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Objective: Dramatic increases in rates of suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs) among youth highlight the need to pinpoint early risk factors. This study used intensive longitudinal sampling to assess what the concurrent associations were between risk factors and STB status, how proximal changes in risk factors were related to STB status, and how risk factors prospectively predicted changes in STB status in a preadolescent sample enriched for early childhood psychopathology., Method: A total of 192 participants were included from the Parent-Child Interaction Therapy-Emotional Development (PCIT-ED) Study, a longitudinal study of children with and without preschool depression. Participants 7 to 12 years of age completed a diagnostic interview, followed by 12 months of intensive longitudinal sampling, assessing experiences of suicidal ideation and 11 psychosocial variables with known links to STBs in adolescents and adults. Preadolescents with STB history (high-risk) received surveys weekly, and those without STB history (lower-risk) received surveys monthly., Results: Female sex, elevated depressive symptoms, greater use of expressive suppression and rumination, emotional clarity, and perceived burdensomeness were uniquely concurrently associated with the likelihood of STB endorsement. Within the high-risk group, (1) increases in depression, expressive suppression, rumination, and perceived burdensomeness, and decreases in positive affect from week t to week t+1 were associated with a higher likelihood of a positive STB status at week t+1 ; and (2) higher expressive suppression, perceived burdensomeness, and caregiver criticism and conflict at week t compared to participants' mean levels prospectively predicted increases in the likelihood of a positive STB report from week t to week t+1 ., Conclusion: Psychosocial factors influencing STBs in adolescents and adults also affect preadolescents in day-to-day life. Expressive suppression and perceived burdensomeness consistently emerged as novel risk indicators and potential targets for treatment. In addition, increases in depression, rumination, and caregiver criticism and conflict, as well as decreases in positive affect, might prompt heightened STB screening and assessments for preadolescents with a history of STBs., Plain Language Summary: There have been large increases in rates of suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs) among youth, highlighting the need to identify early risk factors in preadolescents. Over one year, 192 seven- to 12-year-old Midwestern children, some of whom had a history of STBs, repeatedly reported on several risk factors and occurrence of STBs over the previous week or month. Suppressing one's emotions and feeling like a burden emerged as risk factors and predicted the increased likelihood of the emergence of STBs, suggesting these may be potential targets for treatment. Findings also suggest that increases in depression, rumination, and caregiver criticism and conflict, as well as decreases in positive emotion, should prompt STB screening and assessments for preadolescents with a history of STBs., Diversity & Inclusion Statement: We worked to ensure race, ethnic, and/or other types of diversity in the recruitment of human participants. We worked to ensure that the study questionnaires were prepared in an inclusive way. One or more of the authors of this paper self-identifies as a member of one or more historically underrepresented racial and/or ethnic groups in science. One or more of the authors of this paper self-identifies as a member of one or more historically underrepresented sexual and/or gender groups in science. While citing references scientifically relevant for this work, we also actively worked to promote sex and gender balance in our reference list., (Copyright © 2024 American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Although limited research suggests that infants can behave prosocially even before their first birthdays, the prevalence and characteristics of early prosocial behaviors remain unexplored. Indeed, very few studies of prosocial development have included 12-month-old infants or examined how prosociality changes across the second year, and none has assessed individual differences in prosocial strategy use. This study investigated prosocial helping behaviors in a racially and socioeconomically diverse sample of 220 11- to 20-month-olds living in the United States (45.5% female; 61% Black; 67.2% low socioeconomic status). At 12 months ( n = 153), > 80% of infants helped an experimenter retrieve out-of-reach items. Modest increases in helping were observed across the second year of life. Individual differences in specific helping strategies were also detected. Infants who helped more by handing an item to an experimenter on one task (rather than placing the item in a target location) also helped more by handing on another task; similar patterns were found with placing. Moreover, the type of strategy was associated with age and sex: older infants and male infants used more placing. The high rates of helping by 12 months of age and the use of individual helping strategies demonstrate that infants have robust prosocial abilities beyond those previously documented. These findings contribute critical information about the typical development of prosocial behaviors in the largest and most racially and socioeconomically diverse sample of infants to date. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Preschool-onset major depressive disorder (PO-MDD) is an impairing pediatric mental health disorder that impacts children as young as three years old. There is limited work dedicated to uncovering neural measures of this early childhood disorder which could be leveraged to further understand both treatment responsiveness and future depression risk. Event-related potentials (ERPs) such as the P300 have been employed extensively in adult populations to examine depression-related deficits in cognitive and motivational systems. Few studies examine the prospective relationships between depression and P300, especially in young children. Moreover, limited research examines the relationship between P300 with psychotherapy treatment responsiveness in youths. The current study sought to examine the prospective relationships between pre-intervention P300 (i.e., choice-locked) elicited from the doors task in depressed preschool children (i.e., PO-MDD; ages 3-to-6) with reductions in depressive symptoms after completing an 18-week long dyadic psychotherapy intervention (n = 59). We also explored relations to risk for depression assessed at a follow-up visit during preadolescence (ages 8-to-12; n = 82). Those with PO-MDD exhibiting reduced choice (doors)-locked P300 demonstrated worse treatment response to psychotherapy and were more likely to meet criteria for depression during preadolescence. Moreover, the relationship between pre-intervention P300 and later preadolescence depression was significantly mediated by response to treatment. These findings suggest that deficits in brain systems linked to the choice-locked P300 component (i.e., cognitive and motivational) might be indicative of non-responsiveness to early dyadic psychotherapeutic intervention efforts for depression which impacts risk for recurrent patterns of depression in youths., Competing Interests: Compliance with Ethical Standards. Funding: National Institute of Mental Health Grants K23MH118426 (DJW); R01MH090786 (DJW & KEG); K01MH127412 (LH), and R01MH117436 (JLL & DMB). Conflict of Interest: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare that are relevant to the content of this article. Ethical Approval: The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at Washington University School of Medicine. Informed Consent: Informed written consent was provided to families and obtained before participation in the current project., (© 2025. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

