Maternal depressive history, teen 5HTTLPR genotype, and the processing of emotional faces: Exploring mechanisms of risk

Moderating Effects of Emotional Recognition Competency in Rejective Parenting and Adolescent Depression and Aggression

Rejective parenting is a major antecedent of emotional instability and aggressive behavioral problems. Previous studies have reported that emotional problems, such as depression, anxiety, aggression, and conduct problems in children and adolescents, improve through interventions that enhance emotional recognition competency. In this study, we explored whether the emotional recognition ability levels of individual adolescents moderated the pathway of negative parenting on aggression mediated by depression The moderated mediating effect of emotional recognition competency was investigated through examining 2265 first-year high school students using the 2021 data from the Korean Children and Youth Panel Survey 2018. There was no significant moderating effect on the direct pathway from rejective parenting to aggression. The moderating effect of emotional recognition competency on the indirect pathway leading to aggression through depression in rejective parenting was significant. These results suggest that the ability to correctly understand signals related to the emotions of others can play an important role in reducing depression and aggressive behavior by reducing conflict with people around them and experiencing more support.

Adolescents and young adults differ in their neural response to and recognition of adolescent and adult emotional faces

Peer relationships become increasingly important during adolescence. The success of these relationships may rely on the ability to attend to and decode subtle or ambiguous emotional expressions that are common in social interactions. However, most studies examining youths' processing and labeling of facial emotion have employed adult faces and faces that depict emotional extremes as stimuli. In this study, 40 adolescents and 40 young adults viewed blends of angry-neutral, fearful-neutral, and happy-neutral faces (e.g., 100% angry, 66% angry, 33% angry, neutral) portrayed by adolescent and adult actors as electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded. Participants also labeled these faces according to the emotion expressed (i.e., angry, fearful, happy, or neutral). The Late Positive Potential (LPP), an event-related potential (ERP) component that reflects sustained attention to motivationally salient information, was scored from the EEG following face presentation. Among adolescents, as peer-age faces moved from ambiguous (33%) to unambiguous (100%) emotional expression, the LPP similarly increased. These effects were not found when adolescents viewed emotional face blends portrayed by adult actors. Additionally, while both adolescents and young adults showed greater emotion labeling accuracy as faces increased in emotional intensity from ambiguous to unambiguous emotional expression, adolescent participants did not show greater accuracy when labeling peer-compared to adult-age faces. Together, these data suggest that adolescents attend more to subtle differences in peer-age emotional faces, but they do not label these emotional expressions more accurately than adults.

Socioemotional Mechanisms of Children's Differential Response to the Effects of Maternal Sensitivity on Child Adjustment

OBJECTIVE

Children differ in the extent to which they reap the benefits of maternal sensitive care or suffer the adverse consequences of insensitive care, and these differences can be accounted for by biological characteristics. However, how susceptible children adapt to maternal sensitivity in ways that either maximize positive development or lead to maladjustment has yet to be determined. Here, we propose a novel model of socioemotional mechanisms by which the joint influences of maternal sensitivity and child biological characteristics influence child adjustment.

DESIGN

We propose a theoretical model, in which children's vagal functioning and polymorphisms in serotonin transporter (5-HTTLPR) and dopamine receptor D4 (DRD4) genes confer susceptibility to the effects of maternal sensitivity on internalizing, externalizing, prosocial and moral behavior via changes in interpersonal strategies for emotion regulation, the threat response system, and empathy.

RESULTS

Theoretical and empirical support for the proposed mechanisms are provided.

CONCLUSIONS

The proposed mechanistic model of susceptibility to maternal sensitivity offers a novel framework of for whom and how children are affected by early maternal care, highlighting multiple reciprocal, interacting influences across genes, physiology, behavior, and the environment.

Accuracy of emotion labeling in children of parents diagnosed with bipolar disorder

BACKGROUND

Emotion labeling deficits have been posited as an endophenotype for bipolar disorder (BD) as they have been observed in both patients and their first-degree relatives. It remains unclear whether these deficits exist secondary to the development of psychiatric symptoms or whether they can be attributed to risk for psychopathology. To explore this, we investigated emotion processing in symptomatic and asymptomatic high-risk bipolar offspring (HRO) and healthy children of healthy parents (HCO).

