The relationship between a range of prenatal and perinatal events and risk forpsychopathology in offspring was examined. Prenatal and perinatal events investigated includedmaternal experiences, health, and substance use during pregnancy, obstetric complications,feeding practices, and infant health during the first year of life. Offspring diagnosis was based onstructured interviews conducted with 579 adolescents on two occasions. Risk for laterpsychopathology was associated with a number of prenatal and perinatal factors. Majordepression was associated with not being breast fed and maternal emotional problems during thepregnancy. Anxiety was chiefly associated with fever and illness during the first year of life andmaternal history of miscarriage and stillbirth. Disruptive behavior disorder was associated withpoor maternal emotional health during the pregnancy and birth complications. Risk for substanceuse disorder was associated with maternal use of substances during the pregnancy. Mediatingeffects of maternal depression, maternal–child conflict, and physical symptoms in thechild, and moderating effects of gender of child and parental education were also evaluated. Thelimitations of this study are discussed and future research directions are suggested.

While research has well documented that urban youth are exposed to increasing rates ofcommunity violence, little is known about what increases risk for violence exposure, whatprotects children from exposure to violence, and what factors reduce the most negative outcomesassociated with witnessing violence. This study expands on current research by evaluating therelations between exposure to violence, family relationship characteristics and parentingpractices, and aggression and depression symptoms. Data were drawn from a sample of 245African-American and Latino boys and their caregivers from economically disadvantagedinner-city neighborhoods in Chicago. Rates of exposure could not be predicted from familyrelationship and parenting characteristics, although there was a trend for discipline to be related.Exposure to community violence was related to increases in aggressive behavior and depressionover a 1-year period even after controlling for previous status. Future studies should continue toevaluate the role of exposure to violence on the development of youth among differentneighborhoods and communities. Implications for intervention and policy are discussed.

Cicchetti and Lynch have conceptualizedecological contexts as consisting of nested levels with varying degrees of proximity to theindividual. These levels of the environment interact and transact with each other over time inshaping individual development and adaptation. With a sample of maltreated (n =188) and nonmaltreated (n = 134) children between the ages of 7 and 12 years, thisinvestigation employed a 1-year longitudinal design to conduct an ecological-transactionalanalysis of the mutual relationships among community violence, child maltreatment, andchildren's functioning over time. Indicators of children's functioning wereexternalizing and internalizing behavior problems and self-rated traumatic stress reactions,depressive symptomatology, and self-esteem. Either full or partial support was obtained for thestudy's primary hypotheses. Rates of maltreatment, particularly physical abuse, wererelated to levels of child-reported violence in the community. In addition, child maltreatment andexposure to community violence were related to different aspects of children'sfunctioning. Specific effects were observed for neglect and sexual abuse and for witnessing andbeing victimized by violence in the community. Finally, there was evidence that children andtheir contexts mutually influence each other over time. Results were discussed within theframework of an ecological-transactional model of development.

Whereas the social and emotionalconsequences of childhood trauma are well documented, less is known about how young childrenunderstand, represent, and remember traumatic experiences. A review of the literature indicatesstriking similarities in the development of young children's ability to recall traumatic andnontraumatic events. More specifically, events experienced before the age of about 18 months donot seem to be verbally accessible; events experienced between about 18 months and2.5–3 years are reported in fragmentary fashion and seem to be prone to increasing errorover time. From about age 3 years on, children can give reasonably coherent accounts of theirpast experiences and can retain these memories over long durations. The ways in which childrenare able to participate in conversations about events as they are occurring and in retrospect seemsto play a critical role in their developing event memories. Implications of the empirical data forunderstanding trauma memory in childhood are discussed.

In this review we examinefactors hypothesized to affect children's memory for traumatic events. Theoretical ideas onthe processing and remembering of trauma are presented and critiqued. We review research onhow psychopathology may generally influence and dissociation and posttraumatic stress disordermay specifically influence children's memory and suggestibility. The special case of childmaltreatment is addressed as it relates to interviewing children about traumatic life experiences.Throughout we draw on current developmental, cognitive, social, and clinical theory andresearch. The review covers a controversial and exciting area of psychological inquiry.

