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The COVID Stress Scales (CSS) were developed to measure stress in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. To further investigate the psychometric properties of the CSS, we used data collected in Poland across two waves of assessment (N = 556 at T1 and N = 264 at T2) to evaluate the factor structure, reliability (at the item and scale level), measurement invariance (across the Polish and Dutch translations of the CSS, and time), over time stability, and external associations of the Polish-language version of the CSS (CSS-PL). Overall, results suggest that the CSS-PL is psychometrically robust, largely invariant across the countries and time-lags considered. The CSS-PL was also positively related to other measures of COVID-19 fear, health anxiety, obsessive compulsive symptoms, anxiety, depression, and intent to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. This study thus provides considerable information about the CSS’s items and scales, and lays the foundation for future investigations into COVID stress across time and different populations.

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is a highly contagious disease responsible for millions of deaths worldwide. Effective vaccines against COVID-19 are now available, however, an extreme form of vaccine hesitancy known as anti-vax attitudes challenge vaccine acceptance and distribution efforts. To understand these anti-vax attitudes and their associated psychological characteristics, we examined several predictors of vaccine hesitancy for COVID-19 and anti-vax attitudes generally. We surveyed 1004 adults (M = 47.0 years, SD = 17.1 years, range 18–98 years) in September-October 2020 across the United States (51% female, 49% male; 76.5% White, 23.5% non-White), prior to widespread availability of the COVID-19 vaccines. Attitudes toward vaccinations were influenced by a variety of factors, especially political attitudes. We should therefore anticipate and attempt to mitigate these challenges to achieving widespread vaccination to reduce the spread of COVID-19 and other communicable diseases.

The murder of George Floyd and subsequent mass protest movement in the summer of 2020 brought policing, race, and police brutality to the forefront of American political discourse. We examined mean-levels of attitudes about police and race using online surveys administered at five time points from June 2020 to October 2021 ( n ~ 1000 at each wave) to adults living in the United States. There was a small increase in pro-police attitudes over this time ( d = .24), and some evidence that mean-levels of pro-police attitudes increased more for Black participants ( d = .51) than White participants ( d = .20), and more for Democrats ( d = .40) than Republicans ( d = .15). Pro-police attitudes were much lower among Black participants than White participants (mean d = -1.04), and–relative to political independents–lower among Democrats (mean d = -.66) and higher among Republicans (mean d = .72). Pro-police attitudes had large associations with a variety of conservative or right-wing political attitudes (e.g., approval of Donald Trump) and COVID-19 variables (e.g., disapproval of government mandates and restrictions), but were unrelated to psychiatric problems and substance use. These results validate a new measure of police attitudes, provide information on trends in police attitudes over the 15 months following the largest mass protests against police brutality in American history, and begin to establish the nomological network of police attitudes, finding that pro-police attitudes are firmly within the right-wing coalition of American politics.

This study examined how youth aggressive and delinquent externalizing problem behaviors across childhood and adolescence are connected to consequential psychosocial life outcomes in adulthood. Using data from a longitudinal, high-risk sample ( = 1069) that assessed children and their parents regularly from early childhood (ages 3-5) through adulthood, multilevel growth factors of externalizing behaviors were used to predict adult outcomes (age 24-31), providing a sense of how externalizing problems across development were related to these outcomes via maternal, paternal, teacher, and child report. Findings indicated strong support for the lasting connections between youth externalizing problems with later educational attainment and legal difficulties, spanning informants and enduring beyond other meaningful contributors (i.e., child sex, cognitive ability, parental income and education, parental mental health and relationship quality). Some support was also found, although less consistently, linking externalizing problems and later alcohol use as well as romantic relationship quality. Delinquent/rule-breaking behaviors were often stronger predictors of later outcomes than aggressive behaviors. Taken together, these results indicate the importance of the role youth externalizing behaviors have in adult psychosocial functioning one to two decades later.

Structural models of psychopathology consistently identify internalizing (INT) and externalizing (EXT) specific factors as well as a superordinate factor that captures their shared variance, the factor. Questions remain, however, about the meaning of these data-driven dimensions and the interpretability and distinguishability of the larger nomological networks in which they are embedded. The sample consisted of 10 645 youth aged 9-10 years participating in the multisite Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. , INT, and EXT were modeled using the parent-rated Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). Patterns of associations were examined with variables drawn from diverse domains including demographics, psychopathology, temperament, family history of substance use and psychopathology, school and family environment, and cognitive ability, using instruments based on youth-, parent-, and teacher-report, and behavioral task performance. exhibited a broad pattern of statistically significant associations with risk variables across all domains assessed, including temperament, neurocognition, and social adversity. The specific factors exhibited more domain-specific patterns of associations, with INT exhibiting greater fear/distress and EXT exhibiting greater impulsivity. In this largest study of hierarchical models of psychopathology to date, we found that , INT, and EXT exhibit well-differentiated nomological networks that are interpretable in terms of neurocognition, impulsivity, fear/distress, and social adversity. These networks were, in contrast, obscured when relying on the a priori Internalizing and Externalizing dimensions of the CBCL scales. Our findings add to the evidence for the validity of , INT, and EXT as theoretically and empirically meaningful broad psychopathology liabilities.

