Quantifying preference for social stimuli in young children using two tasks on a mobile platform

Children typically prefer to attend to social stimuli (e.g. faces, smiles) over non-social stimuli (e.g. natural scene, household objects). This preference for social stimuli is believed to be an essential building block for later social skills and healthy social development. Preference for social stimuli are typically measured using either passive viewing or instrumental choice paradigms, but not both. Since these paradigms likely tap into different mechanisms, the current study addresses this gap by administering both of these paradigms on an overlapping sample. In this study, we use a preferential looking task and an instrumental choice task to measure preference for social stimuli in 3-9 year old typically developing children. Children spent longer looking at social stimuli in the preferential looking task but did not show a similar preference for social rewards on the instrumental choice task. Task performance in these two paradigms were not correlated. Social skills were found to be positively related to the preference for social rewards on the choice task. This study points to putatively different mechanisms underlying the preference for social stimuli, and highlights the importance of choice of paradigms in measuring this construct.

[Maternal depression and child development: A prospective analysis of consequences, risk and protective factors]

Maternal depression and child development: A prospective analysis of consequences, risk and protective factors Abstract. Objective: Maternal stress, specifically maternal mental health problems, are considered risk factors for child development. The literature suggests that prenatal depressive symptoms as well as depressive symptoms are a widespread phenomenon during the further development of the child and have repeatedly been shown to have adverse effects on child mental health outcomes. The present study examined the longitudinal relationships between maternal depression (prenatal, postnatal, during childhood and adolescence) and child mental health from childhood to adolescence. Possible risk and protective factors were also considered. Method: N = 112 mothers were assessed for depressive symptoms via a questionnaire at four different timepoints (prenatal, T1; postnatal, T2; during childhood, T3; during adolescence, T4). Children's externalizing and internalizing symptoms (50.9 % girls) were assessed by their mothers both during childhood (M = 7.68, SD = 0.76 years) and during adolescence (M = 13.23, SD = 0.27 years). We evaluated the relationships between maternal depressive symptoms and children's externalizing/internalizing symptoms using multiple regression models and analyzed possible risk and protective factors using moderation analysis. Results: Externalizing/Internalizing symptoms were not directly associated with maternal depressive symptoms, while associations between such symptoms and maladaptive behavior were found in adolescents. The socioeconomic status of families showed a different risk profile for prenatal and postnatal depressive symptoms. The IQ of the children proved to be a risk factor for internalizing symptoms. Conclusions: Maternal depressive symptoms at any time during child development - in combination with further risk factors - have an impact on child mental health. The early identification of maternal symptoms followed by interventions to differentiate between prenatal and postnatal depression - especially in the context of socioeconomic status - are highly relevant for child development.

Mother-Adolescent Discrepancies in Reporting Sleep Disturbances: Effects of Diagnosis and Mother's Occupation

BACKGROUND

Sleep disturbances are common in children and adolescents. However, they are rarely diagnosed and treated because parents, who often report the symptoms, may fail to notice the problems. Factors that can affect parent-child discrepancy include child's diagnosis, parent's occupation, and child's sex. The current study retrospectively analyzed the effect of these factors on parent-child discrepancies of sleep disturbance scores.

METHODS

Data for sleep-related items in Youth Self-Report (YSR) and Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) from 2014 to 2020 August in South Korea were collected from psychiatric outpatient clinics at Konkuk University Medical Center and Soonchunhyang University Hospital.

RESULTS

A three-way analysis of variance revealed main effect of diagnosis type and interaction between diagnosis type and mother's occupation. Discrepancies were greater for mood and anxiety disorders compared to conduct-related disorder. Interaction effect revealed greater discrepancies in mood disorders for reports completed by working mothers compared to homemaker mothers.

CONCLUSION

The results of this study emphasize the need to explore with caution the self-reported sleep disturbances in adolescents, especially in those with mood disorders. The results also suggest that mother's occupation should be taken into account when evaluating sleep reports of parents and adolescents.

A Bayesian nonparametric approach to dynamic item-response modeling: An application to the GUSTO cohort study

Statistical analysis of questionnaire data is often performed employing techniques from item-response theory. In this framework, it is possible to differentiate respondent profiles and characterize the questions (items) included in the questionnaire via interpretable parameters. These models are often crosssectional and aim at evaluating the performance of the respondents. The motivating application of this work is the analysis of psychometric questionnaires taken by a group of mothers at different time points and by their children at one later time point. The data are available through the GUSTO cohort study. To this end, we propose a Bayesian semiparametric model and extend the current literature by: (i) introducing temporal dependence among questionnaires taken at different time points; (ii) jointly modeling the responses to questionnaires taken from different, but related, groups of subjects (in our case mothers and children), introducing a further dependency structure and therefore sharing of information; (iii) allowing clustering of subjects based on their latent response profile. The proposed model is able to identify three main groups of mother/child pairs characterized by their response profiles. Furthermore, we report an interesting maternal reporting bias effect strongly affecting the clustering structure of the mother/child dyads.

