Click on [Article] below each publication to view the abstract and relevant links!

2021 and in press

+ Cheng T, Magis-Weinberg L, Guazzelli Williamson V, Ladouceur, C, Whittle, S, Herting, M, Uban, K, Byrne, M, Barendse, M, Shirtcliff, E, .Pfeifer, J. (2021). A researcher’s guide to modeling pubertal development in the first wave of the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development study. Frontiers in Endocrinology.

The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development℠ (ABCD) Study is an ongoing, diverse, longitudinal, and multi-site study of 11,880 adolescents in the United States. The ABCD Study provides open access to data about pubertal development at a large scale, and this article is a researcher’s guide that both describes its pubertal variables and outlines recommendations for use. These considerations are contextualized with reference to cross-sectional empirical analyses of pubertal measures within the baseline ABCD dataset by Herting, Uban, and colleagues (2021). We discuss strategies to capitalize on strengths, mitigate weaknesses, and appropriately interpret study limitations for researchers using pubertal variables within the ABCD dataset, with the aim of building toward a robust science of adolescent development. [Article] [Preprint]

+ Jankowski, K. F., & Pfeifer, J. H. (2021). Self-conscious emotion processing in autistic adolescents: Over-reliance on learned social rules during tasks with heightened perspective-taking demands may serve as compensatory strategy for less reflexive mentalizing. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. DOI: 10.1007/s10803-020-04808-6.

Autistic adolescents experience a secondary wave of social cognitive challenges which impact interpersonal success. We investigated self-conscious emotion (SCE) processing in autistic and neurotypical adolescents. Participants watched videos of peers acting embarrassed and proud and rated inferred and empathic SCEs. We compared intensity ratings across groups and conducted correlations with social cognitive abilities and autistic features. Autistic adolescents recognized SCEs and felt empathic SCEs; however, they made atypical emotion attributions when perspective-taking demands were high, which more strongly reflected the situational context. Atypical attributions were associated with perspective-taking difficulties and autistic feature intensity. An over-reliance on contextual cues may reflect a strict adherence to learned social rules, possibly compensating for less reflexive mentalizing, which may underlie interpersonal challenges in ASD.

Keywords: Autism; Empathy; Perspective-taking; Self-conscious emotions; Social context; Social emotions. [Article].

+Pfeifer, J. H., & Allen, N. B. (2021). Puberty initiates cascading relationships between neurodevelopmental, social, and internalizing processes across adolescence. Biological Psychiatry. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2020.09.002.

Adolescence is a period of dramatic developmental transitions—from puberty-related changes in hormones, bodies, and brains to an increasingly complex social world. The concurrent increase in the onset of many mental disorders has prompted the search for key developmental processes that drive changes in risk for psychopathology during this period of life. Hormonal surges and consequent physical maturation linked to pubertal development in adolescence are thought to affect multiple aspects of brain development, social cognition, and peer relations, each of which have also demonstrated associations with risk for mood and anxiety disorders. These puberty-related effects may combine with other nonpubertal influences on brain maturation to transform adolescents’ social perception and experiences, which in turn continue to shape both mental health and brain development through transactional processes. In this review, we focus on pubertal, neural, and social changes across the duration of adolescence that are known or thought to be related to adolescent-emergent disorders, specifically depression, anxiety, and deliberate self-harm (nonsuicidal self-injury). We propose a theoretical model in which social processes (both social cognition and peer relations) are critical to understanding the way in which pubertal development drives neural and psychological changes that produce potential mental health vulnerabilities, particularly (but not exclusively) in adolescent girls. [Article]

+Nelson, B. W., Sheeber, L., Pfeifer, J., & Allen, N. B. (2021). Psychobiological markers of allostatic load in depressed and nondepressed mothers and their adolescent offspring. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.13264.

Background: A substantial body of research has emerged suggesting that depression is strongly linked to poor physical health outcomes, which may be partly due to increased allostatic load across stress response systems. Interestingly, health risks associated with depression are also borne by the offspring of depressed persons. Our aim was to simultaneously investigate whether maternal depression is associated not only with increased allostatic load across cardiac control, inflammation, cellular aging, but also if this is transmitted to adolescent children, possibly increasing the risk for early onset of psychiatric conditions and disease in these offspring.

Methods: A preregistered, case–control study of 180 low-income mothers (50% mothers depressed, 50% mothers nondepressed) and their adolescent offspring was conducted to determine how depressed mothers and their adolescent offspring systematically differ in terms of autonomic, sympathetic, and parasympathetic cardiac control; inflammation; cellular aging; and behavioral health in offspring, which are indicators suggestive of higher allostatic load.

Results: Findings indicate that depressed mothers and their adolescent offspring differ in terms of comorbid mental and physical health risk profiles that are suggestive of higher allostatic load. Findings indicate that depressed mothers exhibit elevated resting heart rate and decreased heart rate variability, and adolescent offspring of depressed mothers exhibit greater mental health symptoms, elevated heart rate, and accelerated biological aging (shorter telomeres). These effects persisted after controlling for a range of potential covariates, including medication use, sex, age, and adolescents’ own mental health symptoms.

