Predictors of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Symptom Trajectories During Late Childhood and Early Adolescence Using the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Dataset

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Description
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) impacts 7% of children and is associated with serious impairment throughout the lifespan. Though considered a chronic, stable condition, symptoms fluctuate substantially during adolescence, and symptom trajectory is linked to adult outcomes. A small number of studies…

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) impacts 7% of children and is associated with serious impairment throughout the lifespan. Though considered a chronic, stable condition, symptoms fluctuate substantially during adolescence, and symptom trajectory is linked to adult outcomes. A small number of studies have examined symptom trajectory during adolescence, but these have predominately examined demographic predictors. As a neurodevelopmental disorder, ADHD is theorized to arise from deficits in executive functions (EFs). Extant literature identifies three major components of EF- working memory, behavioral inhibition, and set shifting- as interrelated constructs underlying ADHD symptom expression. This study aimed to 1.) identify trajectories of ADHD symptoms, 2.) examine demographic predictors of trajectories, and 3.) examine whether EF predicts symptom trajectory using five timepoints from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study, a large-scale, representative, population-based sample from the United States. 1,605 participants meeting criteria for ADHD included in analyses. ADHD symptoms were measured by parent report on the widely used Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist. Growth Mixture Modeling was used to model trajectories of ADHD symptoms. However, poor entropy indicated trajectories were not clearly differentiated and predictors could not be examined. Therefore, exploratory regression was conducted to examine predictors of ADHD symptom change from baseline to 3-year follow-up. Male sex, medication use, greater than high school parental education, and better EF all predicted increasing ADHD symptoms. Findings must be interpreted with caution due to their exploratory nature and poor validity of the measure used for ADHD symptoms, which was found to have sensitivity of only 22.58%. Given the strong theoretical and empirical link between ADHD symptoms and EF, additional research on the connection between EF and disorder trajectory with more robust measures of EF is warranted.
Date Created
2024
Agent

Impulsive Personality Traits, Alcohol and Cannabis Co-Use, and Alcohol Problems: A Theoretically Driven Combination of Three Studies

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Description
The current dissertation combines the results of three recently published papers focused on impulsive personality traits, alcohol and cannabis co-use, and alcohol misuse. The first study used alcohol administration to test whether different impulsivity facets conferred risk for heightened alcohol…

The current dissertation combines the results of three recently published papers focused on impulsive personality traits, alcohol and cannabis co-use, and alcohol misuse. The first study used alcohol administration to test whether different impulsivity facets conferred risk for heightened alcohol craving through subjective alcohol response patterns. The second study built on this study by incorporating alcohol and cannabis co-use into the acquired preparedness model, using longitudinal data. This study tested whether generalized impulsivity and sensation seeking during late adolescence predisposed individuals to co-use alcohol and cannabis, and whether co-use was indirectly associated with alcohol problems ten years later through positive expectancies and heavy drinking. The third study tested whether impulsive traits moderated the day-level effect of alcohol and cannabis co-use (vs. alcohol-only) on within-person deviations in drinking quantity on drinking days. Through the combination of these three studies, this dissertation seeks to further advance the literature on multiplicative ways in which personality enacts risk for heavy drinking, alcohol and cannabis co-use, and alcohol problems.
Date Created
2024
Agent

Proximal Antecedents and Subjective Effects of Cannabis Use and their Relation to Cannabis Use Disorder: An Ecological Momentary Assessment of Medical Cannabis Users

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Description
With the growing popularity of medical cannabis, and high rates of cannabis use disorder (CUD) among medical cannabis users, it is more important than ever to accurately identify the proximal antecedents and subjective effects of medical cannabis use. Subjective antecedents…

With the growing popularity of medical cannabis, and high rates of cannabis use disorder (CUD) among medical cannabis users, it is more important than ever to accurately identify the proximal antecedents and subjective effects of medical cannabis use. Subjective antecedents and effects have been proposed as key mechanisms underlying the transition from cannabis use to CUD, but little research has examined medical cannabis users’ experiences in real-time, real-world settings. The current study of 86 young-adult medical cannabis users ages 18-30 (32.6% female) used ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to characterize the antecedents and effects of medical cannabis use, and to examine whether these antecedents and effects vary as a function of CUD severity. Higher craving, pain, and withdrawal symptoms predicted greater odds of cannabis use at the next report, and lower subjective ‘high’ predicted greater odds of cannabis use at the next report. Use of medical cannabis was associated with increases in positive affect, stimulation, relaxation, and subjective ‘high’, decreases in negative affect, withdrawal symptoms, craving, and pain, and increases in cognitive problems, psychotic-like experiences, and adverse bodily effects. Further, following cannabis use, medical users with more CUD symptoms reported greater relief from craving, attenuated increases in stimulation and relaxation, and enhanced increases in sluggishness, cognitive problems, psychotic-like symptoms, and bodily symptoms. Results suggest that medical cannabis use, like recreational use, is associated with a wide range of subjective antecedents and effects, and that relief from cannabis craving may play an important role in the maintenance of CUD among medical users.
Date Created
2022
Agent

