The Moderating and Mediating Role of Responsive Parenting Behavior in Explaining the Link between Intimate Partner Violence and Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms in Young Children.

Responsive parenting serves an influential role in explaining the link between children's exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV) and children's mental health impairment, but how this occurs is not well elucidated. In some cases, researchers examine parenting as a mediator to explain how IPV leads to maladaptive outcomes (i.e., IPV negatively impacts one's capacity for responsive parenting, which in turn impacts children), whereas others examine moderation in which either the absence of responsive parenting exacerbates adverse outcomes or increased responsive parenting buffers risk. Mediation addresses theoretical questions about how or why IPV leads to maladaptive outcomes, whereas moderation addresses who might be most impacted. However, responsive parenting has rarely, if ever, been tested as both a mediator and moderator of the link between IPV and posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) within the same sample. The current study examined the mediating and moderating role of responsive parenting on physical IPV exposure and child PTSS in a longitudinal sample of 391 children ages 3 to 5 years (M = 4.74, SD = 0.89). Self-report measures of physical IPV exposure, parenting practices, and PTSS were completed by mothers. We found that responsive parenting significantly moderated and mediated the association between physical IPV exposure and child PTSS over time. Studies that include tests of both moderation and mediation are critical for advancing mechanistic insight into the role of parenting in the etiology of mental health impairment in children exposed to IPV.

Examination of Wnt signaling as a therapeutic target for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) using a pancreatic tumor organoid library (PTOL).

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) presents at advanced stages and is refractory to most treatment modalities. Wnt signaling activation plays a critical role in proliferation and chemotherapeutic resistance. Minimal media conditions, growth factor dependency, and Wnt dependency were determined via Wnt inhibition for seven patient derived organoids (PDOs) derived from pancreatic tumor organoid libraries (PTOL). Organoids demonstrating response in vitro were assessed in vivo using patient-derived xenografts. Wnt (in)dependent gene signatures were identified for each organoid. Panc269 demonstrated a trend of reduced organoid growth when treated with ETC-159 in combination with paclitaxel or gemcitabine as compared with chemotherapy or ETC-159 alone. Panc320 demonstrated a more pronounced anti-proliferative effect in the combination of ETC-159 and paclitaxel but not with gemcitabine. Panc269 and Panc320 were implanted into nude mice and treated with ETC-159, paclitaxel, and gemcitabine as single agents and in combination. The combination of ETC-159 and paclitaxel demonstrated an anti-tumor effect greater than ETC-159 alone. Extent of combinatory treatment effect were observed to a lesser extent in the Panc320 xenograft. Wnt (in)dependent gene signatures of Panc269 and 320 were consistent with the phenotypes displayed. Gene expression of several key Wnt genes assessed via RT-PCR demonstrated notable fold change following treatment in vivo. Each pancreatic organoid demonstrated varied niche factor dependencies, providing an avenue for targeted therapy, supported through growth analysis following combinatory treatment of Wnt inhibitor and standard chemotherapy in vitro. The clinical utilization of this combinatory treatment modality in pancreatic cancer PDOs has thus far been supported in our patient-derived xenograft models treated with Wnt inhibitor plus paclitaxel or gemcitabine. Gene expression analysis suggests there are key Wnt genes that contribute to the Wnt (in)dependent phenotypes of pancreatic tumors, providing plausible mechanistic explanation for Wnt (in)dependency and susceptibility or resistance to treatment on the genotypic level.

Do general and specific factors of preschool psychopathology predict preadolescent outcomes? A transdiagnostic hierarchical approach.