Conclusions: Findings indicate that maternal depression is associated with increased allostatic load in depressed women and their adolescent children, possibly increasing risk for early onset of psychiatric conditions and disease in these offspring. Future research is needed to delineate why some biological systems are more impacted than others and to explore how findings might inform preventative programs targeted at adolescent offspring of depressed mothers. [Article]

+Cheng, T. W., Mills, K. L., Miranda Dominguez, O., Zeithamova, D., Perrone, A., Sturgeon, D., Feldstein Ewing, S. W., Fisher, P. A., Pfeifer, J. H., Fair, D. A., & Mackiewicz Seghete, K. L. (2021). Characterizing the impact of adversity, abuse, and neglect on adolescent amygdala resting-state functional connectivity. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2020.100894.

Characterizing typologies of childhood adversity may inform the development of risk profiles and corresponding interventions aimed at mitigating its lifelong consequences. A neurobiological grounding of these typologies requires systematic comparisons of neural structure and function among individuals with different exposure histories. Using seed-to-whole brain analyses, this study examined associations between childhood adversity and amygdala resting-state functional connectivity (rs-fc) in adolescents aged 11–19 years across three independent studies (N = 223; 127 adversity group) in both general and dimensional models of adversity (comparing abuse and neglect). In a general model, adversity was associated with altered amygdala rs-fc with clusters within the left anterior lateral prefrontal cortex. In a dimensional model, abuse was associated with altered amygdala rs-fc within the orbitofrontal cortex, dorsal precuneus, posterior cingulate cortex, and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex/anterior mid-cingulate cortex, as well as within the dorsal attention, visual, and somatomotor networks. Neglect was associated with altered amygdala rs-fc with the hippocampus, supplementary motor cortex, temporoparietal junction, and regions within the dorsal attention network. Both general and dimensional models revealed unique regions, potentially reflecting pathways by which distinct histories of adversity may influence adolescent behavior, cognition, and psychopathology. [Article]

+Ferschmann, L., Vijayakumar, N., Grydeland, H., Overbye, K., Mills, K. L., Fjell, A. M., Walhovd, K. B., Pfeifer, J. H., & Tamnes, C. K. (2021). Cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression relate differentially to longitudinal structural brain development across adolescence. Cortex: A Journal Devoted to the Study of the Nervous System and Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2020.11.022.

Emotional disorders commonly emerge in adolescence, a period characterized by changes in emotion-related processes. Thus, the ability to regulate emotions is crucial for well-being and adaptive social functioning during this period. Concurrently, the brain undergoes large structural and functional changes. We investigated relations between tendencies to use two emotion regulation strategies, cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression, and structural development of the cerebral cortex and subcortical structures (specifically amygdala and nucleus accumbens given these structures are frequently associated with emotion regulation). A total of 112 participants (59 females) aged 8–26 were followed for up to 3 times over a 7-year period, providing 272 observations. Participants completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ), yielding a measure of tendencies to use cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression at the final time point. Linear mixed model analyses were performed to account for the longitudinal nature of the data. Contrary to expectations, volumetric growth of the amygdala and nucleus accumbens was not associated with either emotion regulation strategy. However, frequent use of expressive suppression was linked to greater regionally-specific apparent cortical thinning in both sexes, while tendency to use cognitive reappraisal was associated with greater regionally-specific apparent thinning in females and less thinning in males. Although cognitive reappraisal is traditionally associated with cognitive control regions of the brain, our results suggest it is also associated with regions involved in social cognition and semantics. The continued changes in cortical morphology and their associations with habitual use of different emotion regulation strategies indicate continued plasticity during this period, and represent an opportunity for interventions targeting emotion regulation for adolescents at risk. [Article]

+Nelson, B.W., Sheeber, L., Pfeifer, J. H., Allen, & N. B. (2021, June 17). Affective and autonomic reactivity during parent-child interactions in depressed and non-depressed mothers and their adolescent offspring. Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology 49, 1513–1526 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-021-00840-x.

Depression presents risks that are profound and intergenerational, yet research on the association of depression with the physiological processes that might be associated with impaired mental and physical health has only recently been contextualized within the family environment. Participants in this multi-method case–control study were 180 mother-adolescent dyads (50% mothers with a history of depression treatment and current depressive symptoms). In order to examine the association between maternal depression and affective and autonomic reactivity amongst these mothers and their adolescent offspring we collected self-reported measures of positive and negative affect, as well as measures of cardiovascular and electrodermal autonomic activity, during mother-adolescent interaction tasks. Findings indicated that depressed mothers and their adolescent offspring exhibited greater self-reported negative affect reactivity during a problem-solving interaction and blunted (i.e., low) sympathetic activity as measured via skin conductance level across both interaction tasks. These effects remained significant after controlling for a range of potential covariates, including medication use, sex, age, adolescents own mental health symptoms, and behavior of the other interactant, along with correcting for multiple comparisons. Findings indicate that depressed mothers and their adolescent offspring both exhibit patterns of affect and physiology during interactions that are different from those of non-depressed mothers and their offspring, including increased negative affect reactivity during negative interactions and blunted sympathetic activity across both positive and negative interactions. These findings have potential implications for understanding the role of family processes in the intergenerational transmission of risk for depressive disorders. [Article]