Educational success is associated with greater quality of life and depends, in part, on heritable cognitive and non-cognitive traits. We used polygenic scores (PGS) for smoking and educational attainment to examine different genetic influences on facets of academic adjustment in adolescence and educational attainment in adulthood. PGSs were calculated for participants of the Minnesota Twin Family Study ( N = 3225) and included as predictors of grades, academic motivation, and discipline problems at ages 11, 14, and 17 years-old, cigarettes per day from ages 14 to 24 years old, and educational attainment in adulthood (mean age 29.4 years). Smoking and educational attainment PGSs had significant incremental associations with each academic variable and cigarettes per day. About half of the adjusted effects of the smoking and education PGSs on educational attainment in adulthood were mediated by the academic variables in adolescence. Cigarettes per day from ages 14 to 24 years old did not account for the effect of the smoking PGS on educational attainment, suggesting the smoking PGS indexes genetic influences related to general behavioral disinhibition. In sum, distinct genetic influences measured by the smoking and educational attainment PGSs contribute to academic adjustment in adolescence and educational attainment in adulthood.

Sexual debut, or first intercourse, predicts problem behaviors such as substance use. This association could reflect a direct effect of debut itself, general developmental trends, or the fact that some youth are more predisposed to a wide array of problem behaviors (e.g., risky sex, substance use). Understanding the association between sexual debut and substance use thus requires methods that can distinguish between these various accounts. In this study the association between sexual debut and substance use was investigated in a longitudinal sample of Mexican-origin youth (N = 674) assessed annually from 5th (Mage = 10.86 years, SD = 0.51) through 12th grade (Mage = 17.69 years, SD = 0.48). The longitudinal aspect of the data allowed the direct effect of sexual debut on substance use to be tested while accounting for long-term trends in substance use, and stable individual differences in those trends based on early risk and debut timing. Substance use increased over time, and early risk and debut were consistently associated with more substance use. Sexual debut also modestly predicted an increase in substance use after accounting for these effects, however. Taken together, results provide some evidence consistent with each of the potential explanations for the association between sexual debut and substance use across adolescence.

Although it is well known that parental depression is transmitted within families across generations, the etiology of this transmission remains unclear. Our goal was to develop a novel study design capable of explicitly examining the etiologic sources of intergenerational transmission. We specifically leveraged naturally-occurring variations in genetic relatedness between parents and their adolescent children in the 720 families participating in the Nonshared Environment in Adolescent Development (NEAD) study, 58.5% of which included a rearing stepparent (nearly always a stepfather). Results pointed squarely to the environmental transmission of psychopathology between fathers and children. Paternal depression was associated with adolescent depression and adolescent behavior problems (i.e., antisocial behavior, headstrong behavior, and attention problems) regardless of whether or not fathers and their children were genetically related. Moreover, these associations persisted to a subset of “blended” families in which the father was biologically related to one participating child but not to the other, and appeared to be mediated via father–child conflict. Such findings are not only fully consistent with the environmental transmission of psychopathology across generations, but also add to extant evidence that parent–child conflict is a robust and at least partially environmental predictor of adolescent psychopathology.

General cognitive ability (GCA) is an individual difference dimension linked to important academic, occupational, and health-related outcomes and its development is strongly linked to differences in socioeconomic status (SES). Complex abilities of the human brain are realized through interconnections among distributed brain regions, but brain-wide connectivity patterns associated with GCA in youth, and the influence of SES on these connectivity patterns, are poorly understood. The present study examined functional connectomes from 5937 9- and 10-year-olds in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) multi-site study. Using multivariate predictive modeling methods, we identified whole-brain functional connectivity patterns linked to GCA. In leave-one-site-out cross-validation, we found these connectivity patterns exhibited strong and statistically reliable generalization at 19 out of 19 held-out sites accounting for 18.0% of the variance in GCA scores (cross-validated partial η2). GCA-related connections were remarkably dispersed across brain networks: across 120 sets of connections linking pairs of large-scale networks, significantly elevated GCA-related connectivity was found in 110 of them, and differences in levels of GCA-related connectivity across brain networks were notably modest. Consistent with prior work, socioeconomic status was a strong predictor of GCA in this sample, and we found that distributed GCA-related brain connectivity patterns significantly statistically mediated this relationship (mean proportion mediated: 15.6%, p < 2 × 10−16). These results demonstrate that socioeconomic status and GCA are related to broad and diffuse differences in functional connectivity architecture during early adolescence, potentially suggesting a mechanism through which socioeconomic status influences cognitive development.

Recent well-powered genome-wide association studies have enhanced prediction of substance use outcomes via polygenic scores (PGSs). Here, we test (1) whether these scores contribute to prediction over-and-above family history, (2) the extent to which PGS prediction reflects inherited genetic variation demography (population stratification and assortative mating) and indirect genetic effects of parents (genetic nurture), and (3) whether PGS prediction is mediated by behavioral disinhibition prior to substance use onset. PGSs for alcohol, cannabis, and nicotine use/use disorder were calculated for Minnesota Twin Family Study participants ( = 2483, 1565 monozygotic/918 dizygotic). Twins' parents were assessed for histories of substance use disorder. Twins were assessed for behavioral disinhibition at age 11 and substance use from ages 14 to 24. PGS prediction of substance use was examined using linear mixed-effects, within-twin pair, and structural equation models. Nearly all PGS measures were associated with multiple types of substance use independently of family history. However, most within-pair PGS prediction estimates were substantially smaller than the corresponding between-pair estimates, suggesting that prediction is driven in part by demography and indirect genetic effects of parents. Path analyses indicated the effects of both PGSs and family history on substance use were mediated via disinhibition in preadolescence. PGSs capturing risk of substance use and use disorder can be combined with family history measures to augment prediction of substance use outcomes. Results highlight indirect sources of genetic associations and preadolescent elevations in behavioral disinhibition as two routes through which these scores may relate to substance use.