Covariance Between Parent and Child Symptoms Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic

OBJECTIVE

COVID-19 has had unprecedented effects on American families, including increases in depression, anxiety, and irritability for both parents and children. While parents and children influence each other's psychological functioning during non-disaster times, this effect may be amplified during times of disaster. The current study investigated how COVID-19 influenced covariance of depressive symptoms and irritability in children and their parents.

METHODS

Three hundred and ninety-one parents and their 8- to 17-year-old children (Mage = 10.68 years old, 70% male, 86% White) from a large sample of children and parents, primarily from Southeastern Louisiana, completed self-report measures of depression and irritability approximately 6 weeks into the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as providing retrospective reports of their symptoms prior to the pandemic. Actor-partner interdependence models were used to measure the reciprocal effects of parent symptoms on children and vice versa, both before and during the pandemic.

RESULTS

Actor effects in both the depressive symptoms and irritability models suggested that pre-COVID-19 depressive symptoms and irritability were robust predictors of early-COVID-19 depressive symptoms and irritability for both parents and children. Partner effects were also detected in the irritability model, in that parental irritability prior to COVID-19 was associated with decreased child irritability during the pandemic. Both before and during the pandemic, associations between parent and child depressive symptoms and irritability scores were weaker in families evidencing greater dysfunction.

CONCLUSIONS

Results suggest that COVID-19-related stress is associated with increases in both parent and child symptomatology, and that family relationships likely influence associations between these symptoms.

Italian adolescents' adjustment before and during the coronavirus disease 2019: A comparison between mothers' and adolescents' perception

The current cross‐sectional study aimed to analyse adolescents’ adjustment during and before the lockdown caused by the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, by evaluating levels of emotional problems and hyperactivity as referred by adolescents themselves. A further purpose was to compare adolescents’ and mothers’ perception about adolescents’ adjustment. Participants comprised 206 adolescents (50.5% females; mean age = 12.2; SD = 3.3) and their mothers (mean age = 43.9; SD = 5.9). Findings showed that levels of emotional symptoms and hyperactivity in adolescents during the pandemic were significantly higher than before. This worsening was consistently detected by both mothers and adolescents themselves. Two main conclusions are highlighted by the current research: During the first wave of the COVID‐19 pandemic, adolescents participating to this study detected a worsening in their well‐being; mothers’ perceptions of their adolescents’ psychological problems may be considered reliable and consistent with the offspring’s point of view.

A study of personality in children aged 8–12 years: Comparing self‐ and parents' ratings

This cross‐sectional study was designed to investigate personality in children aged 8–12 years. Children's self‐perceptions were compared to parent's ratings. Parents of 506 children completed the Hierarchical Personality Inventory for Children (HiPIC) and children completed a selection of 38 questions from the HiPIC. Results showed that children aged 11–12 years present higher structural congruence, higher reliabilities and higher mean correlation with parents' description than children aged 8–9 years. Interestingly reliabilities of parents' ratings were also higher for older children. Mean levels were higher in younger children for Imagination in parents' ratings and for Benevolence, Conscientiousness and Imagination, in children's ratings. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Maternal pre-pregnancy weight and twins’ temperament

Maternal pre-pregnancy weight has been related with young singletons’ cognitive and behavioral development, but it is not clear if it has an effect on temperament. We used a twin cohort to evaluate the association between maternal pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI) and infants’ temperament. The mothers of 834 twins answered questions regarding their pre-pregnancy BMI and their 0- to 18-month-old children’s temperament using the Revised Infant Behavior Questionnaire. Three temperamental dimensions were examined: activity level, distress to limitation and duration of orienting. The relationship between maternal pre-pregnancy BMI and each temperamental component was investigated by means of multilevel mixed-effects linear regression analysis. We found no clear evidence of an association of maternal pre-pregnancy BMI with twins’ temperament. The development of temperament is influenced by a large number of factors, probably different from those influencing children’s emotional and behavioral development.

Parenting practices in middle childhood mediate the relation between growing up with a parent having bipolar disorder and offspring psychopathology from childhood into early adulthood

The offspring of parents with bipolar disorder (OBD) are at high risk for developing mental disorders. In addition to genetic factors, environmental risk is purported to be associated with these negative outcomes. However, few studies have examined this relation. Using concurrent and longitudinal data, we examined if support, structure, and control provided by parents in middle childhood mediated the relation between having a parent with or without bipolar disorder, and offspring mental health. The sample included 145 offspring (77 OBD, 68 controls) aged 4 to 14 years and their parents. Parent and teacher ratings of child behavior were collected, and diagnostic assessments were conducted in offspring 12 years later (n = 101). Bootstrapping analyses showed that low levels of structure mediated the relation between having a parent with bipolar disorder and elevated internalizing and externalizing difficulties during middle childhood. For the longitudinal outcomes, parental control emerged as the strongest mediator of the relation between parents’ bipolar disorder and offspring psychopathology. Suboptimal childrearing may have different immediate and enduring consequences on mental health outcomes in the OBD. Parental structure has robust effects on emotional and behavioral problems in middle childhood, while levels of control promote psychological adjustment in the OBD as they mature.