2022

+ Cosme, D., Flournoy, J. C., Livingston, J. L., Lieberman, M. D., Dapretto, M., & Pfeifer, J. H. (2022, April). Testing the adolescent social reorientation model during slef and other evaluation using hierarchical growth curve modeling with parcellated fMRI data. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2022.101089.

Adolescence is characterized as a period when relationships and experiences shift toward peers. The social reorientation model of adolescence posits this shift is driven by neurobiological changes that increase the salience of social information related to peer integration and acceptance. Although influential, this model has rarely been subjected to tests that could falsify it, or studied in longitudinal samples assessing within-person development. We focused on two phenomena that are highly salient and dynamic during adolescence—social status and self-perception—and examined longitudinal changes in neural responses during a self/other evaluation task. We expected status-related social information to uniquely increase across adolescence in social brain regions. Despite using hierarchical growth curve modeling with parcellated whole-brain data to increase power to detect developmental effects, we didn’t find evidence in support of this hypothesis. Social brain regions showed increased responsivity across adolescence, but this trajectory was not unique to status-related information. Additionally, brain regions associated with self-focused cognition showed heightened responses during self-evaluation in the transition to mid-adolescence, especially for status-related information. These results qualify existing models of adolescent social reorientation and highlight the multifaceted changes in self and social development that could be leveraged in novel ways to support adolescent health and well-being. [Article]

+ Barendse, M. E.A., Flannery, J., Cavanagh, C., Aristizabal, M., Becker, S. P., Berger, E., Breaux R., Campione-Barr, N., Church, J. A., Crone, E. A., Dahl, R. E., Dennis-Tiwary, T. A., Dvorsky, M. R., Dziura, S. L., van de Groep, S., Ho, T. C., Killoren, S. E., Landberg, J. M., Larguinho, T. L., Magis-Weinberg, L., Michalska, K. J., Mullins, J. L., Nadel, H., Porter, B. M., Prinstein, M. J., Redcay, E., Rose, A. J., Rote, W. M., Roy, A. K., Sweijen, S. W., Telzer, E. H., Teresi, G. I., Gile Thomas, A., & Pfeifer, J. H. (2022, July 7). Longitudinal change in adolescent depression and anxiety symptoms from before to during the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Research on Adolescence. https://doi.org/10.1111/jora.12781. 

This study aimed to examine changes in depression and anxiety symptoms from before to during the first 6 months of the COVID-19 pandemic in a sample of 1,339 adolescents (9–18 years old, 59% female) from three countries. We also examined if age, race/ethnicity, disease burden, or strictness of government restrictions moderated change in symptoms. Data from 12 longitudinal studies (10 U.S., 1 Netherlands, 1 Peru) were combined. Linear mixed effect models showed that depression, but not anxiety, symptoms increased significantly (median increase = 28%). The most negative mental health impacts were reported by multiracial adolescents and those under ‘lockdown’ restrictions. Policy makers need to consider these impacts by investing in ways to support adolescents’ mental health during the pandemic. [Article]

+ Barendse, M. E.A., Byrne, M. L., Flournoy, J. C., McNeilly, E. A>, Guazzelli Williamson, V., Barrett, A. Y., Chavez, S. J., Shirtcliff, E. A., Allen, N. B., & Pfeifer J. H. (2022). Multimethod assessment of pubertal timing and associations with internalizing psychopathology in early adolescent girls. Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science. https://doi.org/10.1037/abn0000721.

Early pubertal timing has consistently been associated with internalizing psychopathology in adolescent girls. Here, we aimed to examine whether the association between timing and mental health outcomes varies by measurement of pubertal timing and internalizing psychopathology, differs between adrenarcheal and gonadarcheal processes, and is stronger concurrently or prospectively. We assessed 174 female adolescents (age 10.0–13.0 at Time 1) twice, with an 18-month interval. Participants provided self-reported assessments of depression/anxiety symptoms and pubertal development, subjective pubertal timing, and date of menarche. Their parents/guardians also reported on the adolescent’s pubertal development and subjective pubertal timing. We assessed salivary dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), testosterone, and estradiol levels and conducted clinical interviews to determine the presence of case level internalizing disorders. From these data, we computed 11 measures of pubertal timing at both time points, as well as seven measures of internalizing psychopathology, and entered these in a Specification Curve Analysis. Overall, earlier pubertal timing was associated with increased internalizing psychopathology. Associations were stronger prospectively than concurrently, suggesting that timing of early pubertal processes might be especially important for later risk of mental illness. Associations were strongest when pubertal timing was based on the Tanner Stage Line Drawings and when the outcome was case-level Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition (DSM–IV) depression or Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) distress disorders. Timing based on hormone levels was not associated with internalizing psychopathology, suggesting that psychosocial mechanisms, captured by timing measures of visible physical characteristics might be more meaningful determinants of internalizing psychopathology than biological ones in adolescent girls. Future research should precisely examine these psychosocial mechanisms. [Article]

