Thomas M. Olino

Understanding sex and ethnoracial group differences in psychopathology is critical to identify mental health disparities. However, the validity of these group differences is often uninterrogated. One threat to validity is measurement bias, where specific items may be more likely to be endorsed by a specific group even without differences in underlying psychopathology. We examined measurement bias using invariance testing in the Adult Self-Report (ASR) in adult parents of children in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study ( N = 8,608). The ASR dimensions demonstrated invariance across sex and ethnoracial groupings, except for Antagonism and Social Maladjustment. These results suggest that some dimensions of the ASR are largely invariant across sex and ethnoracial groupings in this sample, and that group differences in measured scores are likely unconfounded by measurement bias. We report sex and ethnoracial group differences in psychopathology dimensions and discuss limitations of parental psychopathology assessment in the ABCD study.

Life stress is central to models of psychopathology, and traditions have focused on either assessing stress exposure—what occurs in the environment—or stress responding—the person’s multimodal reaction to the exposure, including stress perception. The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) is the most widely used measure of stress perception in psychopathology and health research; although it was intended to measure appraisals of transient stressors, it is often used as a stand-in for stress exposure. However, the PSS may inadvertently measure a general neuroticism factor (i.e. a stable tendency to experience negative emotion) rather than capture environmental conditions or situational appraisals. Therefore, we investigated the structural relationships between perceived stress and neuroticism in two samples. In secondary analyses of samples randomly split into two equal halves, we conducted exploratory factor analyses of perceived stress and neuroticism, followed by confirmatory factor analyses. The results suggest a substantially common structure characterized by a shared overwhelmed factor plus smaller specific factors for low self-efficacy (entirely derived from perceived stress) and self-dislike (derived from neuroticism). The PSS was also correlated more with neuroticism than with stress exposure in a subsample. Researchers using the PSS should consider that the measure may largely capture trait neuroticism and poor self-efficacy.

Psychopathology is a major public health concern, which is why the U.S. government invests billions of dollars annually to investigate its etiology, assessment, course, and treatment. To date, however, there is no empirical mechanism for evaluating how federal research funding is allocated across dimensions of psychopathology. This Registered Report used the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) as a framework to classify funded research grants from 2020 through 2024 across four psychopathology-focused institutes within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) according to higher-order dimensions of psychopathology. We first present a pilot study supporting the feasibility of using a large language model (LLM) for this task. In the main study, we quantified the allocation of federal funding across HiTOP spectra, examining differences across funding agencies, grant mechanisms, and time. Results indicated that the Disinhibited Externalizing spectrum received more funding in this time period than all other spectra combined, and this funding was almost entirely driven by substance-use-related research funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). Internalizing, Autism, Thought Disorder, and Detachment spectra received substantial allocations of federal funding, all of which were predominantly administered by the National Institute on Mental Health (NIMH). Finally, Antagonistic Externalizing and Somatoform spectra received comparatively little federal funding. This work provides the first systematic characterization of U.S. research priorities grounded in a contemporary, dimensional model of psychopathology.

Reward valuation and reward and punishment learning are key constructs relevant for understanding and intervening on mental illness. These constructs are frequently measured with behavioral tasks such as intertemporal choice tasks, measuring delay discounting, and the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), measuring reward and punishment learning. Delay discounting refers to how people value delayed outcomes, with steep discounting (i.e., delayed outcomes holding little value) considered a form of impulsive decision-making. Reward and punishment learning refers to how people adjust their decision behavior in response to rewards and punishments, with deficits indicating atypical reward and punishment processing related to clinical outcomes such as substance abuse. In this study, we tested the association between delay discounting and reward and punishment learning among adults (N = 299) from the United States that completed an intertemporal choice task and the play-or-pass IGT. We fit a joint model to the task data to simultaneously estimate parameters from the hyperbolic discounting model (for the intertemporal choice task) with parameters from a reinforcement learning model (for the play-or-pass IGT). The joint model also included parameters capturing cross-task associations between model parameters. Our results indicate that steep delay discounting is negatively associated with punishment learning. That is, people who do not value delayed outcomes also show less learning from punishment. Implications of these findings are discussed in the context of improving our assessment of reward valuation and reward and punishment learning as constructs relevant to mental illness.

Childhood adversity is a robust risk factor for psychopathology, and growing evidence implicates developmental alterations in reward and punishment learning as potent mechanisms shaping this vulnerability. However, little is known about how specific types of adversity impact different learning processes, particularly during the sensitive adolescent period. To examine effects of different types of adversity on the development of valenced learning processes, we combined a subtype-specific approach to childhood adversity, a behavioral task and reinforcement learning (RL) model that capture distinct component processes of learning, and a longitudinal design in youth aged 9-17 (n = 166). Task performance metrics included traditional summary scores and RL-derived estimates for reward learning rate, punishment learning rate, win/loss frequency sensitivity, and go bias (general tendency to play). Analyses probing adversity subtypes and component learning processes revealed dissociable effects: emotional abuse attenuated normative developmental increases in punishment learning rate, and physical abuse attenuated normative increases in both go bias and a summary score of reward learning (FDR < .05). In contrast, analyses relying on a gross summary score of net success and composite variables representing broad adversity dimensions (abuse vs. neglect) obscured these effects, highlighting the need for fine-grained characterization of both adversity and learning processes. Additionally, adversity did not predict differences in net success, suggesting that youth high and low in adversity reach similar behavioral outcomes through divergent learning strategies. This study is among the first to identify unique effects of different adversity types on specific component processes of valenced learning during adolescence.

There are multiple conceptualizations of maladaptive exercise with each being assessed by different measures. This has led to challenges in integrating the literature. Better understanding of the underlying processes of maladaptive exercise is needed to better conceptualize the construct. The present study used data from two independent samples, a college student sample (n = 497), identified primarily as female (72%), male (22%), White (38%), and Black (22%), and a sample recruited for their exercise engagement (n = 500), identified primarily as female (41%), male (56%), White (57%), and Black (20%). All participants completed self-report measures, including measures of maladaptive exercise (i.e., the Exercise Dependence Scale-Revised, Exercise Addiction Inventory-3, and Compulsive Exercise Test) and assessments of focal criterion variables for the problematic behavior (i.e., impulsivity, compulsivity, and eating disorder pathology). We used exploratory factor analysis to examine the overlapping and distinct content across measures of maladaptive exercise. We then examined correlations between the focal criterion variables and the measures of maladaptive exercise and latent factors. In both samples, the exploratory factor analysis suggested a four-factor solution reflecting tolerance and structure, impairment, exercise worries, and affect regulation. Our findings highlight the overlapping and distinct qualities of the varying assessment instruments and how those qualities map onto the potential underlying processes of maladaptive exercise. Future work should continue to refine the features of a broad definition of maladaptive exercise and develop a self-report measure that integrates the content from the existing measures. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).