Executive functions and social information processing in adolescents with severe behavior problems

The predictive effect childhood abuse on aggression of adolescents with ADHD: The mediating role of executive function

This study investigates the predictive effect childhood abuse on aggression of adolescents with ADHD, focusing on the mediating role of Executive function. Random sampling was used to select adolescents from five schools in Baltim City, Egypt from January to April 2024 as the research subjects. A total of 180 participants aged 12-15 years (mean= 13.10 and SD = 4.56) were included in the analyses. Questionnaires were used to collect data. This study mainly explored the relationship between childhood abuse, executive function, and reactive and proactive aggressive behavior among adolescents. The results of comparing the scores of the top 27% and the bottom 27% of childhood abuse experience showed that the reactive, proactive aggression, and executive dysfunction questionnaire scores of the high childhood abuse group were higher than those of the low childhood abuse group.

Effects of victimization and perpetration in observing bullying scenes: an eye-tracker study{es}: Efectos de la victimización y la perpetración en la observación de escenas de acoso: un estudio con eye-tracker

Introduction

Previous research showed that bullying experiences are associated with different ways of interpreting and behaving in bullying dynamics. However, it remains uncertain whether these distinctions can already be present during the first step of information processing: the allocation of attention.

Aims

The study explored attentional patterns of Italian students with different bullying experiences in daily life while observing different roles represented through bullying vignettes.

Methods

Participants (72 students, Mage= 11.18) were categorized as victims, bully-victims, or not involved based on their scores on a self-report questionnaire. They observed 9 bullying vignettes on which different portraits were presented (bully, victim, pro-bully, defender, bystander) while the eye-tracker registered attentional indexes (fixation, visit and duration).

Results

Kruskal- Wallis and pairwise comparisons revealed a significant effect for the portraits of the bully and the pro-bully as bully-victims exhibited greater fixations and visits than victims, while students not involved showed no significant differences with the other groups.

Conclusion

Our research reveals that bully-victims focused more on threatening cues while victims diverged their gaze from them, confirming that the experience of bullying influences how they explore aggressive situations. Learning how involved students direct their attention helps us understand different responses, leading to powerful interventions.

A Meta-Analysis of the Effectiveness of EMDR and TF-CBT in Reducing Trauma Symptoms and Externalizing Behavior Problems in Adolescents

This multi-level meta-analysis tested if evidence-based trauma treatment was effective in reducing trauma symptoms and externalizing behavior problems in adolescents. Based on eight independent samples and 75 effect sizes, results indicated that Trauma Focused-Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) and Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR) had a large and significant overall effect (d = 0.909) on reducing trauma symptoms and externalizing behavior problems. Trauma treatment significantly decreased trauma symptoms (large effect) and externalizing behavior problems (medium effect). Age and type of control group moderated treatment effects. Treatment was more effective in older adolescents. Trauma treatment for adolescents with externalizing behavior problems had a larger effect compared to no treatment, but not compared to treatment as usual. It seems important to provide a broad treatment offer for adolescents with severe externalizing behavior problems, in which, besides trauma treatment, attention is paid to reducing relevant individual risk factors for behavior problems.

The relation between harsh parenting and bullying involvement and the moderating role of child inhibitory control: A population-based study

Harsh parenting has been linked to children's bullying involvement in three distinct roles: perpetrators, targets (of bullying), and perpetrator‐targets. To understand how the same parenting behavior is associated with three different types of bulling involvement, we examined the moderating roles of children's inhibitory control and sex. In addition, we differentiated between mothers’ and fathers’ harsh parenting. We analyzed multi‐informant questionnaire data from 2131 families participating in the Dutch Generation R birth cohort study. When children were three years old, parents reported on their own harsh parenting practices. When children were four, mothers reported on their children's inhibitory control. At child age six, teachers reported on children's bullying involvement. Our results revealed that fathers’, and not mothers’, harsh parenting increased the odds of being a perpetrator. No moderation effects with children's inhibitory control and sex were found for the likelihood of being a perpetrator. Moderation effects were present for the likelihood of being a target and a perpetrator‐target, albeit only with mothers’ harsh parenting. Specifically, for boys with lower‐level inhibitory control problems, mothers’ harsh parenting increased the odds of being a target. In contrast, for boys with higher‐level inhibitory control problems, mothers’ harsh parenting decreased the odds of being a target. Furthermore, for girls with higher‐level inhibitory control problems, mothers’ harsh parenting increased the odds of being a perpetrator‐target. Overall, our results underscore the importance of differentiating by children's cognitive skills and by parent and child sex to fully understand how harsh parenting and bullying involvement are related.