+ Minihan, S., Orben, A., Songco, A., Fox, E., Ladouceur, C. D., Mewton, L., Moulds, M., Pfeifer, J. H., Van Harmelen, A.-L., & Schweizer, S. (2022). Social determinants of mental health during a year of the covid-19 pandemic. Development and Psychopathology. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579422000396.

Belonging is a basic human need, with social isolation signaling a threat to biological fitness. Sensitivity to ostracism varies across individuals and the lifespan, peaking in adolescence. Government-imposed restrictions upon social interactions during COVID-19 may therefore be particularly detrimental to young people and those most sensitive to ostracism. Participants (N = 2367; 89.95% female, 11–100 years) from three countries with differing levels of government restrictions (Australia, UK, and USA) were surveyed thrice at three-month intervals (May 2020 – April 2021). Young people, and those living under the tightest government restrictions, reported the worst mental health, with these inequalities in mental health remaining constant throughout the study period. Further dissection of these results revealed that young people high on social rejection sensitivity reported the most mental health problems at the final assessment. These findings help account for the greater impact of enforced social isolation on young people’s mental health, and open novel avenues for intervention. [Article]

+Barendse, M. E. A., Allen, N. B., Sheeber, L., & Pfeifer, J. H. (2022). The impact of depression on mothers’ neural processing of their adolescents’ affective behavior. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsac001.

Depression affects neural processing of emotional stimuli and could, therefore, impact parent–child interactions. However, the neural processes with which mothers with depression process their adolescents’ affective interpersonal signals and how this relates to mothers’ parenting behavior are poorly understood. Mothers with and without depression (N = 64 and N = 51, respectively; Mage = 40 years) from low-income families completed an interaction task with their adolescents (Mage = 12.8 years), which was coded for both individuals’ aggressive, dysphoric, positive and neutral affective behavior. While undergoing fMRI, mothers viewed video clips from this task of affective behavior from their own and an unfamiliar adolescent. Relative to non-depressed mothers, those with depression showed more aggressive and less positive affective behavior during the interaction task and more activation in the bilateral insula, superior temporal gyrus and striatum but less in the lateral prefrontal cortex while viewing aggressive and neutral affect. Findings were comparable for own and unfamiliar adolescents’ affect. Heightened limbic, striatal and sensory responses were associated with more aggressive and dysphoric parenting behavior during the interactions, while reduced lateral prefrontal activation was associated with less positive parenting behavior. These results highlight the importance of depressed mothers’ affective information processing for understanding mothers’ behavior during interactions with their adolescents. [Article]

+Nowell, C., Pfeifer, J. H., Enticott, P., Silk, T., & Vijayakumar, N. (2022). Value of self‐disclosure to parents and peers during adolescence. Journal of Research on Adolescence. https://doi.org/10.1111/jora.12803.

Self-disclosure is a crucial part of developing close interpersonal relationships during adolescence. In particular, sharing information with a greater depth of intimacy is thought to strengthen social bonds and thus support mental health. The current study investigated the value for different depths of self-disclosures to close others (mothers and best friends) during adolescence and its association with mental health and well-being. Fifty-four girls (11.0–15.9 years) completed a forced-choice monetary paradigm to assess value for self-disclosures and questionnaires on mental health. Participants significantly valued (i.e., forfeited monetary reward) for disclosures to both mothers and best friends, although intimate disclosures were more “costly” than superficial disclosures. Greater value for intimate self-disclosures to mothers was also associated with better mental health and well-being. [Article]

+Guazzelli Williamson, V., Berger, E. L., Barendse, M. E. A., Pfeifer, J. H., Dahl, R. E., & Magis-Weinberg, L. (2022). Socio-ecological resilience relates to lower internalizing symptoms among adolescents during the strictest period of COVID‑19 lockdown in Perú. Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-022-00928-y

The COVID-19 pandemic has touched the lives of adolescents around the world. This short-term longitudinal, observational study followed 1,334 adolescents (11–17 yo) to investigate whether social-ecological resilience relates to intra- and inter-personal resources and/or the caregiver relationship relates to changes in internalizing symptoms during five stressful weeks of COVID-19 lockdown in Perú. In this work, we contextualize social-ecological resilience in relation to culturally-relevant personal and caregiver resources that youth can use to adapt to stressful situations. We found that adolescents who reported higher levels of personal, caregiver, and overall resilience had lower levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms at week six. We also find that personal, caregiver, and overall resilience moderated the change in anxiety symptoms from week 6 to week 11 of lockdown in 2020. Our findings underscore the importance of social-ecological resilience related to both intra/interpersonal resources and the caregiver relationship for minimizing the harmful impacts of COVID-19 on adolescent internalizing symptoms. [Article]

2023

+ McNeilly, E. A., Mills, K. L., Kahn, L. E., Crowley, R., Pfeifer, J. H., & Allen, N. B. (2023, January 7). Adolescent Social Communication Through Smartphones: Linguistic Features of Internalizing Symptoms and Daily Mood. Clinical Psychological Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/21677026221125180.