BACKGROUND: Preschool psychiatric symptoms significantly increase the risk for long-term negative outcomes. Transdiagnostic hierarchical approaches that capture general ('p') and specific psychopathology dimensions are promising for understanding risk and predicting outcomes, but their predictive utility in young children is not well established. We delineated a hierarchical structure of preschool psychopathology dimensions and tested their ability to predict psychiatric disorders and functional impairment in preadolescence. METHODS: Data for 1253 preschool children (mean age = 4.17, s.d. = 0.81) were drawn from three longitudinal studies using a similar methodology (one community sample, two psychopathology-enriched samples) and followed up into preadolescence, yielding a large and diverse sample. Exploratory factor models derived a hierarchical structure of general and specific factors using symptoms from the Preschool Age Psychiatric Assessment interview. Longitudinal analyses examined the prospective associations of preschool p and specific factors with preadolescent psychiatric disorders and functional impairment. RESULTS: A hierarchical dimensional structure with a p factor at the top and up to six specific factors (distress, fear, separation anxiety, social anxiety, inattention-hyperactivity, oppositionality) emerged at preschool age. The p factor predicted all preadolescent disorders (ΔR2 = 0.04-0.15) and functional impairment (ΔR2 = 0.01-0.07) to a significantly greater extent than preschool psychiatric diagnoses and functioning. Specific dimensions provided additional predictive power for the majority of preadolescent outcomes (disorders: ΔR2 = 0.06-0.15; functional impairment: ΔR2 = 0.05-0.12). CONCLUSIONS: Both general and specific dimensions of preschool psychopathology are useful for predicting clinical and functional outcomes almost a decade later. These findings highlight the value of transdiagnostic dimensions for predicting prognosis and as potential targets for early intervention and prevention.

Longitudinal Associations Between Reward Responsiveness and Depression Across Adolescence.

OBJECTIVE: Lower neural response to reward predicts subsequent depression during adolescence. Both pubertal development and biological sex have important effects on reward system development and depression during this period. However, relations among these variables across the transition from childhood to adolescence are not well characterized. METHOD: Depressive symptoms, pubertal status, and the reward positivity (RewP) event-related potential component, a neural indicator of reward responsivity, were assessed in 609 community-recruited youth at 9, 12, and 15 years of age. Structural equation modeling was used to examine concurrent and prospective relations within and between depression and reward responsiveness as well as the influence of pubertal status and biological sex on these variables across assessments. RESULTS: Stability paths for depression, the RewP, and pubertal status were significant across assessments. Compared with male participants, female participants reported more advanced pubertal status at all assessments, a smaller RewP at age 9, and higher levels of depression at age 15. More advanced pubertal status was associated with a larger RewP at age 15. Most importantly, there were bidirectional prospective effects between the RewP and depression from ages 12 to 15; a lower RewP at age 12 predicted increases in depression at age 15, whereas increased depression at age 12 predicted a lower RewP at age 15. CONCLUSION: These findings indicate that there are bidirectional prospective effects between reward responsiveness and depression that emerge between ages 12 and 15. This may be a crucial time for studying bidirectional reward responsiveness-depression associations across time.

Three-variable systems: An integrative moderation and mediation framework for developmental psychopathology.

In this article, we consider an often overlooked model that combines mediation and moderation to explain how a third variable can relate to a risk factor-psychopathology relationship. We refer to it as moderation and mediation in a three-variable system. We describe how this model is relevant to studying vulnerability factors and how it may advance developmental psychopathology research. To illustrate the value of this approach, we provide several examples where this model may be applicable, such as the relationships among parental externalizing pathology, harsh parenting, and offspring psychopathology as well as between neuroticism, stressful life events, and depression. We discuss possible reasons why this model has not gained traction and attempt to clarify and dispel those concerns. We provide guidance and recommendations for when to consider this model for a given data set and point toward existing resources for testing this model that have been developed by statisticians and other methodologists. Lastly, we describe important caveats, limitations, and considerations for making this approach most useful for developmental research. Overall, our goal in presenting this information to developmental psychopathology researchers is to encourage testing moderation and mediation in a three-variable system with the aim of advancing analytic strategies for studying vulnerability factors.

