Associations between callous–unemotional (CU) traits and facial emotionrecognition (FER) difficulties may vary with co-occurring attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms and conduct problems. The present study used eye tracking to examine how CU traits, ADHD symptoms, and conduct problems uniquely and interactively relate to gaze allocation during FER among 210 children ages 6 to 11 years with analytic samples ranging from 203 to 205 children across models depending on data availability. Children completed a facial emotion recognition task while fixation counts and fixation duration to emotionally diagnostic facial regions (eyes, mouth) were recorded across a 2-s stimulus window. Trial-level mixed-effects models indicated that higher CU traits were associated with reduced gaze allocation to key facial regions, including fewer fixations to the eyes and mouth and shorter fixation duration to the eyes. Conduct problems were associated with longer fixation duration to the mouth region. ADHD symptoms and conduct problems also moderated associations between CU traits and gaze behavior. These findings suggest that reduced attention to socioemotional cues during FER is linked to CU traits, but that co-occurring externalizing symptoms shape these gaze patterns. Considering multidimensional externalizing profiles may improve understanding of heterogeneity in visual attentionduring social information processing in youth.
Many children who experience reading challenges develop co-occurring mental health difficulties, such as reading anxiety. The current study tested the relationships between specific reading skills (decoding, fluency, and comprehension) and reading anxiety symptoms. Participants were 230 twins between 8 and 13 years old. Multi-level linear regression models were used to account for family relationships and covaried for age and sex. Age was positively associated and sex was not associated with reading anxiety. Lower decoding (β = -0.19, p < .001), reading fluency (β = -0.22, p < .001), and reading comprehension skills (β = -0.22, p < .001) were significantly associated with higher reading anxiety symptoms. When testing whether each reading skill contributed to reading anxiety after controlling for others, reading comprehension (β = -0.15, p = .010) remained significantly associated with reading anxiety symptoms, whereas decoding (β = 0.01, p = .90) and reading fluency (β = -0.13, p = .08) were no longer significant. Model comparisons followed a similar pattern indicating that reading comprehension (and to a lesser extent fluency) accounted for significant variance in reading anxiety over and above other reading skills, while decoding did not. Secondary analyses covarying for clinical anxiety and ADHD symptoms showed that the association between reading skills and reading anxiety could not be accounted for by these co-occurring symptoms. This study is among the first to examine relationships between specific reading skills and reading anxiety symptoms and highlights the need for improved identification and treatment of reading anxiety symptoms in struggling readers.
Family accommodation, or behaviors that parents enact to alleviate or prevent child anxiety, has been linked to child anxiety severity. Accommodation has also been implicated in the etiology and maintenance of child anxiety. Preschool children, who may show early anxiety symptoms, may be particularly impacted by accommodation when they show temperamental predisposition towards anxiety. Dysregulated fear, characterized by displays of fear and shyness in low-threat contexts, has emerged as a temperamental construct that highlights risk for anxiety. Typically studied in toddlerhood, dysregulated fear has not been operationalized in preschool children. The current study examined whether dysregulated fear, measured observationally at child age 4, moderated the longitudinal relation from family accommodation at age 4 to change in child anxiety from age 4 to age 5. The sample included 138 children (44.5% female, 83.9% White/European American, 3.6% Hispanic/Latino) and their mothers. Dysregulated fear was coded as shyness and withdrawal during stranger approach and compliments tasks deemed “low threat” in comparison to a speech task. Mothers reported family accommodation at child age 4 and child anxiety at child ages 4 and 5. Controlling for age 4 anxiety and maternal age, there was an interaction between family accommodation and dysregulated fear in predicting child anxiety. Family accommodation related to child anxiety across values of, but most strongly at high, dysregulated fear. These results expand evidence of environment-temperament interactions in predicting child anxiety to include dysregulated fear in the preschool developmental period, which is aligned with evidence-based child anxiety prevention programs.
Youth involved with the juvenile legal system (JLS) have high rates of behavioral health concerns requiring higher levels of care, yet few studies have examined the unique characteristics of JLS-involved youth who present to these settings. This study examined the demographic and clinical characteristics of youth admitted to an inpatient psychiatric unit, comparing those with and without JLS involvement. The sample included 829 adolescents (Mage = 14.96, Range = 11–18 years) admitted to an inpatient psychiatric unit. As part of routine care, adolescents completed self-report measures assessing demographics, adverse childhood experiences, interpersonal functioning, psychological symptoms, substance use, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Information on previous hospitalizations, length of stay, and readmissions within six months was obtained from the electronic health record. JLS-involved youth were more likely to identify as male, Black/African American, Hispanic/Latine, and American Indian/Alaska Native, and to report child welfare involvement than non-JLS-involved youth. Clinically, JLS-involved youth were more likely to have a prior inpatient admission, experience longer hospital stays, and report higher levels of adverse childhood experiences, anger, and substance use. JLS-involved youth were less likely to report lifetime nonsuicidal self-injury. JLS-involved youth also reported lower suicidal ideation; however, this difference did not remain significant after adjusting for sex assigned at birth. Rates of suicide attempts did not differ between groups. Overall, these findings suggest that JLS-involved youth constitute a clinically distinct subgroup of psychiatrically hospitalized youth whose needs may require tailored treatment approaches.
Multi-informant assessment (typically parents and teachers) is a gold-standard process used to inform diagnosis and tailor treatment in children, but multi-informant agreement is notoriously low. Children’s cognitive abilities might partially account for reporter discrepancies, particularly in situations when a child’s abilities are insufficient to meet context-specific demands (i.e., increased academic difficulties resulting in increased symptomatology at school compared to the home). Existing work examining this possibility has been limited to subjective reports of cognitive ability and/or neglected internalizing symptoms. The current study investigated whether objectively measured cognitive abilities moderate parent/teacher agreement on both externalizing and internalizing psychopathology in children. Parents and teachers of 853 school-age children (ages 8–12) rated children’s internalizing and externalizing symptoms, and children completed tasks assessing intellectual, academic, and executive functioning. Structural equation modeling was used to evaluate the latent interaction between parent-reported psychopathology and cognitive abilities when predicting teacher-reported psychopathology, thus testing whether cognitive abilities moderate parent/teacher agreement. Parent/teacher agreement on internalizing and externalizing symptoms was moderated by intellectual functioning and reading achievement, but not math skills or executive functioning. Stronger skills were associated with higher agreement, and post-hoc analyses indicated that lower cognitive abilities were associated with higher parent versus teacher concerns. Cognitive abilities moderate parent/teacher agreement, which may reflect the strength of the reporter’s knowledge of the child or reporter perceptions rather than context-based behavioral differences. Findings point to the importance of comprehensive assessment that gathers information from multiple informants and multiple domains to form a full-picture understanding of children’s functioning.