Adolescents’ increasing use of smartphone technology has led to unprecedented opportunities to identify early indicators of shifting mental health. This intensive longitudinal study examined the extent to which differences in mental health and daily mood are associated with digital social communication in adolescence. In a sample of 30 adolescents (ages 11–15 years), we analyzed 22,152 messages from social media, email, and texting across 1 month. Lower daily mood was associated with linguistic features reflecting self-focus and reduced temporal distance. Adolescents with lower daily mood tended to send fewer positive emotion words on a daily basis and more total words on low-mood days. Adolescents with lower daily mood and higher depression symptoms tended to use more future-focus words. Dynamic linguistic features of digital social communication that relate to changes in mental states may be a novel target for passive detection of risk and early intervention in adolescence. [Article]

+ Byre, M. L., Vijayakumar, N., Chavez, S. J., Flournoy, J. C., Cheng, T. W., Mills, K. L., Barendse, M. E.A., Mobasser, A., Flannery, J. E., Nelson, B. W., Wang, W., Shirtcliff, E. A., Allen, N. B., & Pfeifer, J. H. (2023, March 17). Associations between multi-method latent factors of puberty and brain structure in adolescent girls. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2023.101228.

Pubertal processes are associated with structural brain development, but studies have produced inconsistent findings that may relate to different measurements of puberty. Measuring both hormones and physical characteristics is important for capturing variation in neurobiological development. The current study explored associations between cortical thickness and latent factors from multi-method pubertal data in 174 early adolescent girls aged 10–13 years in the Transitions in Adolescent Girls (TAG) Study. Our multi-method approach used self-reported physical characteristics and hormone levels (dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), testosterone (T), and estradiol (E2) from saliva) to estimate an overall pubertal factor and for each process of adrenarche and gonadarche. There were negative associations between the overall puberty factor representing later stage and thickness in the posterior cortex, including the occipital cortices and extending laterally to the parietal lobe. However, the multi-method latent factor had weaker cortical associations when examining the adnearcheal process alone, suggesting physical characteristics and hormones capture different aspects of neurobiological development during adrenarche. Controlling for age weakened some of these associations. These findings show that associations between pubertal stage and cortical thickness differ depending on the measurement method and the pubertal process, and both should be considered in future confirmatory studies on the developing brain. [Article]

+ McCann, C. F., Cheng, T. W., Mobasser, A., Pfeifer, J. H., & Mills, K. L. (2023, January 13). Trait Mindfulness supports self-perceived scholastic competence in adolescent girls. Developmental Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.57559.

Identity development is a core task of adolescence. Self-perceptions of scholastic competence are tied to the academic domain of identity development and have immediate consequences for educational attainment. Understanding the malleability of self-perceptions of scholastic competence, and the factors which may influence its developmental course, are crucial for efforts to improve educational outcomes. This preregistered longitudinal study describes how self-perceived scholastic competence changes across early adolescence, relates to trait mindfulness, and is impacted by school transitions. We investigated these questions in 174 adolescent girls (10–16 years), who each contributed up to three waves of data, using multilevel modeling. Our results demonstrated that prior levels of self-reported mindfulness and school transitions are positively related to self-perceived scholastic competence, whereas age is not. [Article]

+ Cosme, D., Mobasser, A., & Pfeifer, J. H. (2023, November 1). If you’re happy and you know it: Neural correlates of self-evalutated psychological health and well-being. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsad065.

Psychological health and well-being have important implications for individual and societal thriving. Research underscores the subjective nature of well-being, but how do individuals intuit this subjective sense of well-being in the moment? This pre-registered study addresses this question by examining the neural correlates of self-evaluated psychological health and their dynamic relationship with trial-level evaluations. Participants (N = 105) completed a self-evaluation task and made judgments about three facets of psychological health and positive functioning—self-oriented well-being, social well-being and ill-being. Consistent with pre-registered hypotheses, self-evaluation elicited activity in the default mode network, and there was strong spatial overlap among constructs. Trial-level analyses assessed whether and how activity in a priori regions of interest—perigenual anterior cingulate cortex (pgACC), ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and ventral striatum—were related to subjective evaluations. These regions explained additional variance in whether participants endorsed or rejected items but were differentially related to evaluations. Stronger activity in pgACC was associated with a higher probability of endorsement across constructs, whereas stronger activity in vmPFC was associated with a higher probability of endorsing ill-being items, but a lower probability of endorsing self-oriented and social well-being items. These results add nuance to neurocognitive accounts of self-evaluation and extend our understanding of the neurobiological basis of subjective psychological health and well-being. [Article]

+ McCormick, E. M., Byrne, M. L., Flournoy, J. C., Mills, K. L., & Pfeifer, J. H. (2023, October). The hitchhiker's guide to longitudinal models: A primer on model selection for repeated-measures methods. Development Cognitive Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2023.101281.