Objectives of this study were to ascertain risk and protective factors in the adjustment of 78school-age and teenage offspring of opioid- and cocaine-abusing mothers. Using a multimethod,multiinformant approach, child outcomes were operationalized via lifetime psychiatric diagnosesand everyday social competence (each based on both mother and child reports), and dimensionalassessments of symptoms (mother report). Risk/protective factors examined included thechild sociodemographic attributes of gender, age, and ethnicity, aspects of maternalpsychopathology, and both mother's and children's cognitive functioning. Resultsrevealed that greater child maladjustment was linked with increasing age, Caucasian (as opposedto African American) ethnicity, severity of maternal psychiatric disturbance, higher maternalcognitive abilities (among African Americans) and lower child cognitive abilities (amongCaucasians). Limitations of the study are discussed, as are implications of findings for futureresearch.

A trajectory defined by threetime-ordered events was offered as a useful adjunct to building a development theory aboutantisocial behaviors. A sequence was defined with significant linkages between antisocialchildhood behavior and early arrest and between early arrest and chronic offending. The majorityof chronic offenders traveled through all three events in the sequence. Each event in the sequenceshared a common process of disrupted family process plus frequent family transitions andmarked social disadvantage. The findings support the hypothesis that the process that leads toantisocial behaviors at grade four may also maintain the entire sequence. The level of disruptedprocess at initiation and a time-based measure of involvement with deviant peers predicted whichindividuals moved forward in the sequence and which did not. The findings are consistent withthe idea that the majority of chronic offending juveniles follow a trajectory that can be explainedby a single theory.

This study explored the effects ofstructural and experiential neighborhood factors and developmental stage on antisocial behavior,among a sample of poor urban adolescents in New York City. Conceptually and empiricallydistinct profiles of neighborhood experience were derived from the data, based on measures ofperceived neighborhood cohesion, poverty-related hassles, and involvement in neighborhoodorganizations and activities. Both the profiles of neighborhood experience and a measure ofcensus-tract-level neighborhood hazard (poverty and violence) showed relationships to antisocialbehavior. Contrary to expectation, higher levels of antisocial behavior were reported amongadolescents residing in moderate-structural-risk neighborhoods than those in high-structural-riskneighborhoods. This effect held only for teens in middle (not early) adolescence and was strongerfor teens perceiving their neighborhoods as hassling than for those who did not. Implications forfuture research and preventive intervention are discussed.

Research has shown that offspring of depressed caregivers areat increased risk for maladaptive development and emotional difficulties. Specifically, infantsand toddlers of depressed mothers have been shown to evidence higher percentages of insecureattachments and more behavioral difficulties than offspring of nondisordered mothers. However,even in studies that reveal significant differences between children of depressed andnondepressed caregivers, a substantial number of children with depressed caregivers do notevidence dysfunction. Such findings have resulted in increased attention to the broader socialcontext in which children of depressed mothers develop. This investigation examined the directinfluences of maternal depression on child development, as well as the role of contextual risksthat may be particularly heightened in families with depressed parents. Toddlers with depressedmothers evidenced significantly more insecure attachments than did toddlers with nondisorderedmothers, and this difference was not accounted for by contextual risk. In predicting childbehavior problems, contextual risk was found to mediate the relation between maternaldepression and child behavior problems. Father-report data on child behavior corroborated themother report data. Results are discussed in terms of the diversity of functioning in offspring ofdepressed caregivers that can be attributed to varied levels of contextual risk accompanyingdepression.

Research on the effects of child maltreatment and exposure to communityviolence suggests that children who experience these types of traumatic events may be at risk foralterations and biases in attention and memory similar to those that have been observed in adultssuffering from traumatic stress reactions. Along these lines, attachment theory posits thatrepresentational models of relationships also may act as moderators of similar cognitive biasesby selectively guiding children's attention to and processing of interpersonal stimuli.Building upon the trauma and attachment literatures, the present investigation examined the linksamong trauma, representational models of caregivers, and children's memory formother-relevant information using an incidental recall task in a sample of maltreated(n = 71) and nonmaltreated (n = 102) children between the ages of 8 and 13years.Results were consistent with the hypothesis that experiences of trauma and representationalmodels of caregivers are associated with differences in the way children process and retrieveinformation about positive and negative mother attribute words. In particular, experiences oftrauma initially were associated with increased insecurity in children's representationalmodels. Moreover, the interaction of traumatic experience and security of mental representationpredicted children's recall for mother attribute words: victimized children with insecuremodels recalled the highest proportion of negative mother stimuli. Trauma and mentalrepresentation did not have a consistent effect on structurally encoded aspects of recall. Resultswere discussed in terms of the ways in which children who have experienced trauma processinformation about their worlds. The importance of assessing functioning in multipledevelopmental domains when studying memory also was discussed.

