A positive parenting program to enhance positive affect in children of previously depressed mothers

Children of mothers with a history of depression are at heightened risk for developing depression and other maladaptive outcomes. Deficits in parenting are one putative mechanism underlying this transmission of risk from mother to child. The present study evaluated whether a brief intervention with mothers with a history of depression produced greater use of positive parenting behaviors and an increase in observed positive affect in their 8- to 10-year-old children. Mothers with a history of depression (n = 65) were randomly assigned to either a positive parenting intervention or an attention control intervention condition. In addition, a comparison group of 66 mothers with no history of depression was evaluated one time. Results revealed significant increases in positive parenting behaviors (e.g., active listening, praise) immediately postintervention in mothers randomized to the positive parenting intervention as compared to those in the attention control condition. Children of mothers in the positive parenting intervention showed increases in positive affect as compared to children of mothers in the attention control intervention. Increases in mothers' active listening and smiling/laughing significantly predicted increases in children's positive affect. The intervention did not increase the rate of children's moment-by-moment positive affect contingent on mothers' positive parenting behaviors. This study showed the short-term effectiveness of a brief parenting intervention for enhancing interactions between mothers with a history of depression and their children by directly targeting mothers' positive parenting and, indirectly, children's expressions of positive affect. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Incentive processing in Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH): a reward-based antisaccade study

Little is known about how steroid hormones contribute to the beneficial effect of incentives on cognitive control during adolescent development. In this study, 27 adolescents with Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH, mean age 15.6 years, 12 female), a disorder of cortisol deficiency and androgen excess, and 36 healthy participants (mean age 16.3 years, 18 female) completed a reward-based antisaccade task. In this mixed-saccade task, participants performed eye movements towards (prosaccades) or away (antisaccades) from a peripherally occuring stimulus. On incentive trials, monetary reward was provided for correct performance, while no such reward was provided on no-incentive trials. Consistent with the hypothesis, the results showed that healthy, but not CAH adolescents, significantly improved their inhibitory control (antisaccade accuracy) during incentive trials relative to no-incentive trials. These findings were not driven by severity of CAH (salt wasters vs. simple virilizers), individual hormone levels, sex, age-at-diagnosis, or medication type (dexamethasone vs. hydrocortisone). In addition, no significant differences between groups were found on orienting responses (prosaccades). Additional analyses revealed an impact of glucocorticoid (GC) dosage, such that higher GC dose predicted better antisaccade performance. However, this effect did not impact incentive processing. The data are discussed within the context of steroid hormone mediated effects on cognitive control and reward processing.

Translating basic psychopathology research to preventive interventions: a tribute to john R. Z. Abela

This article highlights how the many important contributions of John R. Z. Abela's research program can inform the development and implementation of interventions for preventing depression in youth. Abela provided evidence of multiple vulnerabilities to depression including cognitive (e.g., inferential style, dysfunctional attitudes, ruminative response style), interpersonal (e.g., reassurance seeking, attachment, dependency), personality (e.g., neuroticism, self-criticism), and contextual (e.g., stress, parental depression). He introduced important methodological advances to the study of the hopelessness model of depression, especially in children, including the "weakest link" approach, cognitive priming, and idiographic measurement of stress. We briefly review what is currently known about the prevention of depression regarding intervention targets, content, outcomes, effect sizes, moderators, mediators, specificity, and durability. Next, we summarize several of Abela's contributions that are most relevant to the prevention of depression. We describe the implications of Abela's work for the development, implementation, and testing of programs aimed at preventing depression and discuss important challenges such as the transfer of training to and the personalization of interventions so as to capitalize on individuals' strengths versus compensate for their weaknesses.

Incentive effect on inhibitory control in adolescents with early-life stress: an antisaccade study

OBJECTIVE

Early-life stress (ES) such as adoption, change of caregiver, or experience of emotional neglect may influence the way in which affected individuals respond to emotional stimuli of positive or negative valence. These modified responses may stem from a direct alteration of how emotional stimuli are coded, and/or the cognitive function implicated in emotion modulation, such as self-regulation or inhibition. These ES effects have been probed on tasks either targeting reward and inhibitory function. Findings revealed deficits in both reward processing and inhibitory control in ES youths. However, no work has yet examined whether incentives can improve automatic response or inhibitory control in ES youths.

