In sub-Saharan countries, like South Africa, there is scant understanding of adolescent resilience to depression over time; the multisystemic resource combinations that support such resilience; and whether more diverse resource combinations yield better mental health dividends. In response, we conducted a longitudinal concurrent nested mixed methods study with 223 South African adolescents (mean age: 17.16 years, SD = 1.73; 64.60% girls; 81.60% Black). Using longitudinal mixture modeling, the quantitative study identified trajectories of depression and associations between trajectory membership and resource diversity. Using a draw-and-write methodology and reflexive thematic analyses, the qualitative study explored the resource diversity associated with each trajectory. Taken together, these studies identified four depression trajectories (Stable Low; Declining; Worsening; Chronic High) with varying resource diversity at baseline and over time. Resource diversity was inclusive of personal, relational, contextual, and culturally valued resources in both the Stable Low and Declining trajectories, with emphasis on relational supports. Personal resources were emphasized in the Worsening and Chronic High trajectories, and culturally valued and contextual resources de-emphasized. In summary, resource constellations characterized by within and across system diversity and cultural responsiveness are more protective and will be key to advancing sub-Saharan adolescent mental health.

As our understanding of the process of resilience has become more culturally and contextually grounded, researchers have had to seek innovative ways to account for the complex, reciprocal relationship between the many systems that influence young people’s capacity to thrive. This paper briefly traces the history of a more contextualized understanding of resilience and then reviews a social–ecological model to explain multisystemic resilience. A case study is then used to show how a multisystemic understanding of resilience can influence the design and implementation of resilience research. The Resilient Youth in Stressed Environments study is a longitudinal mixed methods investigation of adolescents and emerging adults in communities that depend on oil and gas industries in Canada and South Africa. These communities routinely experience stress at individual, family, and institutional levels from macroeconomic factors related to boom-and-bust economic cycles. Building on the project’s methods and findings, we discuss how to create better studies of resilience which are able to capture both emic and etic accounts of positive developmental processes in ways that avoid the tendency to homogenize children’s experience. Limitations to doing multisystemic resilience research are also highlighted, with special attention to the need for further innovation.

Children with fragile X syndrome (FXS) often avoid eye contact, a behavior that is potentially related to hyperarousal. Prior studies, however, have focused on between-person associations rather than coupling of within-person changes in gaze behaviors and arousal. In addition, there is debate about whether prompts to maintain eye contact are beneficial for individuals with FXS. In a study of young females (ages 6–16), we used eye tracking to assess gaze behavior and pupil dilation during social interactions in a group with FXS (n = 32) and a developmentally similar comparison group (n = 23). Participants engaged in semi-structured conversations with a female examiner during blocks with and without verbal prompts to maintain eye contact. We identified a social–behavioral and psychophysiological profile that is specific to females with FXS; this group exhibited lower mean levels of eye contact, significantly increased mean pupil dilation during conversations that included prompts to maintain eye contact, and showed stronger positive coupling between eye contact and pupil dilation. Our findings strengthen support for the perspective that gaze aversion in FXS reflects negative reinforcement of social avoidance behavior. We also found that behavioral skills training may improve eye contact, but maintaining eye contact appears to be physiologically taxing for females with FXS.

The present study examined the influence of fathers’ parenting quality during infancy on children’s emotion regulation during toddlerhood and, subsequently, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms in middle childhood. Fathers and their 8-month-old infants (N = 124) were followed over time to obtain home observations of parenting quality at 8 and 24 months, laboratory observations of children’s emotion regulation at 24 months, and teacher reports of children’s ADHD symptoms at 7 years. A path analysis revealed that fathers’ emotional disengagement in infancy and minimizing responses to children’s distress in toddlerhood forecast children’s development of ADHD symptoms in middle childhood. Further, a significant indirect effect was found such that fathers’ parenting at 8 and 24 months predicted subsequent development of ADHD symptoms at age 7 through toddlers’ difficulty regulating emotion. Implications of this study for early intervention and directions for future research are discussed.

Prenatal maternal stress and mental health problems are known to increase risk for developmental psychopathology in offspring, yet pathways leading to risk or resiliency are poorly understood. In a quasi-experimental design, we prospectively examined associations between disaster-related prenatal stress, maternal mental health symptoms, and infant temperament outcomes. Mothers who were pregnant during Hurricane Harvey (N = 527) reported on objective hardships (e.g., loss of belongings or income, evacuation, home flooding) related to the storm and subsequent mental health symptoms (anxiety/depression, posttraumatic stress) across time. At a postpartum assessment, mothers reported on their infant’s temperament (negative affect, positive affect, orienting/regulatory capacity). Greater objective hardship indirectly predicted higher levels of infant orienting/regulatory capacity through its association with increased maternal posttraumatic stress symptoms. Greater objective hardship also indirectly predicted higher levels of infant negative affect through its association with increased maternal anxiety/depression symptoms across time. Our findings suggest a psychological mechanism linking prenatal stress with specific temperamental characteristics via maternal mental health symptoms. Findings point to the importance of high-quality assessment and mental health services for vulnerable women and young children.

