Socioeconomic disadvantage during childhood is associated with a myriad of negative adult outcomes. One mechanism through which disadvantage undermines positive outcomes may be by disrupting the ...development of self-control. The goal of the present study was to examine pathways from three key indicators of socioeconomic disadvantage – low family income, low maternal education, and neighborhood poverty – to neural and behavioral measures of response inhibition. We utilized data from a representative cohort of 215 twins (ages 7–18 years, 70% male) oversampled for exposure to disadvantage, who participated in the Michigan Twins Neurogenetics Study (MTwiNS), a study within the Michigan State University Twin Registry (MSUTR). Our child-friendly Go/No-Go task activated the bilateral inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), and activation during this task predicted behavioral inhibition performance, extending prior work on adults to youth. Critically, we also found that neighborhood poverty, assessed via geocoding, but not family income or maternal education, was associated with IFG activation, a finding that we replicated in an independent sample of disadvantaged youth. Further, we found that neighborhood poverty predicted response inhibition performance via its effect on IFG activation. These results provide the first mechanistic evidence that disadvantaged contexts may undermine self-control via their effect on the brain. The broader neighborhood, beyond familial contexts, may be critically important for this association, suggesting that contexts beyond the home have profound effects on the developing brain and behaviors critical for future health, wealth, and wellbeing.
•The mechanisms linking socioeconomic disadvantage to poor life outcomes are unclear.•We found neighborhood poverty to be correlated with behavioral response inhibition.•Neighborhood poverty, not income or education, uniquely predicted IFG activity.•IFG activity mediated neighborhood poverty-response inhibition associations.•Where youth live may be critically important to their brain development.
•The COVID-19 pandemic may uniquely impact youth with social anxiety disorder.•Continuing exposure therapy to treat social anxiety symptoms in youth is critical.•Considerations for treating socially ...anxious youth during COVID-19 are discussed.•Exposure therapy can be successfully adapted to adhere to public health guidelines.•Modifications for exposure therapy and considerations for the future are presented.
The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has caused widespread disruption to our traditional way of life and mental health therapy has not been spared. A combination of increased anxiety, diminished social opportunities, and the shift to telehealth service provision presents particular challenges for the treatment of social anxiety in youth, which relies heavily on exposures to social situations with peers, adults, or other feared social stimuli. The objective of this commentary is to provide guidance to clinicians working with youth with social anxiety on how to maintain ethical, evidence-informed provision of exposure therapy in light of these unusual circumstances. We first present an overview of how COVID-19 may uniquely impact youth with social anxiety and highlight the importance of continuing to provide exposure-based treatments during this time. We then discuss guiding principles for delivering exposure therapy during COVID-19. We focus on providing practical examples of how common social anxiety exposures can be adapted and delivered successfully through telehealth while abiding by COVID-19 social distancing guidelines. Finally, we discuss key recommendations to assist clinicians in moving treatment forward while considering changing safety guidelines pertaining to COVID-19.
We describe an ecological approach to understanding the developing brain, with a focus on the effects of poverty-related adversity on brain function. We articulate how combining multilevel ecological ...models from developmental science and developmental psychopathology with human neuroscience can inform our approach to understanding the developmental neuroscience of risk and resilience. To illustrate this approach, we focus on associations between poverty and brain function, the roles parents and neighborhoods play in this context, and the potential impact of developmental timing. We also describe the major challenges and needed advances in these areas of research to better understand how and why poverty-related adversity may impact the developing brain, including the need for: a population neuroscience approach with greater attention to sampling and representation, genetically informed and causal designs, advances in assessing context and brain function, caution in interpretation of effects, and a focus on resilience. Work in this area has major implications for policy and prevention, which are discussed.
Public Significance Statement
Millions of youth grow up in poverty and are exposed to an unequal share of adversity which impacts brain and behavior development. An ecological approach to developmental neuroscience can help to articulate the active ingredients associated with poverty that impact brain development. Better understanding how and why various adversities, including harsh parenting and neighborhood poverty, impact brain development can inform policies to prevent negative outcomes.