Psychological Distress Among School-Aged Children with and Without Intrauterine Cocaine Exposure: Perinatal Versus Contextual Effects

Whether intrauterine cocaine exposure (IUCE) explains unique variance in psychiatric functioning among school age children, even after controlling for other biological and social risk factors, has not been fully delineated. As part of a longitudinal birth cohort study of children with and without IUCE, we conducted and analyzed data based on structured clinical interviews with 105 children (57% male) and their caregivers when the child was approximately 8.5 years old; 47% of the children had experienced IUCE. Interviews included past and current major psychological disorders and sub-threshold mental health symptoms. Potential covariates were ascertained by interviews of birth mothers and other caregivers from shortly after the child's birth until the 8.5-year visit. More than one-third of children met DSM-IV criteria for one or more mood, anxiety, attention deficit, or disruptive behavior disorders. IUCE was not significantly associated with children's history of psychological distress, in either bivariate or multiple logistic regressions. In contrast, birth mothers' acknowledgement of greater psychiatric distress at baseline and higher levels of alcohol consumption during pregnancy, and at 8.5 years caregivers' reports of their own psychological distress, and children's lower IQ were predictors of higher rates of psychological morbidity. Findings are consistent with prior reports suggesting that, regardless of IUCE status, children from low-income, urban backgrounds are at heightened risk for psychological distress. Results underscore the need for closer monitoring of the mental health of children living in low-income households, with or without intrauterine substance exposures, to facilitate access to appropriate services.

Evaluating the Iowa Gambling Task as a Direct Assessment of Impulsivity with Low-Income Children

This study examined performance on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT; Bechara, Damasio, Damasio, & Anderson, 1994) as a measure of low-income school-aged children's affective decision-making and considered its utility as a direct indicator of impulsivity. One hundred and ninety-three 8-11 year olds performed a computerized version of the Iowa Gambling Task, a validated measure of decision-making. Multi-level modeling was used to examine children's performance over the course of the task, with age, gender, and teachers' ratings of child impulsivity (BIS-11; Patton, Stanford, & Barratt, 1995) used to predict children's Iowa Gambling performance. Higher impulsivity scores predicted a decrease in slope of Iowa Gambling performance, indicating students rated higher on impulsivity chose more disadvantageously across the task blocks. Results support evidence of the validity of the Iowa Gambling Task as a measure of impulsivity in low-income minority children.

The Efficacy of a Police-Advocacy Intervention for Victims of Domestic Violence: 12 Month Follow-Up Data

The Domestic Violence Home Visit Intervention (DVHVI) provides advocate/police officer team home visits following a domestic dispute. Women (52 DVHVI and 55 controls) were interviewed at 1, 6, and 12 months following a police reported domestic incident to assess repeat violence, service utilization, and symptoms. Women who received the DVHVI were more satisfied with the police and likely to call them to report a nonphysical domestic dispute in the 12 months following the initial incident than women in the comparison group. DVHVI participants were significantly more likely to use court-based services and seek mental health treatment for their children.

Mother-child agreement and its influencing factors in children with and without depression

Az anya-gyerek egyezést és befolyásoló tényezőit vizsgáltam depressziós és nem depressziós gyermekpopulációkban. Célkitűzés: Hipotézisek: a gyermek neme és életkora, az anya depressziója befolyásolja az egyezést; a depressziós gyermekek szülei alacsonyabb életminőséget jeleznek gyermekeiknél; életminőséggel kapcsolatos egyezés jobb idősebb és nem depressziós gyermekeknél. Módszer: Depressziós gyermekek ( N = 354) átlagéletkora 11,69 év (sd: 2,05), nem depressziós minta ( N = 1695) átlagéletkora 10,34 év (sd: 2,19) volt. Pszichiátriai diagnózist félig strukturált kérdőívvel, depressziós tüneteket és életminőséget önkitöltős kérdőívekkel mértem. Eredmények: Anya-gyerek egyezés a gyermek depressziós tüneteiről nőtt a gyermek életkorának emelkedésével. Anya-fiú beszámolók szignifikáns különbséget mutattak, anya-lány párok véleménye hasonló volt. Depressziós anyák súlyosabb tüneteket jelöltek gyermekeiknek. Depressziós gyermekek szülei alacsonyabb életminőséget gondoltak gyermekeiknél. Az egyezést befolyásolta a gyermek depressziója. Következtetések: A gyermek életkora, az alany pszichiátriai betegsége befolyásolja az egyezést. A gyakorlat számára fontos ezen tényezők ismerete.

