The Effects of Parental Depressive Symptoms,Appraisals, and Physical Punishment on Later Child Externalizing Behavior

Examined a cognitive-behavioral pathway by which depressive symptoms in mothers and fathers increase risk for later child externalizing problem behavior via parents’ appraisals of child behavior and physical discipline. Participants were 245 children (118 girls) at risk for school-age conduct problems, and their parents and teachers. Children were approximately 3 years old at Time 1 (T1) and 5 ½ years old at Time 2 (T2). At T1, mothers and fathers reported their depressive symptoms, perceptions of their child’s reciprocal affection and responsiveness, frequency of physical punishment, and child externalizing problems. Mothers, fathers, and teachers provided ratings of externalizing behavior at T2. Structural equation modeling revealed that parents’ negative attributions mediated positive relations between their depressive symptoms and frequency of physical punishment for both fathers and mothers. More frequent physical punishment, in turn, predicted increased child externalizing behavior at T2. In future research, transactional mechanisms underlying effects of clinical depression on child conduct problems should be explored at multiple stages of development. For parents showing depressive symptoms, restructuring distorted perceptions about their children’s behavior may be an important component of intervention programs.     

Measurement Equivalence Across Racial/Ethnic Groups of the Mood and Feelings Questionnaire for Childhood Depression

As research continues to document differences in the prevalence of mental health problems such as depression across racial/ethnic groups, the issue of measurement equivalence becomes increasingly important to address. The Mood and Feelings Questionnaire (MFQ) is a widely used screening tool for child and adolescent depression. This study applied a differential item functioning (DIF) framework to data from a sample of 6th and 8th grade students in the Seattle Public School District (N = 3,593) to investigate the measurement equivalence of the MFQ. Several items in the MFQ were found to have DIF, but this DIF was associated with negligible individual- or group-level impact. These results suggest that differences in MFQ scores across groups are unlikely to be caused by measurement non-equivalence.     

Aggression Among Children with ADHD,Anxiety, or Co-occurring Symptoms: Competing Exacerbation and Attenuation Hypotheses

Competing hypotheses for explaining the role of anxiety in the relation between attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms and childhood aggression were evaluated. Two studies tested whether anxiety exacerbated, attenuated, or had no effect on the relation between ADHD and aggression subtypes among psychiatrically hospitalized children. In Study 1 (N = 99), children who scored above clinical cut-off levels for anxiety only, ADHD only, and co-occurring ADHD and anxiety were compared on aggression subtypes (i.e., reactive, proactive, overt, and relational aggression). In Study 2, the moderating role of anxiety on the relation between ADHD and aggression subtypes was examined with a larger sample (N = 265) and with continuous variables. No support was found for either the attenuation or exacerbation hypothesis, and results remained consistent when separately examining hyperactivity/impulsivity and inattention symptoms of ADHD. Although ADHD symptoms were significantly associated with all aggression subtypes, this association did not remain when including symptoms of oppositional defiant disorder.     

The Effects of Childhood ADHD Symptoms on Early-onset Substance Use: A Swedish Twin Study

Research has documented that children and adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are at increased risk of substance use problems. Few studies, however, have focused on early-onset substance use. This study therefore investigated how the two symptom dimensions of ADHD (hyperactivity/impulsivity and inattention) are associated with early-onset substance use, the role of persistent ADHD for the association, and to what extent the association is influenced by genetic and environmental factors. Twins (1,480 pairs) in the Swedish Twin Study of Child and Adolescent Development were followed from childhood to adolescence. ADHD symptoms were measured at age 8–9 and age 13–14 via parent-report, whereas substance use was assessed at age 13–14 via self-report. Results revealed that hyperactive/impulsive symptoms predicted early-onset “sometimes” tobacco use (adjusted odds ratios, 1.12, for one symptom count), controlling for inattentive symptoms and conduct problem behaviors. There is no independent effect of inattentive symptoms on early-onset substance use. Children with persistent hyperactivity/impulsivity (defined as scoring above the 75th percentile at both time points) had a pronounced risk of both early-onset tobacco and alcohol use (adjusted odds ratios from 1.86 to 3.35, compared to the reference group). The associations between hyperactivity/impulsivity and early-onset substance use were primarily influenced by genetic factors. Our results indicated that hyperactivity/impulsivity, but not inattention, is an important early predictor for early-onset substance use, and a shared genetic susceptibility is suggested to explain this association.     

Predictors of Boys’ ADHD Symptoms from Early to Middle Childhood: The Role of Father–Child and Mother–Child Interactions

This prospective 3 year longitudinal study investigated preschool paternal and maternal parenting predictors of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder(ADHD) in a community sample of 93 school-age boys. Participants were recruited on the basis of inattention-hyperactivity at age 4 and fathers and mothers were observed interacting with their sons. Teachers, fathers, and mothers reported children's ADHD symptoms and impairment. Results from dimensional analysis showed that less observed paternal sensitivity and maternal positive regard predicted higher levels of inattentiveness in middle childhood, and that intrusive paternal behavior was predictive of hyperactive-impulsive behavior at school. In categorical analysis, less maternal warmth and sensitivity were predictive of later ADHD. These predictions held after statistical adjustment for the effects of preschool ADHD behaviors and conduct problems. At follow-up, parents of boys with ADHD reported more negative child-parent relationship perceptions than comparison parents. Findings highlight the importance of examining responsive parenting behaviors of both fathers and mothers in relation to multi-informant ratings of ADHD symptoms.     

Time- and space-order effects in timed discrimination of brightness and size of paired visual stimuli

Despite the importance of both response probability and response time for testing models of choice, there is a dearth of chronometric studies examining systematic asymmetries that occur over time- and space-orders in the method of paired comparisons. In this study, systematic asymmetries in discriminating the magnitude of paired visual stimuli are examined by way of log odds ratios of binary responses as well as by signed response speed. Hierarchical Bayesian modeling is used to map response probabilities and response speed onto constituent psychological process, and processing capacity is also assessed using response time distribution hazard functions. The findings include characteristic order effects that change systematically in magnitude and direction with changes in the magnitude and separation of the stimuli. After Hellstr?m (1979, 2000), sensation weighting (SW) model analyses show that such order effects are reflected in the weighted accumulation of noisy information about the difference between stimulus values over time, and interindividual differences in weightings asymmetries are related to the relative processing capacity of participants. An account of SW based on the use of reference level information and maximization of signal-to-noise ratios is posited, which finds support from theoretically driven analyses of behavioral data.     

Templates for rejection: configuring attention to ignore task-irrelevant features

Theories of attention are compatible with the idea that we can bias attention to avoid selecting objects that have known nontarget features. Although this may underlie several existing phenomena, the explicit guidance of attention away from known nontargets has yet to be demonstrated. Here we show that observers can use feature cues (i.e., color) to bias attention away from nontarget items during visual search. These negative cues were used to quickly instantiate a template for rejection that reliably facilitated search across the cue-to-search stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs), although negative cues were not as potent as cues that guide attention toward target features. Furthermore, by varying the search set size we show a template for rejection is increasingly effective in facilitating search as scene complexity increases. Our findings demonstrate that knowing what not to look for can be used to configure attention to avoid certain features, complimenting what is known about setting attention to select certain target features.