Papers by Caroline Oppenheimer
Advancements in machine learning and natural language processing have made text classification in... more Advancements in machine learning and natural language processing have made text classification increasingly attractive for information retrieval. However, developing text classifiers is challenging when no prior labeled data are available for a rare category of interest. Finding instances of the rare class using a uniform random sample can be inefficient and costly due to the rare category's low base rate. This work presents an approach that combines the strengths of text classification and Boolean retrieval to help learn rare concepts of interest. As a motivating example, we use the task of finding conversations that reference firearm injury or violence in the Crisis Text Line database. Identifying rare categories, like firearm injury or violence, can improve crisis lines' abilities to support people with firearm-related crises or provide appropriate resources. Our approach outperforms a set of iteratively refined Boolean queries and results in a recall of 0.91 on a test set generated from a process independent of our study. Our results suggest that text classification with Boolean retrieval initialization can be effective for finding rare categories of interest and improve on the precision of using Boolean retrieval alone.
Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Nov 1, 2015
Depression is a debilitating mental illness with clear developmental patterns from childhood thro... more Depression is a debilitating mental illness with clear developmental patterns from childhood through late adolescence. Here, we present data from the Gene Environment Mood (GEM) study, which used an accelerated longitudinal cohort design with youth (N = 665) starting in 3 rd , 6 th , and 9 th grades, and a caretaker, who were recruited from the general community, and were then assessed repeatedly via semi-structured diagnostic interviews every 6-months over 3 years
Translational psychiatry, 2011
Positive affect has been implicated in the phenomenological experience of various psychiatric dis... more Positive affect has been implicated in the phenomenological experience of various psychiatric disorders, vulnerability to develop psychopathology and overall socio-emotional functioning. However, developmental influences that may contribute to positive affect have been understudied. Here, we studied youths' 5-HTTLPR genotype and rearing environment (degree of positive and supportive parenting) to investigate the differential susceptibility hypothesis (DSH) that youth carrying short alleles of 5-HTTLPR would be more influenced and responsive to supportive and unsupportive parenting, and would exhibit higher and lower positive affect, respectively. Three independent studies tested this gene-environment interaction (GxE) in children and adolescents (age range 9-15 years; total N=1874). In study 1 (N=307; 54% girls), positive/supportive parenting was assessed via parent report, in study 2 (N=197; 58% girls) via coded observations of parent-child interactions in the laboratory and in...
Frontiers in Psychiatry, 2011
This study provides the first genetic association examination of borderline personality disorder ... more This study provides the first genetic association examination of borderline personality disorder (BPD) traits in children and adolescents (ages 9-15) using two independent samples of youth recruited from the general community. We tested the a priori hypothesis that the serotonin transporter promoter gene (5-HTTLPR) would relate specifically to BPD traits in youth. This association was hypothesized based on prior genetic association research with BPD adults and theory positing that emotion dysregulation may be a core risk process contributing to BPD. Youth provided DNA via buccal cells. Both youth and a parent completed self-report measures assessing youth's BPD traits and depressive symptoms. Results from both Study 1 (N = 242) and an independent replication sample of Study 2 (N = 144) showed that carriers of the short allele of 5-HTTLPR exhibited the highest levels of BPD traits. This relation was observed even after controlling for the substantial co-occurrence between BPD traits and depressive symptoms. This specific association between 5-HTTLPR and BPD traits among youth supports previous genetic associations with adults diagnosed with BPD and provides preliminary support for a developmental extension of etiological risk for BPD among youth.
Developmental psychology, 2014
During the transition to adolescence, several developmental trends converge to increase the impor... more During the transition to adolescence, several developmental trends converge to increase the importance of peer relationships, the likelihood of peer-related stressors, and the experience of depressive symptoms. Simultaneously, there are significant changes in parent-child relationships. The current study sought to evaluate whether positive relationship quality with parents continued to serve a protective effect by buffering the relationship between stressful life events, especially peer stress, and increases in depressive symptoms throughout the transition to adolescence. Participants in a large (N = 692) 2-site accelerated longitudinal study were recruited in 3rd, 6th, and 9th grade and followed every 3 months for 1 year. At baseline, parents and youth reported on parent-child relationship quality, and every 3 months thereafter reported on their levels of stressors and depressive symptoms. Parent relationship quality moderated the relationship of person-level fluctuations in peer s...
Developmental perspectives on vulnerability to nonsuicidal self-injury in youth
Advances in Child Development and Behavior, 2011
Nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) is defined as intentionally causing bodily harm to oneself without... more Nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) is defined as intentionally causing bodily harm to oneself without the intent to kill oneself. Recently, there has been an increase in research aimed at understanding why individuals, especially youth and young adults, engage in NSSI. This chapter explores the emergence and maintenance of NSSI from a developmental perspective. Epidemiological research suggests that rates of NSSI increase dramatically from early adolescence to young adulthood. No study has investigated NSSI in youth younger than age 10. Current understanding of how emotion and cognitions as well as interpersonal processes play a role in the emergence and maintenance of NSSI is explored. Further, the role of biology (e.g., neurological underpinnings, genetic associations, HPA-axis functioning) on NSSI is explored. Throughout the chapter, particular limitations (e.g., sample selection, measurement issues) in the extant corpus of knowledge are highlighted. Finally, we consider future research directions that may inform developmentally sensitive understanding of the proximal and distal risk factors that may affect the emergence and maintenance of NSSI across the life span.