Examining the Development of Acute Tolerance to Subjective Response to Alcohol in an Alcohol Administration Study

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Description
Both subjective response to alcohol and acute tolerance possess unique biphasic relations with the blood alcohol concentration curve. However, prior work has generally failed to examine shared relations between the two constructs and has yet to consider the full valence…

Both subjective response to alcohol and acute tolerance possess unique biphasic relations with the blood alcohol concentration curve. However, prior work has generally failed to examine shared relations between the two constructs and has yet to consider the full valence by arousal affective space of subjective response, nor individual differences in metabolism or peak levels of subjective intoxication. As such, the present study sought to characterize acute tolerance to subjective response in addition to examining relations between acute tolerance, subjective response, and related outcomes. Participants (N=258) were randomly assigned to receive alcohol (target blood alcohol concentration = .08 g%) as part of a large placebo-controlled alcohol administration study. Participant family history of alcohol use problems and personal history of alcohol use were collected at baseline. Subjective response to alcohol was assessed across the full valence by arousal affective space at equivalent points on the ascending and descending limbs of the blood alcohol concentration curve. Latent change scores were calculated to characterize the development of acute tolerance, and path analyses tested relations between acute tolerance to subjective response, concurrent patterns of alcohol use, and negative alcohol-related consequences. Age, sex, race/ethnicity, and drinking context were included as covariates. Acute tolerance to low arousal positive (i.e., relaxed, mellow) effects were found to be inversely related to negative consequences such that a maintenance of low arousal positive effects was associated with more negative consequences. The amount of time elapsed between measurements was found to be significantly related to the development of acute tolerance to high arousal positive (i.e., talkative, stimulated) effects, such that more time between measurements was related to a greater decrease in high arousal positive effects. Peak high arousal positive effects were found to be related to increased drinking and indirectly related to more negative consequences via drinking, whereas high arousal negative was protective against increased drinking and negative consequences. Results suggest that a maintenance of negatively reinforcing effects across the blood alcohol concentration curve may confer risk for negative consequences. Results also suggest that considering individual differences in alcohol metabolism may be useful in understanding alcohol’s rewarding, stimulating effects.
Date Created
2022
Agent

Bridging the Gap Between Chronic Pain and Mental Health in Childhood: A Genetically-Informed Study Examining the Etiology Underlying Co-occurring Symptomologies and Mechanisms of Intergenerational Transmission

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Description
Pediatric chronic pain is pervasive and associated with myriad adverse consequences, yet due consideration has not been given to the mental health disturbances that often present alongside chronic pain and the etiological mechanisms that potentially underlie both. The current study…

Pediatric chronic pain is pervasive and associated with myriad adverse consequences, yet due consideration has not been given to the mental health disturbances that often present alongside chronic pain and the etiological mechanisms that potentially underlie both. The current study examined the etiology underlying chronic pain and internalizing symptomology in middle childhood, considering both independent and co-occurring symptom presentations. Phenotypic parent-offspring associations across chronic pain and internalizing symptomology were also examined. Lastly, nuclear twin family models were tested to determine the extent to which genetic and environmental factors underlie parent-offspring transmission. The sample comprised 795 children (399 families; Mage= 9.7 years; SD = 0.92) and their parents drawn from the Arizona Twin Project. Results indicated that chronic pain was highly heritable (78%), whereas internalizing symptomology was modestly heritable (32%) and further subject to moderate shared environmental influence (50%). Moreover, 9% of the variance in chronic pain was explained by additive genetic factors shared with internalizing symptomology. Maternal chronic pain and internalizing symptomology were positively associated with both child chronic pain and internalizing symptomology. The association between maternal chronic pain and child chronic pain was more pronounced for girls than boys, whereas the association between maternal internalizing symptomology and child internalizing symptomology was more pronounced for boys than girls. Paternal chronic pain was not significantly associated with child chronic pain but was unexpectedly associated with lower child internalizing symptomology. The negative association between paternal chronic pain and child internalizing symptomology was more pronounced for boys than girls. Paternal internalizing symptomology was not significantly associated with child chronic pain but was positively associated with child internalizing symptomology. Lastly, the best fitting reduced nuclear twin family models for both chronic pain and internalizing symptomology retained additive genetic, sibling-specific shared environmental, and nonshared environmental parameters, where parent-offspring transmission was solely explained by shared genetics and sibling-specific shared environmental factors further accounted for co-twin resemblance. Results provide novel insight into common liabilities underlying chronic pain and internalizing symptomology in middle childhood, parent-offspring associations across chronic pain and internalizing symptomology, and the etiological mechanisms that explain symptom aggregation across generations.
Date Created
2021
Agent