The development of depressogenic self-schemas: Associations with children's regional grey matter volume in ventrolateral prefrontal cortex.

Cognitive theories of depression contend that biased cognitive information processing plays a causal role in the development of depression. Extensive research shows that deeper processing of negative and/or shallower processing of positive self-descriptors (i.e., negative and positive self-schemas) predicts current and future depression in adults and children. However, the neural correlates of the development of self-referent encoding are poorly understood. We examined children's self-referential processing using the self-referent encoding task (SRET) collected from 74 children at ages 6, 9, and 12; around age 10, these children also contributed structural magnetic resonance imaging data. From age 6 to age 12, both positive and negative self-referential processing showed mean-level growth, with positive self-schemas increasing relatively faster than negative ones. Further, voxel-based morphometry showed that slower growth in positive self-schemas was associated with lower regional gray matter volume (GMV) in ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC). Our results suggest that smaller regional GMV within vlPFC, a critical region for regulatory control in affective processing and emotion development, may have implications for the development of depressogenic self-referential processing in mid-to-late childhood.

Is the distinction between tonic and phasic irritability meaningful in 3-year-old children?

Irritability encompasses both normative misbehavior in early childhood and clinically significant problems across development. Recent studies have distinguished between tonic (i.e., persistently angry or grumpy mood) and phasic (i.e., temper tantrums or outbursts) forms of irritability and shown that they have different implications for psychopathology and functioning. However, data on this distinction in young (i.e., preschool aged) children are nonexistent. We utilized data from a longitudinal study of a community sample of 462 3-year-olds followed to age 15. We conducted confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using items from a diagnostic interview and several parent-report inventories and examined concurrent and prospective associations with clinically relevant variables. The CFA identified dimensions consistent with tonic and phasic irritability. Tonic irritability was independently associated with concurrent parent-reported temperamental negative affectivity and surgency, and depressive and oppositional defiant (ODD) disorders, and predicted higher rates of disruptive behavior disorders (DBD) and suicidal behavior in later childhood and adolescence. Phasic irritability was independently associated with concurrent laboratory observations of child impulsivity, parent-reported temperamental negative affectivity, surgency, and low effortful control, maladaptive parenting, and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and ODD, but it did not predict later psychopathology. Tonic and phasic irritability are separable in 3-year-old children, but their correlates and outcomes are not as distinct as in older youth. This may reflect the greater difficulty characterizing normative and pathological irritability in the preschool period.

Moderation effects in personality disorder research.

Tests of statistical interactions (or tests of moderation effects) in personality disorder research are a common way for researchers to examine nuanced hypotheses relevant to personality pathology. However, the nature of statistical interactions makes them difficult to reliably detect in many research scenarios. The present study used a flexible, simulation-based approach to estimate statistical power to detect trait-by-trait interactions common to psychopathy research using the Triarchic model of Psychopathy and the Psychopathic Personality Inventory. Our results show that even above-average sample sizes in these literatures (e.g., N = 428) provide inadequate power to reliably detect trait-by-trait interactions, and the sample sizes needed to detect interaction effect sizes in realistic scenarios are extremely large, ranging from 1,300 to 5,200. The implications for trait-by-trait interactions in psychopathy are discussed, as well as how the present findings might generalize to other areas of personality disorder research. We provide recommendations for how to design research studies that can provide informative tests of interactions in personality disorder research, but also highlight that a more realistic option is to abandon the traditional approach when testing for interaction effects and adopt alternative approaches that may be more productive. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Tonic and phasic irritability in 6-year-old children: differential correlates and outcomes.

