Lurie, L., Hangan, E., Rosen, M., Crosnoe, R., & McLaughlin, K. (In Press).
Reduced growth mindset as a mechanism linking childhood trauma with academic performance and internalizing psychopathology.
Child Abuse & Neglect , 1-12.
Publisher's VersionAbstract
Background: Despite the high prevalence of childhood adversity and well-documented associa- tions with poor academic achievement and psychopathology, effective, scalable interventions remain largely unavailable. Existing interventions targeting growth mindset—the belief that personal characteristics are malleable—have been shown to improve academic achievement and symptoms of psychopathology in youth.
Objective: The present study examines growth mindset as a potential modifiable mechanism un- derlying the associations of two dimensions of childhood adversity—threat and deprivation—- with academic achievement and internalizing psychopathology.
Participants and setting: Participants were 408 youth aged 10–18 years drawn from one timepoint of two longitudinal studies of community-based samples recruited to have diverse experiences of childhood adversity.
Method: Experiences of threat and deprivation were assessed using a multi-informant, multi- method approach. Youth reported on growth mindset of intelligence and symptoms of anxiety and depression. Parents provided information about youths’ academic performance.
Results: Both threat and deprivation were independently associated with lower growth mindset, but when accounting for co-occurring adversities, only the association between threat and lower growth mindset remained significant. Lower growth mindset was associated with worse academic performance and greater symptoms of both anxiety and depression. Finally, there was a signifi- cant indirect effect of experiences of threat on both lower academic performance and greater symptoms of anxiety through lower growth mindset.
Conclusions: Findings suggest that growth mindset could be a promising target for efforts aimed at mitigating the impact of childhood adversity on academic achievement and psychopathology given the efficacy of existing brief, scalable growth mindset interventions.
PDF Reid-Russell, A., Cvencek, D., Meltzoff, A. N., & McLaughlin, K. A. (In Press).
Lower implicit self-esteem as a pathway linking childhood abuse to depression and suicidal ideation.
Development and Psychopathology.
Publisher's VersionAbstractIdentifying the potential pathways linking childhood abuse to depression and suicidal ideation is critical for developing effective interventions. This study investigated implicit self-esteem—unconscious valenced self-evaluation—as a potential pathway linking childhood abuse with depression and suicidal ideation. A sample of youth aged 8–16 years (N = 240) completed a self-esteem Implicit Association Test (IAT) and assessments of abuse exposure, and psychopathology symptoms, including depression, suicidal ideation, anxiety, and externalizing symptoms. Psychopathology symptoms were re-assessed 1–3 years later. Childhood abuse was positively associated with baseline and follow-up depression symptoms and suicidal ideation severity, and negatively associated with implicit self-esteem. Lower implicit self-esteem was associated with both depression and suicidal ideation assessed concurrently and predicted significant increases in depression and suicidal ideation over the longitudinal follow-up period. Lower implicit self-esteem was also associated with baseline anxiety, externalizing symptoms, and a general psychopathology factor (i.e. p-factor). We found an indirect effect of childhood abuse on baseline and follow-up depression symptoms and baseline suicidal ideation through implicit self-esteem. These findings point to implicit self-esteem as a potential mechanism linking childhood abuse to depression and suicidal ideation.
PDF Luby, J., Rogers, C., & McLaughlin, K. A. (In Press).
Environmental conditions to promote healthy childhood brain/behavioral development: Informing early preventive interventions for delivery in routine care. Biological Psychiatry.
Publisher's VersionAbstract
Environmental experiences early in life have strong and enduring consequences for cognitive, emotional, and neurobiological development and related physical and mental health trajectories. The powerful influence of early caregiver nurturance and stimulation on promoting positive neurodevelopmental outcomes has been demonstrated across species. These findings elucidate the environmental conditions known to facilitate healthy neurodevelopment and underscore the potential for modifiable psychosocial factors in the environment to be harnessed to inform early preventive interventions to promote health and adaptive development. A framework for early preventive interventions to enhance nurturing and responsive caregiving for implementation during early sensitive periods of brain develop- ment delivered within existing health or educational infrastructures is proposed. Emotional development during sensitive periods is an important, under-recognized, and abundantly modifiable predictor of mental and physical health outcomes that warrants investment of resources and integration of interventions into public health infra- structure for children worldwide. Future studies are needed to further clarify whether and when sensitive periods are present for key developmental domains to inform the optimal timing and targets of these interventions. Numerous available empirically supported early interventions may be modified and applied in briefer and more feasible mo- dalities of delivery to broader populations of developing children. As well established in growth and development across species, essential environmental inputs that are particularly important at specified developmental periods facilitate optimal growth trajectories. Such principles hold great potential in application to early child neuro- development to facilitate a thriving and resilient human population.
