Symptoms of anxiety and depression are commonly comorbid and partially share a genetic etiology. Mean levels of anxiety and depression increase over the transition to adolescence, particularly in girls, suggesting a possible role of pubertal development in the activation of underlying genetic risks. The current study examined how genetic and…

This study tested the association between multiple prenatal and postnatal early life factors and adolescent sexual orientation in a longitudinal birth cohort. Factors included birth weight, gestational age, parental age at birth, number of older brothers and sisters, breastfeeding, maternal anxiety/depression, family socioeconomic position,…

Although voluminous research has linked nonresident fatherhood to riskier sexual behavior in adolescence, including earlier sexual debut, neither the causality of that link nor the mechanism accounting for it has been well-established. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979--the Young Adult Survey (CNLSY-YA), the present…

Age at menarche is critical in research and clinical settings, yet there is a dearth of studies examining its reliability in adolescents. We examined age at menarche during adolescence, specifically, (a) average method reliability across 3 years, (b) test-retest reliability between time points and methods, (c) intraindividual variability of…

Executive functions and social cognition develop through childhood into adolescence and early adulthood and are important for adaptive goal-oriented behavior (Apperly, Samson, & Humphreys, 2009; Blakemore & Choudhury, 2006). These functions are attributed to frontal networks known to undergo protracted maturation into early adulthood…

We investigated whether the link between early pubertal timing and initiation of weekly alcohol use is mediated by changes in perceived parental alcohol-specific rule setting and changes in perceived proportion of drinkers in the peer group. Longitudinal data including 3 annual waves were used to estimate the hazard for adolescents to initiate…

It has been hypothesized that sensation seeking and impulsivity, which are often conflated, in fact develop along different timetables and have different neural underpinnings, and that the difference in their timetables helps account for heightened risk taking during adolescence. In order to test these propositions, the authors examined age…

In a sample of families with 6- to 18-year-olds, this study found that sons' and daughters' testosterone levels showed little direct connection to risk behavior or depressive symptoms. As parent-child relationship quality increased, testosterone-related adjustment problems were less evident. When relationship quality decreased, testosterone-linked…

Examined effects of early physical maturation and accelerated pubertal changes on symptoms of major depression among 639 African American adolescents. Found that for girls, early maturation was consistently associated with elevated levels of depressive symptoms. For boys, early maturers showed elevated depression only at age 11, with symptoms…

The authors investigated age-related changes in executive control using an Internet-based task-switching experiment with 5,271 participants between the ages of 10 and 66 years. Speeded face categorization was required on the basis of gender (G) or emotion (E) in single task blocks (GGG... and EEE...) or switching blocks (GGEEGGEE...). General…

Examined the effect of puberty on the parent-adolescent relationship in association with ethnicity, parental psychopathology, and chronological age. Found that puberty effects on parent support and parent-adolescent conflict differ for Hispanic and non-Hispanic white boys. Parent alcoholism did not moderate the effect of puberty, and puberty…