The current study explored coping and the relationship between coping, stressors, seriousness of delinquency, and internalizing and externalizing psychopathology in a sample of 93 (69 male, 24 female, M age=14.3 SD=1.4) court-involved adolescents. Participation took place in the Juvenile Court Clinics of Hampden, Hampshire, and Franklin Counties in Massachusetts. Participants completed the Brief COPE (Carver, 1997) with added items to measure aggressive coping, the Behavior Assessment System for Children Parent Report, Second Edition (BASC-2, PRS), and the Self-Report Delinquency Scale (SRD; Elliot, Huizinga, & Ageton, 1985). The documented history of delinquencies and stressors was collected from court records. An exploratory principal component analysis of the 14 subscales of the Brief COPE was conducted yielding 4 factors: approach coping, avoidant coping, seeking support, and emotional coping. Male participants reported more Active Coping than female participants whereas female participants demonstrated more Self-Blame Coping than male participants. Caucasian participants used more Acceptance, Venting, and Seeking Emotional Support than African-American and Hispanic participants. Participants with financial hardships reported using more Denial Coping than participants without financial hardship. Participants who were raised in single-parent households reported less Seeking Emotional Support Coping than participants who were raised in two-parent households. Participants who were subjected to parental physical abuse used less Seeking Instrumental Support Coping than participants without a history of parental physical abuse. Participants with a history of physical abuse between parents reported more Denial than participants without such history. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) revealed that the avoidant coping factor was associated with more internalizing symptoms and that the approach coping factor was associated with fewer internalizing symptoms. Coping was not associated with externalizing symptoms or seriousness of delinquency. The current investigation provides preliminary evidence for the use of the Brief COPE scale in court-involved adolescents. Furthermore, the study introduced a novel way of capturing aggressive ways of coping that may be particularly relevant for delinquent populations. The differences in coping strategies as a function of stressor supports an argument that coping is flexible and is influenced by environmental circumstances. Implications of the results include the need to develop coping measures that capture unique dimensions of coping in court-involved adolescents and the need to develop coping-informed interventions for at-risk adolescents.

Harsh parenting behaviors have been shown to predict internalizing and externalizing symptoms in children. These symptoms of psychopathology can persist into adolescence, which can negatively impact social, academic, and emotional functioning. Most studies, however, focus on between-person differences in average harsh parenting, rather than within-person changes in harsh parenting over time. This variability in harsh parenting has a potentially unique impact on the development of adolescent psychopathology. The present study aims to understand if child/adolescent-perceived variability in harsh parenting over time (intraindividual variability; IIV) predicts higher levels of internalizing and externalizing symptoms in mid-adolescence, while controlling for average levels of harsh parenting. IIV in child/adolescent-perceived harsh parenting was quantified using the coefficient of variation. Path analysis results indicated that IIV in child-perceived harsh parenting from ages 8-14 was a reliable construct, rather than random error. Further, more IIV in child-perceived mother harsh parenting predicted higher externalizing, but not internalizing, symptoms in adolescence (at age 15). Results were replicated using Residual Dynamic Structural Equation Modeling (RDSEM), a new method that models variability around one’s predicted slope within the model. Implications of this work include a novel way to conceptualize and measure aspects of the parent-child/adolescent relationship that predict individual differences in symptoms of psychopathology in mid-adolescence.

