Peter J. Castagna

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Verified

Peter verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

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• PhD
• Assistant Professor at University of Alabama

Neuroscientific and psychological research posits that there are two transdiagnostic facets of anxiety: anxious arousal and anxious apprehension. Though these two facets of anxiety are distinct, they are often subsumed into one domain (e.g., trait anxiety). The primary goal of the current study was to delineate the relationship between anxious arou...

Several measures are available that assess inattention, hyperactivity/impulsivity, and executive functioning deficits. Treatments for adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and skill-based academic interventions focus on improving compensatory strategies to ameliorate functional impairment; however, no measure exists that exami...

Limited Prosocial Emotion (LPE) specifier of conduct disorder (CD) includes lack of remorse or guilt, callousness/lack of empathy, unconcern about performance, and shallow/deficient affect. Given the relatively recent inclusion of the LPE specifier in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, fundamental information is still unknown about LPE, such as...

Background: Adolescence is a time of heightened risk for developing depression and also a critical period for the development and integration of self-identity. Despite this, the relation between the neurophysiological correlates of self-referential processing and major depressive symptoms in youth is not well understood. Here, we leverage computat...

Frontal midline theta oscillatory dynamics have been implicated as an important neural signature of inhibitory control. However, most proactive cognitive control studies rely on behavioral tasks where individual differences are inferred through button presses. We applied computational modeling to further refine our understanding of theta dynamics i...

The extent to which latent profiles of psychopathy manifest across the full spectrum of psychopathy (i.e., general population) is unknown. The present study sought to address this gap by subtyping adults based on psychopathic features and exploring whether these profiles differ based on external correlates: motivational tendencies, impulsivity, tri...

Although exposure to dysfunctional parenting styles in childhood can have lasting, negative impacts on overall functioning into adulthood, it remains unclear why. We explored the idea that perceived dysfunctional parenting may influence the cultivation of antisocial personality traits that remain into adulthood and account for links between perceiv...

Irritability, a prevalent and impairing symptom in many mood and anxiety disorders, is characterized by aberrant responses to frustrative nonreward. Past research investigating irritability have used a cued-attention task with rigged feedback, the affective Posner task (AP), to induce frustrative nonreward. Previous studies have not been successful...

Neuroticism predicts behaviors symptomatic of behavior dysregulation. One idea is that Neuroticism encompasses deficits in executive functioning; despite this link being empirically substantiated, it remains poorly understood. If Neuroticism is associated with executive functioning deficits due to it activating impulsivity in response to negative e...

Authoritarianism has been of interest to multiple fields in the social sciences (e.g., psychology, political science). Though traditionally conceptualized as a right-wing phenomenon, burgeoning research suggests it is also a left-wing phenomenon. The Left-Wing Authoritarianism Index-13 (LWAI-13) was recently developed as a brief measure of left-win...

The presence of callous-unemotional (CU) traits may not be unique to conduct disorder (CD) but also extend to oppositional defiant disorder (ODD). While a distinct neurocognitive profile characterizes CU traits, it remains unclear whether this CU-related neurocognitive profile differs between youth with CD and ODD. This study investigated whether C...

Endorsement of the moral foundations specified by Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) can sometimes fail to relate negatively to certain dispositions indicative of bad moral character. This evidence has fueled some concerns over whether the moral foundations in MFT are “moral.” To increase understanding of how moral foundations relate to moral character...

Adolescents experience significant developmental changes during a time of heightened sensitivity to social cues, particularly rejection by peers, which can be especially overwhelming for those with elevated levels of social anxiety. Social evaluative decision‐making tasks have been useful in uncovering the neural correlates of information processin...

This chapter offers a definition of healthy autobiographical memory within a larger framework of narrative identity. Healthy memory consists of memory specificity, a greater emphasis on positive affective content, and the capacity to engage in meaning-making based on memory narratives. Research on several major psychological disorders is reviewed f...

Introduction: Anxiety disorders are the most prevalent psychiatric disorders among youth. Among the various anxiety disorders, generalized anxiety disorder is particularly prevalent. Youth with GAD appear at elevated risk of developing other anxiety disorders, mood disorder, and substance use disorders. Functional outcomes of youth with GAD can be...

What an adolescent thinks about themselves, commonly termed self-referential processing, has significant implications for youth long-term psychological well-being. Self-referential processing plays an important role in anticipatory and reactive processing in social contexts and contributes to symptoms of social anxiety. Previous work examining self...

Objective: Modest agreement between mothers', fathers', and teachers' reports of child psychopathology can cause diagnostic ambiguity. Despite this, there is little research on informant perspectives of youth's limited prosocial emotions (LPEs). We examined the relationship between mother-, father-, and teacher-reported LPE in a clinical sample of...