Despite rising rates of suicidal thoughts and behaviors in children, little is known about best practices for conducting suicide risk assessments in this population. The acquisition of the concept of death occurs during childhood, and thoughts and preoccupation with death can be developmentally normative. This review highlights a critical gap in knowledge about how children with suicide ideation understand death-a foundational issue in assessing suicide risk. First, we provide an overview of studies that examined the concept of death and related constructs (e.g., preoccupation with death) among children who experienced suicidal ideation or attempted suicide, many of which date back to the 1970s and '80s. We describe indirect methods of assessing death cognitions, such as the Death Implicit Association Test, representations of death/suicidal themes in play, and the role of exposure to these themes through screens (e.g., social media, videogames). Given the potential impact of sociocultural changes since the 1970s-1980s on how children understand death, gaining a contemporary perspective on how children think about death and its relationship to suicide risk is warranted. Guided by a developmental approach, we provide recommendations for future areas of research to advance this field and inform the design of developmentally appropriate risk assessments and interventions for children., Competing Interests: Declaration of conflicting interestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Objective: The aim of this study was to determine whether advanced puberty at age 9 and 10 years, relative to that in same-aged peers, predicts current and/or new-onset self-injurious thoughts and behaviors (SITBs). New predictors of SITBs in preadolescence are urgently needed to address this escalating public health crisis of youth self-harm and suicidality., Method: Data from the baseline, 1-year, and 2-year waves of the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development Study were used. Bayesian mixed-effects models were estimated for test and replication split halves, and tested whether relatively advanced youth-reported pubertal development at 9 or 10 years predicted SITBs (suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, and non-suicidal self-injury) as reported by preadolescents (each wave) and their caregiver (baseline, 2-year follow-up) in a computerized version of the Kiddie Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia (KSADS). Preadolescents with baseline self-reported puberty, KSADS (N = 8,708; 44.6% female; 60.8% White non-Hispanic), and demographic information were included., Results: Baseline preadolescent-reported puberty predicted the presence of any SITB before or at baseline (odds ratio = 1.50, 95% credible interval = 1.23-1.85) and the new-onset SITBs between baseline and 2-year follow-up in preadolescents SITB-naive at baseline (odds ratio = 2.26, 95% credible interval = 1.66-3.21)., Conclusion: Preadolescents reporting relatively advanced puberty were more likely to have experienced SITBs and, if SITB naive, were more likely to experience the onset of SITBs across the following 2 years. Findings were not explained by child psychopathology or other familial and psychosocial factors known to predict SITBs. Screening preadolescents for advanced puberty at ages 9 and 10 years and applying targeted suicide screening for those youth showing advanced puberty should be considered in primary care and mental health settings., (Copyright © 2025 American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Depression symptoms that onset during early childhood are increasingly recognized as a significant public health concern. A proliferation of research over the last 2 decades has identified preschool depression as a diagnostic reality that is associated with a severe and persistent course of depression throughout the lifespan. The current review summarizes the research on preschool depression from the last 7 years (2017-2024), with a particular focus on the assessment of, factors and outcomes associated with, neurobiological underpinnings of, and treatments for preschool depression. We also discuss potential avenues of inquiry that further elucidate the nature of preschool depression., Competing Interests: Disclosure The authors have no conflicts of interest to report. The authors have nothing to disclose., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