METHODS

Symptomatic (n:18, age: 13.8 ± 2.6 years, 44% female) and asymptomatic (n:12, age: 12.8 ± 3.0 years, 42% female) HRO and age- and sex-matched HCO (n:20, age: 13.3 ± 2.5 years, 45% female) performed an emotion-labeling task. Total number of errors, emotion category and intensity of emotion error scores were compared. Correlations between total error scores and symptom severity were also investigated.

RESULTS

Compared to HCO, both HRO groups made more errors on the adult face task (pcor=0.014). The HRO group were 2.3 times [90%CI:0.9-6.3] more likely and 4.3 times [90%CI:1.3-14.3] more likely to make errors on sad and angry faces, respectively. With the exception of sad face type errors, we observed no significant differences in error patterns between symptomatic and asymptomatic HRO, and no correlations between symptom severity and total number of errors.

LIMITATIONS

This study was cross-sectional in design, limiting our ability to infer trajectories or heritability of these deficits.

CONCLUSIONS

This study provides further support for emotion labeling deficits as a candidate endophenotype for BD. Our study also suggests these deficits are not attributable to the presence of psychiatric symptoms.

Preliminary evidence for the interaction of the oxytocin receptor gene (oxtr) and face processing in differentiating prenatal smoking patterns

Prenatal smoking cessation has been described as an empathic action "for the baby," but this has not been empirically demonstrated. We capitalized on a genetically-characterized extant dataset with outstanding measurement of prenatal smoking patterns and maternal face processing data (as an indicator of empathy) to test this hypothesis, and explore how empathy and smoking patterns may be moderated by a genetic substrate of empathy, the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR). Participants were 143 Caucasian women from the East Boston family study with repeated prospective reports of smoking level, adjusted based on repeated cotinine bioassays. Salivary DNA and face processing (Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy-2) were assessed 14 years later at an adolescent follow-up of offspring. Two-thirds of participants reported smoking prior to pregnancy recognition. Of these, 21% quit during pregnancy; 56% reduced smoking, and 22% smoked persistently at the same level. A significant interaction between face processing and OXTR variants previously associated with increased sensitivity to social context, rs53576GG and rs2254298A, was found (β = -.181; p = .015); greater ability to identify distress in others was associated with lower levels of smoking during pregnancy for rs53576(GG)/rs2254298(A) individuals (p = .013), but not for other genotypes (p = .892). Testing this "empathy hypothesis of prenatal smoking cessation" in larger studies designed to examine this question can elucidate whether interventions to enhance empathy can improve prenatal smoking cessation rates.

Emotion recognition in preschool children: associations with maternal depression and early parenting

Emotion knowledge in childhood has been shown to predict social functioning and psychological well-being, but relatively little is known about parental factors that influence its development in early childhood. There is some evidence that both parenting behavior and maternal depression are associated with emotion recognition, but previous research has only examined these factors independently. The current study assessed auditory and visual emotion recognition ability among a large sample of preschool children to examine typical emotion recognition skills in children of this age, as well as the independent and interactive effects of maternal and paternal depression and negative parenting (i.e., hostility and intrusiveness). Results indicated that children were most accurate at identifying happy emotional expressions. The lowest accuracy was observed for neutral expressions. A significant interaction was found between maternal depression and negative parenting behavior: children with a maternal history of depression were particularly sensitive to the negative effects of maladaptive parenting behavior on emotion recognition ability. No significant effects were found for paternal depression. These results highlight the importance of examining the effects of multiple interacting factors on children's emotional development and provide suggestions for identifying children for targeted preventive interventions.

5-HTTLPR modulates the recognition accuracy and exploration of emotional facial expressions

Individual genetic differences in the serotonin transporter-linked polymorphic region (5-HTTLPR) have been associated with variations in the sensitivity to social and emotional cues as well as altered amygdala reactivity to facial expressions of emotion. Amygdala activation has further been shown to trigger gaze changes toward diagnostically relevant facial features. The current study examined whether altered socio-emotional reactivity in variants of the 5-HTTLPR promoter polymorphism reflects individual differences in attending to diagnostic features of facial expressions. For this purpose, visual exploration of emotional facial expressions was compared between a low (n = 39) and a high (n = 40) 5-HTT expressing group of healthy human volunteers in an eye tracking paradigm. Emotional faces were presented while manipulating the initial fixation such that saccadic changes toward the eyes and toward the mouth could be identified. We found that the low vs. the high 5-HTT group demonstrated greater accuracy with regard to emotion classifications, particularly when faces were presented for a longer duration. No group differences in gaze orientation toward diagnostic facial features could be observed. However, participants in the low 5-HTT group exhibited more and faster fixation changes for certain emotions when faces were presented for a longer duration and overall face fixation times were reduced for this genotype group. These results suggest that the 5-HTT gene influences social perception by modulating the general vigilance to social cues rather than selectively affecting the pre-attentive detection of diagnostic facial features.

