Daniel N. Klein

Objective: Adolescence is characterized by increased vulnerability to internalizing symptoms, particularly among girls. Although peer victimization and rumination have each been implicated in this vulnerability, their dynamic, bidirectional associations with dysphoria remain poorly understood. The current study examined transactional longitudinal relations among peer victimization, rumination, and dysphoria symptoms in adolescent girls. Method: Participants were 550 girls (ages 13.5–15.5 years at baseline) from the Adolescent Development of Emotions and Personality Traits (ADEPT) study, assessed across five waves over three years. Self-report measures captured dysphoria, rumination, and peer victimization. A Random-Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Model was fitted to separate within-person from between-person processes and to test bidirectional associations across time, controlling for age at each wave. Results: At the between-person level, higher average dysphoria, rumination, and peer victimization were strongly inter-correlated. Within-person analyses showed that elevations in dysphoria predicted subsequent increases in both rumination and peer victimization, and that increases in peer victimization also predicted later elevated levels of dysphoria. Furthermore, the within-person analyses revealed rumination did not predict later changes in the other constructs. Conclusion: Findings suggest that, at the within-person level, changes in dysphoria and peer-victimization may be reciprocally related. In contrast, changes in rumination were only predicted by changes in dysphoria, and not peer victimization, challenging previous theory and evidence on the temporal order between the three constructs. Modeling these processes as transactional and across various levels of analyses may inform more precise estimates for multilevel prevention efforts aimed at reducing disparities experienced by adolescent girls.

Background: The mesolimbic dopamine system is a critical component of the brain’s reward pathways encompassing motivation, reward processing, reinforcement learning, and goal-directed behaviors. Early execution of reward-seeking neurobehaviors may influence later childhood adiposity. We investigated performance on a reward-based operant conditioning paradigm in relation to adiposity in later childhood.Methods: Children aged 6–7 years completed five Operant Testing Battery tasks that used nickels as rewards with higher scores reflecting greater reward sensitivity and heightened responsiveness to reinforcement. Repeated BMI (body mass index) and percentage (%) body fat were assessed from ages 8 to 10. A covariate-adjusted generalized weighted quantile sum (WQS) regression was used to derive an integrated neurobehavioral index across five tasks to estimate joint association with later adiposity measures. Stratified analyses assessed male- and female-dimorphic differences.Results: The neurobehavioral index was positively associated with BMI at ages 8 and 10 (β=0.40kg/m²; 95%CI:0.12–0.68; p =0.005 and β=0.43kg/m²; 95%CI:0.14–0.72; p =0.003, respectively) and %body fat at ages 8 and 10 (β=1.09%; 95%CI:0.14–2.03; p=0.025 and β=1.45%; 95%CI:0.60–2.29; p=0.001, respectively). Among males, higher index scores were associated with greater BMI at age 8 (β=0.48kg/m²; 95%CI:0.12–0.84; p=0.01), BMI at age 10 (β=0.52kg/m²; 95%CI:0.14–0.90; p=0.007), and %body fat at age 10 (β=1.72%; 95%CI:0.61–2.84; p=0.003) and among females was positively associated with %body fat at age 8 (β=1.58%; 95%CI: 0.35–2.82; p=0.013). Temporal processing and learning behavior contributed to the highest mixture weights in most models.Conclusion: Emerging reward-driven response patterns, as captured through laboratory-based operant conditioning tasks, may contribute to adiposity later in childhood.

Irritability is a transdiagnostic clinical problem in youths and adults and can be parsed into tonic and phasic components. However, no prior work has related these components to the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology. In the present study, we used diagnostic-interview and self-report data from a sample of 18-year-olds ( N = 461) to model irritability components alongside a psychopathology structure specifying fear and distress (internalizing) and harmful substance use and antisocial behavior (externalizing). After regressing tonic and phasic irritability onto the psychopathology subfactors, chi-square difference tests indicated that tonic irritability showed significantly stronger associations with fear (Cohen’s w = 0.31, 95% confidence interval [CI] = [0.25, 0.38]) and distress (Cohen’s w = 0.37, 95% CI = [0.31, 0.44]) than phasic irritability. Phasic irritability showed a stronger association with antisocial behavior (Cohen’s w = 0.10, 95% CI = [0.04, 0.17]) than tonic irritability. Neither component uniquely related to substance misuse. Results support the tonic-phasic-irritability distinction and clarify its placement within higher-order psychopathology

The Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire (PSDQ), a widely used index of parenting, assesses authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive dimensions; however, there is little rigorous work to support this structure. In addition, research on the PSDQ has focused on maternal self-reports, leaving the structure of paternal self-reports and informant-reported caregiving poorly understood. We examined the structure of the PSDQ for mother and father self- and informant-report versions, using exploratory factor analyses, in 401 caregivers with 3-year-old children (Sample 1). A three-factor structure showed the best but not consistently acceptable fit; this was supported by confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) conducted in a sample of 510 caregivers (Sample 2). Removing redundant items improved the fit of the CFAs, such that it was acceptable based on certain indices (i.e., RMSEA and SRMR). These findings support the continued use of the three-factor structure; however, they also indicate that certain items are not useful toward assessing contemporary parenting.

Offspring of depressed parents at increased risk for developing depression. They also differ from offspring of nondepressed parents on numerous risk factors, including personality, cognitive biases, neural processing of emotional stimuli, subthreshold depression and anxiety and irritability symptoms, and interpersonal functioning (Goodman, 2020; Gotlib et al., 2023). However, few studies have tested whether these risk factors mediate the transmission of depression from parents to offspring. In a longitudinal study of a community sample of youth and parents (n = 481), we examined if these risk factors mediated the relationship between parental and youth depression using structural equation modeling. Separate models revealed significant indirect effects for negative emotionality, cognitive biases, and depressive, anxiety and irritability symptoms. However, when these independent mediators were entered in a model that also included subthreshold depressive symptoms only depression had unique indirect effects. Our findings are contextualized based on our analytic approach and the highly intertwined and overlapping nature of the mediating risk factors assessed with depressive symptoms. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Current classification systems of psychopathology focus on cross-sectional symptoms rather than continuity, discontinuity, and comorbidity across development. Here, a community sample of 600 youths was assessed every 3 years from early childhood through late adolescence using semistructured diagnostic interviews. We used longitudinal k -means clustering of joint-diagnostic trajectories to identify six distinct clusters (healthy, childhood anxiety, childhood/adolescent attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, adolescent depression/anxiety, adolescent depression/substance use, and early childhood disruptive behavior). Comparing psychopathology clusters with the healthy cluster on age-3 predictors (parental education and psychopathology, early environment, temperament, cognitive and social functioning) and age-18 functional outcomes, we found that the clusters captured developmental patterning of psychopathology not apparent in cross-sectional nosology. The study serves as a proof of principle in applying a longitudinal clustering approach to common mental disorders, affording a rich perspective on the unfolding of sequential comorbidity and heterotypic continuity and identifying transdiagnostic subgroups with meaningful clinical, family, and temperamental correlates.

This study examined changes in the agreement, stability, and validity of parent and self-reports of a commonly used measure of youth depression symptoms, the Children’s Depression Inventory, from childhood through adolescence. The study consists of 530 families (youth, mothers, and fathers) assessed at ages 9, 12, and 15. Agreement between youth and each parent on youth depression symptoms was modest but significant at age 9, while agreement between mothers and fathers was high. At age 12, agreement between youth and parents increased; agreement between parents was again high. At age 15, mother-youth and father-youth agreement did not change from age 12, but mother-youth agreement was higher than father-youth agreement. Agreement between parents remained high. Stability of youth-reported depression symptoms was low between ages 9 and 12 but high from ages 12 to 15. Parent-reported youth depression symptoms demonstrated greater stability than youth reports from 9 to 12 but similar stability to youth from 12 to 15. At age 9, parent-reported symptoms predicted concurrent and subsequent depressive diagnoses, however the youth reports did not. At age 12, parent-reported symptoms significantly independently predicted concurrent but not subsequent youth depressive diagnoses, whereas youth reports were independently associated with subsequent, but not concurrent, depressive diagnoses. At age 15, youth, but not parent, reports were independently associated with concurrent depressive disorder diagnoses. These findings indicate that although both informants can provide important insights into youth depression, parents’ reports should be more heavily weighted in childhood and youth reports should be given increasing credence in adolescence.