Irene Tung

California State University, Dominguez Hills | CSUDH · Department of Psychology

Emotional distress during pregnancy is likely influenced by both maternal history of adversity and concurrent prenatal stressors, but prospective longitudinal studies are lacking. Guided by a life span model of pregnancy health and stress sensitization theories, this study investigated the influence of intimate partner violence (IPV) during pregnan...

Life stressors during pregnancy can disrupt maternal stress regulation and negatively impact offspring health. Despite the important role of cardiac vagal control (e.g., heart rate variability; HRV) in stress regulation, few studies have investigated how life stressors and emotional support influence vagal control during pregnancy. This study aimed...

Objective Although many studies have identified risk factors for adolescent pregnancy, much less is known about factors that support pregnant adolescents’ psychological wellbeing and offspring outcomes. This study drew on strength-based frameworks to investigate family and neighborhood factors linked to social connectedness that predict psychologic...

Accumulating evidence suggests that psychological distress during pregnancy is linked to offspring risk for externalizing outcomes (e.g., reactive/aggressive behaviors, hyperactivity, and impulsivity). Effect sizes across studies have varied widely, however, due to differences in study design and methodology, including control for the confounding c...

Exposure to high levels of stress during pregnancy is a known risk factor for a wide range of offspring outcomes, but little is known about the biopsychosocial factors underlying resilience and recovery from stress during pregnancy. The current study investigated associations between emotional and instrumental support during pregnancy and resilienc...

Background Low levels of vitamin D during pregnancy are associated with offspring behavioral problems but little is known about pre-pregnancy influences. Additionally, Black American individuals are underrepresented in studies, limiting translational impact. We tested independent and interactive effects of preconception and prenatal vitamin D in Bl...

Racialized police violence is a profound form of systemic oppression affecting Black Americans, yet the narratives surrounding police brutality have disproportionately centered on Black men and boys, overshadowing the victimization of Black women and girls. In 2014, the #SayHerName campaign emerged to bring attention to the often-overlooked instanc...

Despite requirements by the American Psychological Association and the Psychological Clinical Science Accreditation System regarding training and education in cultural humility, questions remain regarding the presence and quality of the training in clinical psychology PhD and PsyD programs. This is a critical issue as inadequate training in diversi...

Objective: Sexual violence disproportionately impacts Black girls and women in the United States. The literature documents the long-term mental health outcomes of childhood sexual trauma, but research on resilience-promoting factors for Black women survivors of such trauma is sparse. The present study tests hypotheses about the influence of Black g...

High levels of stress during pregnancy can have lasting effects on maternal and offspring health, which disproportionately impacts families facing financial strain, systemic racism, and other forms of social oppression. Developing ways to monitor daily life stress during pregnancy is important for reducing stress-related health disparities. We eval...

Objective: This study assessed perceptions of Clinical Psychology doctoral programs' efforts to recruit and retain faculty and graduate students of color, as well as differences in perceptions based on participants' position within their program (i.e. graduate student versus faculty) and race. Method: Participants (n = 297; 35% people of color;...

Psychological well-being (life satisfaction and flourishing) during the perinatal period has implications for both maternal and child health. However, few studies have investigated the extent to which psychological well-being changes from preconception to postpartum periods, particularly among diverse samples of women. Using prospectively collected...

Unlabelled: Abstract. Background: Studies have reported mixed findings regarding the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on pregnant women and birth outcomes. This study used a quasi-experimental design to account for potential confounding by sociodemographic characteristics. Methods: Data were drawn from 16 prenatal coh...

Individual differences in temperament (e.g., negative emotionality) are robust early predictors of emotional and behavioral health. Although temperament is often conceptualized as relatively stable across the lifespan, evidence suggests that it may change over time as a function of social context. Extant studies have been limited by cross-sectional...

Objective: We sought to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on perinatal outcomes while accounting for maternal depression or perceived stress and to describe COVID-specific stressors, including changes in prenatal care, across specific time periods of the pandemic. Study design: Data dyads from 41 cohorts from the National Institutes o...

The mass incarceration of Black people in the United States is gaining attention as a public-health crisis with extreme mental-health implications. Although it is well documented that historical efforts to oppress and control Black people in the United States helped shape definitions of mental illness and crime, many psychologists are unaware of th...

There is growing recognition that traditional research training in health service psychology (HSP) inadequately addresses issues of social justice, inclusiveness, antiracism, and health equity. Social responsiveness involves using psychologists’ professional roles to actively address issues affecting the public while assuming the inherent interdepe...

The negative effects of prenatal stress on offspring health are well established, but there remains little understanding of the influence of stress prior to conception despite known effects on biological systems that are important for a healthy pregnancy. Furthermore, operational definitions of stress vary considerably, and exposure is often charac...