OBJECTIVE: Irritability is a common and clinically important problem in children and adolescents and a risk factor for later psychopathology and impairment. Irritability can manifest in both tonic (e.g., irritable, touchy mood) and phasic (e.g., temper outburst) forms, and recent studies of adolescents suggest that they predict different outcomes. However, no studies have examined whether tonic and phasic irritability are empirically distinguishable in 6-year-old children and whether they have distinct correlates and outcomes. METHOD: We utilized data from a longitudinal study of an unselected community sample of four hundred fifty-two 6-year-olds followed at 3-year intervals to age 15. We conducted confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using relevant items from a diagnostic interview and several parent-report inventories. RESULTS: The CFA identified dimensions that were consistent with tonic and phasic irritability. Tonic irritability was independently associated with concurrent parent-reported temperamental negative affectivity and internalizing and externalizing disorders at age 6 and predicted higher rates of internalizing psychopathology, and suicidal ideation, in adolescence. Phasic irritability was independently associated with concurrent parent-reported temperamental negative affectivity, surgency, and low effortful control, maladaptive parenting styles and practices, and externalizing disorders at age 6, and predicted higher rates of externalizing psychopathology in adolescence. CONCLUSIONS: Tonic and phasic irritability in 6-year-old children appear to be distinguishable constructs with different temperament and parenting correlates and psychopathological outcomes. Distinguishing these components has implications for research on the etiology and pathophysiology of irritability and developing effective treatments.

Agreement, Stability, and Validity of Parent- and Youth-Reported Anxiety Symptoms from Childhood to Adolescence.

The current study examined changes in the agreement, stability, and concurrent and predictive validity of parent- and self-reports on a frequently used measure of youth anxiety symptoms, the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED), from age 9 to 15. A community sample of 531 families (youth, mothers, and fathers) completed the SCARED and a semi-structured diagnostic interview when children were ages 9, 12, and 15. Agreement between youth and each parent on youth anxiety symptoms was weak at age 9 (r = 0.12-0.17), but moderate at age 12 (r = 0.31-0.36) and 15 (r = 0.31-0.46); mother-father (r = 0.50-0.53) agreement was greater than youth-parent agreement at every wave. Stability of youth-reported symptoms was low between age 9 and 12 (r = 0.25), but much higher from age 12 to 15 (r = 0.57); mother- and father-reported youth anxiety symptoms demonstrated high stability (r = 0.53-0.74) at both intervals. Self- and parent-reported youth symptoms were both significantly associated with youth anxiety disorder status, cross-sectionally and prospectively. When considered simultaneously at age 9, only parent-reported anxiety symptoms uniquely predicted concurrent and subsequent youth anxiety diagnoses. However, by age 12, parent- and youth-reported anxiety symptoms were each independently associated with concurrent and subsequent anxiety diagnoses. Agreement, stability, and concurrent and predictive validity of youth self-reported anxiety symptoms are poorer than parent-reports in middle childhood, but comparable by middle adolescence. However, all reporters provide unique information about youth anxiety at each of the developmental periods examined.

Maternal posttraumatic stress predicts Mother-Child Symptom Flare-Ups over Time.

Although concurrent associations between parent and child posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) have been well-documented, few longitudinal studies have examined bidirectional influences by modeling the effects of both parent and child PTSS simultaneously over time. The current study examines patterns of PTSS in children and their mothers beginning in preschool and continuing through elementary school age (ages 4-9 years) in a large, heterogeneous sample (N = 331 mother-child dyads). Mothers reported on their own and their child's posttraumatic stress symptoms. A random intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM) was used to examine associations between symptoms across six time points. Results indicated that maternal and child symptoms were associated with each other at concurrent time points and tended to fluctuate in a synchronized manner relative to their overall mean symptom levels. Longitudinal cross-lagged paths were significant from mother to child, but non-significant from child to mother, suggesting that mothers' symptom fluctuation at one time point predicted significant fluctuation in children's symptoms at the subsequent time point. The concurrent co-variation of maternal and child symptoms and the predictive nature of maternal symptom flare-ups have important implications for both maternal and child mental health interventions and underscore the importance of attending to mothers' symptomatology early in treatment.

Is personality stable and symptoms fleeting? A longitudinal comparison in adolescence.

