Faculty Bibliography

This work aimed to review recent research on the characteristics of individuals who have both autism spectrum disorder and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder due to their high co-occurrence. Thirty-four studies were analyzed and main findings summarized in two content domains focusing on areas that could enhance our understanding of the cognitive and behavioral characteristics of individuals with autism spectrum disorder + attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ASD+). Most of the results suggested that ASD+ is a co-occurring condition associated with more severe impairments in cognitive functioning, adaptive behavior, and increased likelihood to present more emotional/behavioral problems. These results will be helpful to provide improved care plans for individuals with both attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder.

OBJECTIVE:The objective of this study was to systematically review existing empirical evidence on the effectiveness of trauma-specific treatment for justice-involved adolescents and evaluate the impact of the interventions on the reduction of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, co-occurring mental health symptoms, and juvenile justice-related outcomes. METHOD/METHODS:A systematic literature search was conducted using a four-step process. Studies were included if they used a manualized, trauma-specific treatment with at least one control or comparison group and a sample comprised exclusively of justice-involved adolescents. RESULTS:In total, 1,699 unique records were identified, and 56 full-text articles were reviewed, of which 7 met the criteria for inclusion. Trauma-specific interventions led to a decrease in PTSD symptoms compared with a control group in four of seven studies, and two studies also demonstrated a reduction in trauma-related depressive symptoms. Finally, juvenile justice-related outcomes were measured in only four studies, with one study finding moderately reduced rates of delinquent behavior and recidivism following trauma-specific treatment. CONCLUSIONS:The results from this systematic review suggest that trauma-specific treatment interventions have promising effects for justice-involved adolescents. However, the results reveal a dearth of quality intervention research for treating youths with histories of trauma in the justice system. Significant gaps in the literature are highlighted, and suggestions for future directions are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Behavioral flexibility-the ability to tailor motor actions to changing body-environment relations-is critical for functional movement. Navigating the everyday environment requires the ability to generate a wide repertoire of actions, select the appropriate action for the current situation, and implement it quickly and accurately. We used a new, adjustable barrier paradigm to assess flexibility of motor actions in 20 17-month-old (eight girls, 12 boys) and 14 13-month-old (seven girls, eight boys) walking infants and a comparative sample of 14 adults (eight women, six men). Most participants were White, non-Hispanic, and middle class. Participants navigated under barriers normalized to their standing height (overhead, eye, chest, hip, and knee heights). Decreases in barrier height required lower postures for passage. Every participant altered their initial walking posture according to barrier height for every trial, and all but two 13-month-olds found solutions for passage. Compared to infants, adults displayed a wider variety of strategies (squat-walking, half-kneeling, etc.), found more appropriate solutions based on barrier height (ducked at eye height and low crawled at knee height), and implemented their solutions more quickly (within 4 s) and accurately (without bumping their heads against the barrier). Infants frequently crawled even when the barrier height did not warrant a low posture, displayed multiple postural shifts prior to passage and thus took longer to go, and often bumped their heads. Infants' improvements were related to age and walking experience. Thus, development of flexibility likely involves the contributions of multiple domains-motor, perception, and cognition-that facilitate strategy selection and implementation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

OBJECTIVE:"Subsyndromal" obsessive-compulsive disorder symptoms (OCDSs) are common and cause impaired psychosocial functioning. OCDSs are better captured by dimensional models of psychopathology, as opposed to categorical diagnoses. However, such dimensional approaches require a deep understanding of the underlying neurocognitive drivers and impulsive and compulsive traits (ie, neurocognitive phenotypes) across symptoms. This study investigated inhibitory control and self-monitoring across impulsivity, compulsivity, and their interaction in individuals (n = 40) experiencing mild-moderate OCDSs. METHODS:EEG recording concurrent with the stop-signal task was used to elicit event-related potentials (ERPs) indexing inhibitory control (ie, N2 and P3) and self-monitoring (ie, error-related negativity and correct-related negativity (CRN): negativity following erroneous or correct responses, respectively). RESULTS:< .05, 95% CI [0.03, 0.19]). CONCLUSION/CONCLUSIONS:The current findings provide evidence for differential, ERP-indexed inhibitory control and self-monitoring profiles across impulsive and compulsive phenotypes in OCDSs.