Working memory guidance of visual attention to threat in offenders

Aggression and trait anger have been linked to attentional biases toward angry faces and attribution of hostile intent in ambiguous social situations. Memory and emotion play a crucial role in social-cognitive models of aggression but their mechanisms of influence are not fully understood. Combining a memory task and a visual search task, this study investigated the guidance of attention allocation toward naturalistic face targets during visual search by visual working memory (WM) templates in 113 participants who self-reported having served a custodial sentence. Searches were faster when angry faces were held in working memory regardless of the emotional valence of the visual search target. Higher aggression and trait anger predicted increased working memory modulated attentional bias. These results are consistent with the Social-Information Processing model, demonstrating that internal representations bias attention allocation to threat and that the bias is linked to aggression and trait anger.

Neurocognitive functioning of children with mild to borderline intellectual disabilities and psychiatric disorders: profile characteristics and predictors of behavioural problems

BACKGROUND

The aim of the current study was twofold: first, to uncover a neurocognitive profile of normative and relative strengths and weaknesses that characterises an extremely vulnerable group of children with mild to borderline intellectual disabilities (MBID) and co-morbid psychiatric disorders, and second, to investigate the relevance of these neurocognitive functions explaining internalising and externalising symptoms.

METHOD

We recruited 45 children (M_age  = 9.5, SD_age  = 1.7; range 6-13 years) with MBID (Full-Scale IQ 50-85) and at least one psychiatric disorder. Neurocognitive functioning was examined utilising the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children - Fifth Edition (WISC-V) indices and the Cognitive Task Application (COTAPP), a comprehensive computerised self-paced task designed in such a manner that 'g' (an overall tendency of children with MBID to execute tasks with a slower reaction time and a higher error rate) has been corrected for in the administration of the task (i.e. completely self-paced) and in the operationalisation of outcome measures. Behavioural problems were measured using the CBCL and TRF. One-sample t-tests and binomial tests were carried out to compare performance with normative data. Regression analyses were used to examine the relationship between neurocognitive parameters and mental health.

RESULTS

Compared with normative data, very small to very large effect sizes were found, indicating clear heterogeneity amongst neurocognitive domains relevant for children with MBID. Two prominent neurocognitive weaknesses emerged: processing speed - characterised by slowness and unstableness combined with a high drift rate and delayed processing of the previous trial, particularly under higher cognitive demands - and working memory - in terms of a weaker central executive and 'slave' systems to temporarily store information. Both domains were not clearly predictive of internalising or externalising problems.

CONCLUSION

Children with MBID and psychiatric disorders are hampered by a strongly diminished processing speed and working memory capacity, together resulting in an overall limited processing capacity that may underlie the general developmental delays on domains that depend on fast and parallel processing of information (i.e. language, reading, mathematics and more complex forms of social cognition). Neurocognitive vulnerabilities are neither necessary nor sufficient to explain internalising and externalising problems; rather, a mismatch between the support needs and adaptations these children need, arising from their diminished processing capacity, and the inadequacy of the environment to compensate for this vulnerability may be of relevance.

Community Violence Exposure and Youth Aggression: The Moderating Role of Working Memory

Community violence exposure (CVE) is associated with aggression among youth, particularly those who reside in low-income, urban neighborhoods. However, not all youth who experience CVE exhibit aggression. Working memory (WM) difficulties may interfere with attributions or retrieval of nonaggressive responses, suggesting that individual differences in WM may contribute to proactive and/or reactive aggression among youth who experience CVE. Participants were 104 low-income, urban youth (M = 9.92 ± 1.22 years old; 50.5% male; 95% African American). Youth reported on frequency of direct victimization and witnessing of violence in the community and completed two WM tasks. Teachers reported on youth proactive and reactive aggression. WM moderated the relation between direct victimization and proactive and reactive aggression, and between witnessing violence and reactive aggression. Among youth reporting less frequent victimization and witnessing, lower WM was associated with higher levels of proactive and reactive aggression. Among youth reporting more frequent direct victimization, lower WM was associated with higher levels of proactive aggression. Proactive and reactive aggression levels were similar among youth reporting more frequent witnessing regardless of WM levels. WM represents a potential target for early identification and intervention efforts to reduce reactive and proactive aggression among low-income, urban youth who are at elevated risk for CVE.

Increasing Effectiveness of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Conduct Problems in Children and Adolescents: What Can We Learn from Neuroimaging Studies?

