Search

Manuscript in press at Development & Psychopathology (Submitted 8/17/2020, Accepted 11/08/2020). Childhood adversity is thought to undermine youth socioemotional development via altered neural function within regions that support emotion processing. These effects are hypothesized to be developmentally specific, with adversity in early childhood sculpting subcortical structures (e.g., amygdala) and adversity during adolescence impacting later-developing structures (e.g., prefrontal cortex; PFC). However, little work has tested these theories directly in humans. Using prospectively-collected longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 4,144) and neuroimaging data from a subsample of families recruited in adolescence (N = 162), the current study investigated the trajectory of harsh parenting across childhood (i.e., ages 3 to 9) and how initial levels versus changes in harsh parenting across childhood were associated with corticolimbic activation and connectivity during socioemotional processing. Harsh parenting in early childhood (indexed by the intercept term from a linear growth curve model) was associated with less amygdala, but not PFC, reactivity to angry facial expressions. In contrast, change in harsh parenting across childhood (indexed by the slope term) was associated with less PFC, but not amygdala, activation to angry faces. Increases in, but not initial levels of, harsh parenting were also associated with stronger positive amygdala-PFC connectivity during angry face processing

Introduction: Structural models of psychopathology consistently identify internalizing (INT) and externalizing (EXT) specific factors as well as a superordinate factor that captures their shared variance, the P factor. Questions remain, however, about meaning of these data-driven dimensions and the interpretability and distinguishability of the larger nomological networks in which they are embedded. Methods: The sample consisted of 11,875 youth aged 9 to 10 years participating in the multisite Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. P, INT, and EXT were modeled using the parent-rated Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). Patterns of associations were examined with variables drawn from diverse domains including: demographics, psychopathology, temperament, family history of substance use and psychopathology, school and family environment, and cognitive ability, using instruments based on youth-, parent-, and teacher-report and behavioral task performance.Results: P exhibited a broad pattern of statistically significant associations with risk variables across all domains assessed, including temperament, neurocognition, and social adversity. The specific factors exhibited more domain-specific patterns of associations, with INT exhibiting greater fear/distress and EXT exhibiting greater impulsivity. Conclusions: In this largest study of hierarchical models of psychopathology to date, we found that P, INT, and EXT exhibit well differentiated nomological networks that are interpretable in terms of neurocognition, impulsivity, fear/distress, and social adversity. These networks were, in contrast, obscured when relying on the a priori internalizing and externalizing dimensions of the CBCL scales. Our findings add to the evidence for the validity of P, INT, and EXT as theoretically and empirically meaningful broad psychopathology liabilities.