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CEKLJ, FFLJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PEFLJ
Humans are thought to use the approximate number system (ANS) to make quick approximations based on quantity even before learning to count. However, there has long been controversy regarding the ...salience of number versus other stimulus dimensions throughout development, including a recent proposal that number sense is derived from a sense of general magnitude. Here, we used a regression approach to disentangle numerical acuity from sensitivity to total surface area in both 5-year-old children and adults. We found that both children and adults displayed higher acuity when making numerosity judgments than total surface area judgments. Adults were largely able to ignore irrelevant stimulus features when making numerosity or total area judgments. Children were more biased by numerosity when making total area judgments than by total area when making numerosity judgments. These results provide evidence that number is more salient than total surface area even before the start of formal education and are inconsistent with the Sense of Magnitude proposal.
Background
Callous‐unemotional (CU) traits are associated with chronic and escalating trajectories of antisocial behavior. Extant etiologic studies suggest that heritability estimates for CU traits ...vary substantially, while also pointing to an environmental association between parenting and CU traits.
Methods
We used twin modeling to estimate additive genetic (A), shared environmental (C), and nonshared environmental (E) influences on CU traits, measured with the Inventory of Callous‐Unemotional Traits (ICU) and its subscales. Our sample included 600 twin pairs (age 6–11, 230 monozygotic) from neighborhoods with above‐average levels of family poverty, a risk factor for antisocial behavior. We examined the extent to which correlations between parenting, measured via parent and child report on the Parental Environment Questionnaire, and CU traits reflected genetic versus environmental factors. Then, we tested whether parenting moderated the heritability of CU traits.
Results
In the context of lower‐income neighborhoods, CU traits were moderately to highly heritable (A = 54%) with similar moderate‐to‐high nonshared environmental influences (E = 46%). Bivariate models revealed that associations between CU traits and warm parenting were genetic (rA = .22) and environmental (rE = .19) in origin, whereas associations between CU traits and harsh parenting were largely genetic in origin (rA = .70). The heritability of CU traits decreased with increasing parental warmth and decreasing harshness.
Conclusions
Callous‐unemotional traits are both genetic and environmental in origin during middle childhood, but genetic influences are moderated by parenting quality. Parenting may be an important target for interventions, particularly among youth with greater genetic risk.
Deficits in executive functioning both run in families and serve as a transdiagnostic risk factor for psychopathology. The present study employed twin modeling to examine parenting as an ...environmental pathway underlying the intergenerational transmission of executive functioning in an at-risk community sample of children and adolescents (N = 354 pairs, 167 monozygotic). Using structural equation modeling of multi-informant reports of parenting and a multi-method measure of child executive functioning, we found that better parent executive functioning related to less harsh, warmer parenting, which in turn related to better child executive functioning. Second, we assessed the etiology of executive functioning via the nuclear twin family model, finding large non-shared environmental effects (E = .69) and low-to-moderate heritability (A = .22). We did not find evidence of shared environmental effects or passive genotype–environment correlation. Third, a bivariate twin model revealed significant shared environmental overlap between both warm and harsh parenting and child executive functioning (which may indicate either passive genotype–environment correlation or environmental mediation), and non-shared environmental overlap between only harsh parenting and child executive functioning (indicating an effect of harsh parenting separable from genetic confounds). In summary, genetics contribute to the intergenerational transmission of executive functioning, with environmental mechanisms, including harsh parenting, also making unique contributions.
Persistent radiological lung abnormalities are evident in many survivors of acute coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Consolidation and ground glass opacities are interpreted to indicate subacute ...inflammation whereas reticulation is thought to reflect fibrosis. We sought to identify differences at molecular and cellular level, in the local immunopathology of post-COVID inflammation and fibrosis.
We compared single-cell transcriptomic profiles and T cell receptor (TCR) repertoires of bronchoalveolar cells obtained from convalescent individuals with each radiological pattern, targeting lung segments affected by the predominant abnormality.