Longitudinal data are becoming increasingly available in developmental neuroimaging. To maximize the promise of this wealth of information on how biology, behavior, and cognition change over time, there is a need to incorporate broad and rigorous training in longitudinal methods into the repertoire of developmental neuroscientists. Fortunately, these models have an incredibly rich tradition in the broader developmental sciences that we can draw from. Here, we provide a primer on longitudinal models, written in a beginner-friendly (and slightly irreverent) manner, with a particular focus on selecting among different modeling frameworks (e.g., multilevel versus latent curve models) to build the theoretical model of development a researcher wishes to test. Our aims are three-fold: (1) lay out a heuristic framework for longitudinal model selection, (2) build a repository of references that ground each model in its tradition of methodological development and practical implementation with a focus on connecting researchers to resources outside traditional neuroimaging journals, and (3) provide practical resources in the form of a codebook companion demonstrating how to fit these models. These resources together aim to enhance training for the next generation of developmental neuroscientists by providing a solid foundation for future forays into advanced modeling applications. [Article]

+ Mudiam, K. R., Sheeber, L. B., Leve, C., Pfeifer, J. H., & Allen, N. B. (2023, May 10). Maternal depression, parental attributions, and adolescent psychopathology; An evaluation using observational and video-meditated recall methods. Journal of Research on Adolescence. https://doi.org/10.1111/jora.12855.

Parenting styles associated with maternal depression are a risk factor for adolescent psychopathology, and maternal attributional styles may be a key mechanism in this relationship. Mother-adolescent dyads (N = 180; 96 male; ages 10–15) completed in-person interactions and then the mothers participated in a video-mediated recall procedure to assess maternal attributions. Maternal depression was associated with negative attributions. Negative attributions were associated with low parental acceptance, aggressive parenting, and low positive parenting. Positive maternal attributions were associated with less aggressive parenting, and more positive parenting during one interaction task. Adolescent externalizing behaviors were associated with negative attributions. Future research should evaluate whether maternal attributions mediate the association between maternal depression and both parenting behaviors and adolescent mental health. [Article]

+ Andrews, J. L., Li, M., Minihan, S., Songco, A., Fox, E., Ladouceur, C. D., Newton, L., Moulds, M., Pfeifer, J. H., Van Harmelen, A., & Schweizer, S. (2023, April 17). The effect of intolerance of uncertainty on anxiety and depression and their symptom networks, during the COVID-19 pandemic. BMC Psychiatry. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-023-04734-8.

Individuals vary in their ability to tolerate uncertainty. High intolerance of uncertainty (the tendency to react negatively to uncertain situations) is a known risk factor for mental health problems. In the current study we examined the degree to which intolerance of uncertainty predicted depression and anxiety symptoms and their interrelations across the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. We examined these associations across three time points (May 2020 – April 2021) in an international sample of adults (N = 2087, Mean age = 41.13) from three countries (UK, USA, Australia) with varying degrees of COVID-19 risk. We found that individuals with high and moderate levels of intolerance of uncertainty reported reductions in depression and anxiety symptoms over time. However, symptom levels remained significantly elevated compared to individuals with low intolerance of uncertainty. Individuals with low intolerance of uncertainty had low and stable levels of depression and anxiety across the course of the study. Network analyses further revealed that the relationships between depression and anxiety symptoms became stronger over time among individuals with high intolerance of uncertainty and identified that feeling afraid showed the strongest association with intolerance of uncertainty. Our findings are consistent with previous work identifying intolerance of uncertainty as an important risk factor for mental health problems, especially in times marked by actual health, economic and social uncertainty. The results highlight the need to explore ways to foster resilience among individuals who struggle to tolerate uncertainty, as ongoing and future geopolitical, climate and health threats will likely lead to continued exposure to significant uncertainty. [Article]

+ Songco, A., Minihan, S., Fox, E., Ladouceur, C., Newton, L., Moulds, M., Pfeifer, J., Van Harmelen, A., & Schweizer, S. (2023, March 15). Social and cognitive vulnerability to COVID-19-realted stress in pregnancy: A case-matched-control study of antenatal mental health. Journal of Affective Disorders. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2023.01.053.