Mental Health Status and History of Suicidality as Predictors of Suicide Note Leaving Behavior

Description

Suicide is a significant public health problem, with incidence rates and lethality continuing to increase yearly. Given the large human and financial cost of suicide worldwide alongside the lack of progress in suicide prediction, more research is needed to inform…

Suicide is a significant public health problem, with incidence rates and lethality continuing to increase yearly. Given the large human and financial cost of suicide worldwide alongside the lack of progress in suicide prediction, more research is needed to inform suicide prevention and intervention efforts. This study approaches suicide from the lens of suicide note-leaving behavior, which can provide important information on predictors of suicide. Specifically, this study adds to the existing literature on note-leaving by examining history of suicidality, mental health problems, and their interaction in predicting suicide note-leaving, in addition to demographic predictors of note-leaving examined in previous research using data from the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS, n = 98,515). We fit a logistic regression model predicting leaving a suicide note or not, the results of which indicated that those with mental health problems or a history of suicidality were more likely to leave a suicide note than those without such histories, and those with both mental health problems and a history of suicidality were most likely to leave a suicide note. These findings reinforce the need to tailor suicide prevention efforts toward identifying and targeting higher risk populations.

Date Created
2022-05
Agent

Between- and Within-Family Predictors of Educational Attainment

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Description

Adolescence is an important period of scaffolding for educational attainment, which is among the strongest predictors of outcomes in multiple domains. Parents who encourage academic success and promote self-regulation may enhance their offspring’s educational attainment. However, parents with externalizing disorders…

Adolescence is an important period of scaffolding for educational attainment, which is among the strongest predictors of outcomes in multiple domains. Parents who encourage academic success and promote self-regulation may enhance their offspring’s educational attainment. However, parents with externalizing disorders present a complex constellation of risk factors, including low educational attainment and poor parenting, and are more likely to have children with high levels of disinhibition. Previous research has identified low parental education, poor parenting and adolescent impulsivity as threats to educational attainment, but has not examined risk factors for discrepancies in educational attainment among siblings of the same family. Furthermore, studies have not examined the between- and within-family mechanisms that may explain why adolescents with externalizing parents have low educational attainment. The current study addressed these gaps by testing between- and within-family predictors of educational attainment using data from a longitudinal, multigenerational study that oversampled families at risk for alcohol use disorder. The sample consisted of 555 biological siblings within 240 families. We tested whether parental externalizing predicted lower educational attainment through parents’ own lower education, parents’ differential treatment of offspring, and impulsivity. Results suggested that between families, parents with externalizing disorders had lower educational attainment and more impulsive offspring, but did not exhibit increased differential parenting. Within families, siblings with greater impulsivity had lower educational attainment, whereas receiving more preferential maternal treatment than one’s siblings predicted higher educational attainment. Low parental educational attainment mediated the relation between parental externalizing disorders and low offspring educational attainment.

Date Created
2021-12
Agent

Examining Parents’ Personality within a Five Factor Model Predicting Negative and Positive Urgency in Their Adolescent Children

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Description
Negative Urgency and Positive Urgency are important subfacets of a propensity to rash action. There is currently limited research on parental antecedents of Negative Urgency and Positive Urgency. The current study investigated whether parent personality and parenting behaviors predict adolescent…

Negative Urgency and Positive Urgency are important subfacets of a propensity to rash action. There is currently limited research on parental antecedents of Negative Urgency and Positive Urgency. The current study investigated whether parent personality and parenting behaviors predict adolescent Negative Urgency and Positive Urgency. Data were taken from a community sample with parent personality, positive parenting behaviors, and child Negative Urgency and Positive Urgency measured at separate timepoints. Structural equation models were used to examine whether parent personality predicted adolescent Negative Urgency and Positive Urgency and whether positive parenting mediated this relationship. There was no evidence for a relationship between parent personality and children’s Negative Urgency and Positive Urgency. In addition, there was no relationship between parenting behaviors and child Negative and Positive Urgency in cross-reporter models, but child-reported parenting predicted later adolescent-reported Negative and Positive Urgency. Greater positive parenting, as perceived by children, was related to less Negative and Positive Urgency when they were adolescents. More research is needed to understand whether the current results are due to reporter bias or whether child-perceived parenting behaviors influence the development of adolescent Negative and Positive Urgency.
Date Created
2022
Agent
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