Elevated responding to safe conditions as a specific risk factor for anxiety versus depressive disorders: evidence from a longitudinal investigation

The current study evaluated the degree to which startle reflexes (SRs) in safe conditions versus danger conditions were predictive of the onset of anxiety disorders. Specificity of these effects to anxiety disorders was evaluated in comparison to unipolar depressive disorders and with consideration of level of neuroticism. A startle paradigm was administered at baseline to 132 nondisordered adolescents as part of a longitudinal study examining risk factors for emotional disorders. Participants underwent a repetition of eight safe-danger sequences and were told that delivery of an aversive stimulus leading to a muscle contraction of the arm would occur only in the late part of danger conditions. One aversive stimulus occurred midway in the safe-danger sequences. Participants were assessed for the onset of anxiety and unipolar depressive disorders annually over the next 3 to 4 years. Larger SR magnitude during safe conditions following delivery of the aversive stimulus predicted the subsequent first onset of anxiety disorders. Moreover, prediction of the onset of anxiety disorders remained significant above and beyond the effects of comorbid unipolar depression, neuroticism, and subjective ratings of intensity of the aversive stimulus. In sum, elevated responding to safe conditions following an aversive stimulus appears to be a specific, prospective risk factor for the first onset of anxiety disorders.     

Amygdala–orbitofrontal connectivity predicts alcohol use two years later: a longitudinal neuroimaging study on alcohol use in adolescence

This study tested the relation between cortical–subcortical functional connectivity and alcohol consumption in adolescents using an accelerated longitudinal design, as well as normative developmental patterns for these measures. Participants between ages 8 and 27 completed resting‐state neuroimaging scans at two time points separated by two years (N = 274 at T1, N = 231 at T2). In addition, participants between ages 12 and 27 reported on recent and lifetime alcohol use (N = 193 at T1, N = 244 at T2). Resting‐state connectivity analyses focused on amygdala–orbitofrontal connectivity given prior research linking reduced coupling between these regions to alcohol use. Mixed model analyses revealed that age had a cubic relationship with alcohol use, with little to no use in childhood, steep increases in adolescence and leveling off in adulthood. No age effects were found for amygdala–OFC connectivity. Prediction analyses showed that left amygdala–orbitofrontal connectivity at the first time point predicted recent and lifetime alcohol use two years later. There was no evidence for the reversed relation, suggesting that brain connectivity measures precede explorative risk‐taking behavior in adolescence, possibly because decreased subcortical–frontal connectivity biases towards more explorative or risky behavior.     

Interactive voice response for relapse prevention following cognitive-behavioral therapy for alcohol use disorders: a pilot study

Relapse after alcoholism treatment is high. Alcohol Therapeutic Interactive Voice Response (ATIVR) is an automated telephone program for posttreatment self-monitoring, skills practice, and feedback. This pilot study examined feasibility of ATIVR. Participants (n = 21; 57% male) had access to ATIVR for 90 days following outpatient group cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) to make daily reports of mood, confidence in sobriety, urges to use substances, and actual use. Reports of relapse or risk were followed with additional questions. Participants received personalized therapist feedback based on responses, and could access recorded CBT skill reviews. Pre-post assessments included: alcohol consumption (Timeline Follow-Back), self-efficacy (Situational Confidence Questionnaire), and perceived coping ability (Effectiveness of Coping Behaviors Inventory). Participants called on 59% of scheduled days and continued making calls for an average of 84 days. Following ATIVR, participants gave feedback that ATIVR was easy to use and increased self-awareness. Participants particularly liked the therapist feedback component. Abstinence rate increased significantly during ATIVR (p = .03), and both self-efficacy and coping significantly improved from pre-CBT to post-ATIVR (p < .01). Results indicate ATIVR is feasible and acceptable. Its efficacy should be evaluated in a randomized controlled trial.     

Delayed onset of drunkenness as a protective factor for adolescent alcohol misuse and sexual risk taking: a longitudinal study

A longitudinal structural equation model was tested to examine relationships among adolescent alcohol misuse, sexual risk-taking behaviors, parental monitoring, and demographic variables. Participants (N=561) were between the ages of 15-18 years old and were representative of the Buffalo, New York, metropolitan area. Two waves (separated by a year) of a larger longitudinal project were used. At each of these waves, ongoing (i.e., past year) alcohol misuse and sexual risk taking were measured. Age of onset of drunkenness and of sexual intercourse were also obtained. Among the major results were that later onset of drunkenness diminished future levels of alcohol misuse and sexual risk taking and that parental monitoring mitigated later levels of alcohol misuse. Also, single-parent family structure was directly related to sexual risk taking and indirectly related to greater alcohol misuse through lowered monitoring. Multiple-group modeling revealed that the essential features of the model were consistent across participant race and gender.     