Individuals with high anxiety levels from clinical and non-clinical populations tend to exhibit an attentional bias where they selectively allocate more attention to threat stimuli than neutral stimuli, in comparison to individuals with lower anxiety levels. However, longitudinal studies investigating the relations between attentional bias to threat and symptoms of anxiety, depression, and social anxiety––some of the most common mental disorders––are scarce. Using a concurrent and longitudinal design, we investigated the relations between attentional bias to threat and symptoms of anxiety, depression, and social anxiety; concurrently in adulthood (the 30s) as well as longitudinally between young adulthood (the 20s) and adulthood (the 30s). We also investigated whether attentional bias to threat in the 30s moderated and/or mediated the relation between symptoms of psychopathology in the 20s and the same symptoms in the 30s. We found significant concurrent correlations between attentional bias to threat and greater symptoms of anxiety, depression, and social anxiety in the 30s. We also found positive longitudinal correlations between attentional bias to threat in the 30s and symptoms of anxiety (approached significance) and depression (significant) in the 20s. Thus, greater symptoms of internalizing-related psychopathology were associated with greater attentional bias to threat. Attentional bias to threat did not mediate the relation between early psychopathology and later psychopathology, but it did moderate the relation between anxiety in the 20s and social anxiety nearly a decade later. In individuals with greater attentional bias to threat, early anxiety was significantly associated with and predicted greater future social anxiety, but this was not the case for individuals with lower attentional bias to threat. Hence, attentional bias to threat may have a critical role in internalizing-related psychopathology, and interventions targeting it may have preventative and therapeutic potential for mitigating the likelihood of the development and/or persistence of internalizing-related psychopathology. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc) / People with higher anxiety levels pay more attention to threatening information than neutral information, compared to people with lower anxiety levels. Relatively few studies have investigated the long-term relation between attentional bias to threat and symptoms of mental disorder. Our study investigated the concurrent and longitudinal relations between attentional bias to threat and symptoms of anxiety, depression, and social anxiety. We found that anxiety, depression, and social anxiety in the 30s were concurrently related to greater attentional bias to threat. Additionally, anxiety and depression in the 20s were longitudinally related to greater attentional bias to threat 10 years later. Moreover, people with high anxiety and high attentional bias to threat were more likely to experience social anxiety in the future than people with high anxiety but low attentional bias to threat. Therefore, attentional bias to threat might have a critical role in the development and/or persistence of some mental disorders.

Deliberate Emotion Regulation (ER), the effortful regulation of emotions, is strongly linked to psychopathology. In adults, deliberate ER is often experienced as a self-narrative, such as reappraising a negatively perceived scenario. However, researchers have yet to study how young children articulate deliberate ER strategies, whether these strategies relate to real-time ER neurophysiological processes, and how they are associated with psychopathology. Thus, from an existing sample of 59 children, I aimed to examine preschool-aged children’s verbally articulated ER strategies prior to a frustration challenge, and related these strategies to subsequent neural and physiological responses to frustration and psychopathology. I categorized children’s responses into two groups: those who articulated any emotion regulation strategy (i.e., “strategy”) and those who did not articulate a strategy (i.e., “no strategy”). We found that about 70% of children in this age range were able to articulate an emotion regulation strategy. Children who articulated a strategy had lower psychophysiological stress during a frustration task and fewer parent-reported ADHD inattention symptoms than children who did not articulate a strategy. There were no observed differences between groups for Prefrontal Cortex (PFC) activation, parent-reported externalizing symptoms, or parent-reported irritability symptoms. To our knowledge, this study is the first to provide evidence that emotion regulation strategy articulation is an emerging skill, and that children who are able to articulate emotion regulation strategies are also able to change their physiological stress in response to a negative emotion challenge and have fewer symptoms of psychopathology.

Although there has been progress in trying to decrease the use of cigarette smoking, a new method of smoking has evolved which is rapidly increasing, namely vaping. Adolescents who participate in smoking are more likely to increase smoking frequency if they believed that it is self-defining (“I smoke cigarettes” versus “I am a smoker”). While there has been evidence to support the claim that internal motives for smoking are correlated with smoker identity development, there has been none, to our knowledge, found for vaping identity. Due to the similarities of smoking and vaping, it is important to discover whether those who vape also have an identity similar to those who smoke. In other words, with vaping being a new technology, do users identify themselves as “I am a vaper” or “I vape e-cigarettes”? The way in which users identify themselves may have important implications for intervention efforts. Further, smoking is a type of substance abuse, and substance abuse, primarily alcohol, has been linked to identity status, identity distress, and psychopathology. Smoking has been linked to alcohol use and abuse, but it is unclear if smoking is related to similar identity and adjustment variables, particularly internalizing symptoms, in the same way as alcohol use. Thus, the purpose of this study was to explore the associations between smoking, vaping, identity, and psychopathology. Using college student participants (N = 303) who completed anonymous online surveys for course credit, four hypotheses were tested, but none was confirmed. Possible reasons for the lack of significant findings are discussed. Despite the lack of findings in regard to the relationship among the study variables, the new concept and measure of vaping identity proposed in this thesis appear to be a potentially valid and useful avenue for future research.

