Measurement matters: An individual differences examination of family socioeconomic factors, latent dimensions of children's experiences, and resting state functional brain connectivity in the ABCD sample

Food insecurity and adolescent impulsivity: The mediating role of functional connectivity in the context of family flexibility

Adolescent food insecurity is a salient adversity hypothesized to affect neural systems associated with increased impulsive behavior. Family environments shape how adverse experiences influence development. In this study, hypotheses were tested regarding the conjoint effects of food insecurity and family flexibility on impulsivity via alterations in connectivity between regions within the salience and central executive networks. Such alterations are reflected in resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) metrics between the anterior insula (AI) and the middle frontal gyrus (MFG). Hypotheses were tested in a longitudinal moderated mediation model with two waves of data from 142 adolescents (Time 1 [T1] Mage = 12.89, SD = 0.85; Time 2 [T2] Mage = 15.01, SD = 1.07). Data on past-year household food insecurity, family flexibility, and rsFC were obtained at T1. Impulsivity was self-reported by the adolescent at T1 and T2. Findings revealed that high T1 left-to-left rsFC between the AI and MFG was associated with increased impulsivity at T2. The interaction of family flexibility and food insecurity was associated with AI and MFG rsFC. In the context of low family flexibility, food insecurity was linked to high levels of AI and MFG rsFC. Conversely, in the context of optimal family flexibility, food insecurity was associated with low levels of AI and MFG rsFC. Conditional indirect analysis suggests that the links among food insecurity, rsFC, and impulsive behavior depend on family flexibility. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Adolescent food insecurity was associated with anterior insula and middle frontal gyrus connectivity only at certain levels of family flexibility. High family flexibility attenuated the link between food insecurity and neural connectivity, while low levels of family flexibility increased this risk. High left anterior insula and left middle frontal gyrus connectivity was associated with increased impulsivity 1 year later.

Cognitive deficits and enhancements in youth from adverse conditions: An integrative assessment using Drift Diffusion Modeling in the ABCD study

Childhood adversity can lead to cognitive deficits or enhancements, depending on many factors. Though progress has been made, two challenges prevent us from integrating and better understanding these patterns. First, studies commonly use and interpret raw performance differences, such as response times, which conflate different stages of cognitive processing. Second, most studies either isolate or aggregate abilities, obscuring the degree to which individual differences reflect task-general (shared) or task-specific (unique) processes. We addressed these challenges using Drift Diffusion Modeling (DDM) and structural equation modeling (SEM). Leveraging a large, representative sample of 9-10 year-olds from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, we examined how two forms of adversity-material deprivation and household threat-were associated with performance on tasks measuring processing speed, inhibition, attention shifting, and mental rotation. Using DDM, we decomposed performance on each task into three distinct stages of processing: speed of information uptake, response caution, and stimulus encoding/response execution. Using SEM, we isolated task-general and task-specific variances in each processing stage and estimated their associations with the two forms of adversity. Youth with more exposure to household threat (but not material deprivation) showed slower task-general processing speed, but showed intact task-specific abilities. In addition, youth with more exposure to household threat tended to respond more cautiously in general. These findings suggest that traditional assessments might overestimate the extent to which childhood adversity reduces specific abilities. By combining DDM and SEM approaches, we can develop a more nuanced understanding of how adversity affects different aspects of youth's cognitive performance. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT: To understand how childhood adversity shapes cognitive abilities, the field needs analytical approaches that can jointly document and explain patterns of lowered and enhanced performance. Using Drift Diffusion Modeling and Structural Equation Modeling, we analyzed associations between adversity and processing speed, inhibition, attention shifting, and mental rotation. Household threat, but not material deprivation, was mostly associated with slower task-general processing speed and more response caution. In contrast, task-specific abilities were largely intact. Researchers might overestimate the impact of childhood adversity on specific abilities and underestimate the impact on general processing speed and response caution using traditional measures.