We are in a youth mental health crisis with unprecedented and staggeringly high rates of suicidal ideations and suicide behaviors in preteens. In the United States, 14.5% of children aged 9-10 have experienced suicidal thoughts and behaviors, including 1.3% with a suicide attempt. American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines call for universal suicide risk screening of youth aged 12 years and older during preventative health care visits and screening in preteens aged 8-11 years when clinically indicated. However, what constitutes a clinical indication at 8-11 years can be difficult to systematically detect, and pediatric practitioners may not be equipped with necessary age-specific assessment tools. This is compounded by the lack of emphasis on preteen suicide risk screening (and focus on adolescents), which leaves practitioners without age-appropriate resources to make clinical determinations for at-risk preteens. The objective of this project was to develop an evidence-informed suicide risk screening pathway for pediatric practitioners to implement with preteen patients in outpatient settings. Suicide risk assessment in younger children (<8 years) is also briefly addressed. We convened a group of researchers and practitioners with expertise in preadolescent suicide, pediatric medicine, behavioral health screening integration with primary care, and child development. They reviewed the empirical literature and existing practice guidelines to iterate on a multi-informant clinical suicide risk screening pathway for preteens that includes both caregivers and preteens in the screening process. We also developed tools and accompanying guidelines for a preteen suicide risk screening workflow and risk determination to aid practitioners in deciding who, when, and how to screen. Finally, we provide scripts for introducing suicide risk screening to caregivers and preteens and to discuss screening findings., (Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Introduction: Parental suicide attempts and suicide death increase suicide risk in their offspring. High levels of impulsivity have been observed in families at high risk for suicide. Impulsivity, a highly heritable trait that is especially elevated in childhood, is frequently measured with the UPPS-P Impulsive Behavior Scale, which includes negative urgency, positive urgency, sensation seeking, premeditation, and perseverance. Our study examined the association between the UPPS-P facets and suicide ideation (without suicide attempts) and suicide attempts at baseline and first-time endorsement within the next two years in childhood. We also examined how the UPPS-P facets mediated the association between parental suicide attempts and suicide death and offspring first-time suicide ideation and attempts at follow-up., Methods: The sample was 9,194 children (48.4% female; 9-10 years old) from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, assessed yearly three times. At Time 1 (T1), caregivers reported on suicide attempts and suicide deaths (combined) of the biological parents. Caregivers and children reported on suicide ideation and attempts in the KSADS-PL DSM-5 at each time point, T1 and follow-up (T2 and/or T3). The Short UPPS-P Scale (child-report) assessed the impulsivity facets at T1, which were computed as latent variables., Results: At T1, 6.7% of children had a parent who had attempted or died by suicide. Most UPPS-P facets were associated with suicide ideation and attempts at T1 and T2/T3. In adjusted models, parental suicide attempts and suicide death were associated with offspring negative and positive urgency. In mediation models, parental suicide attempts and suicide death had an indirect effect on offspring first-time suicide ideation at T2/T3 through negative urgency (OR = 1.04; 95% CI, 1.01-1.08) and positive urgency (OR = 1.03, 95% CI, 1.01-1.05). Similar results were found for first-time suicide attempts at T2/T3., Discussion: Our findings support an impulsive pathway in the familial transmission of suicide risk. For all youth, interventions that target multiple UPPS-P facets may help prevent or reduce suicide risk. For offspring whose parents have attempted or died by suicide, clinicians should pay particular attention to children who impulsively act on extreme emotions, as they may be at higher suicide risk., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Ortin-Peralta, Schiffman, Malik, Polanco-Roman, Hennefield and Luking.)

Objective: Suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs) in children are an escalating public health concern. This study focused on 1 understudied candidate risk factor, namely, preschool-onset major depressive disorder (PO-MDD), as a predictor of persistent and emerging STBs from early childhood into preadolescence., Method: Participants were 137 children 8 to 12 years of age who met criteria for PO-MDD when they were 3 to 6 years of age, and a nondepressed sample of 53 age-, income-, and sex-matched peers. STBs were reported by caregivers (preschool, preadolescence) and children (preadolescence) using age-appropriate diagnostic interviews., Results: By preadolescence, children who had PO-MDD were 7.38 times more likely than their peers to have endorsed STBs after early childhood (p < .001; 67.9% vs 22.6%), including 6.71 times more likely to have engaged in suicide behaviors/attempts (p = .012; 21.9% vs 3.8%); they were also 8.98 times more likely to have endorsed STBs over the prior month (p = .005; 26.3% vs 3.8%). Similar findings emerged when limiting the PO-MDD group to children without preschool STBs, and when controlling for externalizing comorbidities, implicating PO-MDD as a unique diagnostic predictive risk factor. However, children who had PO-MDD with STBs were 3.46 times more likely than children who had PO-MDD without STBs to endorse later STBs (p = .018; 83.1% vs 54.2%), indicating substantial continuity of preschool STBs alongside strikingly high rates of emerging STBs into preadolescence., Plain Language Summary: This longitudinal study explores preschool onset major depressive disorder (PO-MDD) as a predictor of having suicidal thoughts or attempting suicide by age 12. 137 children aged 8 to 12 years who met criteria for PO-MDD when they were 3 to 6 years of age and 53 non-depressed peers were included in the study. The study found that preadolescents who had experienced preschool-onset depression were 6.14 times more likely to experience active suicidal thoughts and 8.03 times more likely to have made a suicide attempt by age 12 when compared to preadolescents who did not experience preschool depression. Results suggest that children with preschool-onset depression would likely benefit from increased suicide screening, proactive safety planning and early interventions., Conclusion: PO-MDD is a strong risk factor for the emergence and persistence of STBs into preadolescence. Children with PO-MDD would likely benefit from increased suicide screening, proactive safety planning, and early interventions., (Copyright © 2023 American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The development of empathy and prosocial behavior begins in infancy and is likely supported by emotion processing skills. The current study explored whether early emerging deficits in emotion processing are associated with disruptions in the development of empathy and prosociality. We investigated this question in a large, diverse sample of 147, 11- to 20-month-old infants (42% female; 61% Black; 67% low socioeconomic status). Infants completed two observational tasks assessing prosocial helping and one task assessing empathy and prosocial comforting behavior. Infants also completed an eye-tracking task assessing engagement and disengagement with negative emotional faces. Infants who attended less to angry, sad, and fearful faces (i.e., by being slower to look at and/or quicker to look away from negative compared to neutral faces) engaged in fewer helping behaviors, and effect sizes were larger when examining infants' attention toward the eye regions of faces. Additionally, infants who were quicker to look away from the eye regions of angry faces, but not the whole face, displayed less empathy and comforting behaviors. Results suggest that as early as 12 months of age, infants' decreased attention toward negative emotional faces, particularly the eye regions, is associated with less empathy and prosociality during a developmental period in which these abilities are rapidly maturing., (© 2024 International Congress of Infant Studies (ICIS).)