Few investigations have directly compared personality and internalizing symptoms stability within the same sample and have not included personality facets. This study examined rank-order stability and mean-level change of Big Five domains, facets of neuroticism and extraversion, and internalizing symptoms in a sample of 550 adolescent females. Personality and symptoms were assessed every nine months for three years. Three year rank-order stability was higher for personality domains and facets compared to symptoms. Notable exceptions included lower stability of depressivity and positive emotionality facets. Facets and symptoms showed similar mean level change. Overall, we observed modest and variable temporal differences between symptoms and traits; symptoms exhibited high rank-order stability and low mean-level change, but domains and facets were generally more stable.

Preschool Irritability Predicts Adolescent Psychopathology and Functional Impairment: A 12-Year Prospective Study.

OBJECTIVE: The long-term clinical and functional outcomes of preschool-age irritability are unknown. This study examined longitudinal associations of preschool irritability with psychiatric disorders and functional impairment assessed in adolescence in a large community sample. METHOD: A total of 453 children were assessed at age 3 and again at ages 12 and/or 15. At age 3, parents were interviewed about their child's irritability, other psychiatric symptoms, and functional impairment with the Preschool Age Psychiatric Assessment (PAPA). In adolescence, both parents and youths were interviewed with the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School-Age Children-Present and Lifetime (K-SADS-PL) to assess youth psychopathology and functional impairment; youths also completed the UCLA Life Stress Interview (LSI) to assess different domains of functioning. Lastly, youths and parents completed the Children's Depression Inventory 2 (CDI 2) and the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Disorders (SCARED). RESULTS: Irritability at age 3 predicted internalizing and externalizing disorders in adolescence; parent-reported anxiety and depressive symptoms; and greater functional impairment, including poorer peer functioning, poorer physical health, and antidepressant and educational service use, even after controlling for baseline psychiatric disorders. All longitudinal associations persisted after further adjusting for well-established early life risk markers for psychopathology. CONCLUSION: The findings of this study underscore the clinical significance and predictive power of preschool irritability and provide support for its use in large-scale identification and intervention efforts.

Profiling COVID-related experiences in the United States with the Epidemic-Pandemic Impacts Inventory: Linkages to psychosocial functioning.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on the lives of individuals, families, and communities around the world with constraints on multiple aspects of daily life. The purpose of the present study was to identify specific profiles of pandemic-related experiences and their relation to psychosocial functioning using the 92-item Epidemic-Pandemic Impacts Inventory (EPII). Data were collected as part of a cross-sectional, online survey of adults (18+) residing in the Northeast region of the United States (N = 652) and recruited via online advertisements. Person-centered latent class analysis (LCA) was applied to 38 pandemic-related experiences that showed a significant bivariate correlation with perceived stress. Measures of psychosocial risk were also obtained. Results revealed five unique profiles of respondents based on patterns of pandemic-related experiences. Three profiles representing about 64% of the sample were characterized by moderate to high exposure to adverse experiences during the pandemic and were more likely to screen positive for depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress. These profiles were differentiated by sociodemographic differences, including age, caregiving, and employment status. Two profiles differentiated by age and caregiver status represented about 36% of the sample and were characterized by relatively low exposure to adverse experiences and lower risk for psychosocial impairment. Findings support the EPII as an instrument for measuring tangible and meaningful experiences in the context of an unprecedented pandemic disaster. This research may serve to identify high-risk subpopulations toward developing public health strategies for supporting families and communities in the context of public health emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Neurophysiological patterns associated with blunted emotional face processing and withdrawal tendencies in young children exposed to intimate partner violence.