This article examines the role of adolescent social relationships in fostering the occurrenceand co-occurrence of depression and substance abuse, using two waves of data from acommunity sample of adolescents (N = 900). Multinomial logistic response modelswere estimated to identify the extent to which risk and protective features of youths'family and peer relations were differentially linked with depressive symptoms, substance abuse,and their co-occurrence. Taking a within-person, configurational approach to adolescentadaptation, contrasts involved four subgroups of adolescents: those high on both depressed moodand substance abuse, those who experience neither problem, those evidencing high levels ofdepressive symptoms only, and those high on substance abuse only. Risk for depressivesymptoms was differentiated by its association with conflict and lack of support in the friendshipdomain. Substance abuse was associated with negative peer pressure, but these youth wereotherwise little different from youths with no problems. Whereas co-occurrence of depressionand substance use was associated with more difficulties in both the family and peerenvironments, the most distinctive risk was that of low family support. Discussion centers on thedevelopmental antecedents of co-occurring problems and family relations duringadolescence.

The present article addresses issues concerning thecomplex relation between memory and trauma in childhood and adult life. Research findingsshowing how children and adults remember public and personal emotional events are presented,and mechanisms functioning to hold traumatic memories back from awareness are discussed. Inthe final section, developmental aspects are addressed by considering the interplay between childand adult trauma. Several cases are described that show how childhood trauma may berepresented in memory and influence later development and adult memory processes.

Utilizing attachment theory as a basis for conceptualizing close relationships amongadolescents, this study investigated two important relationship risk factors (child maltreatment,and adolescent self-perceived insecure attachment style) as predictors of“offender” and “victim” experiences in youth relationships. Inaddition to considering the influence of these risk factors, we further considered their interactionin predicting conflict in close relationships. Of interest was the extent to which attachment stylesmay function as a moderator of the relationship between childhood abuse and current abuse inteen close relationships. High school students (N = 321) in grades 9 and 10 completedquestionnaires tapping their histories of maltreatment, currently viewed styles of attachment, andconflict in close relationships over the past 6 months. Maltreatment alone emerged as the mostconsistent predictor, accounting for 13–18% of the variance in male's physically,sexually, and verbally abusive behaviors; in contrast, it was not highly predictive offemale's abusive behaviors. Maltreatment was predictive of victimization experiences forboth males and females. Attachment style did not substantially add to the prediction ofrelationship conflict beyond maltreatment; however, avoidant attachment style emergedrepeatedly as a significant predictor of female abusiveness and victimization. Attachmentself-ratings were found to function as a moderator of child maltreatment in predicting primarilymale coercive behavior towards a relationship partner as well as predicting male'sexperience of coercion from a partner. Thus, the presence of childhood maltreatment andadolescent self-perceived insecure attachment style applies predominantly to male youth. Theimplication of these gender differences for understanding relationship violence is discussed.

To examine the effects of infant negativeemotionality and of mothering and fathering during the toddler years on 3-year-old boys'externalizing problems and inhibition, as well as explore the proposition that children vary intheir susceptibility to rearing influence, 125 first-born, Caucasian boys from maritally intactfamilies were studied. Results revealed that when infant negativity is measured with objective,replicable, and discriminantly valid procedures, no relation obtains between it and externalizingproblems (nor inhibition). Moreover, as hypothesized on the basis of prior work, parenting was astronger predictor of externalizing problems and inhibition in the case of children who werehighly negative as infants. Mothering proved a stronger predictor of externalizing problems andfathering of inhibition, with more negative mothering in the 2nd and 3rd year forecasting higherCBCL-externalizing scores and less negative fathering in the 2nd and 3rd year and more positivefathering in the 2nd year forecasting more inhibition at age 3. Implications of these findings forstudies of parental influence are considered.

The following paragraphs were missing from the original article published in 1995.Beginning with the last paragraph on page 706, the text to the end of the section is here reprinted.We regret the omission and any problems it may have caused.