The current study investigated the effects of parenting styles in same-sex and opposite-sex parent-child dyads, as well as the differences in parenting styles in two regions of the country. This study’s sample came from two previously collected datasets: one from Mississippi and one from Florida. The participants reported on perceived parental behaviors, parenting styles, discipline practices, and their own psychological adjustment. There were main effects for gender of emerging adults and parenting styles of mothers and fathers. No interactions between the genders of the parent and child reached significance. The results of Pearson correlations suggest that authoritarian parenting leads to negative outcomes for individuals from Florida, although there was no relationship for individuals from Mississippi. Conversely, the results suggest that permissive parenting leads to negative outcomes for individuals from Mississippi, although there was no relationship for individuals from Florida. Thus, outcomes related to parenting seem to differ by region.

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<p dir="ltr">The main goal of my study was to use a novel precision medicine approach to optimize assignment to short-term abstinence from alcohol based on a variety of individual characteristics. The sample consisted of 97 moderate-to-heavy drinkers aged 21-35. A within-subjects design was employed where each participant completed two counter-balanced intravenous alcohol sessions (one following abstinence and one during usual drinking). For the primary aim of this study (N = 47), crossover generalized outcome weighted learning was used to estimate an optimal individualized assignment rule to short-term abstinence based on prescriptive factors, including HiTOP-relevant dimensions and other characteristics. For a secondary aim (N = 50), logistic regression was used to test whether the subgroups estimated by the optimal rule were associated with a set of genetic and behavioral factors related to AUD, and subjective perceptions to alcohol intoxication. Findings showed that an estimated rule with higher granularity – higher-specificity traits and demographics – led to lower alcohol consumption overall compared with one-size-fits-all rules (i.e., assigning everyone to abstinence or assigning no one to abstinence). The effect sizes of the difference were small-to-medium and fell short of statistical significance. Family history of AUD had a positive trend association with benefit from abstinence, with one standard deviation increase in family history of AUD being associated with twice as high odds of being assigned to abstinence. Due to the limited sample size, the results should be interpreted with caution. Study results provided preliminary evidence that an individualized assignment rule based on relatively simple and easily accessible individual characteristics can lead to lower alcohol consumption than that observed if everyone or no one was assigned to abstinence (i.e., one-size-fits-all approach). Genetic predispositions reflected in family history of AUD may be a potential mechanism linking the assessed prescriptive factors with abstinence response, which is worth further exploration.</p>

Stemming from the interdisciplinary questions, "what is the self?" and "what occurs in the absence of the self' this study sheds light on key areas of interest to both clinical psychologists and cognitive scientists. Following a review of self-literature across several disciplines, it is concluded that the fracturing or absence of the self may relate to certain psychopathologies. The present study used oral autobiographical narrative and a self-report inventory of psychopathology to explore this relationship in 43 college students. By examining these questions from a bottom-up perspective, this study expands upon existing literature regarding quantitative linguistic analysis of narrative in addition to providing key empirical data for the interdisciplinary study of psychopathology. Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count software and the Brief Symptom Inventory were used to categorize word use in autobiographical narratives and recent psychological distress. Linear regression with forward modeling was used to explore linguistic factors from the narratives that related to specific types of psychopathology. Results suggested that increased use of positive feeling words (e.g., happy, joy, love) in autobiographical narratives predicted an increased overall severity of distress, with other emotional, cognitive, and pronoun-based word usage predicting specific forms of psychopathology.

Despite potentially severe medical consequences of pica and rumination disorder (RD), little is known about their prevalence and association with other psychopathology in childhood. As a part of a larger population-based study, 804 youths aged 7–14 years and their parents were asked about their experience of pica and RD behaviors, and associated eating, feeding and general psychopathology. A total of 12.31% and 11.49% of youth reported having engaged in pica or RD behaviors at least once. Recurring pica or RD behaviors had been experienced by 4.98% and 1.49% of the participants. The behaviors showed a significant, but small correlation with one another (r = .28, p < .01). Correlations with symptoms of avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID) were significant, but small (pica: r = .18, RD: r = .27, both p < .01). Prevalence rates of recurring pica behavior were significantly increased if recurring RD was present (58.33%), and also greater vice versa (17.50%). The prevalence rates for recurrent pica and RD behaviors were also increased in the presence of an ARFID diagnosis (both behaviors 12.0%). However, correlations with restraint, eating, weight, and shape concern were nonsignificant (all p > .05). In addition, RD behavior was positively correlated with emotional and conduct problems (r = .15 and .22, both p < .01) and both behaviors were negatively correlated with prosocial behavior (r = −.10 and −.09, both p < .05). Our findings underscore the clinical significance of pica and RD behaviors. More research is warranted on both disorders, their association and their relation with ARFID, in order to reach a further understanding of their presentation and to ascertain diagnostic validity.