Perceptions of problem behavior in adolescents' families: perceiver, target, and family effects

Considerable research has focused on the reliability and validity of informant reports of family behavior, especially maternal reports of adolescent problem behavior. None of these studies, however, has based their orientation on a theoretical model of interpersonal perception. In this study we used the social relations model (SRM) to examine family members' reports of each others' externalizing and internalizing problem behavior. Two parents and two adolescents in 69 families rated each others' behavior within a round-robin design. SRM analysis showed that within-family perceptions of externalizing and internalizing behaviors are consistently due to three sources of variance; perceiver, target, and family effects. A family/contextual effect on informant reports of problem behavior has not been previously reported.

Through a mother's eyes: Sources of bias when mothers with co-occurring disorders assess their children

Mothers are the principal informants on children's emotional and behavioral functioning. Maternal assessments of child functioning can be influenced by a mother's own psychological state. The magnitude and valence of distortion in maternal assessments associated with current maternal mental health and substance abuse symptoms were explored in a clinical sample of 253 mothers with co-occurring disorders and histories of trauma. Analyses estimated the correlation between current maternal symptoms and child assessments after controlling for maternal history of disorders, child's history of service utilization for emotional and behavioral problems, and demographic characteristics. Current maternal psychological distress was associated with more pessimistic assessments on the problem-focused Child Behavior Checklist, whereas current maternal substance abuse problems were associated with more optimistic assessments on both problem-focused and strength-based measures. Clinicians and researchers may choose to take distortion into account when treatment plans or measures of change are based on maternal assessments.

The Impact of the Big Five Personality Traits on Reports of Child Behavior Problems by Different Informants

The present study compared ratings of a standardized sample of child behavior problems across informants and examined the effects of informant personality traits on child behavior ratings by mothers, teachers, and group-care workers. Participants were 55 clinic-referred children, aged 6-12 years. All informants watched and rated the same 17-min videotaped behavior sample of a familiar target child. Independent trained observers rated the same videotapes to provide criterion ratings. Informants' personality traits were assessed using the NEO Five Factor Personality Inventory. Results showed that mothers reported fewer behavior problems than did the professionals, that the informants who were familiar with the child reported more behavior problems than did the independent observers, and that higher levels of informant neuroticism were related to higher ratings of child behavior problems in the case of the professionals, but not in the case of the mothers. In addition, group-care workers who were less extraverted and open were likely to report more child behavior problems than group-care workers with normal levels of extraversion and openness. Finally, no relations were found between agreeableness or conscientiousness and ratings of child behavior. Findings suggest that professionals who work with children are not immune to distortions based on their own personality.

Case Formulation and Design of Behavioral Treatment Programs

Summary: We review the rationale for behavioral clinical case formulations and emphasize the role of the functional analysis in the design of individualized treatments. Standardized treatments may not be optimally effective for clients who have multiple behavior problems. These problems can affect each other in complex ways and each behavior problem can be influenced by multiple, interacting causal variables. The mechanisms of action of standardized treatments may not always address the most important causal variables for a client's behavior problems. The functional analysis integrates judgments about the client's behavior problems, important causal variables, and functional relations among variables. The functional analysis aids treatment decisions by helping the clinician estimate the relative magnitude of effect of each causal variable on the client's behavior problems, so that the most effective treatments can be selected. The parameters of, and issues associated with, a functional analysis and Functional Analytic Clinical Case Models (FACCM) are illustrated with a clinical case. The task of selecting the best treatment for a client is complicated because treatments differ in their level of specificity and have unequally weighted mechanisms of action. Further, a treatment's mechanism of action is often unknown.

Clinical Case Formulation in the Research Program “Subjective Theories”

Summary: Clinical case formulation within the research program subjective theories is based on a constructivistic point of view. The relevance of the subjective constructions was first postulated by Kelly (1955) in his personal construct theory. In his model of “man the scientist” Kelly shows the core assumption of a parallelism between naive and scientific theories. Kelly's model was elaborated within the research program subjective theories (RPST). This article shows the clinical case formulation within the RPST with examples of patients suffering from chronic pancreatitis and from chronic back pain. The RPST proposes a two-phase model for the research process of communicative and explanatory validation. In the phase of communicative validation, we are asking whether patients hold subjective theories about their diseases. In the phase of explanatory validation, we are asking whether these theories influence their behavior during illness. The results of the phase of communicative validation reveal that these patients do indeed have differentiated theories about their illnesses and recognize the potential of these ideas to influence the course of their illness. In the phase of explanatory validation, it was also possible to test these subjective theories empirically: Patients view their illnesses realistically and reveal rationally guided coping behavior.