Serotonin transporter genotype, salivary cortisol, neuroticism and life events: impact on subsequent psychopathology in healthy twins at high and low risk for affective disorder

OBJECTIVE

To investigate if cortisol alone or in interaction with other risk factors (familial risk, the serotonin transporter genotype, neuroticism and life events (LEs)) predicts onset of psychiatric disorder in healthy individuals at heritable risk.

MATRIAL AND METHODS

In a high-risk study, 234 healthy monozygotic and dizygotic twins with or without a co-twin history of affective disorder (high and low risk twins) were baseline assessed. Participants were followed up for seven years and then reassessed with a personal interview revealing whether they had developed psychiatric illness.

RESULTS

36 participants (15.4%) developed psychiatric disorder. Using Cox proportional hazards ratio (HR) estimates neither morning nor evening salivary cortisol at baseline did predict illness onset. In multivariate Cox models, the two-way interaction between morning cortisol and LEs lifetime before baseline was significantly associated with onset. Further, the HR of onset was higher concerning individuals carrying the short allele of the 5-HTTPLR and having experienced more LEs lifetime. Familial risk for affective disorder predicted illness and the risk of onset was further increased in individuals at familial risk carrying the short allele of the 5-HTTPLR.

CONCLUSIONS

Cortisol levels alone do not increase the risk of onset of psychiatric illness but the interaction of a lower cortisol level and the experience of more LEs do. The 5-HTTLPR genotype seems to interact and contribute to increased stress vulnerability in combination with other stress indicators of illness thereby adding to the risk of subsequent psychopathology.

Beyond risk, resilience, and dysregulation: Phenotypic plasticity and human development

We provide a theoretical and empirical basis for the claim that individual differences exist in developmental plasticity and that phenotypic plasticity should be a subject of study in its own right. To advance this argument, we begin by highlighting challenges that evolutionary thinking poses for a science of development and psychopathology, including for the diathesis–stress framework that has (fruitfully) guided so much empirical inquiry on developmental risk, resilience, and dysregulation. With this foundation laid, we raise a series of issues that the differential-susceptibility hypothesis calls attention to, while highlighting findings that have emerged over just the past several years and are pertinent to some of the questions posed. Even though it is clear that this new perspective on Person × Environment interaction is stimulating research and influencing how hypotheses are framed and data interpreted, a great many topics remain that need empirical attention. Our intention is to encourage students of development and psychopathology to treat phenotypic plasticity as an individual-difference construct while exploring unknowns in the differential-susceptibility equation.

Do dopamine gene variants and prenatal smoking interactively predict youth externalizing behavior?

Externalizing behaviors (encompassing antisocial, impulsive, and substance use behaviors) are pervasive and impairing across a multitude of settings and developmental contexts. These behaviors, though often investigated separately, are highly comorbid. Prenatal tobacco exposure in interaction with various genetic influences has predicted later externalizing behavior, and recent evidence supports investigating sex differences in these patterns. In the current study, we extend this work by (a) examining two functional genetic markers in the dopamine system: the transporter gene (DAT1) and the dopamine receptor D4 gene (DRD4) in interaction with prenatal tobacco exposure to predict a latent composite of externalizing behavior and (b) testing whether these patterns differ by sex of youth in a community sample of adolescents (n=176). The relatively small sample is partially offset by high quality, multi-method prospective measurement. We assessed prenatal tobacco exposure using prospective repeated cotinine-corrected reports and externalizing behaviors were assessed utilizing multiple measures across three waves. The interaction between DAT1 (but not DRD4) and prenatal tobacco exposure was statistically significant in boys, and patterns appeared to differ by sex. Risk for externalizing behaviors for exposed boys increased linearly as a function of the 10r DAT1 allele. For exposed girls, there was a trend such that DAT1 heterozygotes had a marginally higher risk than homozygotes. This pattern was not explained by passive gene-environment correlation. Elucidating sex-specific pathways through which early adverse exposures and genetic susceptibilities contribute to externalizing behavior can inform early targeted prevention efforts for those children at highest risk.

