The diverse phenotypic expressions of disinhibitory psychopathology are believed to reflect a common latent predisposing variable: externalizing. While deficiencies in executive functioning (i.e., cognitive/inhibitory control, working memory) and affective hyper-reactivity are commonly associated with externalizing, there is also evidence that externalizing is related to anomalous allocation of...

Nonresident fathers can have a significant impact on children's behavioral outcomes. Unfortunately, the impact of nonresident father involvement on the behavioral outcomes of children with child welfare involvement has received scant attention in the literature, a limitation the current study sought to address. A sample of 333 children in state custody in Illinois between the ages of six and 13...

The genetic and environmental influences on problem behaviors at two assessment points, three years apart, and their stability were studied in a sample of international adoptees, initially aged 10 to 15 years. Parents of 111 pairs of adopted biological siblings, 221 pairs of adopted nonbiological siblings and 1484 adopted singletons completed the Child Behavior Checklist (75 pairs, 154 pairs an...

BACKGROUND Prenatal polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) exposures may influence children's neurodevelopment. OBJECTIVE We examined the association of prenatal PBDE and PCB exposures with children's reading skills at ages 5 and 8 years, Full-Scale Intelligence Quotient (FSIQ), and externalizing behavior problems at age 8 years. METHODS From 239 mother-...

This investigation examined how two commonly employed measures of functional impairment (the Child and Adolescent Functional Assessment Scale [CAFAS] and the Global Assessment of Functioning [GAF] scale) perform with respect to assessing levels of functional impairment and, hence, identifying rates of serious emotional disturbance (SED) across youth diagnosed with internalizing or externalizing...

CONTEXT The detection and replication of genes involved in psychiatric outcome has been notoriously difficult. Phenotypic measurement has been offered as one explanation, although most of this discussion has focused on problems with binary diagnoses. OBJECTIVE This article focuses on two additional components of phenotypic measurement that deserve further consideration in evaluating genetic a...

BACKGROUND Little is known about the stability of behavioural and developmental problems as children develop from infants to toddlers in the general population. Therefore, we investigated behavioural profiles at two time points and determined whether behaviours are stable during early development. METHODS Parents of 4,237 children completed questionnaires with 62 items about externalizing, in...

The present study investigated whether cortisol stress responses of 6-year-olds were associated with their behavioral functioning at school. Additionally, the moderating role of stress in the family environment was examined. To this end, 149 healthy children (Mage  = 6.09 years; 70 girls) participated in an age-appropriate innovative social evaluative stress test. Saliva cortisol samples were c...

Background Studies have described the externalizing (e.g., antisocial propensity) and internalizing (e.g., anxiety, depression) characteristics of driving while impaired (DWI) recidivism. However, the respective contribution of those characteristics to recidivism risk and their underlying mechanisms are still unknown. Cortisol, a stress hormone, is a biomarker underlying various high-risk chara...