This study aimed to examine Dispositional, Adaptational, and Environmental (DAE) variables at the intersection of adaptive and maladaptive personality development as a conceptual replication of the DAE-model (Asendorpf & Motti-Stefanidi, European Journal of Personality, 32(3), 167–185, 2018). In a community sample of adolescents (N = 463; Mage = 13.6 years; 51% female) hypotheses-driven cross-lagged panel models were tested. Longitudinal associations between Dispositional (i.e., neuroticism, disagreeableness and unconscientiousness), Adaptational (i.e., social problems), and Environmental (i.e., perceived quality of the parent-child relationship) variables were investigated. The results partially support the DAE hypotheses. High levels of neuroticism, disagreeableness and social problems were found to predict the perceived quality of the parent–child relationship. In turn, the perceived quality of the parent–child relationship was found to predict levels of unconscientiousness and social problems. No mediation effects were found and, in contrast to DAE hypotheses, results did not indicate bidirectional influences between dispositions and adaptations. The results shed light on differential person–environment interactions that shape personality development and the importance of the perceived quality of the parent–child relationship. These findings provide insight in pathways of personality development, that may lead to personality pathology, and demonstrate the value of the DAE model as a structured guideline that provides testable hypotheses.

Bullying research has shown repeatedly that victims of bullying have an increased risk for later internalizing problems and bullies have an increased risk for later externalizing problems. Bullying involvement is often, either explicitly or implicitly, presented as part of a causal mechanism for maladjustment. However, genetic vulnerability may confound the reported associations. This study examined to what extent genetic vulnerability can account for the reported associations between bullying involvement (age 11-14) and later internalizing and externalizing problems (age 16), using data from the TRacking Adolescents' Individual Lives Survey (n = 1604). Because polygenic scores capture only a fraction of the total genetic effect, they were extrapolated to the size of single-nucleotide polymorphism and twin heritability estimates to examine genetic confounding while controlling for (hypothetical) polygenic scores that fully capture the genetic effect. Genetic vulnerability for internalizing and externalizing problems confounded, respectively, the association between bullying victimization and later internalizing problems, and the association between bullying perpetration and later externalizing problems. As such, this study showcases a method that can be broadly used to assess the magnitude of genetic confounding. Caution is, however, warranted in interpreting particularly the less straightforward extrapolations of polygenic scores to the size of twin heritability estimates.

There has been growing evidence that autistic traits are more represented in children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The purpose of this study was to investigate autistic traits associated with responding joint attention (RJA) abilities and face scanning patterns using eye-tracking in children with ADHD, and to compare with typically developing peers (TDs). All child participants viewed a series of videos related to male and female children under congruent and incongruent conditions during eye-tracking evaluation. The object and face regions of the models within the videos were determined as areas of interest (AOIs). Children with ADHD had significantly elevated ratings of autistic traits than TDs. Time course analysis of the proportion of fixations (PoF) on object region determined that children with ADHD tended to show more interest in the objects and had higher PoF on face interest area, including eyes and mouth compared to TD children in the videos when the male/female model shifts his/her gaze to the corner. Higher SRS scores were associated with higher PoF on the Face AOI in both groups. Given these findings, social skill interventions directly targeting the core deficits of RJA and problems in facial scanning appears to be beneficial in children with ADHD.

Fathers have been an important source of child endurance and prosperity since the dawn of civilization, promoting adaptation to social rules, defining cultural meaning systems, teaching daily living skills, and providing the material background against which children developed; still, the recent reformulation in the role of the father requires theory-building. Paternal caregiving is rare in mammals, occurring in 3–5% of species, expresses in multiple formats, and involves flexible neurobiological accommodations to ecological conditions and active caregiving. Here, we discuss father contribution to resilience across development. Our model proposes three tenets of resilience – plasticity, sociality, and meaning – and discussion focuses on father-specific contributions to each tenet at different developmental stages; newborn, infant, preschooler, child, and adolescent. Father’s style of high arousal, energetic physicality, guided participation in daily skills, joint adventure, and conflict resolution promotes children’s flexible approach and social competence within intimate bonds and social groups. By expanding children’s interests, sharpening cognitions, tuning affect regulation, encouraging exploration, and accompanying the search for identity, fathers support the sense of meaning, enhancing the human-specific dimension of resilience. We end by highlighting pitfalls to paternal contribution, including absence, abuse, rigidity, expectations, and gender typing, and the need to formulate novel theories to accommodate the “involved dad.”

