My research concerns risk and protective mechanisms underlying the association between interpersonal adversities and biopsychosocial outcomes for young persons. As a developmental psychopathologist, my interests span across developmental periods, from early childhood to emerging adulthood. My most recent studies have focused on adolescents involved or at risk of involvement in the juvenile justice system in order to investigate the emotional, cognitive, interpersonal, and psychophysiological factors that might explain the association between childhood trauma exposure and adolescent delinquency. I also have abiding interests in gender differences in developmental psychopathology as well as in the study of family processes that provide the contexts in which youth development takes place, for better or worse.
The scholarly publishing enterprise is currently undergoing a “crisis,” likely exacerbated by the... more The scholarly publishing enterprise is currently undergoing a “crisis,” likely exacerbated by the global pandemic, in which peer reviewers are increasingly less available to perform reviews at the same time the flow of submitted manuscripts has not subsided. This editorial considers possible reasons why scholars might decline to participate in the peer review process, including the lack of compensation for this time‐consuming and effort‐laden service activity; questions about the fairness, validity, and efficacy of peer review; a commonly experienced dearth of training in peer review skills; and the fact that a lack of diversity in the sciences, academia, and the professions is reflected in the makeup of scholarly publishing leadership such that peer review is not necessarily conducted by one's “peers.” Potential considerations are also offered on the other side of the ledger. These include the benefits that accrue to our own scholarship and publishing acumen when we review the work of others; the value of peer review to the quality of our journals and the excellence of our field; the positive contributions that thoughtful and educative reviews can make to the work of our colleagues; recent initiatives designed to increase representativeness, reduce bias, and guard against conflicts of interest in the peer reviewing process; the availability of guides and tutorials to assist emerging scholars to develop the relevant skills and acumen; and the ways in which peer reviewing can set the stage for professional growth and entry into leadership positions in the field of scholarly publishing.
Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 2021
The revised criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the fifth edition of the Diagnos... more The revised criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual necessitated the development of new screening tools for youth, one of the most widely used of which is the UCLA Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Reaction Index for DSM-5 (RI-5). Thus far, the few studies that have investigated the RI-5’s factor structure have supported a four-factor model. However, to date this research has been limited to youth with histories of exposure to single-event traumatic stressors, a significant limitation as evidence suggests many trauma-exposed youth report exposure to multiple types of traumatic stressors, or polyvictimization. It is imperative to determine the generalizability of previous factor models to specific populations which they are purported to represent. We investigated whether the RI-5’s four-factor model replicated in a sample of 455 polyvictimized justice-involved adolescents. Initial confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated that the four-factor model did not converge. Therefore, we utilized Bayesian Structural Equations Modeling (BSEM) to determine why the previously proposed factor structure did not converge. The BSEM model suggested that the global factor structure was acceptable and did not require addition or subtraction of any factor or cross-factor loadings. However, small and moderate residual covariances resulted in model misspecification, suggesting there may be additional associations not captured by the current DSM-5 model for polyvictimized youth. Future work should continue examining the RI-5’s factor structure in order to better understand whether the current results are unique and how measurements assessing DSM-5 PTSD symptom criteria perform in diverse trauma-exposed youth populations.
Previous research has provided robust evidence demonstrating that a notable proportion of youth b... more Previous research has provided robust evidence demonstrating that a notable proportion of youth become involved in both the child welfare (CW) system and the juvenile justice (JJ) system, a population often referred to as crossover youth. Prior work has identified a number of risk factors associated with crossing over between these systems. However, there are limitations to the extant literature, key among which is a lack of systematic attention to the influence of trauma exposure and posttraumatic sequelae on the crossover trajectory. In contrast, viewing this research through a trauma-informed lens promises to enhance our ability to integrate findings across studies and to derive theoretically derived hypotheses about underlying mechanisms which will better inform future research and the development of effective prevention and intervention efforts. Accordingly, the purpose of this article is to present a trauma-informed research agenda that would strengthen future research in the field. After providing a brief critique of the existing studies that has documented known risk factors associated with the crossover population, we outline ways in which future research could apply relevant theoretical trauma-informed approaches, including developmental traumatology, to further advance our knowledge of risk factors and mechanisms associated with the crossover trajectory. We conclude by discussing policy and system-wide implications related to the proposed research agenda.
