Youth Anxiety: The Moderating Effects of Accommodation and Emotional Warmth.

Parental accommodation (i.e., modifying behavior to reduce child distress) is among the most empirically supported anxiety enhancing parenting practices; while emotional warmth (i.e., support and affection) has demonstrated a less clear link to anxiety. The current study aims to explore the interactive nature of emotional warmth within the context of accommodation. We hypothesized that accommodation would moderate the relationship between emotional warmth and anxiety. The sample included parents of youth (N = 526) ages 7-17. A simple moderation analysis was conducted. Accommodation significantly moderated the relationship [B = 0.03, C.I. (0.01, 0.05), p = 0.01]. Additional variance was accounted for by adding the interaction term to the model (R2 = 0.47, p < 0.001). At high levels of accommodation, emotional warmth significantly predicted child anxiety symptoms. This study affirms that emotional warmth is significantly related to anxiety in the context of high accommodation. Future work ought to build upon these findings to explore these relationships. Limitations of the study include sampling and parent-report data.

Sleep Disturbances in Pediatric Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors: A Preliminary Investigation.

Body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs) are repeated actions to one's body resulting in physical damage. Limited research has examined sleep, a known factor in psychological health, within the context of pediatric BFRBs. The current study sought to explore the connection between disordered sleep and BFRBs in a community sample. Aim 1 of the study was to determine the predictive power of group membership [control group (no BFRB symptoms reported), subthreshold BFRB group (mild BFRB symptoms reported; severity score of 2 or less out of 9), and those with symptoms characteristic of BFRBs (more than mild BFRB symptoms reported; severity score of 3 or higher out of 9)] for level of sleep disturbance. A hierarchical regression revealed that there was a significant effect of group membership after controlling for anxiety (F (3, 410) = 152.976, p < .001). Aim 2 of the study was to test whether there was a relationship between sleep disturbance and BFRB severity. The hierarchical regression revealed that at Step 1, anxiety accounted for 23.1% of the variance in BFRB severity (ß = 0.48, t = 8.87, p < 0.001). At Step 2, sleep disturbance total score accounted for an additional 7.2% of the variance, suggesting this variable makes a unique contribution to overall BFRB severity (SDSC: ß = 0.40, t = 5.18, p < 0.001). The findings of this study suggest that sleep could be a clinical factor to consider when conceptualizing a child with BFRBs.

Psychometric Properties of a Measure Assessing Anxiogenic Parenting Practices in Food Allergy.

AIM: Pediatric food allergy represents a significant public health burden. In order to avoid allergen consumption, adequate management requires daily vigilance and involvement from parents, frequently leading to increased parental anxiety. While specific anxiogenic parenting practices (i.e., parenting behaviors which may aid in the development and/or exacerbation of childhood anxiety) have been documented within this population, to this point, these behaviors have not been systematically measured. OBJECTIVES: The current study aimed to develop and examine a parent-report scale designed to measure anxiogenic parenting behaviors related to food allergy. METHODS: Participants included 177 parents of children with food allergy recruited online using Amazon Mechanical Turk (mTurk). An exploratory factor analysis was conducted to determine the factor structure of the newly developed scale. Subsequently, psychometric properties (e.g., construct validity) were examined via correlational analyses. RESULTS: Results indicated a 24-item, 3 factor (Factor 1: Involvement in Food Allergy; Factor 2: Worry about Food Allergy; Factor 3: Autonomy Promotion) scale, which accounted for 53.11% of the total variance. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure was acceptable, KMO = 0.872 and Bartlett's test of sphericity indicated sufficient correlations between items (χ2(378)=2568.95). All subscales demonstrated strong internal consistency (Involvement in Food Allergy: α = .880; Worry about Food Allergy: α = .892; Autonomy Promotion α = .796) as well as convergent and discriminant validity. CONCLUSIONS: Results support the overall psychometric properties of the scale. Interpretations, limitations, and future directions are discussed.

Developmental Trajectories of Pediatric Obsessive-Compulsive Symptoms.

Children who experience obsessive-compulsive symptoms (OCS) may be at risk for developing Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). The current study aimed to investigate developmental trajectories of OCS, as well as possible predictors, within a community-based sample of children. Children (N = 1147) from the longitudinal NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD) were assessed for OCS, via the Child Behavioral Checklist - Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (OCS-8), eight times between Pre-Kindergarten (54 months; Pre-K) and High School (15 years of age; HS.) Participants were recruited within the United States and included only maternal caregivers. Preliminary analyses indicated that approximately 3% of the sample was above the diagnostic cutoff score on the OCS-8 at the High School time-point. Latent growth models tested symptom trajectories. Findings demonstrated three groups of OCS trajectories. Most children fell within a low symptomatology group (the No Peak group) with low OCS across all time points. Two additional OCS trajectories were also demonstrated: Pre-K Peak (high to low OCS across time) and HS Peak (low to high OCS across time). Both higher attention problems and greater depression/anxiety symptoms at the Pre-K time point predicted children's membership in the Pre-K Peak or HS Peak groups compared to the No Peak group. Membership within the HS Peak group predicted a high likelihood of children's OCS being above previously established cutoff scores for an OCD diagnosis at age 15 years. Membership within either the Pre-K Peak or No Peak groups predicted a low likelihood. This study provides new evidence for the existence of different developmental trajectories for youth with OCS. From a clinical perspective, these results may have important implications when considering the identification and early intervention of childhood OCS and OCD within the community.

A Neurocognitive Comparison of Pediatric Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Trichotillomania (Hair Pulling Disorder).

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and trichotillomania (hair pulling disorder, HPD) are both considered obsessive-compulsive and related disorders due to some indications of shared etiological and phenomenological characteristics. However, a lack of direct comparisons between these disorders, especially in pediatric samples, limits our understanding of divergent versus convergent characteristics. This study compared neurocognitive functioning between children diagnosed with OCD and HPD. In total, 21 children diagnosed with HPD, 40 diagnosed with OCD, and 29 healthy controls (HCs), along with their parents, completed self-/parent-report measures and a neurocognitive assessment battery, which included tasks of inhibitory control, sustained attention, planning, working memory, visual memory, and cognitive flexibility. A series of analyses of variance (or covariance) indicated significant differences between groups on tasks examining planning and sustained attention. Specifically, children in both the OCD and HPD groups outperformed HCs on a task of planning. Further, children with OCD underperformed as compared to both the HPD and HC groups on a task of sustained attention. No between group differences were found with respect to tasks of reversal learning, working memory, spatial working memory, visual memory, or inhibitory control. The implications these findings may have for future, transdiagnostic work, as well as limitations and future directions are discussed.