Studies linking child maltreatment to abnormal neurophysiological responses to emotional stimuli and mental health impairment have not specifically explored these patterns in young children exposed to intimate partner violence (IPV). The present study examined two neurophysiological indicators, resting-state electroencephalography and an emotion event-related potential (ERP) in 21 IPV exposed and 30 nonexposed children ages 4-6 years recruited from the community and domestic violence shelters. Frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA) was assessed while at rest. FAA is often associated with avoidant/withdrawn behavior and increased risk of IPV-related mental health conditions (e.g., depression). Additionally, the late positive potential (LPP) ERP component, reflecting motivated attention, was acquired in the context of an age-appropriate affective oddball paradigm with low probability animal pictures as targets and human facial expressions (angry, happy, neutral) as distracters. Results demonstrated that IPV-exposed children, compared with nonexposed children, exhibited lower left FAA during resting state and reduced LPPs to oddball targets and affective faces relative to neutral faces in the oddball task. Together, these results suggest neural patterns associated with a blunted response to emotional stimuli and withdrawal tendencies, respectively, in young children exposed to IPV. Implications for emotional socialization in this vulnerable population are discussed.

The effects of Intimate Partner Violence and a history of Childhood Abuse on Mental Health and Stress during Pregnancy.

PURPOSE: Maternal adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and intimate partner violence (IPV) are temporally distinct risk factors that negatively impact mothers and their offspring. Risk associated with ACEs and IPV begin during pregnancy, a period of increased physical and psychological demands. The current study examined a person-centered method to empirically identify profiles of pregnant women based on type and severity of ACEs and past-year IPV. Profiles were then differentiated on psychosocial functioning indicators. METHODS: A primarily Latinx, low socioeconomic sample of women (n = 225) completed measures assessing ACEs and past-year IPV, perceived and experienced stress, emotion regulation, and trauma-related symptoms during their third trimester. Latent profile analysis (LPA) was used to identify unique profiles of women based on seven dimensional indicators reflecting threat- and deprivation-based ACEs and IPV. RESULTS: A 4-class solution best fit the data: (1) low probability of ACEs or IPV (64.9%), (2) childhood neglect-only (20.4%), (3) childhood abuse/neglect (10.2%), and (4) polytrauma characterized by a combination of childhood abuse, neglect, and IPV (4.4%). Women with the "childhood abuse/neglect" or "polytrauma" profiles reported more stress and symptoms than women with the "low exposure" profile. Women in the "childhood neglect-only" profile were generally similar to women in the "low exposure" profile, but did report greater difficulties in emotion regulation. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that childhood abuse and IPV, exposure types involving threat, are potent correlates of stress, emotion regulation, and mental health difficulties during pregnancy. However, exposure characterized by deprivation alone generally did not increase difficulties.

An Item Response Theory examination of the original and short forms of the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) in pregnant women.

OBJECTIVES: Emotion dysregulation during pregnancy may impede women's capacity to navigate increased stressors during this period and may elevate risk for psychosocial impairment, especially for socioeconomically disadvantaged or racially marginalized women. Valid and efficient assessment of emotion dysregulation is needed. METHODS: We used Item Response Theory (IRT) to examine the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) in 248 low income, primarily Latina/x pregnant women, to compare the short forms relative to the full DERS. RESULTS: IRT indicated that the short forms exhibited modest reliability, but also indicated a substantial decrease in information (i.e., reliability) for the short forms compared with the full DERS. IRT indicated that the DERS-16 appeared more reliable (conserve more information) relative to the other short forms, the DERS-SF and DERS-18. CONCLUSION: Findings suggest that clinicians and researchers use the full DERS when time permits and the DERS-16 when needing a briefer version.

Patterns of stress generation differ depending on internalizing symptoms, alcohol use, and personality traits in early adulthood: a five year longitudinal study.