Emerging evidence shows that compared to pre-pandemic norms pregnant women report significant increases in clinical levels of depressive and anxiety symptoms during COVID-19. This pre-registered study examined cognitive and social vulnerability factors for poor mental health in pregnancy during COVID-19. Understanding vulnerability profiles is key to identifying women at risk for deteriorating peripartum mental health. N = 742 pregnant women and N = 742 age and country-matched controls from the COVID-19 Risks Across the Lifespan Study were included. Using a case-match control design allowed us to explore whether the cognitive vulnerability profiles would differ between pregnant and non-pregnant women. The findings showed that COVID-19-related stress was associated with heightened levels of depression and anxiety during pregnancy. Its impact was greatest in women with cognitive (i.e., higher intolerance of uncertainty and tendency to worry) and social (i.e., higher level of self-reported loneliness) vulnerabilities. Importantly, our data show that the mental health impacts of the pandemic were greater in pregnant women compared to women who were not pregnant, especially those with cognitive and social vulnerabilities. The results highlight the urgent need to prioritize mental health care for pregnant women to mitigate the impact of COVID-19-related stress on women's postpartum mental health and their infants' well-being. [Article]

2024

+Minihan, S., Songco, A., Elaine, F., Ladouceur, C. D., Mewton, L., Moulds, M., Pfeifer, J. H., Van Harmelen, A-L., & Schweizer, S. (2024). Affect and mental health across the lifespan during a year of the COVID-19 pandemic: The role of emotion regulation strategies and mental flexibility. Emotion, 24(1), 67–80. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001238.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a rise in common mental health problems compared to prepandemic levels, especially in young people. Understanding the factors that place young people at risk is critical to guide the response to increased mental health problems. Here we examine whether age-related differences in mental flexibility and frequency of use of emotion regulation strategies partially account for the poorer affect and increased mental health problems reported by younger people during the pandemic. Participants (N = 2,367; 11–100 years) from Australia, the UK, and US were surveyed thrice at 3-month intervals between May 2020 and April 2021. Participants completed measures of emotion regulation, mental flexibility, affect, and mental health. Younger age was associated with less positive (b = 0.008, p < .001) and more negative (b = −0.015, p < .001) affect across the first year of the pandemic. Maladaptive emotion regulation partially accounted for age-related variance in negative affect (β = −0.013, p = .020), whereby younger age was associated with more frequent use of maladaptive emotion regulation strategies, which, in turn, was associated with more negative affect at our third assessment point. More frequent use of adaptive emotion regulation strategies, and in turn, changes in negative affect from our first to our third assessment, partially accounted for age-related variance in mental health problems (β = 0.007, p = .023). Our findings add to the growing literature demonstrating the vulnerability of younger people during the COVID-19 pandemic and suggest that emotion regulation may be a promising target for intervention. [Article]

+Barendse, M. E.A., Allen, N. B., Sheeber, L., & Pfeifer, J. H. (2024, January). Associations between parenting behavior and neural processing of adolescent faces in mothers with and without depression. Neuroscience and Neuroimaging. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpsc.2022.06.005.

Background: This study first examined how mothers with and without depression differ in neural activation in response to adolescents’ affective faces. Second, it examined the extent to which these neural activation patterns are related to observed positive and aggressive parenting behavior.

Methods: Mothers with and without depression (based on self-reported symptoms and treatment history; n = 77 and n = 64, respectively; meanage = 40 years) from low-income families completed an interaction task with their adolescents (meanage = 12.8 years), which was coded for parents’ aggressive and positive affective behavior. During functional magnetic resonance imaging, mothers viewed blurry, happy, sad, and angry faces of unfamiliar adolescents, with an instruction to either label the emotion or determine the clarity of the image.

Results: The depression group showed less activation in the posterior midcingulate than the control subject group while labeling happy faces. Higher activation in the insula and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (PFC) was related to less positive parenting behavior. Ventrolateral PFC activation was most pronounced when labeling negative emotions, but stronger ventrolateral PFC response to happy faces was associated with more aggressive parenting behavior.

Conclusions: This demonstrates the association between parents’ neural responses to adolescent faces and their behavior during interactions with their own adolescents, with relatively low insula and dorsomedial PFC activation supporting positive parenting and affect-dependent response in the ventrolateral PFC as being important to limit aggressive behavior. [Article]

Preprints

+ McNeilly, E. A., Mills, K. L., Kahn, L. E., Crowley, R., Pfeifer, J. H., & Allen, N. B. (2021, April 8). Adolescent Social Communication Through Smartphones: Linguistic Features of Internalizing Symptoms and Daily Mood. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/6gdkf

The increasing use of smartphone technology by adolescents has led to unprecedented opportunities to identify early indicators of shifting mental health. This intensive longitudinal study examined the extent to which differences in mental health and daily mood are associated with digital social communication in adolescence. In a sample of 30 adolescents (ages 11-15 years), we analyzed 22,152 messages from social media, email, and texting across one month. Lower daily mood was associated with linguistic features reflecting self-focus and reduced temporal distance. Adolescents with lower daily mood tended to send fewer positive emotion words on a daily basis, and more total words on low mood days. Adolescents with lower daily mood and higher depression symptoms tended to use more future focus words. Dynamic linguistic features of digital social communication that relate to changes in mental states may represent a novel target for passive detection of risk and early intervention in adolescence. [Preprint].