PDF McLaughlin, K. A., Rosen, M. L., Kasparek, S. W., & Rodman, A. M. (In Press).
Stress-related psychopathology during the COVID-19 pandemic. Behaviour Research and Therapy.
Publisher's VersionAbstractThe COVID-19 pandemic has introduced widespread societal changes that have required ongoing adaptation. Unsurprisingly, stress-related psychopathology has increased during the pandemic, in both children and adults. We review these patterns through the lens of several leading conceptual models of the link between stress and psychopathology. Some of these models focus on characteristics of environmental stressors—including cumulative risk, specific stressor types, and stress sensitization approaches. Understanding the specific aspects of environmental stressors that are most likely to lead to psychopathology can shed light on who may be in most need of clinical intervention. Other models center on factors that can buffer against the onset of psychopathology following stress and the mechanisms through which stressors contribute to emergent psychopathology. These models highlight specific psychosocial processes that may be most usefully targeted by interventions to reduce stress-related psychopathology. We review evidence for each of these stress models in the context of other widescale community-level disruptions, like natural disasters and terrorist attacks, alongside emerging evidence for these stress pathways from the COVID-19 pandemic. We discuss clinical implications for developing interventions to reduce stress-related psychopathology during the pandemic, with a focus on brief, digital interventions that may be more accessible than traditional clinical services.
PDF Sun, D., & et. al.,. (In Press).
Remodeling of the Cortical Structural Connectome in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Results from the ENIGMA-PGC PTSD Consortium.
Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging.
Publisher's VersionAbstract
Background: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is accompanied by disrupted cortical neuroanatomy. We investigated alteration in covariance of structural networks associated with PTSD in regions that demonstrate the case-control differences in cortical thickness (CT) and surface area (SA).
Methods: Neuroimaging and clinical data were aggregated from 29 research sites in >1,300 PTSD cases and >2,000 trauma-exposed controls (age 6.2-85.2 years) by the ENIGMA-PGC PTSD working group. Cortical regions in the network were rank-ordered by effect size of PTSD- related cortical differences in CT and SA. The top-n (n = 2 to 148) regions with the largest effect size for PTSD > non-PTSD formed hypertrophic networks, the largest effect size for PTSD < non-PTSD formed atrophic networks, and the smallest effect size of between-group differences formed stable networks. The mean structural covariance (SC) of a given n-region network was the average of all positive pairwise correlations and was compared to the mean SC of 5,000 randomly generated n-region networks.
Results: Patients with PTSD, relative to non-PTSD controls, exhibited lower mean SC in CT- based and SA-based atrophic networks. Comorbid depression, sex and age modulated covariance differences of PTSD-related structural networks.
Conclusions: Covariance of structural networks based on CT and cortical SA are affected by PTSD and further modulated by comorbid depression, sex, and age. The structural covariance networks that are perturbed in PTSD comport with converging evidence from resting state functional connectivity networks and networks impacted by inflammatory processes, and stress hormones in PTSD.
Keywords: PTSD, Cortical Thickness, Surface Area, Structural Covariance, Brain Network, Depression.
PDF Lengua, L. J., Thompson, S. F., Gyuri Kim, S., Rosen, M. L., Rodman, A., Kasparek, S., Mayes, M., et al. (In Press).
Maternal mental health mediates the effects of pandemic-related stressors on adolescent psychopathology during COVID-19.
Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.
Publisher's VersionAbstract
Background
This study examined whether COVID-19-related maternal mental health changes contributed to changes in adolescent psychopathology.
Methods
A community sample of 226 adolescents (12 years old before COVID-19) and their mothers were asked to complete COVID-19 surveys early in the pandemic (April–May 2020, adolescents 14 years) and approximately 6 months later (November 2020–January 2021). Surveys assessed pandemic-related stressors (health, financial, social, school, environment) and mental health.