Husbands' and wives' alcohol use disorders and marital interactions as longitudinal predictors of marital adjustment

In this longitudinal study, the relationships among wives' and husbands' lifetime alcoholism status, marital behaviors, and marital adjustment were tested. Participants were 105 couples from the Michigan Longitudinal Study (MLS), an ongoing multimethod investigation of substance use in a community-based sample of alcoholics, nonalcoholics, and their families. At baseline (T1), husbands and wives completed a series of diagnostic measures, and lifetime diagnosis of alcohol use disorder (AUD, as defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th ed.), was assessed. Couples completed a problem-solving marital interaction task 3 years later at T2, which was coded for the ratio of positive to negative behaviors. Couples also completed a measure of marital adjustment at T4 (9 years after T1 and 6 years after T2). Results showed that husbands' lifetime AUD predicted lower levels of their wife's positive marital behaviors 3 years later but was not related to their own or their wife's marital adjustment 9 years from baseline. By contrast, wives' lifetime AUD had direct negative associations with their own and their husband's marital satisfaction 9 years later, and wives' marital behaviors during the problem-solving task predicted their own and their husband's marital satisfaction 6 years later. Findings indicate that marital adjustment in alcoholic couples may be driven more by the wives' than the husbands' AUD and marital behavior. Implications for intervention with alcoholic couples were discussed.     

Psychiatric and substance use disorders as risk factors for attempted suicide among adolescents: a case control study

The objective of this research was to test substance-related and non-substance-related psychiatric disorders as predictors of attempted suicide among adolescents. Ninety-six psychiatrically disordered suicide attempters were matched one-to-one to 96 psychiatrically disordered non-attempters on age, race, gender, and the presence/absence of major depression. Conditional logistic regression was used to test psychiatric risk factors for their power to predict attempted suicide among adolescents. Bipolar disorder, cocaine use disorders, and conduct disorder were found to be predictive of attempted suicide in univariate testing. Bipolar disorder, inhalant use disorders, cocaine use disorders, and hallucinogen use disorders were found to be predictive of attempted suicide, after adjusting for all other covariates. Loglinear analyses revealed high odds ratios associated with the comorbidities of alcohol use disorder with conduct disorder and drug use disorders with conduct disorder in both groups. Higher rates of cocaine use disorder/conduct disorder, hallucinogen use disorder/conduct disorder, and alcohol use disorder/ conduct disorder were found among suicide attempters. Evaluation of these particular comorbid conditions should be part of the adolescent suicide risk assessment.     

The development of organizational strategies in children: evidence from a microgenetic longitudinal study

The authors examined memory on a sort-recall task in children 8 to 12 years of age. Children were first classified as either strategic or nonstrategic on a sort-recall pretest and then participated in an 11-week microgenetic study involving nine sessions. Strategy use was assessed on each trial. Consistent with past longitudinal research, changes from nonstrategic to strategic behavior occurred suddenly rather than gradually. Once children began using organizational strategies, their recall performance improved immediately. Deliberate strategy use was clearly reflected by sorting behavior during encoding but not in clustering during recall. Conclusions about whether there are children with utilization deficiencies are thus affected by how the concept is defined and whether sorting or clustering is taken as the indicator of spontaneous strategy use.     

Prospective analysis of comorbidity: tobacco and alcohol use disorders

Alcohol use disorders (AUD) and tobacco use disorders (TD) frequently co-occur. The authors examined AUD-TD comorbidity over time using a state-trait (ST) model. The ST model represents variance in AUD/TD as a traitlike factor that spans measurement occasion and identifies distinct sources of variance in AUD-TD comorbidity. The ST model was evaluated on 450 young adults (baseline age = 18.5 years; 51% with family history of alcoholism) assessed 5 times over 7 years. The ST model demonstrated superior fit over a first-order autoregressive model. The tendency to diagnose with AUD and TD was partially explained by family history of alcoholism; this relationship was mediated by childhood stressors, alcohol expectancies, and behavioral undercontrol. Results supported a common third-variable influence (vs. directional) model of comorbidity. The ST model is an important conceptual and methodological approach to the prospective study of comorbidity in general.     