BACKGROUND:Perinatal depression (PND) is a prevalent ailment that affects both the woman and her family. Addressing PND in primary health care, such as pediatrics and obstetric care settings, has been proposed as an effective way to identify and treat women. OBJECTIVE:The purpose of this study is to examine best practices for management of PND in obstetric and pediatric settings, as well as investigate the evidence that supports the guidelines. METHODS:Guidelines were identified through a literature search and discussion with experts in the field of perinatal depression, while evidence was examined through a literature search of reviews and thereafter experimental studies. RESULTS:Twenty-five guidelines, across 17 organizations were retained for analysis. Findings suggest that there is little or varied guidance on the management of PND, as well as a lack of specificity. Treatment was the topic most frequently reported, followed by screening. However best practices vary greatly and often contradict one another. Across all areas, there is inadequate or contrasting evidence to support these guidelines. CONCLUSIONS:Although there was consensus on the key steps in the pathway to care, the review revealed lack of consensus across guidelines on specific issues relating to identification and management of depression during the perinatal period. Clinicians may use these recommendations to guide their practice, but they should be aware of the limitations of the evidence supporting these guidelines and remain alert to new evidence. There is a clear need for researchers and policymakers to prioritize this area in order to develop evidence-based guidelines for managing perinatal depression.

BACKGROUND:Studies have shown that infant temperament varies with maternal psychosocial factors, in utero illness, and environmental stressors. We predicted that the pandemic would shape infant temperament through maternal SARS-CoV-2 infection during pregnancy and/or maternal postnatal stress. To test this, we examined associations among infant temperament, maternal prenatal SARS-CoV-2 infection, maternal postnatal stress, and postnatal COVID-related life disruptions. METHODS:We tested 63 mother-infant dyads with prenatal maternal SARS-CoV-2 infections and a comparable group of 110 dyads without infections. To assess postnatal maternal stress, mothers completed the Perceived Stress Scale 4 months postpartum and an evaluation of COVID-related stress and life disruptions 6 months postpartum. Mothers reported on infant temperament when infants were 6-months-old using the Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised (IBQ-R) Very Short Form. RESULTS:Maternal SARS-CoV-2 infection during pregnancy was not associated with infant temperament or maternal postnatal stress. Mothers with higher self-reported postnatal stress rated their infants lower on the Positive Affectivity/Surgency and Orienting/Regulation IBQ-R subscales. Mothers who reported greater COVID-related life disruptions rated their infants higher on the Negative Emotionality IBQ-R subscale. CONCLUSIONS:Despite no effect of prenatal maternal SARS-CoV-2 infection, stress and life disruptions incurred by the COVID-19 pandemic were associated with infant temperament at 6-months. IMPACT/CONCLUSIONS:SARS-CoV-2 infection during pregnancy is not associated with postnatal ratings of COVID-related life disruptions, maternal stress, or infant temperament. Postnatal ratings of maternal stress during the COVID-19 pandemic are associated with normative variation in maternal report of infant temperament at 6 months of age. Higher postnatal ratings of maternal stress are associated with lower scores on infant Positive Affectivity/Surgency and Orienting/Regulation at 6 months of age. Higher postnatal ratings of COVID-related life disruptions are associated with higher scores on infant Negative Emotionality at 6 months of age.

