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To improve outcome for children with antisocial\ud and aggressive behavior, it is important to know which individual\ud characteristics contribute to reductions in problem\ud behavior. The predictive value of a parent training (Parent\ud Management Training Oregon; PMTO), parenting practices\ud (monitoring, discipline, and punishment), and child\ud neurobiological function (heart rate, cortisol) on the course\ud of aggression was investigated. 64 boys with oppositional\ud defiant disorder or conduct disorder (8–12 years) participated;\ud parents of 22 boys took part in PMTO. All data were\ud collected before the start of the PMTO, and aggression ratings\ud were collected three times, before PMTO, and at 6 and\ud 12 month follow-up. Parent training predicted a decline in\ud aggression at 6 and 12 months. Child neurobiological variables,\ud i.e., higher cortisol stress reactivity and better cortisol\ud recovery, also predicted a decline in aggression at 6\ud and 12 months. Heart rate and parenting practices were not\ud related to the course of aggression. These results indicate\ud that child neurobiological factors can predict persistence\ud or reduction of aggression in boys with ODD/CD, and\ud have unique prognostic value on top of the parent training\ud effects.

There appear to be contradicting theories and empirical findings on the association between adolescent Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) symptoms and cannabis use, suggesting potential risk as well as protective pathways. The aim of this six-year longitudinal study was to further examine associations between SAD symptoms and cannabis use over time in adolescents from the general population, specifically focusing on the potential role that adolescents’ involvement with their peers may have in these associations. Participants were 497 Dutch adolescents (57 % boys; Mage = 13.03 at T1), who completed annual self-report questionnaires for 6 successive years. Cross-lagged panel analysis suggested that adolescent SAD symptoms were associated with less peer involvement 1 year later. Less adolescent peer involvement was in turn associated with lower probabilities of cannabis use as well as lower frequency of cannabis use 1 year later. Most importantly, results suggested significant longitudinal indirect paths from adolescent SAD symptoms to cannabis use via adolescents’ peer involvement. Overall, these results provide support for a protective function of SAD symptoms in association with cannabis use in adolescents from the general population. This association is partially explained by less peer involvement (suggesting increased social isolation) for those adolescents with higher levels of SAD symptoms. Future research should aim to gain more insight into the exact nature of the relationship between anxiety and cannabis use in adolescents from the general population, especially regarding potential risk and protective processes that may explain this relationship.

International audience; This study examined the direction of effects and age and sex differences between adolescents' perceptions of parental behavioral and psychological control and adolescents' self-reports of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and separation anxiety disorder (SAD) symptoms. The study focused on 1,313 Dutch adolescents (early-to-middle cohort = 923, 70.3%; middle-to-late cohort = 390, 29.7%) from the general population. A multi-group, structural equation model was employed to analyze the direction of the effects between behavioral control, psychological control and GAD and SAD symptoms for the adolescent cohorts. The current study demonstrated that a unidirectional child effect model of the adolescents' GAD and SAD symptoms predicting parental control best described the data. Additionally, adolescent GAD and SAD symptoms were stronger and more systematically related to psychological control than to behavioral control. With regard to age-sex differences, anxiety symptoms almost systematically predicted parental control over time for the early adolescent boys, whereas no significant differences were found between the late adolescent boys and girls.

In expressed emotion (EE) theory, it is held that high EE household environments enhance adolescent psychopathological distress. However, no longitudinal study has been conducted to examine if either the mother's EE or the adolescent's perception of EE predicts adolescent internalizing and externalizing symptom dimensions (an EE effect model) or vice versa (psychopathological effect model) together in one model. To unravel the reciprocal influences of maternal and adolescent perceived EE to adolescent internalizing and externalizing symptom dimensions, we tested two (i.e., one for internalizing and one for externalizing) cross-lagged panel models. In this study, it was found that both internalizing and externalizing symptom dimensions predicted the adolescent's perception of maternal EE as well as the mother's own rated EE criticism over time. The findings of this study should give both researchers and therapists a reason to reevaluate only using the EE effects model assumption in future EE studies.