Children living in poverty and facing related forms of adversity are at higher risk for experiencing concurrent and later psychopathology. Although negative psychological outcomes can be improved by enhancing sensitive and responsive caregiving early in development, interventions targeting the caregiver-child dyad are not readily accessible. The present study investigated the feasibility and effectiveness of delivering a shortened eight-session form of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy-Emotion Development (PCIT-ED) in-person or remotely as an early intervention for 3-6-year-old children (N = 62) at elevated risk for psychopathology who were growing up in low-income communities. Caregiver-child dyads were randomized to eight-sessions of PCIT-ED or online parenting education. Relative to parenting education, children receiving PCIT-ED exhibited lower externalizing symptoms and functional impairment and more positive peer relationships following the intervention. Findings support the effectiveness of this shortened form of PCIT-ED, delivered in-person or remotely, as an early intervention to improve symptoms of psychopathology and functioning in high-risk children living in poverty.Trial registration Clinicaltrials.gov; NCT04399629., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

The psychophysiological underpinnings of preschool-onset depression (PO-MDD) remain underexplored. Moreover, there is currently a limited understanding of the potential impact that PO-MDD might have on neurobiological functions later in development such as general cognitive domains and reward processing. Thus, the current study sought to examine potential neurophysiological differences, measured via electroencephalography (EEG), in adolescents with and without a history of PO-MDD. Participants and their caregivers (N = 138) from a large longitudinal study completed semi-structured clinical interviews at a baseline visit (ages 3-7) to determine PO-MDD status. At a follow-up visit approximately 11 years later, adolescents (ages 13-19) completed the doors gambling task while EEG was recorded to measure event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by both the doors and feedback stimuli, to index cognitive and reward processing functions (i.e., doors-P300, gain/loss feedback-P300, and RewP). Adolescents with a history of PO-MDD exhibited significantly smaller doors-P300 compared with adolescents with no history of PO-MDD, whereas there were no group differences in gain/loss feedback-P300 or RewP. Additionally, reduced doors-P300 was independently associated with lower baseline income-to-needs ratio, older age, and female gender. The current study suggests that reduced doors-P300 amplitude during adolescence might reflect impaired neurophysiological development related to PO-MDD. Thus, the P300 derived from the doors stimuli might be a valuable neural measure to further our understanding of potential neurophysiological differences associated with early-onset childhood depression., (© 2023 Society for Psychophysiological Research.)

Temper tantrums are sudden, overt negative emotional displays that are disproportionate to the eliciting event. Research supports that severe temper tantrums during the preschool period are associated with preschool psychopathology, but few studies have identified which characteristics of preschool tantrums are predictive of distal psychopathological outcomes in later childhood and adolescence. To examine this question, we used a prospective, longitudinal dataset enriched for early psychopathology. Participants ( N = 299) included 3-to 6-year-old children (47.8% female) assessed for tantrums and early childhood psychopathology using diagnostic interviews and then continually assessed using diagnostic interviews over 10 subsequent time points throughout childhood and adolescence. We identified two unique groupings of tantrum behaviors: aggression towards others/objects (e.g., hitting others) and aggression towards self (e.g., hitting self). While both types of tantrum behaviors were associated with early childhood psychopathology severity, tantrum behaviors characterized by aggression towards self were more predictive of later psychopathology. Children displaying high levels of both types of tantrum behaviors had more severe externalizing problems during early childhood and more severe depression and oppositional defiant disorder across childhood and adolescence. Findings suggest that tantrum behaviors characterized by aggression towards self are particularly predictive of later psychopathology.

It is well-documented that early life adversity negatively affects children academically and that these impacts magnify as the number of negative life events (NLEs) they experience increases. However, it is unclear whether the types of NLEs children are exposed to differentially relate to their levels of academic competence, a component of educational functioning. The present study addressed this question by assessing the relationships between different types of early life adversity and academic competence in 4- to 6-year-olds ( N = 111) using secondary data analyses of parent reports in which respondents indicated children's levels of academic competence and exposure to NLEs. The results showed that family turmoil ( b = -2.31, 95% CI [-4.05, -0.57], p = .01, f 2 = .07), poverty ( b = -2.92, 95% CI [-4.31, -1.53], p < .001, f 2 = .16), and violence ( b = -3.43, 95% CI [-5.14, -1.73], p < .001, f 2 = .15) negatively predicted academic competence, whereas family separation and death/illness did not relate to academic competence. Additionally, poverty negatively predicted academic competence above and beyond family turmoil and violence ( b = -2.36, 95% CI [-0.49, 0.72], p = .03, f 2 = .04). These findings demonstrate that some, but not all, types of NLEs negatively predict preschoolers' academic competence, illustrating the differential relationship between different types of early life adversity and academic performance. Moreover, these findings reveal the deleterious impacts of certain types of NLEs on children's academics prior to beginning formal education, suggesting the importance of early intervention targeting family turmoil, poverty, and violence from a young age.