Short-term and long-term relationships between reflection and performance in teams: evidence from a four-wave longitudinal study

Previous theory and research suggest that team reflection is beneficial for team performance. We argue that results remain inconclusive because prior studies have not accounted for the dynamic nature of this relationship. This paper addresses this research gap by examining time-specific relationships among variables and the intra-team variability of changes across time. In a four-wave longitudinal field study with 97 teams (N = 453 team members) performing a business simulation task, short-term (i.e., autoregressive, cross-lagged effects) and long-term (i.e., latent trajectories) relationships between team reflection and performance were explored. We found evidence that reflection had negative autoregressive effects and that there were direct positive short-term relationships between reflection and performance. Reflection trajectories were seen to decline across time and performance trajectories to increase across time. In addition, teams with either low initial reflection or low initial performance showed higher increases in reflection across time, whilst higher increase in reflection was negatively related to change in performance. Findings are discussed with respect to how they extend the previous literature and what directions they suggest for future research.     

The contribution of short-term memory for serial order to early reading acquisition: evidence from a longitudinal study

Early reading acquisition skills have been linked to verbal short-term memory (STM) capacity. However, the nature of this relationship remains controversial because verbal STM, like reading acquisition, depends on the complexity of underlying phonological processing skills. This longitudinal study addressed the relation between STM and reading decoding acquisition by distinguishing between STM for item information and STM for order information based on recent studies showing that STM for item information, but not STM for order information, recruits underlying phonological representations. If there is a specific link between STM and reading decoding acquisition, STM for order information should be an independent predictor of reading decoding acquisition. Tasks maximizing STM for serial order or item information, measures of phonological abilities, and reading tests were administered to children followed from kindergarten through first grade. We observed that order STM capacity, but not item STM capacity, predicted independent variance in reading decoding abilities 1 year later. These results highlight the specific role of STM for order in reading decoding acquisition and argue for a causal role of order STM capacity in reading acquisition. Mechanisms relating STM for order information and reading acquisition are discussed.     

Affective disorders and aggression disorders: evidence for a common biological mechanism

Ever since the discovery that the classical antidepressants--tricyclics and MA oxidase inhibitors--exert an influence on central 5-HT, this neurotransmitter has been studied in depression, particularly in those forms responsive to this type of treatment. This chapter reviews the evidence in favor of a relationship between depression and central 5-HT dysfunctions. Most of the findings have been derived from patients with depression as the principal diagnosis. Some data have originated from patients suffering from a somatic illness and from depression as well. Both peripheral and central data are discussed. Although no single 5-HT-related finding in depression has so far been unequivocally established, the available evidence, in balance, justifies the tentative conclusion that disturbances in 5-HT metabolism can occur in depression. Lowered CSF 5-HIAA, the major indicator of disturbed central 5-HT metabolism in depression, has also been reported in aggression disorders, both in patients who had committed suicidal acts and in those with outward-directed aggression. The finding can not be explained by a concomitant state of depression. Rather than to discard the classical 5-HT-depression hypothesis, in favor of a 5-HT-aggression hypothesis, the hypothesis is launched that disturbances in serotonergic regulation can give rise to both mood and aggression disorders. This would provide a biological explanation for the clinical observation that those disorders frequently go hand in hand.     

The cognitive bases of learning to read and spell in Greek: evidence from a longitudinal study

We conducted a longitudinal study examining the role of phonemic awareness, phonological processing, and grammatical skills in the development of reading and spelling abilities in Greek. A battery of cognitive, linguistic, and literacy tasks was administered to 131 primary school children (65 7-year-olds and 66 9-year-olds) and was repeated in the following year (8- and 10-year-olds, respectively). Phoneme awareness, speech rate, and rapid automatized naming (RAN) were concurrent predictors of reading rate at Time 1 (T1), and speech rate was a longitudinal predictor of reading rate at Time 2 (T2) when reading at T1 was controlled. The predictors of spelling differed from those of reading; phoneme awareness and speech rate predicted concurrent attainments at T1, and phoneme awareness was a robust longitudinal predictor. Despite the differences in the degree of transparency between the Greek and English orthographies, phoneme awareness predicts variations in learning to read and spell in both languages.     

Psychopathology as risk for adolescent substance use disorders: a developmental psychopathology perspective.

Examines several issues on psychiatric diagnoses as risk factors for adolescent drug use and substance use disorders. The articles in this special section are discussed in terms of dynamic models of risk and protective factors, stages of research needed for establishing causal mechanisms in the etiology of drug use disorders, conceptualizing drug use and abuse in the context of the developmental organization of the individual, equifinality and multifinality in developmental pathways to drug use and abuse, and issues in conceptualizing drug use problems as mental disorders. Future directions for research on the etiology of problem drug use, guided by principles of developmental psychopathology and prevention science, are provided.     

