studies of the Strange Situation: the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation (MLSRA) and the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD). Across-time composite assessments reflecting teacher report, mother report, and self-reports of each outcome measure were created. Bivariate associations between infant attachment security and socioemotional outcomes in the MLSRA were comparable to, or slightly weaker than, those reported in the recent meta-analyses, whereas those in the SECCYD were weaker for these outcomes. Controlling for four demographic covariates, partial correlation coefficients between infant attachment and all socioemotional outcomes were r ≤ .10 to .15 in both samples. Compositing Strange Situations at ages 12 and 18 months did not substantively alter the predictive validity of the measure in the MLSRA, though a composite measure of three different early attachment measures in the SECCYD did increase predictive validity coefficients. Associations between infant attachment security and academic skills were unexpectedly comparable to (SECCYD) or larger than (MLSRA) those observed with respect to socioemotional outcomes.

Black and Latinx caregivers face high risk for parenting stress and racism-related stress due to experiences of racial discrimination (RD). This study aimed to explore the associations between RD, parenting stress, and psychological distress in caregiver-child dyads, as well as the impact of a mentalizing-focused group intervention on caregivers’ experiences of RD distress. Ethnoracially minoritized caregivers of children aged 5–17 years old participated in a non-randomized clinical trial (N = 70). They received either a 12-session mentalizing-focused group parenting intervention or treatment-as-usual in outpatient psychiatry. We assessed self-reported frequency and distress related to RD, parenting stress, and psychological distress at baseline (T1) and post-intervention (T2). Caregiver- and self-reported child psychological distress were also measured. The results showed that greater RD frequency and greater RD distress separately predicted higher overall parenting stress and parental role-related distress. Greater RD distress was linked to increased psychological distress in caregivers. Similarly, greater RD frequency and distress among caregivers were associated with higher caregiver-reported, but not self-reported, child psychological distress. No significant changes in RD distress were observed between T1 and T2 for either of the treatment groups. These findings highlight the exacerbating role of RD on parenting stress and psychological distress among ethnoracially minoritized caregivers and their children.