Results
Lower pre-pandemic family income-to-needs ratio was associated with higher pre-pandemic maternal mental health symptoms (anxiety, depression) and adolescent internalizing and externalizing problems, and with experiencing more pandemic-related stressors. Pandemic-related stressors predicted increases in maternal mental health symptoms, but not adolescent symptoms when other variables were covaried. Higher maternal mental health symptoms predicted concurrent increases in adolescent internalizing and externalizing. Maternal mental health mediated the effects of pre-pandemic income and pandemic-related stressors on adolescent internalizing and externalizing problems.
Conclusions
Results indicate that adolescent mental health is closely tied to maternal mental health during community-level stressors such as COVID-19, and that pre-existing family economic context and adolescent symptoms increase risk for elevations in symptoms of psychopathology.
PDF Ellis, B. J., Sheridan, M. A., Belsky, J., & McLaughlin, K. A. (In Press).
Why and how does early adversity influence development? Toward an integrated model of dimensions of environmental experience.
Development and Psychopathology , 1-25.
Publisher's VersionAbstract
Two extant frameworks – the harshness-unpredictability model and the threat-deprivation model – attempt to explain which dimensions of adversity have distinct influences on development. These models address, respectively, why, based on a history of natural selection, develop- ment operates the way it does across a range of environmental contexts, and how the neural mechanisms that underlie plasticity and learning in response to environmental experiences influence brain development. Building on these frameworks, we advance an integrated model of dimensions of environmental experience, focusing on threat-based forms of harshness, deprivation-based forms of harshness, and environ- mental unpredictability. This integrated model makes clear that the why and the how of development are inextricable and, together, essential to understanding which dimensions of the environment matter. Core integrative concepts include the directedness of learning, multiple levels of developmental adaptation to the environment, and tradeoffs between adaptive and maladaptive developmental responses to adversity. The integrated model proposes that proximal and distal cues to threat-based and deprivation-based forms of harshness, as well as unpredictability in those cues, calibrate development to both immediate rearing environments and broader ecological contexts, current and future. We high- light actionable directions for research needed to investigate the integrated model and advance understanding of dimensions of environmental experience.
PDF Romeo, R. R., Flournoy, J. C., McLaughlin, K. A., & Lengua, L. J. (In Press).
Language development as a mechanism linking socioeconomic status to executive functioning development in preschool.
Developmental Science.
Publisher's VersionAbstractChildhood socioeconomic status (SES) is related to disparities in the development of both language and executive functioning (EF) skills. Emerging evidence suggests that language development may precede and provide necessary scaffolding for EF development in early childhood. The present preregistered study investigates how these skills co-develop longitudinally in early childhood and whether language development explains the relationship between SES and EF development. A socioeconomically diverse sample of 305 children completed repeated assessments of language (sentence comprehension) and EF (cognitive flexibility, behavioral inhibition, and cognitive inhibition) at four waves spaced 9 months apart from ages 3 to 5 years. Bivariate latent curve models with structured residuals were estimated to disaggregate between-person and within-person components of stability and change. Results revealed bidirectional relationships between language and EF across all waves. However, at 3 years, language comprehension more strongly predicted EF than the reverse; yet by 5 years, the bidirectional effects across domains did not significantly differ. Children from higher-SES backgrounds exhibited higher initial language and EF skills than children from lower-SES families, though SES was not associated with either rate of growth. Finally, early language-mediated the association between SES and early EF skills, and this model outperformed a reverse direction mediation. Together, results suggest that EF development is driven by early language development, and that SES disparities in EF are explained, at least in part, by early differences in language comprehension. These findings have implications for early interventions to support children's language skills as a potential pathway to improving early EF development.
PDF Weissman, D. G., Rosen, M. L., Colich, N. L., Sambook, K. A., Lengua, L. J., Sheridan, M. A., & McLaughlin, K. A. (In Press).
Exposure to Violence as an Environmental Pathway Linking Low Socioeconomic Status with Altered Neural Processing of Threat and Adolescent Psychopathology.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience , 1-14.