Difficulty recognizing negative emotions is linked to aggression in children. However, it remains unclear how certain types of emotion recognition (insensitivities vs. biases) are associated with functions of aggression and whether these relations change across childhood. We addressed these gaps in two diverse community samples (study 1: aged 4 and 8; N = 300; study 2: aged 5 to 13, N = 374). Across studies, children performed a behavioral task to assess emotion recognition (sad, fear, angry, and happy facial expressions) while caregivers reported children’s overt proactive and reactive aggression. Difficulty recognizing fear (especially in early childhood) and sadness was associated with greater proactive aggression. Insensitivity to anger – perceiving angry faces as showing no emotion – was associated with increased proactive aggression, especially in middle-to-late childhood. Additionally, greater happiness bias – mistaking negative emotions as being happy – was consistently related to higher reactive aggression only in early childhood. Together, difficulty recognizing negative emotions was related to proactive aggression, however, the strength of these relations varied based on the type of emotion and developmental period assessed. Alternately, difficulty determining emotion valence was related to reactive aggression in early childhood. These findings demonstrate that distinct forms of emotion recognition are important for understanding functions of aggression across development.

We applied network analysis combined with community detection algorithms to examine how adverse experiences (AEs) (e.g., abuse, bullying victimization, financial difficulties) are, individually and conjunctively, associated with emotional and behavioral problems at age fourteen in the Dutch TRacking Adolescents’ Individual Lives Survey (TRAILS, N = 1880, 52.2% female). We found that bullying victimization, peer rejection, parental mental health problems, emotional abuse, and sexual abuse were the only AEs directly contributing to risk of emotional problems. Parental divorce and emotional abuse were the only AEs directly contributing to risk of behavioral problems. Most AEs (e.g., parental employment, parental physical illness) were not conditionally associated with emotional and behavioral problems but may nevertheless contribute to emotional and behavioral problems via associations with other AEs (e.g., parental unemployment and emotional abuse). Community detection algorithms suggested that many of the AEs cluster together (e.g., physical abuse, emotional abuse, and sexual abuse; financial difficulties and parental unemployment), sometimes with emotional and behavioral problems (e.g., bullying victimization, peer rejection and emotional problems). Our findings shed light on how individual AEs contribute to risks of emotional and behavioral problems directly, and indirectly through associations with other AEs.

There has been significant interest and progress in understanding the role of caregiver unpredictability on brain maturation, cognitive and socioemotional development, and psychopathology. Theoretical consensus has emerged about the unique influence of unpredictability in shaping children’s experience, distinct from other adverse exposures or features of stress exposure. Nonetheless, the field still lacks theoretical and empirical common ground due to difficulties in accurately conceptualizing and measuring unpredictability in the caregiver–child relationship. In this paper, we first provide an overview of the role of unpredictability in theories of caregiving and childhood adversity and present four issues that are currently under-discussed but are crucial to the field. Focusing on how moment-to-moment and day-to-day dynamics are at the heart of caregiver unpredictability, we review three approaches aiming to address some of these nuances: Environmental statistics, entropy, and dynamic systems. Lastly, we conclude with a broad summary and suggest future research directions. Systematic progress in this field can inform interventions and policies aiming to increase stability in the lives of children.

Parenting can protect against the development of, or increase risk for, child psychopathology; however, it is unclear if parenting is related to psychopathology symptoms in a specific domain, or to broad liability for psychopathology. Parenting differs between and within families, and both overall family-level parenting and the child-specific parenting a child receives may be important in estimating transdiagnostic associations with psychopathology. Data come from a cross-sectional epidemiological sample (N = 10,605 children ages 4–17, 6434 households). Parents rated child internalizing and externalizing symptoms and their parenting toward each child. General and specific (internalizing, externalizing) psychopathology factors, derived with bifactor modeling, were regressed on parenting using multilevel modeling. Less warmth and more aversive/inconsistent parenting in the family, and toward an individual child relative to family average, were associated with higher general psychopathology and specific externalizing problems. Unexpectedly, more warmth in the family, and toward an individual child relative to family average, was associated with higher specific internalizing problems in 4–11 (not 12–17) year-olds. Less warmth and more aversive/inconsistent parenting are broad correlates of child psychopathology. Aversive/inconsistent parenting, is also related to specific externalizing problems. Parents may behave more warmly when their younger children have specific internalizing problems, net of overall psychopathology.