Adverse experiences and family income in childhood have been associated with altered brain development. While there is a large body of research examining these associations, it has primarily used cross-sectional data sources and studied adverse experiences and family income in isolation. However, it is possible that low family income and adverse experiences represent dissociable and potentially interacting profiles of risk. To address this gap in the literature, we examined brain structure as a function of adverse experiences in childhood and family income in 158 youths with up to five waves of MRI data. Specifically, we assessed the interactive effect of these two risk factors on six regions of interest: hippocampus, putamen, amygdala, nucleus accumbens, caudate, and thalamus. Adverse experiences and family income interacted to predict putamen volume (B = 0.086, p = 0.011) but only in participants with family income one standard deviation below the mean (slope estimate = -0.11, p = 0.03). These results suggest that adverse experiences in childhood result in distinct patterns of brain development across the socioeconomic gradient. Given previous findings implicating the role of the putamen in psychopathology-related behaviors, these results emphasize the importance of considering life events and socioeconomic context when evaluating markers of risk. Future research should include interactive effects of environmental exposures and family income to better characterize risk for psychopathology in diverse samples., (© 2022 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Suicidal thoughts and behaviors in youth are an escalating and immediate public health concern. To better understand youth suicidal thoughts and behaviors, it is important to identify risk factors in early childhood that predict the later emergence of youth suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Research with adults and adolescents has identified sleep disturbances as a risk factor for suicidal thoughts and behaviors, but this has yet to be examined in early childhood. Using a prospective, 17-year longitudinal design, the current study explored the association between early childhood sleep disturbances and concurrent and later suicidal thoughts and behaviors (in separate models) across childhood and adolescence. Results indicate that sleep problems in early childhood are associated with increased probability for suicidal thoughts after age 8, even when controlling for prior and concurrent depression severity. Our findings suggest that early childhood sleep difficulties warrant increased clinical attention and management, as they may contribute to the maintenance and exacerbation of suicidal thoughts over time. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

A randomized controlled trial (RCT) demonstrated that a novel psychotherapy, Parent-Child Interaction Therapy-Emotion Development (PCIT-ED), effectively treats preschool-onset depression. However, little is known about which children benefit most from PCIT-ED. As positive parent-level factors are associated with lesser depressive symptoms, this study explored the potential moderating role of positive parenting relationships on PCIT-ED efficacy. This study examined mothers and their children aged 3-6 (N = 185) who participated in the PCIT-ED RCT. Children were randomized to immediate PCIT-ED treatment (n = 94) or a waitlist control condition (n = 91) that received treatment after 18 weeks. Prior to treatment, children completed a narrative story completion task that was videotaped and coded for children's positive and negative representations of their mothers. Parent-child interaction tasks were also completed pre-treatment and videotaped and coded to measure observed parenting. Odds of MDD diagnosis post-treatment were predicted by the interaction of children's negative maternal representations and treatment group (Estimate = -.68; SE = .27; [Formula: see text] = 6.45; p = .01) and the interaction of children's relatively more positive than negative maternal representations and treatment group (Estimate = .30; SE = .13; [Formula: see text] = 5.27; p = .02). Observed parenting measures did not significantly predict odds of MDD diagnosis. Thus, PCIT-ED predicted loss of MDD diagnosis for children who displayed maternal representations that were less negative, and relatively more positive than negative. Results suggest that children with relatively more positive maternal representations may be more likely to benefit from PCIT-ED, whereas children with more negative maternal representations may need targeted work to decrease negative maternal perceptions before initiating PCIT-ED in order for treatment to be most effective., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

Objective: To test whether childhood picky eating (PE)-a behavior previously linked to many forms of psychopathology-is specifically associated with symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)., Methods: We investigated the relationship between PE and symptoms of several forms of psychopathology in two separate observational samples: a sample of 110 children (5 and 6 years old) and a sample of 210 children (8 and 9 years old) drawn from a longitudinal study. In each sample, regression models based on psychiatric symptoms or diagnoses were used to assess the specificity of PE associations while accounting for cooccurring symptoms or comorbidities., Results: Although bivariate associations emerged between PE and multiple forms of psychopathology, multivariate analyses revealed these associations were driven by a strong and specific association between PE and symptoms of OCD in both samples. Moreover, PE among 8- and 9-year-olds in the longitudinal study predicted emergence of additional later psychopathology, specifically attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)., Conclusions: Findings suggest that PE, an easily identifiable clinical presentation, is also a specific marker for obsessive-compulsive symptomatology in school-age children and may impart risk for ADHD later in childhood., (© The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society of Pediatric Psychology. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Optimism, a bias to overestimate positive and underestimate negative outcomes, may shape how children learn, confront challenges, and overcome setbacks. Although approximately 80% of adults are optimistic, childhood optimism is understudied. A racially and socioeconomically diverse community sample of 152 three- to six-year-old children participated in two experiments (one story-based, one numeric probability-based) that assessed expectations of event outcomes when the likelihood of the outcome occurring either matched or conflicted with the most desirable outcome. The results systematically demonstrate that children are optimistic, even more optimistic for themselves than others, and increasingly integrate probabilistic information into their predictions with age. Differences in optimism were found in children from different socioeconomic backgrounds and those with different levels of depressive symptoms. These findings provide insight into how children reason about the future and elucidate key factors that impact optimistic predictions in childhood., Competing Interests: Declarations of interest None.