Publisher's VersionAbstractLow childhood socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with increased risk for psychopathology, because in part of heightened exposure to environmental adversity. Adverse experiences can be characterized along dimensions, including threat and deprivation, that contribute to psychopathology via distinct mechanisms. The current study investigated a neural mechanism through which threat and deprivation may contribute to socioeconomic disparities in psychopathology. Participants were 177 youths (83 girls) aged 10-13 years recruited from a cohort followed since the age of 3 years. SES was assessed using the income-to-needs ratio at the age of 3 years. At the age of 10-13 years, retrospective and current exposure to adverse experiences and symptoms of psychopathology were assessed. At this same time point, participants also completed a face processing task (passive viewing of fearful and neutral faces) during an fMRI scan. Lower childhood SES was associated with greater exposure to threat and deprivation experiences. Both threat and deprivation were associated with higher depression symptoms, whereas threat experiences were uniquely linked to posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms. Greater exposure to threat, but not deprivation, was associated with higher activation in dorsomedial pFC to fearful compared with neutral faces. The dorsomedial pFC is a hub of the default mode network thought to be involved in internally directed attention and cognition. Experiences of threat, but not deprivation, are associated with greater engagement of this region in response to threat cues. Threat-related adversity contributes to socioeconomic disparities in adolescent psychopathology through distinct mechanisms from deprivation.
PDF McLaughlin, K. A., & Gabard-Durnam, L. J. (In Press).
Experience-Driven Plasticity and the Emergence of Psychopathology: A Mechanistic Framework Integrating Development and the Environment into the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) Model.
Journal of Abnormal Psychology , 1-49.
Publisher's VersionAbstractDespite the clear importance of a developmental perspective for understanding the emergence of psychopathology across the life-course, such a perspective has yet to be integrated into the RDoC model. In this paper, we articulate a framework that incorporates developmentally-specific learning mechanisms that reflect experience-driven plasticity as additional units of analysis in the existing RDoC matrix. These include both experience-expectant learning mechanisms that occur during sensitive periods of development and experience-dependent learning mechanisms that may exhibit substantial variation across development. Incorporating these learning mechanisms allows for clear integration not only of development but also environmental experience into the RDoC model. We demonstrate how individual differences in environmental experiences—such as early-life adversity—can be leveraged to identify experience-driven plasticity patterns across development and apply this framework to consider how environmental experience shapes key biobehavioral processes that comprise the RDoC model. This framework provides a structure for understanding how affective, cognitive, social, and neurobiological processes are shaped by experience across development and ultimately contribute to the emergence of psychopathology. We demonstrate how incorporating an experience-driven plasticity framework is critical for understanding the development of many processes subsumed within the RDoC model, which will contribute to greater understanding of developmental variation in the etiology of psychopathology and can be leveraged to identify potential windows of heightened developmental plasticity when clinical interventions might be maximally efficacious.
PDF Kim, S. G., Weissman, D. G., Sheridan, M. A., & McLaughlin, K. A. (In Press).
Child abuse and automatic emotion regulation in children and adolescents.
Development and Psychopathology , 1-11.
Publisher's VersionAbstractChild abuse is associated with elevated risk for psychopathology. The current study examined the role of automatic emotion regulation as a potential mechanism linking child abuse with internalizing psychopathology. A sample of 237 youth aged 8–16 years and their caregivers participated. Child abuse severity was assessed by self-report questionnaires, and automatic emotion regulation was assessed using an emotional Stroop task designed to measure adaptation to emotional conflict. A similar task without emotional stimuli was also administered to evaluate whether abuse was uniquely associated with emotion regulation, but not cognitive control applied in a nonemotional context. Internalizing psychopathology was assessed concurrently and at a 2-year longitudinal follow-up. Child abuse severity was associated with lower emotional conflict adaptation but was unrelated to cognitive control. Specifically, the severity of emotional and physical abuse, but not sexual abuse, were associated with lower emotional conflict adaptation. Emotional conflict adaptation was not associated with internalizing psychopathology prospectively. These findings suggest that childhood emotional and physical abuse, in particular, may influence automatic forms of emotion regulation. Future work exploring the socioemotional consequences of altered automatic emotion regulation among youth exposed to child abuse is clearly needed.
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