METHOD

To determine whether incentives would only improve self-regulated voluntary actions or generalize to automated motoric responses, participants were tested on a mixed eye movement task that included reflex-like prosaccades and voluntary controlled antisaccade eye movements. Seventeen adopted children (10 females, mean age 11.3 years) with a documented history of neglect and 29 typical healthy youths (16 females, mean age 11.9 years) performed the mixed prosaccade/antisaccade task during monetary incentive conditions or during no-incentive conditions.

RESULTS

Across both saccade types, ES adolescents responded more slowly than controls. As expected, control participants committed fewer errors on antisaccades during the monetary incentive condition relative to the no-incentive condition. By contrast, ES youths failed to show this incentive-related improvement on inhibitory control. No significant incentive effects were found with prepotent prosaccades trials in either group. Finally, co-morbid psychopathology did not modulate the findings.

CONCLUSIONS

These data suggest that youths with experience of early stress exhibit deficient modulation of inhibitory control by reward processes, in tandem with a reward-independent deficit in preparation for both automatic and controlled responses. These data may be relevant to interventions in ES youths.

The pathology of social phobia is independent of developmental changes in face processing

OBJECTIVE

While social phobia in adolescence predicts the illness in adulthood, no study has directly compared the neural responses in social phobia in adults and adolescents. The authors examined neural responses to facial expressions in adults and adolescents with social phobia to determine whether the neural correlates of adult social phobia during face processing also manifest in adolescent social phobia.

METHOD

Blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) responses were compared in 39 medication-free participants with social phobia (25 adults and 14 adolescents) and 39 healthy comparison subjects (23 adults and 16 adolescents) matched on age, IQ, and gender. During fMRI scans, participants saw angry, fearful, and neutral expression stimuli while making a gender judgment.

RESULTS

Significant diagnosis-by-emotion interactions were observed within the amygdala and the rostral anterior cingulate cortex, as has previously been hypothesized. In these regions, both the adolescent and adult social phobia patients showed significantly increased BOLD responses relative to their respective age-matched comparison subjects, and there was no evidence of age-related modulation of between-group differences. These enhanced responses occurred specifically when viewing angry (rostral anterior cingulate cortex) and fearful (amygdala and rostral anterior cingulate cortex) expressions but not when viewing neutral expressions. In addition, the severity of social phobia was significantly correlated with the enhanced rostral anterior cingulate cortex response in the adults.

CONCLUSIONS

The neural correlates of adult social phobia during face processing also manifest in adolescents. Neural correlates that are observed in adult social phobia may represent the persistence of profiles established earlier in life rather than adaptive responses to such earlier perturbations or maturational changes. These cross-sectional observations might encourage longitudinal fMRI studies of adolescent social phobia.

Patterns of sustained attention in infancy shape the developmental trajectory of social behavior from toddlerhood through adolescence

The current study examined the relations between individual differences in sustained attention in infancy, the temperamental trait behavioral inhibition in childhood, and social behavior in adolescence. The authors assessed 9-month-old infants using an interrupted-stimulus attention paradigm. Behavioral inhibition was subsequently assessed in the laboratory at 14 months, 24 months, 4 years, and 7 years. At age 14 years, adolescents acted out social scenarios in the presence of an unfamiliar peer as observers rated levels of social discomfort. Relative to infants with high levels of sustained attention, infants with low levels of sustained attention showed increasing behavioral inhibition throughout early childhood. Sustained attention also moderated the relation between childhood behavioral inhibition and adolescent social discomfort, such that initial levels of inhibition at 14 months predicted later adolescent social difficulties only for participants with low levels of sustained attention in infancy. These findings suggest that early individual differences in attention shape how children respond to their social environments, potentially via attention's gate-keeping role in framing a child's environment for processing.