The reward positivity (RewP) is a widely studied measure of neural response to rewards, yet little is known about normative developmental characteristics of the RewP during early childhood. The present study utilized a pooled community sample of 309 4- to 6-year-old children who participated in the Doors guessing game to examine the latency and amplitude of the RewP. Peak detection of the gain-loss difference waveform was conducted for electrodes Fz, Cz, Pz, Oz and the mean activity in a 100 ms window centered around this peak was analyzed. There was a significant decrease in RewP latency (RewP was earlier) and increase in RewP amplitude (RewP magnitude was larger) with advancing age in this cross-sectional analysis. Further, these were independent effects, as both RewP latency and RewP amplitude were uniquely associated with children's age. Moreover, our results indicate that the RewP latency in 4- to 6-year-olds falls outside the 250-350 ms window typically used to quantify the RewP (RewP latency in our sample = 381 ms; SD = 60.15). The internal consistency for latency (.64) and amplitude (.27) of the RewP were characterized by moderate to low reliability, consistent with previous work on the reliability of difference scores. Overall, results demonstrate RewP differences in both timing and amplitude across age in early childhood, and suggest that both amplitude and latency of the RewP might function as individual difference measures of reward processing. These findings are discussed in the context of methodological considerations and the development of reward processing across early childhood., (© 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Objective: Suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs) represent a significant and escalating public health concern in youth. Evidence that STBs can emerge in the preschool years suggests that some pathways leading to clinically significant STBs begin early in life., Method: This prospective longitudinal study examined the developmental trajectories of STBs in children from ages 3 to 17, oversampled for preschool-onset depression., Results: Three unique trajectories of STBs across childhood and adolescence were identified: low class (n = 273) characterized by low rates of STBs, early-persistent class (n = 21) characterized by steadily increasing STBs, and late-onset class (n = 21) characterized by low rates of STBs through age 10 followed by a dramatic increase from ages 11 to 14 years. Preschool measures of depression symptoms, externalizing symptoms, impulsivity, and lower income relative to needs were associated with both high-risk STB classes. Both high-risk STB classes reported greater functional impairment, more externalizing symptoms, and more cumulative stressful life events in adolescence relative to the low class; the late-onset class also reported poorer academic functioning relative to both the early-persistent and low classes., Conclusion: A significant minority of this prospectively followed group of preschool children evidenced STBs by and/or after age 10. Although relatively rare before age 10, approximately half of the children who experienced STBs in adolescence first exhibited STBs in early childhood and comprised a trajectory suggesting increasing STBs. In contrast, approximately half of children first exhibited STBs in early adolescence. Early screening and identification of at-risk youth during both preschool and late childhood is important for early intervention regarding STBs., (Copyright © 2021 American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Background: Early low socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with poor outcomes in childhood, many of which endure into adulthood. It is critical to determine how early low SES relates to trajectories of brain development and whether these mediate relationships to poor outcomes. We use data from a unique 17-year longitudinal study with five waves of structural brain imaging to prospectively examine relationships between preschool SES and cognitive, social, academic, and psychiatric outcomes in early adulthood., Methods: Children (n = 216, 50% female, 47.2% non-White) were recruited from a study of early onset depression and followed approximately annually. Family income-to-needs ratios (SES) were assessed when children were ages 3 to 5 years. Volumes of cortical gray and white matter and subcortical gray matter collected across five scan waves were processed using the FreeSurfer Longitudinal pipeline. When youth were ages 16+ years, cognitive function was assessed using the NIH Toolbox, and psychiatric diagnoses, high-risk behaviors, educational function, and social function were assessed using clinician administered and parent/youth report measures., Results: Lower preschool SES related to worse cognitive, high-risk, educational, and social outcomes (|standardized B| = 0.20-0.31, p values < .003). Lower SES was associated with overall lower cortical (standardized B = 0.12, p < .0001) and subcortical gray matter (standardized B = 0.17, p < .0001) volumes, as well as a shallower slope of subcortical gray matter growth over time (standardized B = 0.04, p = .012). Subcortical gray matter mediated the relationship of preschool SES to cognition and high-risk behaviors., Conclusions: These novel longitudinal data underscore the key role of brain development in understanding the long-lasting relations of early low SES to outcomes in children., (Copyright © 2021 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