Congruence couple therapy for alcohol use and gambling disorders with comorbidities (part I): Outcomes from a randomized controlled trial

A nonblinded randomized trial was conducted at two Canadian provincial outpatient addiction clinics that tested the effectiveness of a systemic congruence couple therapy (CCT) versus individual-based treatment-as-usual (TAU) on nine clinical outcomes: (1) primary outcomes—alcohol use and gambling, psychiatric symptoms, and couple adjustment; (2) secondary outcomes—emotion regulation, substance use, depression, post-traumatic stress symptoms, and life stress. Data of primary clients and partners (N = 46) were analyzed longitudinally across baseline, posttreatment (5 months), and follow-up (8 months). Alcohol use disorder (95%) and gambling disorder (5%) were in the severe range at baseline, and co-addiction was 27%. Psychiatric comorbidity was 100%, and 18% of couples were jointly addicted. Between-group comparison favored CCT in primary outcomes with medium-to-large effect sizes (Cohen's h = 0.74–1.44). Secondary outcomes were also significantly stronger for CCT (Cohen's h = 0.27–1.53). Within-group, for all primary outcomes, a significant proportion of symptomatic CCT clients and partners improved, converging with ANOVA results of large effect sizes (0.14–0.29). All secondary outcomes improved significantly in CCT with large effect sizes (0.14–0.50). TAU showed significant within-group improvement in alcohol use, other substance use, and life stress with large effect sizes (0.16–0.40). Primary clients and partners made largely equivalent improvement within CCT and within TAU. Results were triangulated with clients' satisfaction ratings and counselors' reports. Overall, significant within-group effects were detected for CCT both clinically and statistically and between-group difference favored CCT. Future trials are required to validate these promising findings.     

Cognitive motivation and drug use: a 9-year longitudinal study.

The predictive precedence of expectancy constructs, operationally defined as cognitive motivations, and drug use was investigated over a 9-year period from adolescence to adulthood. Alternative predictions from three different classes of theories of expectancy-behavior relations, including expectancy theory, a Skinnerian approach, and a reciprocal determinism perspective, were evaluated. The results are most consistent with the notion based in expectancy theory that cognitive motivations are nonspurious and possibly functionally autonomous influences on the use and abuse of drugs. More limited support is found for the view that drug use leads to cognitive motivations, as postulated in other theoretical perspectives. Other findings reveal the presence of expectancy generalization processes consistent with Rotter's (1954) expectancy theory, as well as the unique status of cognitive motivations for alcohol as an independent predictor of problem drug use.     

Pessimistic explanatory style is a risk factor for physical illness: a thirty-five-year longitudinal study

Explanatory style, the habitual ways in which individuals explain bad events, was extracted from open-ended questionnaires filled out by 99 graduates of the Harvard University classes of 1942-1944 at age 25. Physical health from ages 30 to 60 as measured by physician examination was related to earlier explanatory style. Pessimistic explanatory style (the belief that bad events are caused by stable, global, and internal factors) predicted poor health at ages 45 through 60, even when physical and mental health at age 25 were controlled. Pessimism in early adulthood appears to be a risk factor for poor health in middle and late adulthood.     

The use of antiepileptic drugs in bipolar disorders: a review based on evidence from controlled trials

Antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) have diverse psychotropic profiles. Some AEDs have proven to be efficacious in the treatment of mood disorders, especially bipolar disorder. Others are ineffective as primary treatments but may be useful adjuncts for mood disorders or comorbid conditions. Valproate (acute mania and mixed episodes), carbamazepine (acute mania and mixed episodes), and lamotrigine (maintenance to delay recurrence) have United States Food and Drug Administration indications for the treatment of bipolar disorder. This article provides an overview of data on the use of AEDs in bipolar disorder, including acute mania and depression, prophylaxis, and rapid cycling.     

Development of emergent literacy and early reading skills in preschool children: evidence from a latent-variable longitudinal study

Although research has identified oral language, print knowledge, and phonological sensitivity as important emergent literacy skills for the development of reading, few studies have examined the relations between these aspects of emergent literacy or between these skills during preschool and during later reading. This study examined the joint and unique predictive significance of emergent literacy skills for both later emergent literacy skills and reading in two samples of preschoolers. Ninety-six children (mean age = 41 months, SD = 9.41) were followed from early to late preschool, and 97 children (mean age = 60 months, SD = 5.41) were followed from late preschool to kindergarten or first grade. Structural equation modeling revealed significant developmental continuity of these skills, particularly for letter knowledge and phonological sensitivity from late preschool to early grade school, both of which were the only unique predictors of decoding.