Individual and Community level Developmental Adversities: Associations with Marijuana and Alcohol Use in Late-Adolescents and Young Adults

Exposure to community and individual level stressors during adolescence has been reported to be associated with increased substance use. However, it remains unclear what the relative contribution of different community- and individual-level factors play when alcohol and marijuana use become more prevalent during late adolescence. The present study uses a large longitudinal sample of adolescents (Wave 1: N = 2017; 55% Female; 54.5% White, 22.3% Black, 8% Hispanic, 15% other) to evaluate the association and potential interactions between community- and individual-level factors and substance use from adolescence to young adulthood (Wave 1 to Wave 3 Age Mean [SD]: 16.7 [1.1], 18.3 [1.2], 19.3 [1.2]). Across three waves of data, multilevel modeling (MLM) is used to evaluate the association between community affluence and disadvantage, individual household socioeconomic status (SES, measured as parental level of education and self-reported public assistance) and self-reported childhood maltreatment with self-reported 12-month alcohol and 12-month marijuana use occasions. Sample-selection weights and attrition-adjusted weights are accounted for in the models to evaluate the robustness of the estimated effects. Across the MLMs, there is a significant positive association between community affluence and parental education with self-reported alcohol use but not self-reported marijuana use. In post hoc analyses, higher neighborhood affluence in older adolescents is associated with higher alcohol use and lower use in younger adolescents; the opposite association is found for neighborhood disadvantage. Consistent with past literature, there is a significant positive association between self-reported childhood maltreatment and self-reported 12-month alcohol and 12-month marijuana use. Results are largely consistent across weighted and unweighted analyses, however, in weighted analyses there is a significant negative association between community disadvantage and self-reported 12-month alcohol use. This study demonstrates a nuanced relationship between community- and individual-level factors and substance use during the transitional window of adolescence which should be considered when contextualizing and interpreting normative substance use during adolescence.

Math items about real-world content lower test-scores of students from families with low socioeconomic status

In many countries, standardized math tests are important for achieving academic success. Here, we examine whether content of items, the story that explains a mathematical question, biases performance of low-SES students. In a large-scale cohort study of Trends in International Mathematics and Science Studies (TIMSS)-including data from 58 countries from students in grades 4 and 8 (N = 5501,165)-we examine whether item content that is more likely related to challenges for low-SES students (money, food, social relationships) improves their performance, compared with their average math performance. Results show that low-SES students scored lower on items with this specific content than expected based on an individual's average performance. The effect sizes are substantial: on average, the chance to answer correctly is 18% lower. From a hidden talents approach, these results are unexpected. However, they align with other theoretical frameworks such as scarcity mindset, providing new insights for fair testing.

The future of neuroscience in developmental psychopathology

Developmental psychopathology started as an intersection of fields and is now a field itself. As we contemplate the future of this field, we consider the ways in which a newer, interdisciplinary field - human developmental neuroscience - can inform, and be informed by, developmental psychopathology. To do so, we outline principles of developmental psychopathology and how they are and/or can be implemented in developmental neuroscience. In turn, we highlight how the collaboration between these fields can lead to richer models and more impactful translation. In doing so, we describe the ways in which models from developmental psychopathology can enrich developmental neuroscience and future directions for developmental psychopathology.

Assessing the utility of a novel cortical marker of delay discounting (C-DD) in two independent samples of early adolescents: Links with externalizing pathology