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is particularly relevant for children from 7 years on and adolescents with clinical levels of conduct problems. CBT provides these children and adolescents with anger regulation and social problem-solving skills that enable them to behave in more independent and situation appropriate ways. Typically, CBT is combined with another psychological treatment such as behavioral parent training in childhood or an intervention targeting multiple systems in adolescence. The effectiveness of CBT, however, is in the small to medium range. The aim of this review is to describe how the effectiveness of CBT may be improved by paying more attention to a series of psychological functions that have been shown to be impaired in neuroimaging studies: (1) anger recognition, (2) the ability to generate situation appropriate solutions to social problems, (3) reinforcement-based decision making, (4) response inhibition, and (5) affective empathy. It is suggested that children and adolescents first become familiar with these psychological functions during group CBT sessions. In individual sessions in which the parents (and/or child care workers in day treatment and residential treatment) and the child or adolescent participate, parents then learn to elicit, support, and reinforce their child’s use of these psychological functions in everyday life (in vivo practice). In these individual sessions, working on the psychological functions is tailored to the individual child’s characteristic impairments of these functions. CBT therapists may also share crucial social-learning topics with teachers with a view to creating learning opportunities for children and adolescents at school.

Perpetration of Dating Violence Among Belgian Youth: Impulsivity, Verbal Skills, and Empathy as Risk and Protective Factors?

Dating violence (DV) is a serious social problem among adolescents and emerging adults, both boys and girls are victims and perpetrators. The current study aimed to investigate correlates of DV perpetration among Belgian youths. We examined facets of empathy and verbal skills as protective factors, and facets of impulsivity as risk factors for psychological and physical DV perpetration. Eight hundred and thirteen adolescents and emerging adults (71.7% females, mean age = 18.9) completed self-administered questionnaires investigating their physical and psychological DV perpetration, empathy, verbal skills, and impulsivity. Findings show that male and female respondents have different patterns of correlations between the studied variables. Facets of empathy and verbal skills hinder DV perpetration, whereas facets of impulsivity foster it. The impact of the different facets can vary across regression models, gender of the perpetrator, and forms of DV. The present study contributes to a better understanding of DV by examining facets of empathy, verbal skills, and impulsivity. Prevention programs are encouraged to target specific facets of these variables among adolescents and emerging adults.

A quasi-experimental pilot study to the effects of Responsive Aggression Regulation Therapy (Re-ART) Outpatient for young adults

It is important to provide treatment for juvenile and young adult violent offenders, since no or (too) late treatment increases the risk of recidivism and persistent aggressive behavior in adulthood. In this study, we investigated the efficacy of the intervention Responsive Aggression Regulation Therapy (Re-ART) Outpatient, which has been developed for adolescents and young adults between 16 and 24 years old with severe aggression problems. This quasi-experimental (pilot) study compared the effects of Re-ART Outpatient (n = 47) with a control group (n = 29) receiving treatment as usual on measures regarding risk of violent recidivism, impulsivity, emotional/personal functioning, family functioning, motivation, handling anger, self-reported problem behavior, coping skills, and cognitive distortions. Re-ART showed significantly better results than the control group on risk of violent recidivism, impulsivity, emotional/personal functioning, motivation, handling anger, certain coping skills, and certain cognitive distortions. Family functioning and self-reported rule-breaking behavior did not differ significantly between the groups. The results implicate that Re-ART is a promising outpatient intervention for young adults with severe aggressive behavior. The results can be explained by the fact that Re-ART treats both systemically and individually and pays specific attention to stress reduction and the improvement of executive functions.

Executive functioning and emotion recognition in youth with oppositional defiant disorder and/or conduct disorder

Objectives: Executive functioning and emotion recognition may be impaired in disruptive youth, yet findings in oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) and conduct disorder (CD) are inconsistent. We examined these functions related to ODD and CD, accounting for comorbid attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and internalising symptoms.Methods: We compared executive functioning (visual working memory, visual attention, inhibitory control) and emotion recognition between youth (8-18 years old, 123 boys, 55 girls) with ODD (n = 44) or CD (with/without ODD, n = 48), and healthy controls (n = 86). We also related ODD, CD, and ADHD symptom counts and internalising symptomatology to all outcome measures, as well as executive functioning to emotion recognition.Results: Visual working memory and inhibitory control were impaired in the ODD and CD groups versus healthy controls. Anger, disgust, fear, happiness, and sadness recognition were impaired in the CD group; only anger recognition was impaired in the ODD group. Deficits were not explained by comorbid ADHD or internalising symptoms. Visual working memory was associated with recognition of all basic emotions.Conclusions: Our findings challenge the view that neuropsychological impairments in youth with ODD/CD are driven by comorbid ADHD and suggest possible distinct neurocognitive mechanisms in CD versus ODD.