+ Byrne, M.L., Chavez, S.J., Vijayakumar, N., Cheng, T.W., Flournoy, J.C., Barendse, M.E.A., Shirtcliff, E.A., Allen, N.B., Pfeifer, J.H. The structure of puberty in early adolescent girls: Pubertal processes and method variance.

Correctly measuring and operationalizing pubertal processes during development is important for capturing variation in both normative development and trajectories associated with adverse outcomes. The aim of the current study was to understand how this variance may be captured by different pubertal processes (adrenarche and gonadarche) and how multiple methods may contribute to variance (and how they are correlated). The study explored multi-method cross-sectional pubertal data, including self-reported physical characteristics from the Pubertal Development Scale (PDS) and Morris & Udry line drawings, and levels of hormones dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), testosterone (T), and estradiol (E2) in saliva and hair, from a cohort of 174 early adolescent girls aged 10-13 years. Authors developed a theory-driven structural equation modelling framework of puberty for girls that includes multiple measures of puberty and considers both processes of adrenarche and gonadarche. Self-reported puberty and hormone levels from saliva and hair can estimate an overall pubertal process as well as each process of adrenarche and gonadarche. The self-reported PDS item on height growth had the lowest standardized loading of the self-report items. In full models with all measures, the more parsimonious one-factor model was not a significantly worse fit than the two-factor model. The shared variance between the hormonal latent puberty factor and the self-reported latent puberty factor was 32%. This suggests fairly good reliability between hormones and self-report puberty data but also suggests that measuring puberty via hormones and via self-report questionnaires is not entirely redundant, and models of puberty require collecting both. Exploratory analyses showed 34%, 48%, and 52% shared variance between chronological age and the adrenarcheal, gonadarcheal, and overall pubertal factors, respectively, suggesting that there is additional variance in these pubertal processes that is not explained by age alone. When controlling for age, the adrenarcheal and gonadarcheal factors were still strongly associated (90% shared variance), suggesting that these factors are correlated when calculated as pubertal timing (i.e., stage compared to same-age peers), as well. Finally, correlations with age were higher when using the latent factors, whether for self-report questionnaire data alone, or for hormones, and correlations were highest when using all available self-report and biological measures. [Preprint]. [Supplemental Material]

+ Cosme, D., Flournoy, J. C., Livingston, J., Lieberman, M. D., Dapretto, M., & Pfeifer, J. H. (2021, June 22). Testing the adolescent social reorientation model using hierarchical growth curve modeling with parcellated fMRI data. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/8eyf5

Adolescence is characterized as a period when social relationships and experiences shift toward peers. The social reorientation model of adolescence posits this shift is driven by neurobiological changes that increase the salience of status-related social information. We focused on two phenomena that are highly salient and dynamic during adolescence—social status and self-perception—and tested this hypothesis by examining longitudinal changes in neural responses during a self/other evaluation task. Using hierarchical growth curve modeling with parcellated whole-brain data, we found weak evidence for this hypothesis. Social brain regions showed increased responsivity across adolescence, but this trajectory wasn’t unique to status-related social information. Brain regions associated with self-focused cognition showed heightened responses during self-evaluation in the transition to mid-adolescence, especially for status-related social information. Together, these results qualify existing models of adolescent social reorientation and highlight the multifaceted changes in self and social development during adolescence. [Preprint].

+ Cosme, D., Mobasser, A., Ross, G., & Pfeifer, J. H. (2019, August 24). If you’re happy and you know it: Neural correlates of self-evaluated psychological health and well-being. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/86n3b

What does it mean to be well? Prior research suggests that it’s more than just the absence of illness or disease; a complete picture of psychological health is also defined in terms of the “good life,” or well-being. Amid continued debate as to what constitutes the good life, one point of relative agreement is that a person’s psychological health is contingent on their own subjective evaluation. The goal of the current study was to further our understanding of psychological functioning by investigating the neural correlates of self-evaluated psychological health and well-being. A sample of 113 incoming college freshmen completed an fMRI task in which they evaluated words and phrases related to three constructs associated with psychological health–well-being, ill-being, and social connectedness–in terms of self-descriptiveness and perceived malleability. Behaviorally, well-being and social connectedness items were more likely to be endorsed as self-descriptive than ill-being items, and social items were perceived to be more malleable. Neurally, self-evaluation was associated with increased activity in the default mode network, consistent with preregistered hypotheses. We observed strong spatial overlap in neural representations among constructs, though patterns of activity in a priori regions of interest–pgACC, vmPFC, and VS–exhibited low similarity among constructs. Furthermore, we found that these neural predictors explained additional variance in trial-level evaluations of psychological health, but not in individual differences in psychological health when aggregating across trials. Specifically, multilevel logistic regression revealed that greater vmPFC activity increased the likelihood of endorsing items as self-descriptive, but only for ill-being items. Exploratory specification curve analyses suggested that closer examination of these neural correlates using multivariate approaches may provide additional insight into individual differences in psychological health. [Preprint].