Palitsky et al. (2022) wrote a timely manuscript that highlights long-standing issues in Health Service Psychology (HSP) internship training and offers concrete recommendations for addressing these challenges. The authors offer suggestions for HSP internship training reform as well as recommendations that may be feasible within the confines of curr...

POSTER SESSION I THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2023 • 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM| VOLUME 228, ISSUE 1, SUPPLEMENT , S86, JANUARY 2023 Objective: Structural racism and discrimination have been shown to contribute to racial inequities in birth outcomes between Black and White women, but less is known about variability in these associations that could better inform...

Introduction: Opioid use has disproportionally impacted pregnant people and their fetuses. Previous studies describing opioid use among pregnant people are limited by geographic location, type of medical coverage, and small sample size. We described characteristics of a large, diverse group of pregnant people who were enrolled in the Environmental...

Introduction The Outness Inventory (OI) is the most commonly used measure for assessing an individual’s level of outness, or openness about sexual identity. However, data on the validity of the OI factor structure across diverse populations is limited. The present study aimed to test the factor structure of the OI in a population-based sample of Bl...

Background Consistent evidence from retrospective reports and case registry studies indicates that a history of depression is a major risk factor for depression in the peripartum period. However, longitudinal studies with racially and socioeconomically diverse samples of young mothers are lacking, and little is known about developmental patterns of...

The mass incarceration of Black people in the United States is gaining attention as a public health crisis with extreme mental health implications. Although it is well-documented that historical efforts to oppress and control Black people in the United States helped shape definitions of mental illness and crime, many psychologists are unaware of th...

Objective Pediatric positive health refers to children's assessments of their well-being. The purpose of this study was to contrast positive health for children aged 8 to 17 years with and without chronic physical and mental health conditions. Methods Data were drawn from the National Institutes of Health Environmental influences on Child Health O...

Graphic videos of race-based violence, including police brutality toward Black people and anti-Asian hate crimes, have exploded over the past year. While documentation of these horrific acts has brought visibility to the pervasiveness of racial discrimination, it has also resulted in youth of color being exposed to racial stressors more than ever b...

Objective. The present study assessed perceptions of Clinical Psychology doctoral programs’ efforts to recruit and retain Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) faculty and graduate students, as well as differences in such perceptions based on participants’: (1) position within their program (i.e., graduate student versus faculty) and (2) r...

Background The science of stress exposure and health in humans has been hampered by differences in operational definitions of exposures and approaches to defining timing, leading to results that lack consistency and specificity. In the present study we aim to empirically derive variability in type, timing and chronicity of stress exposure for Black...

Background: The transition to motherhood is associated with the emergence or exacerbation of symptoms of emotional distress disorders for many women. Although adolescence is a developmental period of increased risk for mood disorders and emotion dysregulation among females, little is known about changes in emotional distress across the early postpa...

Environmental exposures, psychosocial stressors and nutrition are all potentially important influences that may impact health outcomes directly or via interactions with the genome or epigenome over generations. While there have been clear successes in large-scale human genetic studies in recent decades, there is still a substantial amount of missin...

This manuscript provides recommendations to clinicians on how to support youth of color and their families following highly publicized acts of racial violence and related events.

In the weeks following the killing of George Floyd and media coverage of the killings of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, the Black Lives Matter movement and other protests for racial justice swept the world. Demonstrations occurred in more than 700 cities internationally and across all 50 states in the United States. Notably, demands for the dism...

Purpose: Adolescent suicidal ideation (SI) and nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) are associated with depression, but few studies adequately represent sexual minorities. This study investigated whether the association between SI/NSSI and depression varies by sexual orientation. Method: SI, NSSI, sexual orientation, and depressive symptoms were measured...

Clinical psychological science is a field committed to reducing the negative impact of psychiatric illness through innovative research and psychological treatments. Unfortunately, the impact of racial injustices that pervade American society and permeate our academic institutions is felt not only by the individuals who work in our departments as fa...

Background Moderate to heavy alcohol use during pregnancy (≥3 drinks/occasion) is linked to a range of adverse offspring outcomes. Prior studies suggest that adolescent and young adult mothers may be particularly vulnerable to these risky drinking behaviors during and after pregnancy. This study used latent class growth analysis (LCGA) to examine c...

Early threat exposure is a transdiagnostic risk factor for psychopathology, and evidence suggests that genetic variation in the oxytocin receptor ( OXTR ) moderates this association. However, it is unclear if this gene-by-environment (G×E) interaction is tied to unique risk for disorder-specific outcomes or instead increases shared risk for general...

Emotion regulation is critical for optimal functioning across a wide range of domains and may be even more important for individuals in high‐risk environments. While evidence suggests that childhood is generally a period of emotion regulation growth and development, research is needed to examine factors that may contribute to deviations from a typi...