A limited number of studies have begun to investigate how the coordinated actions of distinct phy... more A limited number of studies have begun to investigate how the coordinated actions of distinct physiological systems may be related to the development of psychopathology. However, the form taken by these patterns of coordination as well as their antecedents and developmental implications remain to be clarified. The Adaptive Calibration Model (ACM) proposes four prototypical patterns of physiological stress responsivity and corresponding behavioral patterns, which are further tied to varying levels of childhood adversity. The current study is among the first to investigate whether patterns of sympathetic and parasympathetic stress responsivity predicted by the ACM generalize to a sample of justice‐involved youth with disproportionately high rates of childhood trauma exposure. Psychophysiological and self‐report data were collected from 822 justice‐involved youth (182 girls) ages 12–19 years. Latent profile analyses yielded five profiles of physiological responsivity that largely corre...
This article introduces a special issue of the Journal of Traumatic Stress devoted to new directi... more This article introduces a special issue of the Journal of Traumatic Stress devoted to new directions in the study of moral injury (MI), defined as transgressive harms and the outcomes of those experiences. Although a significant body of research has emerged devoted to the study of the MI construct, a number of conceptual and empirical challenges have arisen; these are summarized and discussed in the present article. In addition, this article proposes ways of overcoming these challenges in order to further research and clinical practice in the field. We then go on to introduce the content and themes of the present collection of articles in this special issue, all of which provide examples of some of the most innovative and forward‐looking work on the topic and expand into new conceptual frameworks, new methods of investigation, and new populations and contexts.
The purpose of this article is to describe theories used to account for the development of psycho... more The purpose of this article is to describe theories used to account for the development of psychopathology in adolescence. After providing some brief historical context regarding the way theories of psychopathology are influenced by the mores of their times, this article gives a description of eight of the major theoretical perspectives underlying modern attempts to explain aberrant human behavior. The central tenets of the medical model, psychoanalytic theory and its offshoots, behaviorism, cognitive theory, humanisms, family systems theory, and the biobehavioral model are described. Lastly, the integrative perspective of developmental psychopathology is introduced.
The scholarly publishing enterprise is currently undergoing a “crisis,” likely exacerbated by the... more The scholarly publishing enterprise is currently undergoing a “crisis,” likely exacerbated by the global pandemic, in which peer reviewers are increasingly less available to perform reviews at the same time the flow of submitted manuscripts has not subsided. This editorial considers possible reasons why scholars might decline to participate in the peer review process, including the lack of compensation for this time‐consuming and effort‐laden service activity; questions about the fairness, validity, and efficacy of peer review; a commonly experienced dearth of training in peer review skills; and the fact that a lack of diversity in the sciences, academia, and the professions is reflected in the makeup of scholarly publishing leadership such that peer review is not necessarily conducted by one's “peers.” Potential considerations are also offered on the other side of the ledger. These include the benefits that accrue to our own scholarship and publishing acumen when we review the work of others; the value of peer review to the quality of our journals and the excellence of our field; the positive contributions that thoughtful and educative reviews can make to the work of our colleagues; recent initiatives designed to increase representativeness, reduce bias, and guard against conflicts of interest in the peer reviewing process; the availability of guides and tutorials to assist emerging scholars to develop the relevant skills and acumen; and the ways in which peer reviewing can set the stage for professional growth and entry into leadership positions in the field of scholarly publishing.
Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 2021
The revised criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the fifth edition of the Diagnos... more The revised criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual necessitated the development of new screening tools for youth, one of the most widely used of which is the UCLA Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Reaction Index for DSM-5 (RI-5). Thus far, the few studies that have investigated the RI-5’s factor structure have supported a four-factor model. However, to date this research has been limited to youth with histories of exposure to single-event traumatic stressors, a significant limitation as evidence suggests many trauma-exposed youth report exposure to multiple types of traumatic stressors, or polyvictimization. It is imperative to determine the generalizability of previous factor models to specific populations which they are purported to represent. We investigated whether the RI-5’s four-factor model replicated in a sample of 455 polyvictimized justice-involved adolescents. Initial confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated that the four-factor model did not converge. Therefore, we utilized Bayesian Structural Equations Modeling (BSEM) to determine why the previously proposed factor structure did not converge. The BSEM model suggested that the global factor structure was acceptable and did not require addition or subtraction of any factor or cross-factor loadings. However, small and moderate residual covariances resulted in model misspecification, suggesting there may be additional associations not captured by the current DSM-5 model for polyvictimized youth. Future work should continue examining the RI-5’s factor structure in order to better understand whether the current results are unique and how measurements assessing DSM-5 PTSD symptom criteria perform in diverse trauma-exposed youth populations.
Previous research has provided robust evidence demonstrating that a notable proportion of youth b... more Previous research has provided robust evidence demonstrating that a notable proportion of youth become involved in both the child welfare (CW) system and the juvenile justice (JJ) system, a population often referred to as crossover youth. Prior work has identified a number of risk factors associated with crossing over between these systems. However, there are limitations to the extant literature, key among which is a lack of systematic attention to the influence of trauma exposure and posttraumatic sequelae on the crossover trajectory. In contrast, viewing this research through a trauma-informed lens promises to enhance our ability to integrate findings across studies and to derive theoretically derived hypotheses about underlying mechanisms which will better inform future research and the development of effective prevention and intervention efforts. Accordingly, the purpose of this article is to present a trauma-informed research agenda that would strengthen future research in the field. After providing a brief critique of the existing studies that has documented known risk factors associated with the crossover population, we outline ways in which future research could apply relevant theoretical trauma-informed approaches, including developmental traumatology, to further advance our knowledge of risk factors and mechanisms associated with the crossover trajectory. We conclude by discussing policy and system-wide implications related to the proposed research agenda.
A limited number of studies have begun to investigate how the coordinated actions of distinct phy... more A limited number of studies have begun to investigate how the coordinated actions of distinct physiological systems may be related to the development of psychopathology. However, the form taken by these patterns of coordination as well as their antecedents and developmental implications remain to be clarified. The Adaptive Calibration Model (ACM) proposes four prototypical patterns of physiological stress responsivity and corresponding behavioral patterns, which are further tied to varying levels of childhood adversity. The current study is among the first to investigate whether patterns of sympathetic and parasympathetic stress responsivity predicted by the ACM generalize to a sample of justice‐involved youth with disproportionately high rates of childhood trauma exposure. Psychophysiological and self‐report data were collected from 822 justice‐involved youth (182 girls) ages 12–19 years. Latent profile analyses yielded five profiles of physiological responsivity that largely corre...
This article introduces a special issue of the Journal of Traumatic Stress devoted to new directi... more This article introduces a special issue of the Journal of Traumatic Stress devoted to new directions in the study of moral injury (MI), defined as transgressive harms and the outcomes of those experiences. Although a significant body of research has emerged devoted to the study of the MI construct, a number of conceptual and empirical challenges have arisen; these are summarized and discussed in the present article. In addition, this article proposes ways of overcoming these challenges in order to further research and clinical practice in the field. We then go on to introduce the content and themes of the present collection of articles in this special issue, all of which provide examples of some of the most innovative and forward‐looking work on the topic and expand into new conceptual frameworks, new methods of investigation, and new populations and contexts.
The purpose of this article is to describe theories used to account for the development of psycho... more The purpose of this article is to describe theories used to account for the development of psychopathology in adolescence. After providing some brief historical context regarding the way theories of psychopathology are influenced by the mores of their times, this article gives a description of eight of the major theoretical perspectives underlying modern attempts to explain aberrant human behavior. The central tenets of the medical model, psychoanalytic theory and its offshoots, behaviorism, cognitive theory, humanisms, family systems theory, and the biobehavioral model are described. Lastly, the integrative perspective of developmental psychopathology is introduced.
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