Sparse additive modeling is a class of effective methods for performing high-dimensional nonparametric regression. This article develops a sparse additive model focused on estimation of treatment effect modification with simultaneous treatment effect-modifier selection. We propose a version of the sparse additive model uniquely constrained to estimate the interaction effects between treatment and pretreatment covariates, while leaving the main effects of the pretreatment covariates unspecified. The proposed regression model can effectively identify treatment effect-modifiers that exhibit possibly nonlinear interactions with the treatment variable that are relevant for making optimal treatment decisions. A set of simulation experiments and an application to a dataset from a randomized clinical trial are presented to demonstrate the method.

OBJECTIVE:A robust literature has identified associations between prenatal maternal depression and adverse child social-emotional and cognitive outcomes. The majority of prior research is from high-income countries despite increased reporting of perinatal depression in low/middle-income countries (LMICs). Additionally, despite the comorbidity between depression and anxiety, few prior studies have examined their joint impact on child neurodevelopment. The objective of the current analysis was to examine associations between prenatal maternal depression and anxiety with child social-emotional and cognitive development in a cohort from the Western Cape Province of South Africa. DESIGN/METHODS:Prenatal maternal depression and anxiety were measured using the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory Scale at 20-24 weeks' gestation. Child neurobehaviour was assessed at age 3 using the Brief Infant-Toddler Social Emotional Assessment and the Bayley Scales of Infant Development III Screening Test (BSID-III ST). We used linear regression models to examine the independent and joint association between prenatal maternal depression, anxiety and child developmental outcomes. RESULTS:Participants consisted of 600 maternal-infant dyads (274 females; gestational age at birth: 38.89 weeks±2.03). Children born to mothers with both prenatal depression and trait anxiety had higher social-emotional problems (mean difference: 4.66; 95% CI 3.43 to 5.90) compared with children born to mothers with no prenatal depression or trait anxiety, each condition alone, or compared with mothers with depression and state anxiety. Additionally, children born to mothers with prenatal maternal depression and trait anxiety had the greatest reduction in mean cognitive scores on the BSID-III ST (mean difference: -1.04; 95% CI -1.99 to -0.08). CONCLUSIONS:The observed association between comorbid prenatal maternal depression and chronic anxiety with subsequent child social-emotional and cognitive development underscores the need for targeting mental health support among perinatal women in LMICs to improve long-term child neurobehavioural outcomes.

We mapped the evidence on the type and strength of associations between a broad range of mental and physical conditions in children and adolescents, by carrying out an umbrella review, i.e., a quantitative synthesis of previous systematic reviews and meta-analyses. We also assessed to which extent the links between mental and physical conditions vary across disorders or, by contrast, are transdiagnostic. Based on a pre-established protocol, we retained 45 systematic reviews/meta-analyses, encompassing around 12.5 million of participants. In analyses limited to the most rigorous estimates, we found evidence for the following associations: ADHD-asthma, ADHD-obesity, and depression-asthma. A transdiagnostic association was confirmed between asthma and anxiety/ASD/depression/bipolar disorder, between obesity and ADHD/ASD/depression, and between dermatitis and ASD/ADHD. We conclude that obesity and allergic conditions are likely to be associated with mental disorders in children and adolescents. Our results can help clinicians explore potential links between mental and physical conditions in children/adolescent and provide a road map for future studies aimed at shading light on the underlying factors.

Pediatric irritability can be highly impairing and is implicated in adverse outcomes. The phasic component, characterized by temper outbursts, is a frequent impetus to seek treatment. This study tested whether a previously described anger-distress model of tantrums applies to an outpatient sample of school-age children with clinically impairing temper outbursts (TO; 5.0-9.9 years; N = 86), and examined the clinical relevance of resulting factors through associations with measures of psychopathology, and differences between children with TO and two groups without: children with ADHD (n = 60) and healthy controls (n = 45). Factor analyses established a three-factor model: High Anger, Low Anger, Distress. These factors had unique associations with measures of irritability, externalizing problems, and internalizing problems in the TO group. Additionally, an interaction between groups and outburst factors emerged. Results provide evidence for the presence and clinical utility of the anger-distress model in children's outbursts and suggest avenues for future pediatric irritability research.