Relationship Quality and Depressive Symptoms Among Adolescents: A Short-Term Multiwave Investigation of Longitudinal, Reciprocal Associations
Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 2011
This study used a multiwave design to examine the short-term longitudinal and bidirectional assoc... more This study used a multiwave design to examine the short-term longitudinal and bidirectional associations between depressive symptoms and peer relationship qualities among a sample of early to middle adolescents (N = 350, 6th-10th graders). Youth completed self-report measures of relationship quality and depressive symptoms at three time points spaced about 5 weeks apart. Results indicated that depressive symptoms predicted increases in negative qualities and decreases in positive qualities. However, neither positive nor negative relationship qualities predicted increases in depressive symptoms. Findings inform a developmentally based interpersonal model of depression by advancing knowledge on the longitudinal direction of effects between depressive symptoms and relationship quality in adolescence.
Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 2011
The current study examined whether rumination serves as a moderator of the temporal association b... more The current study examined whether rumination serves as a moderator of the temporal association between maternal and child negative affect. Participants included 88 mothers with a history of major depressive episodes and their 123 children. During an initial assessment, mothers and their children completed measures assessing negative affect and children completed a measure assessing the tendency to ruminate in response to such symptoms. Every six weeks for the subsequent year, mothers and their children completed measures assessing negative affect. Consistent with hypotheses, children with a ruminative response style were more likely than other children to report elevations in negative affect when their mothers' level of negative affect increased over time. Neither child gender nor mothers' current clinical depression status moderated the association between child rumination and maternal negative affect.
International Journal of Cognitive Therapy, 2012
Social anxiety and depression are highly comorbid conditions. Although this has led researchers t... more Social anxiety and depression are highly comorbid conditions. Although this has led researchers to suggest that social anxiety may convey risk for depression, few studies have examined mechanisms of comorbidity between these two conditions. The current study tested two mechanisms of comorbidity between symptoms of these disorders: brooding and excessive reassurance seeking. The data were evaluated in an undergraduate sample assessed three times over a 2 month period. Results suggested that brooding mediated the relationship between social anxiety at Time 1 and depression at Time 3, although no evidence was found for excessive reassuranceseeking as a mediator of these two variables. These findings support recent research suggesting that brooding may be a transdiagnostic process. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.
International Journal of Cognitive Therapy, 2008
Developmental Psychology, 2014
Theories of affective learning suggest that early experiences contribute to emotional disorders b... more Theories of affective learning suggest that early experiences contribute to emotional disorders by influencing the development of processing biases for negative emotional stimuli. Although studies have shown that physically abused children preferentially attend to angry faces, it is unclear whether youth exposed to more typical aspects of negative parenting exhibit the same type of bias. The current studies extend previous research by linking observed negative parenting styles (e.g., authoritarian) and behaviors (e.g., criticism and negative affect) to attention bias for angry faces in both a psychiatrically enriched (ages 11-17 years; N ϭ 60) and a general community (ages 9 -15 years; N ϭ 75) sample of youth. In addition, the association between observed negative parenting (e.g., authoritarian style and negative affect) and youth social anxiety was mediated by attention bias for angry faces in the general community sample. Overall, findings provide preliminary support for theories of affective learning and risk for psychopathology among youth.
Observed positive parenting behaviors and youth genotype: Evidence for gene–environment correlations and moderation by parent personality traits
Development and Psychopathology, 2013
Gene-environment correlations (rGE) have been demonstrated in behavioral genetic studies, but rGE... more Gene-environment correlations (rGE) have been demonstrated in behavioral genetic studies, but rGE have proven elusive in molecular genetic research. Significant gene-environment correlations may be difficult to detect because potential moderators could reduce correlations between measured genetic variants and the environment. Molecular genetic studies investigating moderated rGE are lacking. This study examined associations between child catechol-O-methyltransferase genotype and aspects of positive parenting (responsiveness and warmth), and whether these associations were moderated by parental personality traits (neuroticism and extraversion) among a general community sample of third, sixth, and ninth graders (N = 263) and their parents. Results showed that parent personality traits moderated the rGE association between youths' genotype and coded observations of positive parenting. Parents with low levels of neuroticism and high levels of extraversion exhibited greater sensitive responsiveness and warmth, respectively, to youth with the valine/valine genotype. Moreover, youth with this genotype exhibited lower levels of observed anger. There was no association between the catechol-O-methyltransferase genotype and parenting behaviors for parents high on neuroticism and low on extraversion. Findings highlight the importance of considering moderating variables that may influence child genetic effects on the rearing environment. Implications for developmental models of maladaptive and adaptive child outcomes, and interventions for psychopathology, are discussed within a developmental psychopathology framework.
Journal of Clinical Psychology, 2009
Cognitive theories of depression have been shown to be potent predictors of future increases in d... more Cognitive theories of depression have been shown to be potent predictors of future increases in depressive symptoms and disorder in children, adolescents, and adults. This article focuses on potential developmental origins of the main cognitive vulnerabilities, including dysfunctional attitudes, negative cognitive style, and rumination. We selectively review processes and factors that have been hypothesized to contribute to the emergence and stabilization of these cognitive risk factors. This review focuses on genetic factors, temperament, parents and peers as salient interpersonal influences, and stressful life events. We end with suggestions for future theory development and research. In particular, we emphasize the need for additional conceptual and empirical work integrating these disparate processes together into a coherent, developmental psychopathological model, and we highlight the coexistence of both stability and change in the development of cognitive vulnerabilities to depression across the lifespan.
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Papers by Caroline Oppenheimer