No abstract

High rates of comorbidities and poor validity of disorder diagnostic criteria for mental disorders hamper advances in mental health research. Recent work has suggested the utility of continuous cross-cutting dimensions, including general psychopathology and specific factors of externalizing and internalizing (e.g., distress and fear) syndromes. The current study evaluated the reliability of competing structural models of psychopathology and examined external validity of the best fitting model on the basis of family risk and child global executive function (EF). A community sample of 8,012 families from Brazil with children ages 6-12 years completed structured interviews about the child and parental psychiatric syndromes, and a subsample of 2,395 children completed tasks assessing EF (i.e., working memory, inhibitory control, and time processing). Confirmatory factor analyses tested a series of structural models of psychopathology in both parents and children. The model with a general psychopathology factor ("P factor") with 3 specific factors (fear, distress, and externalizing) exhibited the best fit. The general P factor accounted for most of the variance in all models, with little residual variance explained by each of the 3 specific factors. In addition, associations between child and parental factors were mainly significant for the P factors and nonsignificant for the specific factors from the respective models. Likewise, the child P factor-but not the specific factors-was significantly associated with global child EF. Overall, our results provide support for a latent overarching P factor characterizing child psychopathology, supported by familial associations and child EF. (PsycINFO Database Record

Results are interpreted in relation to a two-pathway model of ADHD; regulation problems contribute to the emergence of symptoms of inattention-disorganization, reactive or motivational control problems to the emergence of hyperactivity-impulsivity, and these are distinct from negative affectivity. Children with regulation deficits and a reactive motivational style are especially at risk for the development of ADHD.

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a common example of developmental psychopathology that might be able to be better understood by taking an emotion regulation perspective. As discussed herein, emotion regulation is understood to consist of two component processes, emotion (e.g., positive and negative emotionality) and regulation (e.g., effortful and reactive forms of control), which interact with one another at the behavioral level. Review of work to date suggests that the heterogeneous behavioral category of ADHD may encompass two distinct kinds of inputs: inattentive ADHD symptoms may be primarily associated with breakdowns in the regulation side, whereas hyperactivity-impulsive ADHD symptoms may be associated with breakdowns in the emotionality side. It is argued that breakdowns in control may be a signature for ADHD specifically, while increased negative emotionality may serve as non-specific risk factors for disruptive behavior disorders, explaining their comorbidity. Increased understanding of the interrelations and interactions of component emotion regulation processes may elucidate developmental, sex, and neural mechanisms of ADHD and associated comorbid disruptive disorders.