Background The impact of chronic stressors like the COVID‐19 pandemic is likely to be magnified in adolescents with pre‐existing mental health risk, such as attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This study examined changes in and predictors of adolescent mental health from before to during the COVID‐19 pandemic in the Southeastern and Midwestern United States. Methods Participants include 238 adolescents (132 males; ages 15–17; 118 with ADHD). Parents and adolescents provided ratings of mental health symptoms shortly before the COVID‐19 pandemic and in spring and summer 2020. Results Adolescents on average experienced an increase in depression, anxiety, sluggish cognitive tempo, inattentive, and oppositional/defiant symptoms from pre‐COVID‐19 to spring 2020; however, with the exception of inattention, these symptoms decreased from spring to summer 2020. Adolescents with ADHD were more likely than adolescents without ADHD to experience an increase in inattentive, hyperactive/impulsive, and oppositional/defiant symptoms. Adolescents with poorer pre‐COVID‐19 emotion regulation abilities were at‐risk for experiencing increases in all mental health symptoms relative to adolescents with better pre‐COVID‐19 emotion regulation abilities. Interactive risk based on ADHD status and pre‐COVID‐19 emotion regulation abilities was found for inattention and hyperactivity/impulsivity, such that adolescents with ADHD and poor pre‐COVID‐19 emotion regulation displayed the highest symptomatology across timepoints. Lower family income related to increases in inattention but higher family income related to increases in oppositional/defiant symptoms. Conclusions The early observed increases in adolescent mental health symptoms during the COVID‐19 pandemic do not on average appear to be sustained following the lift of stay‐at‐home orders, though studies evaluating mental health across longer periods of time are needed. Emotion dysregulation and ADHD increase risk for sustained negative mental health functioning and highlight the need for interventions for these populations during chronic stressors. Results and clinical implications should be considered within the context of our predominately White, middle class sample.

Among the many impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the most dramatic was the immediate closure of in-person schooling when parents were faced with much greater responsibility in supporting their children’s learning. Despite this, few studies have examined parents’ own perspectives of this experience. The aims of this study were to (1) identify overall challenges, benefits, and useful strategies related to home learning and (2) examine differences in findings across continents, between parents of youth with and without attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and between parents of children and adolescents. A qualitative approach was used to understand parents’ responses to remote learning across three studies conducted in the United States and Australia. Parents (N=606, children: 68.5% male, ages 6-17 years) provided responses to three open-ended questions. The most frequently expressed challenges were difficulty staying on task (20.5%), lack of motivation (15.3%), teacher-related factors such as poor teaching quality (13.4%), lack of social interaction opportunities (10.9%), and balancing parent work with online learning (10.2%). The most frequently expressed strategy related to using routines and schedules (51.4%) and the biggest benefit was more family time (18.3%). Findings were largely consistent across continents, ADHD status, and age, suggesting that many parental responses to remote learning appear to be universal. Given that the most common challenges were child- (e.g., difficulties with staying on task and motivation), parent- (e.g., balancing remote learning with work responsibilities), and teacher- (e.g., poor instructional quality) related, there is a need for improved support across these systems going forward.

Among the many impacts of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, one of the most dramatic was the immediate closure of in-person schooling in March/April 2020 when parents were faced with much greater responsibility in supporting their children's learning. Despite this, few studies have examined parents' own perspectives of this experience. The aims of this preliminary study were to (a) identify challenges, benefits, and useful strategies related to remote learning and (b) examine differences in findings across two countries, between parents of youth with and without attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and between parents of children and adolescents. To address these aims, parent responses to openended questions on the Home Adjustment to COVID-19 Scale (HACS; were examined across three studies conducted in the United States and Australia (N = 606, children: 68.5% male, ages 6-17 years). The challenges most frequently expressed by parents included the child's difficulty staying on task (23.8% of parents), lack of motivation (18.3%), remote learning factors (17.8%), and lack of social interaction (14.4%). The most frequently expressed strategy related to using routines and schedules (58.2%) and the biggest benefit was more family time (20.3%). Findings were largely consistent across countries, ADHD status, and age, with a few notable group differences. Given that the most common challenges involved child-(e.g., difficulties with staying on task and motivation), parent-(e.g., balancing remote learning with work responsibilities), and school-(e.g., remote instruction difficulties) related factors, there is a need for improved support across these systems going forward. do not necessarily represent the official views of the funding agencies or authors' affiliations.

Executive function (EF), including cognitive flexibility, attention shifting, and inhibitory control, has been linked to a range of outcomes across the lifespan, such as school readiness and academic functioning, job performance, health, and social-emotional wellbeing. Yet, research investigating links between parent EF and child EF is still limited. This is partly due to challenges in measuring the same EF abilities in parents and their children. The current study investigated the applicability of a computer-based battery of various EF tasks for use with both mothers and children. The battery included the following EF tasks: Dimensional Change Card Sort, Hearts and Flowers, and Fish Flanker. Participants were 80 Indian mothers and their 4-year-old daughters. EF was measured with regard to accuracy scores, response time, and inverse efficiency (IE) scores of the most complex blocks of each task. Scoring patterns indicated that children's task performance appeared to be determined by their ability to recognize the cue indicating which task to perform at any given trial and to inhibit an incorrect response. In contrast, mothers' performance appeared to be determined by response time, that is, their ability to be quick in giving the correct response. However, for both children and mothers, IE scores best captured individual differences in EF performance between participants. Furthermore, confirmatory factor analyses found that, for both children and mothers, all EF measures loaded on a latent factor, suggesting that the measures shared common variance in EF. There appeared to be no significant association between mothers' and children's EF scores, controlling for several background variables. Directions for further research include examining the applicability of the EF task battery to reliably describe developmental trajectories of EF abilities over time, and further examining variability in the parent-child EF association across the lifespan. Executive function (EF) is a set of higher-order cognitive processes that are essential to optimal cognitive and socialemotional functioning from early childhood into adulthood (Best & Miller, 2010;Blair, 2002;Duckworth & Steinberg, 2015;Miyake et al., 2000). Although EF is not synonymous with self-regulation, both constructs are intricately linked with one another (Blair & Ursache, 2011;Hofmann, Schmeichel, & Baddeley, 2012). The cognitive processes involved in EF assist the individual in self-regulation, that is, one's purposeful behavior to successfully complete goaldirected action (Blair & Ursache, 2011). The relationship between EF and self-regulation becomes particularly obvious when experiencing failure of self-regulation. Hofmann et al. (2012) argue that impairments in an individual's selfregulation can be best explained "via state reductions in EF as the underlying conceptual mechanism" (p. 177).It is well documented that EF undergoes significant developmental changes during the early childhood years that are linked to changes in the structural organization...

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