Delay discounting is a well-established risk factor for risky behaviors and the development of externalizing spectrum disorders. Building upon recent work that developed a novel cortical marker of delay discounting (C-DD) in adult samples, the objective of this study was to test whether the C-DD relates to delay discounting and subsequently externalizing pathology in adolescent samples. The current study used two samples: 9992 early adolescents participating in the ABCD study (Mage = 9.93 years old, 48.7% female), and 56 early adolescents recruited from the community (Mage = 12.27 years old, 55.4% female). Cortical thickness was estimated using the FreeSurfer standard pipeline, and the cortical marker of delay discounting (C-DD) was calculated based on procedures outlined by the initial validation study. All data are cross-sectional in nature. As expected, C-DD was positively related to delay discounting in the ABCD sample, even after accounting for age, biological sex, collection site and data quality indicators. Moreover, results showed that C-DD was discriminately associated with externalizing, but not internalizing, symptoms in both samples of young adolescents. Findings replicate those found in adult samples, suggestive that C-DD may be a useful neuroanatomical marker of youth delay discounting. Replication of findings in other samples will be needed to determine whether C-DD has translational relevance to understanding externalizing psychopathology in adolescent samples.

General and Specific Factors of Environmental Stress and Their Associations With Brain Structure and Dimensions of Psychopathology

Background

Early-life stressors can adversely affect the developing brain. While hierarchical modeling has established the existence of a general factor of psychopathology, no studies have modeled a general factor of environmental stress and related this factor to brain development. Using a large sample of children from the ABCD (Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development) Study, the current study aimed to identify general and specific factors of environmental stress and test their associations with brain structure and psychopathology.

Methods

In a sample of 11,878 children, bifactor modeling and higher-order (second-order) modeling identified general and specific factors of environmental stress: family dynamics, interpersonal support, neighborhood socioeconomic status deprivation, and urbanicity. Structural equation modeling was performed to examine associations between these factors and regional gray matter volume (GMV) and cortical thickness as well as general and specific factors of psychopathology.

Results

The general environmental stress factor was associated with globally smaller cortical and subcortical GMV as well as thinner cortices across widespread regions. Family dynamics and neighborhood socioeconomic status deprivation were associated with smaller GMV in focal regions. Urbanicity was associated with larger cortical and subcortical GMV and thicker cortices in frontotemporal regions. The environmental factors were associated with psychopathology in the expected directions. The general factors of environmental stress and psychopathology were both predictors of smaller GMV in children, while remaining distinct from each other.

Conclusions

This study reveals a unifying model of environmental influences that illustrates the inherent organization of environmental stressors and their relationship to brain structure and psychopathology.

Socioeconomic resources are associated with distributed alterations of the brain's intrinsic functional architecture in youth

Little is known about how exposure to limited socioeconomic resources (SER) in childhood gets "under the skin" to shape brain development, especially using rigorous whole-brain multivariate methods in large, adequately powered samples. The present study examined resting state functional connectivity patterns from 5821 youth in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, employing multivariate methods across three levels: whole-brain, network-wise, and connection-wise. Across all three levels, SER was associated with widespread alterations across the connectome. However, critically, we found that parental education was the primary driver of neural associations with SER. These parental education associations with the developing connectome exhibited notable concentrations in somatosensory and subcortical regions, and they were partially accounted for by home enrichment activities, child's cognitive abilities, and child's grades, indicating interwoven links between parental education, child stimulation, and child cognitive performance. These results add a new data-driven, multivariate perspective on links between household SER and the child's developing functional connectome.

Mediating effect of pubertal stages on the family environment and neurodevelopment: An open-data replication and multiverse analysis of an ABCD Study®