BACKGROUND: Depression is thought to generate stressful life events. However, other internalizing symptoms such as anxiety or post-traumatic stress and individual difference variables such as personality traits and alcohol use may contribute to stressful life events. Whether stress generation is specific to depression or generalized to these other variables is unclear. Therefore, we tested whether stress generation was depression specific or generalizable to anxiety, PTSD, alcohol use, neuroticism, and extraversion. DESIGN: Two-wave longitudinal study with a five-year follow-up. METHODS: 917 young adults completed measures of internalizing symptoms, alcohol use, neuroticism, and extraversion during college and five years later along with an interview-based measure of life events. RESULTS: Symptoms of depression, anxiety, PTSD, and neuroticism exhibited bivariate predictive effects on interpersonal-dependent events. When considering internalizing symptoms in the aggregate, stress generation was specific to symptoms rather than neuroticism. Furthermore, interpersonal-dependent life events mediated Time 1 internalizing symptoms predicting Time 2 symptoms. CONCLUSION: Our results indicate that stress generation applies to internalizing symptoms broadly rather than specifically to depression. Moreover, neuroticism was no longer a significant predictor of life events when examined with internalizing symptoms simultaneously. These results support the value of integrative models that test numerous factors predicting stressful life events.

The conserved alternative splicing factor caper regulates neuromuscular phenotypes during development and aging.

RNA-binding proteins play an important role in the regulation of post-transcriptional gene expression throughout the nervous system. This is underscored by the prevalence of mutations in genes encoding RNA splicing factors and other RNA-binding proteins in a number of neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental disorders. The highly conserved alternative splicing factor Caper is widely expressed throughout the developing embryo and functions in the development of various sensory neural subtypes in the Drosophila peripheral nervous system. Here we find that caper dysfunction leads to aberrant neuromuscular junction morphogenesis, as well as aberrant locomotor behavior during larval and adult stages. Despite its widespread expression, our results indicate that caper function is required to a greater extent within the nervous system, as opposed to muscle, for neuromuscular junction development and for the regulation of adult locomotor behavior. Moreover, we find that Caper interacts with the RNA-binding protein Fmrp to regulate adult locomotor behavior. Finally, we show that caper dysfunction leads to various phenotypes that have both a sex and age bias, both of which are commonly seen in neurodegenerative disorders in humans.

Do simple slopes follow-up tests lead us astray? Advancements in the visualization and reporting of interactions.

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported online in Psychological Methods on Sep 24 2020 (see record 2020-72092-001). In the article "Do Simple Slopes Follow-Up Tests Lead Us Astray? Advancements in the Visualization and Reporting of Interactions," by Megan C. Finsaas and Brandon L. Goldstein (Psychological Methods, advance online publication. April 20, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/ met0000266), Figure 5 contained an error. The second sentence of the caption of Figure 5 should read: "The left plot depicts the region of significance when life stress is acting as the moderator, and the right when neuroticism is acting as the moderator." All versions of this article have been corrected.] Statistical interactions between two continuous variables in linear regression are common in psychological science. As a follow-up analysis of how the moderator impacts the predictor-outcome relationship, researchers often use the pick-a-point simple slopes method. The simple slopes method requires researchers to make two decisions: (a) which moderator values should be used for plotting and testing simple slopes, and (b) which predictor should be considered the moderator. These decisions are meant to be driven by theory, but in practice researchers may use arbitrary conventions or theoretical reasons may not exist. Even when done thoughtfully, simple slopes analysis omits important information about the interaction. Consequently, it is problematic that the simple slopes approach is the primary basis for interpreting interactions. A more nuanced alternative is to utilize the Johnson-Neyman technique in conjunction with a regression plane depicting the interaction effect in three-dimensional space. This approach does not involve picking points but rather shows the slopes at all possible values of the predictor variables and gives both predictors equal weight instead of selecting a de facto moderator. Because this approach is complex and user-friendly implementation tools are lacking, we present a tutorial explaining the Johnson-Neyman technique and how to visualize interactions in 3-D space along with a new open-source tool that completes these procedures. We discuss how this approach facilitates interpretation and communication as well as its implications for replication efforts, transparency, and clinical applications. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).