Adolescent-specific patterns of behavior and neural activity during social reinforcement learning

Humans are sophisticated social beings. Social cues from others are exceptionally salient, particularly during adolescence. Understanding how adolescents interpret and learn from variable social signals can provide insight into the observed shift in social sensitivity during this period. The present study tested 120 participants between the ages of 8 and 25 years on a social reinforcement learning task where the probability of receiving positive social feedback was parametrically manipulated. Seventy-eight of these participants completed the task during fMRI scanning. Modeling trial-by-trial learning, children and adults showed higher positive learning rates than did adolescents, suggesting that adolescents demonstrated less differentiation in their reaction times for peers who provided more positive feedback. Forming expectations about receiving positive social reinforcement correlated with neural activity within the medial prefrontal cortex and ventral striatum across age. Adolescents, unlike children and adults, showed greater insular activity during positive prediction error learning and increased activity in the supplementary motor cortex and the putamen when receiving positive social feedback regardless of the expected outcome, suggesting that peer approval may motivate adolescents toward action. While different amounts of positive social reinforcement enhanced learning in children and adults, all positive social reinforcement equally motivated adolescents. Together, these findings indicate that sensitivity to peer approval during adolescence goes beyond simple reinforcement theory accounts and suggest possible explanations for how peers may motivate adolescent behavior.     

Parent management training for conduct problems in children: Enhancing treatment to improve therapeutic changeCapacitación en entrenamiento de padres para problemas de conducta en niños: mejorar el tratamiento para mejorar el cambio terapéutico

Background/Objective: The study evaluated two variations of Parent Management Training (PMT) for children referred to treatment for oppositional, aggressive, and antisocial behavior. The goal was to evaluate the impact of multiple enhancements to optimize common and placebo factors to augment therapeutic change. Method: The families of all children (N=138, 39 girls and 99 boys, ages 6-13) received PMT. One half of the families were assigned to receive an enhanced version with multiple additions designed to increase bonding of the parent to the therapist, professionalism of treatment and setting, credibility of the intervention, and expectancies for therapeutic change. Assessment included multiple treatment outcome measures of the child (problem behaviors, psychiatric symptoms, social competence, and adaptive functioning) and parents (depression, stress, and family relations) showed marked improvements over the course of treatment, and several process measures (therapeutic alliance, credibility of the procedures, expectancy for change). Results: The results indicated that children and parents made marked improvement in all the treatment outcome measures. The vast majority of children fell within the normative range at posttreatment on problem and prosocial behaviors. The two treatment conditions were no different in outcomes for children or parents. Conclusion: PMT led to marked changes in treatment outcome.     

Maternal Mental Health and Child Adjustment Problems in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Families Experiencing Economic Disadvantage

Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology - Parents living in low-income contexts shouldered disproportionate hardships during the COVID-19 pandemic with consequences to maternal mental...     

Development of the Uni Virtual Clinic: an online programme for improving the mental health of university students

ABSTRACT

There is growing recognition of the importance of addressing the mental health needs of young people attending university. Anonymous, scalable, and evidence-based online interventions can help to reduce burden on university services and increase access to care for marginalised or disconnected students. This paper reports the participatory design methods used to develop the Uni Virtual Clinic (UVC), a comprehensive online programme that was designed to prevent and treat mental health problems and related issues in university students. Data evaluating the participatory design process is also presented. The potential for the implementation of the UVC within university-based counselling services is strong, and has potential to reduce the prevalence of mental disorders in a high-risk group of young people.     

Quantifying latent social motivation and its associations with joint attention and language in infants at high and low likelihood for autism spectrum disorder

Social motivation—the psychobiological predisposition for social orienting, seeking social contact, and maintaining social interaction—manifests in early infancy and is hypothesized to be foundational for social communication development in typical and atypical populations. However, the lack of infant social-motivation measures has hindered delineation of associations between infant social motivation, other early-arising social abilities such as joint attention, and language outcomes. To investigate how infant social motivation contributes to joint attention and language, this study utilizes a mixed longitudinal sample of 741 infants at high (HL = 515) and low (LL = 226) likelihood for ASD. Using moderated nonlinear factor analysis (MNLFA), we incorporated items from parent-report measures to establish a novel latent factor model of infant social motivation that exhibits measurement invariance by age, sex, and familial ASD likelihood. We then examined developmental associations between 6- and 12-month social motivation, joint attention at 12–15 months, and language at 24 months of age. On average, greater social-motivation growth from 6–12 months was associated with greater initiating joint attention (IJA) and trend-level increases in sophistication of responding to joint attention (RJA). IJA and RJA were both positively associated with 24-month language abilities. There were no additional associations between social motivation and future language in our path model. These findings substantiate a novel, theoretically driven approach to modeling social motivation and suggest a developmental cascade through which social motivation impacts other foundational skills. These findings have implications for the timing and nature of intervention targets to support social communication development in infancy.

Highlights

• We describe a novel, theoretically based model of infant social motivation wherein multiple parent-reported indicators contribute to a unitary latent social-motivation factor.
• Analyses revealed social-motivation factor scores exhibited measurement invariance for a longitudinal sample of infants at high and low familial ASD likelihood.
• Social-motivation growth from ages 6–12 months is associated with better 12−15-month joint attention abilities, which in turn are associated with greater 24-month language skills.
• Findings inform timing and targets of potential interventions to support healthy social communication in the first year of life.

     

Need satisfaction,work–school interference and school dropout: An application of self-determination theory

Background. In many parts of the world, it is common for secondary school students to be involved in part-time employment. Research shows that working can have a negative impact on school engagement. However, the majority of studies have focused on the amount of time that students spend working rather than on the quality of work experience and its influence on school engagement. Aims. This study explored the relation of part-time work and school experiences to dropout intentions among secondary school and junior college students. The study was conceptualized from a self-determination theory perspective (Deci & Ryan, 2000). Sample. Participants were 3,248 students from rural and suburban schools in the greater region of Montreal, Canada. Method. Questionnaires were used to assess the number of hours worked, the extent to which work interfered with or facilitated school functioning, autonomy, competence, and relatedness experienced in the work and school domains. School performance and school dropout intentions were also assessed. Results. A curvilinear relation between work hours and dropout intentions was found, reflecting that part-time work began to be associated with higher dropout intentions only when students worked more than 7 hr per week. Analyses also showed that work–school interference was related to dropout intentions, and that this variable served to mediate the relation of employer autonomy support to dropout intentions. Conclusions. These results suggest that both the quantity and the quality of students’ part-time work experiences need to be considered when examining the relation of work to school engagement.     

Patient Suicide: A Survey of Therapists' Reactions

A substantial proportion of therapists will at some point in their professional life experience the loss of a patient to suicide. Our aims were to assess how therapists react to patient's suicide over time and which factors contribute to the reaction. One third of the therapists, mostly women, suffer from severe distress. The impact is not different for therapists in institutional settings and therapists in private practice. The item “overall distress” immediately after the suicide predicts emotional reactions and changes in behavior. Our data suggest that identifying the severely distressed subgroup could be done using a visual analogue scale for overall distress. As a consequence, more specific and intensified help could be provided to these individuals.