There is mounting evidence that young children who express suicidal ideation (SI) have a different conceptualization of death than their peers. This study characterizes 3- to 6-year-olds' depictions of violence, death, and suicidal themes in a story completion task as a function of their history of SI. Participants were 228 children with depression (3.0-6.9 years) who completed a comprehensive psychiatric assessment and four story stem narratives. For each narrative, an interviewer began a story with a conflict that the child was encouraged to resolve. Children's resolutions were coded for standard themes and negative atypical themes including violence and homicide, accidental harm or death, and suicidal ideation/acts. Themes were examined as a function of children's SI status: active-SI (n = 25), passive-SI (n = 28), or no history of SI (n = 175). Across the narratives, 89 children described at least one negative atypical theme: violence or homicide (n = 78), accidental harm or death (n = 22), and suicide (n = 13). The responses of children with active-SI included significantly more violence or homicide than children without SI. Moreover, current active-SI predicted suicidal themes. There were no group differences in accidental harm or death, nor in common aggressive or punitive acts (e.g., hitting, yelling, spanking), indicating specificity between active-SI and more intense violence and death-related themes. In sum, young children with active SI are more likely than their depressed peers without SI to incorporate violence, homicide, and suicide into their narratives around conflict resolution. These themes appear more salient to depressed children with SI and pervasive in their thoughts and problem-solving strategies. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Objectives: To evaluate the Preschool Feeling Checklist (PFC) utility for predicting later mental disorders and functioning for children and assess whether the PFC's predictive utility differs as a function of childhood poverty., Study Design: We analyzed data from a prospective longitudinal study of preschoolers in St Louis. Preschoolers (N = 287) were recruited from primary care sites and were assessed annually for 10-15 years. The PFC screened for depressive symptoms. Later age-appropriate psychiatric diagnostic interviews were used to derive Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, diagnoses. Regression and moderation analyses, and multilevel modeling were used to test the association between the PFC and later outcomes, and whether this relationship was moderated by income-to-needs., Results: The PFC predicted major depressive disorder (OR 1.13, P < .001), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (OR 1.16, P < .001), and mania (OR 1.18, P < .05) in adolescence and early adulthood. Income-to-needs was a moderator in the predictive pathway between the PFC and later major depressive disorder (OR 1.10, P < .05) and mania (OR 1.19, P < .001) with the measure less predictive for children living in poverty. The PFC predicted worse functioning by the final assessment (b = 1.71, SE = 0.51, P = .001)., Conclusions: The PFC served as an indicator of risk for later attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and impairment in all children. It has predictive utility for later mood disorders only in children living above the poverty line. Predicting depression in children living below the poverty line may require consideration of risk factors not covered by the PFC., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Optimists, by definition, make inaccurate (overly positive) predictions regarding future event outcomes. Adults favor optimists as social partners. If children also prefer optimists, that preference could indicate early social benefits of being optimistic and might also shape how and what children learn regarding the likelihood of future outcomes. The present study thus sought to determine how children integrate the conflicting dimensions of optimism and accuracy in their social (friendship) preferences. Across two experiments (N = 133) 3- to 6-year-old children chose optimists over realists as social partners even if they were able to correctly identify the realist as being the most accurate of the two. However, when children made mistakes in identification, those mistakes primarily took the form of identifying the optimist as most accurate. These findings suggest that young children weigh optimism more heavily than accuracy in their affiliative relationships. Misidentifying the optimist as accurate also supports the notion that children have a bias to expect others to provide positive information. Further, a social preference for optimists might impact children's abilities to learn the true likelihood of event outcomes, as affiliating with optimists may result in setting oneself up to receive more positive (mis)information in the future. Such a preference suggests a mechanism by which optimism is perpetuated and points to potential social benefits that derive from being optimistic., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest None.

Purpose of Review: We review findings related to predictors, correlates, outcomes, and treatment of preschool depression that have been published in the last 3 years., Recent Findings: Preschool depression displays a chronic course through late adolescence and is associated with temperamental and personality traits, poorer physical health, and negative parenting practices. Preschool depression predicts deficits into adolescence, including social difficulties and blunted neural response to rewards. Depressed preschoolers can experience suicidal ideation and behaviors and display an accurate understanding of the finality of death. A treatment for preschool depression has now been validated that uses the parent-child relationship to enhance emotion development and reduce depressive symptoms. Preschool depression is homotypic with depression that occurs later in life. Future work elucidating mechanisms through which preschool depression develops and informs the sub-groups for which particular treatments may be most effective will have considerable implications for prevention and early intervention.

Peer victimization (or bullying) is a known risk factor for depression, especially among youth. However, the mechanisms connecting victimization experience to depression symptoms remains unknown. As depression is known to be associated with neural blunting to monetary rewards, aberrant responsiveness to social rewards may be a key deficit connecting socially stressful experiences with later depression. We, therefore, sought to determine whether adolescents' experiences with social stress would be related to their current response to social rewards over less socially relevant monetary rewards. Neural responses to monetary and social rewards were measured using event-related potentials (ERPs) to peer acceptance and rejection feedback (Island Getaway task) and to monetary reward and loss feedback (Doors task) in a sample of 56 late adolescents/emerging young adults followed longitudinally since preschool. In the Island Getaway task, participants voted whether to "keep" or "kick out" each co-player, providing an index of prosocial behavior, and then received feedback about how each player voted for the participant. Analyses tested whether early and recent peer victimization was related to response to rewards (peer acceptance or monetary gains), residualized for response to losses (peer rejection or monetary losses) using the reward positivity (RewP) component. Findings indicated that both experiencing greater early and greater recent peer victimization were significantly associated with participants casting fewer votes to keep other adolescents ("Keep" votes) and that greater early peer victimization was associated with reduced neural response to peer acceptance. Early and recent peer victimization were significantly more associated with neural response to social than monetary rewards. Together, these findings suggest that socially injurious experiences such as peer victimization, especially those occurring early in childhood, relate to two distinct but important findings: that early victimization is associated with later reduced response to peer acceptance, and is associated with later tendency to reject peers. Findings also suggest that there is evidence of specificity to reward processing of different types; thus, future research should expand studies of reward processing beyond monetary rewards to account for the possibility that individual differences may be related to other, more relevant, reward types.