Infants adopted domestically from foster care often present with prenatal substance exposure and risky birth outcomes such as prematurity and low birth weight. Because few longitudinal studies of foster‐adoptive infants exist, it is unclear how these preplacement risk factors influence development over time. The present study examined associations...

Background Adolescent girls who become pregnant demonstrate greater risk for substance use than same‐aged peers. However, it remains unclear how risk relates to normative changes in adolescence. Few studies have examined adolescent substance use changes before, during, and after pregnancy and considered how pregnancy outcomes (childbirth, miscarria...

Social skills are traditionally viewed as acquired through social environments including parenting. However, biopsychosocial models highlight the importance of genetic influences and gene-environment interactions (G×Es) in child development. Extant G×E investigations often fail to account for developmental changes in the phenotype or rigorously ass...

Childhood exposure to stress can induce prolonged negative effects on health, which in turn confer risks for the next generation, but greater specificity is needed to inform intervention. A first step is to measure individual differences in emotional reactivity to stress early in life in ways that can account for heterogeneity in child exposure. Th...

Childhood maltreatment robustly predicts adolescent externalizing behaviors (EB; e.g., violence, delinquency, substance use) and may crystalize patterns of EB by influencing sensitivity to the social environment (e.g., parenting, friendships). In a nationally representative sample of 9,421 adolescents, we modeled latent growth curves of EB from age...

Importance Modern digital platforms are easily accessible and intensely stimulating; it is unknown whether frequent use of digital media may be associated with symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Objective To determine whether the frequency of using digital media among 15- and 16-year-olds without significant ADHD symptoms...

Although parenting behavior and friendship quality predict adolescent externalizing behaviors (EBs), individual differences in temperament may differentially affect susceptibility to these factors over time. In a multi-method and multi-informant study of 141 children followed prospectively from toddlerhood to adolescence, we tested the independent...

Children in foster care frequently have histories of physical/sexual abuse and neglect, increasing their risk for externalizing behaviors (EB; e.g., aggression). According to the differential susceptibility theory, children with reactive temperaments (e.g., negative emotionality) may be particularly vulnerable to early maltreatment, but may also be...

Although both gene- and temperament-environment interactions contribute to the development of youth externalizing problems, it is unclear how these factors jointly affect environmental sensitivity over time. In a 7-year longitudinal study of 232 children (aged 5-10) with and without ADHD, we employed moderated mediation to test a developmentally se...

Although gene × environment interactions contribute to youth attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms, the pathways mediating these influences are unknown. We tested genetic moderation of indirect effects from parenting behavior to youth ADHD symptoms through multiple neurocognitive factors. Two hundred and twenty-nine youth with an...

Individual differences in emotion regulation are central to social, academic, occupational, and psychological development, and emotion dysregulation (ED) in childhood is a risk factor for numerous developmental outcomes. The present study aimed to (a) describe the developmental trajectory of ED across early childhood (3–6 years) and (b) examine its...

Childhood attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a replicated risk factor for depression, but the explanatory factors underlying this association have not been reliably identified. Given that social skills (i.e., cooperation, assertion, responsibility, self-control) are sensitive to early ADHD and predict later depression, we tested whe...

Although parental attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a risk factor for multiple negative youth outcomes, it is unknown how change in parental ADHD symptoms over time affects change in child ADHD symptoms; moreover, mediators of these predictions are largely unknown. Parents of 230 5-10 year-old children (68 % male) with (n = 120) an...

Context: Although children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are at elevated risk for comorbid psychopathology, the clinical correlates of ADHD in girls are far less understood relative to boys, despite ADHD being one of the most common childhood disorders in girls. Objective: To meta-analytically summarize rates of comorbid i...

Although harsh parenting and peer rejection are independently associated with childhood conduct problems (CP), these patterns are often informant specific, suggesting that their associations across contexts (i.e., home and school) should be considered. In a sample of 142 children with and without attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD; ages...

Although prevailing theories of antisocial behavior (ASB) emphasize distinct developmental trajectories, few studies have explored gene–environment interplay underlying membership in empirically derived trajectories. To improve knowledge about the development of overt (e.g., aggression) and covert (e.g., delinquency) ASB, we tested the association...

Although there are likely to be multiple mechanisms underlying parent attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms as a key risk factor for offspring ADHD, potential explanatory factors have yet to be reliably identified. Given that parent ADHD symptoms independently predict parenting behavior and child ADHD symptoms, we tested whether...

Although negative parenting behavior and peer status are independently associated with childhood conduct problems (e.g., oppositional defiant disorder (ODD)), relatively little is known about their interplay, particularly in relation to differentiated measures of positive and negative peer regard. To improve the specificity of the association of ne...

Although multiple dimensions of negative parenting behavior are associated with childhood conduct problems (CP), there is relatively little research on whether the association is equally robust in boys and girls. To improve the specificity of current models of negative parenting and offspring CP, we explored the potential moderating role of child s...