Training Inhibition and Social Cognition in the Classrooms

Executive functions and social cognition competences are associated with many important areas of life, such as school readiness, academic success or sociability. Numerous intervention programs aiming to improve these capacities have emerged and have been shown to be effective. As inhibition in particular, is closely related with social cognition competences, we developed a training program that targets both abilities and implemented it in kindergarten and lower primary school classes for 6 months. We evaluated its effectiveness at improving inhibition and social cognition as well as its possible impact on academic performance. The results showed that tackling inhibition and social cognition in the classroom at an early age improved inhibition, visual attention and flexibility as well as Theory of Mind and social information processing skills. However, the impact on academic learning was weak; a slight effect on a mathematical task was observed.

Cognitive Training for Very High Risk Incarcerated Adolescent Males

OBJECTIVE

Persistent violent and antisocial behavior, as manifested in conduct disorder (CD) traits, are associated with a range of cognitive deficits. Individuals with more severe cognitive deficits are more likely to commit violent crimes. Currently, no treatments target improving cognition in high-risk CD youth. This pilot study tests the feasibility and efficacy of delivering intensive tablet-based cognitive training (CT) to adolescent males incarcerated in a youth maximum-security prison.

METHODS

Participants were fourteen adolescent males, diagnosed with CD. All participants completed up to 30 h of unsupervised, intensive, adaptive CT exercises that targeted multiple neurocognitive domains, as well as a battery of standardized neurocognitive measures and computerized assessments at baseline and post-training.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE

At baseline, participants exhibited significant impairments on neurocognitive measures, relative to age-matched healthy controls. Twelve participants completed training and showed evidence of target engagement, as indexed by improvement in cognitive processing speed. Significant gains were observed in measures of global cognition, with additional gains in cognitive flexibility at trend level significance. Improvements in these measures were positively related to total training time. In summary, both assessments and intervention appear to be feasible, tolerable, and acceptable in incarcerated youth. Intensive CT shows preliminary efficacy in improving neurocognitive performance in key domains, with large effect sizes, and significant performance improvement associations with the time in training.

Social information processing skills link executive functions to aggression in adolescents with mild to borderline intellectual disability

Executive Functions (EFs) have been associated with aggression in children and adolescents. EFs as higher-order cognitive abilities are assumed to affect cognitive functions such as Social Information Processing (SIP). We explored SIP skills as a mediating mechanism linking EFs to aggression in adolescents with mild to borderline intellectual disability (MBID with IQ from 50-84), a high risk group for aggressive behaviors and EF impairments. A total of 153 adolescents (M_age = 15.24, SD = 1.35; 54% male) with MBID participated. Focused attention, behavioral inhibition, and working memory were tested with multiple neurocognitive tasks to define latent EF constructs. Participants responded to a video-based SIP task. A latent construct for aggression was defined by caretaker, teacher, and adolescent self-reports of aggression (Child Behavior Check List, Teacher Report Form, and Youth Self Report). Structural equation modeling was performed to test mediation. Results were consistent with mediation of the relation between focused attention and aggression by SIP, namely via hostile interpretations and self-efficacy for aggression. Behavioral inhibition was linked to aggression, but this relation was not mediated by SIP. The relation between working memory and aggression was mediated by SIP, namely via hostile interpretations, aggressive response generation and via self-efficacy for aggressive responses. Bearing the cross-sectional design in mind, support was found for SIP skills as a mechanism linking EFs, in particular focused attention and working memory, to aggression, providing a viable explanation for the high vulnerability of adolescents with MBID for aggression.

Reversal learning strategy in adolescence is associated with prefrontal cortex activation

Adolescence is a critical maturation period for human cognitive control and executive function. In this study, a large sample of adolescents (n = 85) performed a reversal learning task during functional magnetic resonance imaging. We analyzed behavioral data using a reinforcement learning model to provide individually fitted parameters and imaging data with regard to reward prediction errors (PE). Following a model-based approach, we formed two groups depending on whether individuals tended to update expectations predominantly for the chosen stimulus or also for the unchosen one. These groups significantly differed in their problem behavior score obtained using the child behavior checklist (CBCL) and in a measure of their developmental stage. Imaging results showed that dorsolateral striatal areas covaried with PE. Participants who relied less on learning based on task structure showed less prefrontal activation compared with participants who relied more on task structure. An exploratory analysis revealed that PE-related activity was associated with pubertal development in prefrontal areas, insula and anterior cingulate. These findings support the hypothesis that the prefrontal cortex is implicated in mediating flexible goal-directed behavioral control.