Youth genetic vulnerability to maternal depressive symptoms: 5-HTTLPR as moderator of intergenerational transmission effects in a multiwave prospective study

BACKGROUND

Maternal depressive symptoms are a strong predictor of increases in depressive symptoms in offspring, yet knowledge of individual differences that may moderate the association between youth and maternal symptoms is still relatively scant. Youth genetic susceptibility to maternal depressive symptoms in particular is a nearly unexplored area of research.

METHODS

This study used a multiwave prospective design and lagged hierarchical linear modeling analyses to examine whether youth 5-HTTLPR genotype moderated the longitudinal association between mother and youth depressive symptoms in a community sample (N = 241 youth). Maternal and youth symptoms were assessed every 3 months over 1 year (five waves of data).

RESULTS

Youth 5-HTTLPR interacted with idiographic elevations in maternal depressive symptoms (elevations relative to mothers' average level of symptoms) to predict prospective increases in youth symptoms 3 months later. Youth with the SS genotype experienced greatest increases in depressive symptoms when exposed to elevations in maternal symptoms. Youth 5-HTTLPR did not interact with maternal nomothetic elevations in depressive symptoms (severity of symptoms compared to the sample as a whole).

CONCLUSION

These findings advance knowledge on genetic susceptibility for intergenerational transmission of depression between mothers and their children.

Outcomes, moderators, and mediators of empathic-emotion recognition training for complex conduct problems in childhood

Impairments in emotion recognition skills are a trans-diagnostic indicator of early mental health problems and may be responsive to intervention. We report on a randomized controlled trial of "Emotion-recognition-training" (ERT) versus treatment-as-usual (TAU) with N=195 mixed diagnostic children (mean age 10.52 years) referred for behavioral/emotional problems measured at pre- and 6 months post-treatment. We tested overall outcomes plus moderation and mediation models, whereby diagnostic profile was tested as a moderator of change. ERT had no impact on the group as a whole. Diagnostic status of the child did not moderate outcomes; however, levels of callous-unemotional (CU) traits moderated outcomes such that children with high CU traits responded less well to TAU, while ERT produced significant improvements in affective empathy and conduct problems in these children. Emotion recognition training has potential as an adjunctive intervention specifically for clinically referred children with high CU traits, regardless of their diagnostic status.

Toward an integration of cognitive and genetic models of risk for depression

There is growing interest in integrating cognitive and genetic models of depression risk. We review two ways in which these models can be meaningfully integrated. First, information-processing biases may represent intermediate phenotypes for specific genetic influences. These genetic influences may represent main effects on specific cognitive processes or may moderate the impact of environmental influences on information-processing biases. Second, cognitive and genetic influences may combine to increase reactivity to environmental stressors, increasing risk for depression in a gene×cognition×environment model of risk. There is now growing support for both of these ways of integrating cognitive and genetic models of depression risk. Specifically, there is support for genetic influences on information-processing biases, particularly the link between 5-HTTLPR and attentional biases, from both genetic association and gene×environment (G×E) studies. There is also initial support for gene×cognition×environment models of risk in which specific genetic influences contribute to increased reactivity to environmental influences. We review this research and discuss important areas of future research, particularly the need for larger samples that allow for a broader examination of genetic and epigenetic influences as well as the combined influence of variability across a number of genes.

Recognition of scared faces and the serotonin transporter gene in young children: the Generation R Study

BACKGROUND

Previous research highlights the significance of a functional polymorphism located in the promoter region (5-HTTLPR) of the serotonin transporter gene in emotional behaviour. This study examined the effect of the 5-HTTLPR polymorphism on emotion processing in a large number of healthy preschoolers.

METHODS

The 5-HTTLPR genotype was classified in 605 children as homozygous for the short allele (SS), homozygous for the long allele (LL), or heterozygous (LS). Emotion-processing was assessed using age-appropriate computer tasks where children matched happy, sad, angry, and fearful facial expressions preceded by a shape-matching task to assess basic matching ability.

RESULTS

We found that young children could differentiate between emotion categories (F = 12.1, p < .001). The effect of 5-HTTLPR genotype depended on the emotion category presented (F = 2.3, p = .031). This effect was explained by the finding that SS children were less accurate at recognising fearful faces than LL or LS children (F = 5.3, p = .005). We did not find any significant differences as a result of 5-HTTLPR genotype for happy, sad or angry expressions (p > .05).

CONCLUSIONS

Results indicate that 5-HTTLPR allele status selectively impacts the processing of fearful but not other facial expressions. This pattern is already apparent in very young typically developing children. Results may signal an early vulnerability for affective problems before disorders emerge.