Increasing evidence demonstrates that environmental factors meaningfully impact the development of the brain (Hyde et al., 2020; McEwen and Akil, 2020). Recent work from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study^® suggests that puberty may indirectly account for some association between the family environment and brain structure and function (Thijssen et al., 2020). However, a limited number of large studies have evaluated what, how, and why environmental factors impact neurodevelopment. When these topics are investigated, there is typically inconsistent operationalization of variables between studies which may be measuring different aspects of the environment and thus different associations in the analytic models. Multiverse analyses (Steegen et al., 2016) are an efficacious technique for investigating the effect of different operationalizations of the same construct on underlying interpretations. While one of the assets of Thijssen et al. (2020) was its large sample from the ABCD data, the authors used an early release that contained 38% of the full ABCD sample. Then, the analyses used several 'researcher degrees of freedom' (Gelman and Loken, 2014) to operationalize key independent, mediating and dependent variables, including but not limited to, the use of a latent factor of preadolescents' environment comprised of different subfactors, such as parental monitoring and child-reported family conflict. While latent factors can improve reliability of constructs, the nuances of each subfactor and measure that comprise the environment may be lost, making the latent factors difficult to interpret in the context of individual differences. This study extends the work of Thijssen et al. (2020) by evaluating the extent to which the analytic choices in their study affected their conclusions. In Aim 1, using the same variables and models, we replicate findings from the original study using the full sample in Release 3.0. Then, in Aim 2, using a multiverse analysis we extend findings by considering nine alternative operationalizations of family environment, three of puberty, and five of brain measures (total of 135 models) to evaluate the impact on conclusions from Aim 1. In these results, 90% of the directions of effects and 60% of the p-values (e.g. p > .05 and p < .05) across effects were comparable between the two studies. However, raters agreed that only 60% of the effects had replicated. Across the multiverse analyses, there was a degree of variability in beta estimates across the environmental variables, and lack of consensus between parent reported and child reported pubertal development for the indirect effects. This study demonstrates the challenge in defining which effects replicate, the nuance across environmental variables in the ABCD data, and the lack of consensus across parent and child reported puberty scales in youth.

Assessment of Parent Income and Education, Neighborhood Disadvantage, and Child Brain Structure

IMPORTANCE

Although different aspects of socioeconomic status (SES) may represent distinct risk factors for poor mental health in children, knowledge of their differential and synergistic associations with the brain is limited.

OBJECTIVE

To examine the independent associations between distinct SES factors and child brain structure.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS

We used baseline data from participants aged 9 to 10 years in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. These data were collected from 21 US sites between September 2017 and August 2018. Study participants were recruited from schools to create a participant sample that closely reflects the US population.

EXPOSURES

Neighborhood disadvantage was measured using the area deprivation index. We also used data on total parent or caregiver educational attainment (in years) and household income-to-needs ratio.

MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES

T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging was used to assess measures of cortical thickness, surface area, and subcortical volume.

RESULTS

Data from 8862 ABCD participants aged 9 to 10 years were analyzed. The mean (SD) age was 119.1 (7.5) months; there were 4243 girls (47.9%) and 4619 boys (52.1%). Data on race or ethnicity were available for 8857 of 8862 participants: 173 (2.0%) were Asian, 1099 (12.4%) were Black or African American, 1688 (19.1%) were Hispanic, 4967 (56.1%) were White, and 930 (10.5%) reported multiple races or ethnicities. Using 10-fold, within-sample split-half replication, we found that neighborhood disadvantage was associated with lower cortical thickness in the following brain regions (η2 = 0.004-0.009): cuneus (B [SE] = -0.099 [0.013]; P < .001), lateral occipital (B [SE] = -0.088 [0.011]; P < .001), lateral orbitofrontal (B [SE] = -0.072 [0.012]; P < .001), lingual (B [SE] = -0.104 [0.012]; P < .001), paracentral (B [SE] = -0.086 [0.012]; P < .001), pericalcarine (B [SE] = -0.077 [0.012]; P < .001), postcentral (B [SE] = -0.069 [0.012]; P < .001), precentral (B [SE] = -0.059 [0.011]; P < .001), rostral middle frontal (B [SE] = -0.076 [0.011]; P < .001), and superior parietal (B [SE] = -0.060 [0.011]; P < .001). Exploratory analyses showed that the associations of low educational attainment or neighborhood disadvantage and low cortical thickness were attenuated in the presence of a high income-to-needs ratio (η2 = 0.003-0.007).

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE

The findings of this cross-sectional study suggest that different SES indicators have distinct associations with children's brain structure. A high income-to-needs ratio may play a protective role in the context of neighborhood disadvantage and low parent or caregiver educational attainment. This study highlights the importance of considering the joint associations of different SES indicators in future work.