CD4 central memory T cells and CD8 effector memory T cells were significantly more abundant in those with inflammatory radiology. Clustering of similar TCRs from multiple donors was a striking feature of both phenotypes, consistent with tissue localised antigen-specific immune responses. There was no enrichment for known SARS-CoV-2-reactive TCRs, raising the possibility of T cell-mediated immunopathology driven by failure in immune self-tolerance.
Post-COVID radiological inflammation and fibrosis show evidence of shared antigen-specific T cell responses, suggesting a role for therapies targeting T cells in limiting post-COVID lung damage.
The approximate number system (ANS) is widely considered to be a foundation for the acquisition of uniquely human symbolic numerical capabilities. However, the mechanism by which the ANS may support ...symbolic number representations and mathematical thought remains poorly understood. In the present study, we investigated two pathways by which the ANS may influence early math abilities: variability in the acuity of the ANS representations, and children's' ability to manipulate ANS representations. We assessed the relation between 4-year-old children's performance on a non-symbolic numerical comparison task, a non-symbolic approximate addition task, and a standardized symbolic math assessment. Our results indicate that ANS acuity and ANS manipulability each contribute unique variance to preschooler's early math achievement, and this result holds after controlling for both IQ and executive functions. These findings suggest that there are multiple routes by which the ANS influences math achievement. Therefore, interventions that target both the precision and manipulability of the ANS may prove to be more beneficial for improving symbolic math skills compared to interventions that target only one of these factors.
Intimate partner violence (IPV) is often considered an adult problem despite profound consequences for the children who are exposed toviolent relational patterns. About a third of children and ...adolescents report past exposure to parental IPV, and a majority were first exposed as infants. Exposure to IPV during pregnancy through the first 5 years of a child's life has consequences ranging from adverse birth outcomes to diagnosable emotional problems and lasting physiological dysregulation. This article reviews risks and consequences of IPV in pregnancy and early childhood and discusses a relational psychotherapeutic treatment approach (Child–Parent Psychotherapy) applied to both developmental stages to mitigate the adverse consequences of family violence on parents and their children. Research evidence for the effectiveness of Child–Parent Psychotherapy (CPP) among IPV‐exposed families is reviewed as are specific treatment components which seek to restore relational safety following familial violence. Additionally, clinical considerations unique to families with histories of or ongoing exposure to IPV are discussed. Finally, recommendations are presented to improve the integration between medical and early childhood behavioral health systems for families at highest risk for chronic IPV.
Objective
Our goal was to illuminate associations between specific characteristics of under‐resourced neighborhoods (i.e., socioeconomic deprivation, danger) and specific aspects of parenting (e.g., ...parental praise, parental nurturance, harsh parenting, and parental control).
Background
Prior work has highlighted associations between level of neighborhood disadvantage and the parenting of its residents. However, this work has yet to clarify the specific characteristics of the neighborhood or the types of parenting involved.
Method
Exhaustive modeling analyses were conducted in a sample of 1030 families of twins (average age 8 years; 51% male, 49% female; the racial composition was 82% White, 10% Black, 1% Asian, 1% Indigenous, 6% multiracial) from the Twin Study of Behavioral and Emotional Development in Children. Neighborhood and parenting were assessed using multiple informants and assessment strategies (neighborhood informants, family informants, administrative data, and videotaped parent–child interactions).
Results
Neighborhood socioeconomic deprivation (i.e., limited institutional and economic structural resources) demonstrated small but consistent negative associations with positive parenting behaviors and maternal control, but not with negative parenting behaviors. Neighborhood danger (i.e., recorded crime, fear of crime, exposure to community violence), by contrast, demonstrated weaker associations with parenting that dissipated once we controlled for overlap with socioeconomic deprivation.
Conclusion
Danger and socioeconomic deprivation do not function as interchangeable characteristics of under‐resourced neighborhoods, at least in terms of their association with positive parenting. Future studies should identify the specific mechanisms through which neighborhood socioeconomic deprivation is associated with less nurturing parenting.
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