How do clinical observations of repressionsquare with experimental evidence suggesting that emotionally arousing memories are especiallyenduring? This discrepancy can be understood by examining three kinds of memory distortionsthat give the impression in a clinical context, of repression. Potentially traumatic events such aschildhood sexual abuse (CSA) may be subject to ordinary forgetting. Recent research suggestspeople who fail to understand the sexual nature of CSA report that they remember it less well. Inother words, the event occurred and it was forgotten, but not “repressed.” Inaddition, people may be wrong about experiencing a period of forgetting, i.e. the event occurredbut was never forgotten. Finally, people may believe that a particular traumatic event occurredand was repressed when, in fact, it did not happen in the first place. Under certain circumstances,some combination of these distortions could lead to situations that are mistakenly interpreted asrepression.

Adopting a motivational perspectiveon adolescent development, these two companion studies examined the longitudinal relationsbetween early adolescents' school motivation (competence beliefs and values),achievement, emotional functioning (depressive symptoms and anger), and middle schoolperceptions using both variable- and person-centered analytic techniques. Data were collectedfrom 1041 adolescents and their parents at the beginning of seventh and the end of eighth gradein middle school. Controlling for demographic factors, regression analyses in Study 1 showedreciprocal relations between school motivation and positive emotional functioning over time.Furthermore, adolescents' perceptions of the middle school learning environment (supportfor competence and autonomy, quality of relationships with teachers) predicted their eighth grademotivation, achievement, and emotional functioning after accounting for demographic and prioradjustment measures. Cluster analyses in Study 2 revealed several different patterns of schoolfunctioning and emotional functioning during seventh grade that were stable over 2 years andthat were predictably related to adolescents' reports of their middle school environment.Discussion focuses on the developmental significance of schooling for multiple adjustmentoutcomes during adolescence.

Many aspects of brain development dependon experience. Because the major macro-morphological events of brain development occur overthe first 2–3 years of postnatal life, this time period can be considered both a period ofopportunity as well as a period of vulnerability. In this paper we describe how experience withstress early in life can have a negative impact on certain aspects of brain development, andspecifically, those neural circuits that underlie memory. We also describe the effects of traumaticevents on the development of the neural basis of memory. In support of our argument, we reviewthe literature on brain, stress, and memory in the context of development. Based on this review,we suggest that the developing brain is particularly vulnerable to the harmful physiologicaleffects of stress, which in turn has the potential to lead to impairments in memory.Unfortunately, there are few empirical data that directly address this hypothesis. In this contextwe offer a number of suggestions for future research.

The primary goal of this research is to increase the goodness-of-fit between thetheoretical tenets of family systems theory and quantitative methods used to test systemshypotheses. A family systems perspective is applied to two specific research questionsconcerning family influences on adolescent development: To what extent are familial risk andprotective factors for psychopathology and competence shared or not shared by siblings and aredifferent family relationship patterns associated with optimal adolescent adjustment innondivorced and remarried families? Multirater and multimethod data from a national sample of516 nondivorced and remarried families from the Nonshared Environment and AdolescentDevelopment (NEAD) project were examined using a combination of cluster, factor, andregression analyses. Results indicated that the effects of an individual relationship on adolescentadjustment is moderated by the larger network of relationships in which it is embedded.Evidence for nonshared familial processes in predicting adolescent psychopathology was alsofound but only in a subset of families, and the mechanisms of influence were neither main effectsnor linear, as has been assumed by research to date. Results are discussed in light of familysystems models of relationship influences on development. These results illustrate how familysystems theory provides a specific example of contextualism as regards the development ofpsychopathology in adolescence.

Emotionand memory are examined within a developmental framework. The point of departure for thisdiscussion is the study of maltreated children whose traumatic experiences have been linked todifficulties in emotional development. It is suggested that cognitive processes such as memoryand attention serve to link experience with emotion and emotion with psychopathology. Thus, aninformation processing approach is used to explain the development of maltreatedchildren's adaptive and maladaptive coping responses. It is argued that maltreatedchildren's association of affective stimuli with traumatic experiences and memoriesselectively alters the meaning of emotions for these children. More generally, the role ofexperience and learning as a component of emotional development is emphasized.