Elana S. Israel

In this study, we examined associations between census-derived indices of neighborhood disadvantage and children’s reward outcome processing and whether these relations would be stronger among children already at risk for alterations in reward processing due to having a parental history of major depressive disorder (MDD) compared to children of never depressed parents. Participants were 224 children aged 7–11 years old and their parent. Parents were required to either have a history of MDD or no lifetime history of any depressive disorder. To measure reward outcome processing, we focused on the reward positivity (RewP) event-related potential (ERP) elicited following gain and loss outcome feedback while children completed a monetary reward task. Census-derived measures of neighborhood disadvantage based upon families’ addresses included the Area Deprivation Index (ADI), neighborhood crime risk, and the Child Opportunity Index (COI). The general pattern of findings across indices was that higher levels of neighborhood disadvantage were associated with more blunted neural reactivity to both gain and loss feedback, but only among children with a parental history of MDD and not among children of never depressed parents. These results suggest that broader contextual stressors may impact how youth process reward outcome feedback, especially youth already at heightened risk for depression, which may have implications for understanding risk for disorders associated with reward dysfunction.

Background: Non‐suicidal self‐injury (NSSI) is a significant public health concern that is thought to increase risk for future self‐injurious behaviors, including suicide attempts. Notably, NSSI is especially prevalent among adolescents, which underscores a critical need to identify modifiable risk factors that could be targeted to reduce future risk. The current study examined self‐ and co‐regulation of physiological responses during mother‐daughter interactions in adolescent girls with and without a history of NSSI. Methods: Participants were 60 girls aged 13–17 with ( n = 27) and without ( n = 33) a history of NSSI and their mothers. Adolescents and their mothers completed positive and negative interaction tasks during which physiological reactivity was assessed via respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA). Results: Using Actor‐Partner Interdependence Modeling (APIM), we found that adolescents with an NSSI history demonstrated a higher RSA setpoint than adolescents without this history during the negative, but not positive, interaction task. In addition, there were differences in co‐regulation during the negatively valenced interaction, such that mothers of daughters with NSSI were more reactive to fluctuations in their daughters' RSA than mothers of daughters without an NSSI history. Conclusions: These findings highlight intra‐ and interpersonal aspects of physiological dysregulation associated with NSSI that could provide promising targets of intervention to reduce future risk in adolescent girls.

Offspring of mothers with a history of major depressive disorder (MDD) are at high risk of developing the disorder themselves, yet specific mechanisms of risk remain unclear. One hypothesized mechanism is interpersonal stress, which has been shown to be elevated in offspring of mothers with a history of MDD. The goal of this study was to examine the role of a specific form of interpersonal stress, peer victimization (overt and relational). In doing so, we not only examined the impact of peer victimization on changes in youth depression, but also youth depression on changes in peer victimization, consistent with stress generation models. Participants were 251 mothers with (n = 129) or without (n = 122) a history of MDD and their child (aged 8–14 years at baseline) who were assessed every six months for two years. Using random intercepts cross-lagged panel models (RI-CLPM), we were able to separate between-subject effects (mother MDD group differences in average levels of peer victimization and offspring depressive symptoms) and within-subject effects (transactional influences between within-subject fluctuations in peer victimization and depressive symptoms among offspring over time). Overall, these effects were stronger for relational victimization than for overt victimization and stronger for girls than boys. These results support the role of peer victimization, particularly relational victimization, as a risk factor among offspring of mothers with MDD, particularly girls, and highlight transactional relations between relational victimization and depressive symptoms in girls over time, which may create a vicious cycle of risk.

In this study, we sought to combine two lines of research to better understand risk for the intergenerational transmission of depression. The first focuses on the role of maternal criticism as a potential mechanism of risk for depression in youth while the second builds from interpersonal and stress generation models regarding the potential impact of youth depression on future escalations in maternal criticism. Specifically, we examined the role of maternal criticism within a transactional mediation model using data from a multi-wave study. Participants were 251 mother–offspring pairs consisting of mothers with (n = 129) and without (n = 122) a history of major depressive disorder (MDD) during their child’s lifetime who completed assessments every 6 months for 2 years. We found support for the hypothesized transactional mediational model in which maternal expressed emotion-criticism (EE-Crit) mediated the link between maternal history of MDD and residual change in youth’s depressive symptoms over the previous 6 months and, reciprocally, youth depressive symptoms mediated the relation between maternal MDD history and residual change in EE-Crit 6 months later. These results indicate that maternal criticism and offspring depressive symptoms may contribute to a vicious cycle of depression risk, which should be considered for interventions targeted toward youth at risk of developing MDD.

The goal of this study was to examine age‐related differences in children’s reward processing. Focusing on reward outcome processing, we used event‐related potentials to examine substages of neural response to gain versus loss feedback in a sample of 7–11‐year‐old children (M = 9.67, SD = 1.40) recruited from the community (N = 234; 47.6% girls, 66.2% non‐Hispanic European American). Using principal components analysis (PCA), we focused on temporospatial combinations that closely resembled the RewP, fb‐P3, and fb‐LPP in temporal and spatial distributions. Two of these, the PCA factors reflecting the RewP and fb‐LPP, demonstrated age‐related differences in response to gains versus losses. Age‐related changes in the RewP were specific to gain feedback, with RewP amplitudes to gain, but not loss, increasing from middle to late childhood. In contrast, age‐related changes in fb‐LPP were specific to loss feedback, with fb‐LPP amplitudes to losses, but not gains, decreasing from middle to late childhood. Follow‐up analyses revealed that children younger than age 8 exhibited larger fb‐LPP responses to loss than gain, whereas children older than age 10 exhibited larger RewP responses to gain than loss. Similar results were obtained using mean amplitude‐based ERP indices and the results do not appear to have been due to age‐related differences in the latency or location of the ERPs themselves. These results highlight the importance of examining distinct substages of reward outcome processing and suggest that robust neural responses to loss feedback may emerge earlier in childhood than responses to gains.

Rather than relying on a single psychotherapeutic orientation, most clinicians draw from a range of therapeutic approaches to treat their clients. To date, no data-driven approach exists for personalized predictions of which skill domain would be most therapeutically beneficial for a given patient. The present study combined ecological momentary assessment (EMA) and machine learning to test a data-driven approach for predicting patient-specific skill-outcome associations. Fifty (M_age= 37 years old, 54% female, 84% White) adults received training in Behavioral Therapy (BT) and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) skills within a behavioral health partial hospital program. Following discharge, patients received four EMA surveys per day for two weeks (total observations = 2,036) assessing use of therapeutic skills and positive/negative affect (PA/NA). Clinical and demographic characteristics were submitted to elastic net regularization to predict, via cross-validation, patient-specific associations between use of BT vs. DBT skills and level of PA/NA. Cross-validated accuracy was 81% (sensitivity=93%; specificity=63%) in predicting whether a patient would exhibit a stronger association between use of BT vs. DBT skills and PA level. Predictors of positive DBT skills-PA associations included higher levels of non-suicidal self-injury and sleep disturbance, whereas predictors of positive BT skills-PA relations included higher emotional lability and anxiety disorder comorbidity, and lower psychomotor retardation/agitation and worthlessness/guilt. Corresponding models with NA yielded no predictors. Findings from this initial proof-of-concept study highlight the potential of data-driven approaches to inform personalized prescriptions of which skill domains may be most therapeutically beneficial for a given patient.