Prenatal adversity has been linked to later psychopathology. Yet, research on cumulative prenatal adversity, as well as its interaction with offspring genotype, on brain and behavioral development is scarce. With this study, we aimed to address this gap. In Finnish mother–infant dyads, we investigated the association of a cumulative prenatal adversity sum score (PRE-AS) with (a) child emotional and behavioral problems assessed with the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire at 4 and 5 years (N = 1568, 45.3% female), (b) infant amygdalar and hippocampal volumes (subsample N = 122), and (c) its moderation by a hippocampal-specific coexpression polygenic risk score based on the serotonin transporter (SLC6A4) gene. We found that higher PRE-AS was linked to greater child emotional and behavioral problems at both time points, with partly stronger associations in boys than in girls. Higher PRE-AS was associated with larger bilateral infant amygdalar volumes in girls compared to boys, while no associations were found for hippocampal volumes. Further, hyperactivity/inattention in 4-year-old girls was related to both genotype and PRE-AS, the latter partially mediated by right amygdalar volumes as preliminary evidence suggests. Our study is the first to demonstrate a dose-dependent sexually dimorphic relationship between cumulative prenatal adversity and infant amygdalar volumes.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) represents a significant public health concern. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) represent one risk factor for IPV, however, the results of existing research on the association between ACEs and IPV demonstrate mixed findings. The present research sought to meta-analytically examine the association between ACEs and (a) IPV perpetration and (b) IPV victimization. Moderator analyses were conducted to determine factors that may impact the association between ACEs and IPV involvement. Electronic searches were conducted in MEDLINE, Embase, and PsycINFO in August of 2021. One-hundred and twenty-three records were screened for inclusion. All studies included a measure of ACEs and IPV victimization or perpetration. Among the 27 studies and 41 samples included in the meta-analysis, 65,330 participants were included. The results of the meta-analyses demonstrated that ACEs were positively associated with IPV perpetration and victimization. Significant methodological and measurement moderators further inform our understanding of ACEs and IPV involvement. The present meta-analyses demonstrates that trauma-informed approaches to IPV screening, prevention, and intervention may be useful, given that individuals who are involved with IPV may be more likely to possess a history of ACEs exposure.

The relationship between attachment and posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) has been researched extensively within adult samples, with findings consistently demonstrating a relationship between insecure attachment and increased PTSS, and between secure attachment and decreased PTSS. To a lesser extent, such relationships have also been explored within child and adolescent samples. The evidence to date is equivocal and there have been no attempts to synthesize studies. This meta-analysis aimed to provide a quantitative synthesis of studies reporting a relationship between attachment orientation (on both developmental and social psychological measures) and PTSS within children and adolescents. A random effects model was used to pool 30 studies (N = 10,431) reporting exposure to a range of traumatic events including maltreatment and war trauma. Results demonstrate a negative correlation between secure attachment and PTSS (r = −.16) and a positive correlation between insecure attachment (r = .20), avoidant attachment (r = .20), anxious attachment (r = .32), and disorganized attachment (r = .17) and PTSS. These findings indicate a small but significant relationship between attachment and PTSS in children and adolescents. Exposure to maltreatment did not moderate the relationship between secure attachment and PTSS, though strengthened the relationship between insecure attachment and PTSS.

This study investigates the capacity of pre/perinatal factors to predict attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms in childhood. It also explores whether predictive accuracy of a pre/perinatal model varies for different groups in the population. We used the ABCD (Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development) cohort from the United States (N = 9975). Pre/perinatal information and the Child Behavior Checklist were reported by the parent when the child was aged 9–10. Forty variables which are generally known by birth were input as potential predictors including maternal substance-use, obstetric complications and child demographics. Elastic net regression with 5-fold validation was performed, and subsequently stratified by sex, race/ethnicity, household income and parental psychopathology. Seventeen pre/perinatal variables were identified as robust predictors of ADHD symptoms in this cohort. The model explained just 8.13% of the variance in ADHD symptoms on average (95% CI = 5.6%–11.5%). Predictive accuracy of the model varied significantly by subgroup, particularly across income groups, and several pre/perinatal factors appeared to be sex-specific. Results suggest we may be able to predict childhood ADHD symptoms with modest accuracy from birth. This study needs to be replicated using prospectively measured pre/perinatal data.