Objective: This study characterized 3- to 6-year-old children's understanding of death as a function of depression status, suicidal ideation (SI), and media consumption., Method: Participants were 79 children with depression (3.0-6.11 years old) who completed a comprehensive psychiatric assessment and experimenter-led death interview and a comparison group of 60 healthy children (4.0-7.12 years old). The interview assessed children's understanding of 5 concepts of death: universality, applicability, irreversibility, cessation, and causality. Children's mastery of each concept and overall understanding of death was examined as a function of depression and SI status: depressed with SI (n = 22), depressed without SI (n = 57), and healthy (n = 60). Children's observed emotional reactions to hearing about natural death, accidental death, and suicide were assessed by death-themed stories. Parent reports of children's television and videogames/internet consumption assessed links between media exposure and understanding of death., Results: Children with depression and SI scored higher on overall understanding of death than those with depression without SI and healthy children. They also exhibited more sad and anxious affect listening to death-themed stories and were more likely to describe death as caused by violence. Across this sample, older children also were more likely to depict death as violent. More television use was associated with less understanding of death, including the concept of irreversibility., Conclusion: Children with depression and SI have a more advanced understanding of death than their peers, dispelling the myth that these ideations arise in the context of a poor understanding of death. The increase in violence attributions across early childhood could indicate increasing normalization of violence in children's perceptions of death., Clinical Trial Registration Information: A Randomized Controlled Trial of PCIT-ED for Preschool Depression; http://clinicaltrials.gov; NCT00595283., (Copyright © 2019 American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The classic Aesop's fable, Crow and the Pitcher, has inspired a major line of research in comparative cognition. Over the past several years, five articles (over 32 experiments) have examined the ability of corvids (e.g., rooks, crows, and jays) to complete lab-based analogs of this fable, by requiring them to drop stones and other objects into tubes of water to retrieve a floating worm (Bird and Emery in Curr Biol 19:1-5, 2009b; Cheke et al. in Anim Cogn 14:441-455, 2011; Jelbert et al. in PLoS One 3:e92895, 2014; Logan et al. in PLoS One 7:e103049, 2014; Taylor et al. in Gray R D 12:e26887, 2011). These researchers have stressed the unique potential of this paradigm for understanding causal reasoning in corvids. Ghirlanda and Lind (Anim Behav 123:239-247, 2017) re-evaluated trial-level data from these studies and concluded that initial preferences for functional objects, combined with trial-and-error learning, may account for subjects' performance on key variants of the paradigm. In the present paper, we use meta-analytic techniques to provide more precise information about the rate and mode of learning that occurs within and across tasks. Within tasks, subjects learned from successful (but not unsuccessful) actions, indicating that higher-order reasoning about phenomena such as mass, volume, and displacement is unlikely to be involved. Furthermore, subjects did not transfer information learned in one task to subsequent tasks, suggesting that corvids do not engage with these tasks as variants of the same problem (i.e., how to generate water displacement to retrieve a floating worm). Our methodological analysis and empirical findings raise the question: Can Aesop's fable studies distinguish between trial-and-error learning and/or higher-order causal reasoning? We conclude they cannot.

This study showed that 8.5-month-old infants seemed to consider the consistency of an agent's choices in attributing preferences to her. When the agent consistently chose one object over another, three or four times consecutively, infants acted as if they had interpreted her actions as evidence for her preference. In contrast, when the agent inconsistently chose between the two objects, at the ratio of 1:3, infants did not seem to interpret her actions as suggesting her preference. Converging evidence was obtained from infants' responses across a looking-time task and an action task. The results are discussed in terms of how infants might use frequencies of agents' actions directed toward different objects to understand agents' preferences., (Copyright © International Congress of Infant Studies (ICIS).)

To what extent does knowing what others like influence children's valuation of objects? The current study examined the effect of having observed another person's choices on children's decisions about objects. Specifically, we asked whether children consider what the other person does not choose. In the first of three conditions, 4-year-olds watched as an experimenter looked inside two boxes and then selected the box containing the object she liked best. Children were then asked to choose between the remaining box (that the experimenter did not take) and a neutral box (that replaced the chosen box). Children tended to select the neutral box, suggesting that they had devalued the box the experimenter did not choose. However, in the second condition, when the experimenter chose a box without first looking inside--and thus was ignorant of the contents--children chose randomly. The third condition revealed that children continued to select the neutral box even when the experimenter who made the initial choice was not present. This indicates that children's valuation of the rejected option changed rather than their choices being solely influenced by the social dynamics of the situation (e.g., reluctance to choose the box with the option the experimenter knowingly rejected while in the presence of that experimenter). Taken together, these findings suggest that by 4 years of age, children's own choices--and values--are influenced by observing others' informed choices, including what they do not choose. The findings provide new insight into the potential role of social influence in children's developing preferences., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

We investigate the hypothesis that our conceptual systems provide two formally distinct ways of representing categories by investigating the manner in which lexical nominals (e.g., tree, picnic table) and phrasal nominals (e.g., black bird, birds that like rice) are interpreted. Four experiments found that lexical nominals may be mapped onto kind representations, whereas phrasal nominals map onto class representations but not kind representations. Experiment 1 found that phrasal nominals, unlike lexical nominals, are mapped onto categories whose members need not be of a single kind. Experiments 2 and 3 found that categories named by lexical nominals enter into both class inclusion and kind hierarchies and thus support both class inclusion (is a) and kind specification (kind of) relations, whereas phrasal nominals map onto class representations which support only class inclusion relations. Experiment 4 showed that the two types of nominals represent hierarchical relations in different ways. Phrasal nominals (e.g., white bear) are mapped onto classes that have criteria of membership in addition to those specified by the class picked out by the head noun of the phrase (e.g., bear). In contrast, lexical nominals (e.g., polar bear) specify one way to meet the criteria specified by the more general kind concept (e.g., bear). Implications for the language-conceptual system interface, representation of hierarchical relations, lexicalization, and theories of conceptual combination are discussed., (Copyright © 2012 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.)