UNLABELLED: Emotion regulation (ER) strategies and beliefs about emotions (implicit theories of emotions; ITE) may shape psychosocial outcomes during turbulent times, including the transition to adulthood and college while encountering stressors. The normative stressors associated with these transitions were compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, providing a novel opportunity to examine how emerging adults (EAs) cope with sustained stressors. Stress exposures can heighten existing individual differences and serve as turning points that predict psychosocial trajectories. This pre-registered study (https://osf.io/k8mes) of 101 EAs (18-19 years old) examined whether ITE (believing emotions can change or not; incremental vs. entity beliefs) and ER strategy usage (cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression usage) predicted changes in anxiety symptomatology and feelings of loneliness across five longitudinal assessments (across a 6-month period) before and during the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic. On average, EAs anxiety decreased after the pandemic outbreak but returned to baseline over time, while loneliness remained relatively unchanged across time. ITE explained variance in anxiety across time over and above reappraisal use. Conversely, reappraisal use explained variance in loneliness over and above ITE. For both anxiety and loneliness, suppression use resulted in maladaptive psychosocial outcomes across time. Thus, interventions that target ER strategies and ITE may ameliorate risk and promote resilience in EAs who experience increased instability. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-023-00187-0.

Understanding adolescent decision-making is significant for informing basic models of neurodevelopment as well as for the domains of public health and criminal justice. System-based theories posit that adolescent decision-making is guided by activity amongst reward and control processes. While successful at explaining behavior, system-based theories have received inconsistent support at the neural level, perhaps because of methodological limitations. Here, we used two complementary approaches to overcome said limitations and rigorously evaluate system-based models. Using decision-level modeling of fMRI data from a risk-taking task in a sample of 2000+ decisions across 51 human adolescents (25 females, mean age = 15.00 years), we find support for system-based theories of decision-making. Neural activity in lateral prefrontal cortex and a multivariate pattern of cognitive control both predicted a reduced likelihood of risk-taking, whereas increased activity in the nucleus accumbens predicted a greater likelihood of risk-taking. Interactions between decision-level brain activity and age were not observed. These results garner support for system-based accounts of adolescent decision-making behavior.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT:Adolescent decision-making behavior is of great import for basic science, and carries equally consequential implications for public health and criminal justice. While dominant psychological theories seeking to explain adolescent decision-making have found empirical support, their neuroscientific implementations have received inconsistent support. This may be partly due to statistical approaches employed by prior neuroimaging studies of system-based theories. We used brain modeling-an approach that predicts behavior from brain activity-of univariate and multivariate neural activity metrics to better understand how neural components of psychological systems guide decision behavior in adolescents. We found broad support for system-based theories such that neural systems involved in cognitive control predicted a reduced likelihood to make risky decisions, whereas value-based systems predicted greater risk-taking propensity.

Beginning college involves changes that can increase one's vulnerability to loneliness and associated negative outcomes. Parent and friend relationships are potential protective factors against loneliness given their positive association with adjustment. The present longitudinal study, with data collection at baseline, 1 month, and 2 months later, assessed the comparative effects of self-reported parent and friend relationship quality on loneliness in first-year college students (N = 101; 80 female, M_age = 18.36). At baseline, parent and friend relationship quality were negatively associated with loneliness. Longitudinal data revealed that friend relationship quality interacted with time, such that its effects on loneliness attenuated over the course of 2 months. By contrast, parent relationship quality continued to predict lower loneliness 2 months post-baseline. These results highlight the importance of close relationships and suggest that targeting relationship quality could be effective in helping youth transition to college.

Background

Reward and threat processes work together to support adaptive learning during development. Adolescence is associated with increasing approach behavior (e.g., novelty-seeking, risk-taking) but often also coincides with emerging internalizing symptoms, which are characterized by heightened avoidance behavior. Peaking engagement of the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) during adolescence, often studied in reward paradigms, may also relate to threat mechanisms of adolescent psychopathology.

Methods

47 typically developing adolescents (9.9-22.9 years) completed an aversive learning task during functional magnetic resonance imaging, wherein visual cues were paired with an aversive sound or no sound. Task blocks involved an escapable aversively reinforced stimulus (CS+_r), the same stimulus without reinforcement (CS+_nr), or a stimulus that was never reinforced (CS-). Parent-reported internalizing symptoms were measured using Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scales.

Results

Functional connectivity between the NAcc and amygdala differentiated the stimuli, such that connectivity increased for the CS+_r (p = .023) but not for the CS+_nr and CS-. Adolescents with greater internalizing symptoms demonstrated greater positive functional connectivity for the CS- (p = .041).

Conclusions

Adolescents show heightened NAcc-amygdala functional connectivity during escape from threat. Higher anxiety and depression symptoms are associated with elevated NAcc-amygdala connectivity during safety, which may reflect poor safety versus threat discrimination.

Early caregiving adversity (ECA) is associated with elevated psychological symptomatology. While neurobehavioral ECA research has focused on socioemotional and cognitive development, ECA may also increase risk for low-level sensory processing challenges. However, no prior work has compared how diverse ECA exposures differentially relate to sensory processing, or, critically, how this might influence psychological outcomes. We examined sensory processing challenges in 183 8-17-year-old youth with and without histories of institutional (orphanage) or foster caregiving, with a particular focus on sensory over-responsivity (SOR), a pattern of intensified responses to sensory stimuli that may negatively impact mental health. We further tested whether sensory processing challenges are linked to elevated internalizing and externalizing symptoms common in ECA-exposed youth. Relative to nonadopted comparison youth, both groups of ECA-exposed youth had elevated sensory processing challenges, including SOR, and also had heightened internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Additionally, we found significant indirect effects of ECA on internalizing and externalizing symptoms through both general sensory processing challenges and SOR, covarying for age and sex assigned at birth. These findings suggest multiple forms of ECA confer risk for sensory processing challenges that may contribute to mental health outcomes, and motivate continuing examination of these symptoms, with possible long-term implications for screening and treatment following ECA.