A large body of work documents the utility of behavioral risk tasks for making inferences about adolescent risk-taking proclivities and related emotional and motivational correlates. Much less attention has been paid to risk-avoidance during adolescence. We provide validity data for a behavioral measure designed to assess avoidance, the Balloon Ris...

Research on self-reported executive functioning (EF) and personality has largely focused on normative personality traits. While previous research has demonstrated that maladaptive personality traits are associated with performance-based EF, the literature examining the relationship between these traits and self-reported EF is limited. The current s...

Callous–unemotional traits, which include lack of remorse or guilt, callousness/lack of empathy, unconcern about performance, and shallow/deficient affect, were included as a specifier of conduct disorder in the current (fifth) edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders under the rubric Limited Prosocial Emotions (LPEs). T...

In the field of child and adolescent psychopathology, discrepancy among informants (e.g., mother and child) is common. Discrepancies are an important topic of research as assessments utilize multiple informants, which guild clinicians’ diagnostic, treatment, and research decisions. The difference score between mothers and youth report of internaliz...

Adolescence is a developmental period characterized by substantial biological, neural, behavioral, and social changes. Learning to navigate the complex social world requires adaptive skills. Although anticipation of social situations can serve an adaptive function, providing opportunity to adjust behavior, socially anxious individuals may engage in...

Previous work relies largely on the simple reaction time measures in inhibitory control tasks. The goal of the current study was to provide a better understanding the relationship between puberty, sex, and inhibitory control utilizing and contrasting two popular drift diffusion models. A sample of 103 adolescents (Mage = 14.49, SD = 1.69) self-repo...

Limited prosocial emotions (LPE) are characterized by a lack of remorse or guilt, callousness/lack of empathy, being unconcerned about performance, and shallow/deficient affect. While previous research has largely focused on the presence or absence of LPE in youth, there is considerable evidence that symptom presence/absence and symptom impairment...

The goal of the current study was to examine the role number of children in a family has on the discrepancy between mother- and teacher-reported externalizing problems. A total of 243 youth and mothers (Mage = 9.92 ± 2.84 years; age range: 8–16 years; 129 males and 114 females) presented for a psychological evaluation. Behavioral reports were gathe...

There is growing evidence that features of borderline personality disorder (BPD) emerge in childhood and present long-term risk for the development of BPD. Thus, valid and reliable assessments of BPD features in childhood are needed. This study examined the psychometric properties of the parent version of the Borderline Personality Features Scale f...

Oppositional behavior, irritability, and aggression are common in autism and ADHD-Combined presentation (but less frequent in ADHD-Inattentive), and children with autism are at high risk for anxiety. No study has compared sex differences in externalizing and internalizing symptoms between ADHD-Combined, ADHD-Inattentive, autism, and general populat...

The current study sought to examine the functional connectivity of resting state networks (RSNs) as they relate to the individual domains of executive functioning (EF). Based on the Unity and Diversity model (Miyake et al., 2000), EF performance was captured using a three-factor model proposed by Karr et al. (2018), which includes inhibition, shift...

Defensive Responding is a term to describe strategies used to control the perceptions others have of oneself. The attempt to control information in an effort to influences another’s opinion can serve as a personal or social goal-directed behavior. This behavior has implications for how others perceive, evaluate, and treat them. There is a wealth of...

Trait neuroticism refers to individual differences in negative emotional response to threat, frustration, or loss, operationally defined by elevated levels of irritability, anger, sadness, anxiety, worry, hostility, self-consciousness, and vulnerability to mental and physical difficulties. While functional studies have been fairly consistent when i...

Academic underachievement has been associated with serious long term consequences for children and adolescents, including poorer outcomes within occupational, social, and health domains. Research has shown that student’s cognitive abilities, such as working memory and verbal reasoning, significantly predict achievement outcomes. However, identifyin...

Objective To better understand the factors associated with the maintenance of social anxiety symptoms in youth. Social anxiety disorder is highly prevalent, and it is associated with persistent and recurrent major depressive disorders that are more chronic and linked with worse social functioning. Negative self-statements have been found to be a cr...

Although anxiety and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms are highly comorbid, research has generally examined the executive functioning (EF) deficits associated with each of these symptoms independently. The purpose of this study was to examine the unique and interactive effects of anxiety and ADHD symptoms (first respectively,...

When exploring the relationship anxiety has with IQ, academic achievement studies often rely on diagnostic groups or total scores for an anxiety measure. The differential effects caused by anxiety dimensions, as well as their interactions, were examined with an exploratory method. This study examined the main effect of worry and physiological anxie...

The Attentional Control Scale (ACS) is a self-report questionnaire that is used to measure individual differences in attentional control. Despite its widespread use, there is limited and conflicting data regarding the factor structure of the ACS. Further, the psychometric properties of the ACS have yet to be evaluated in an older adult sample. The...

Background: Self-report instruments are commonly used to assess for childhood depressive symptoms. Historically, clinicians have relied heavily on parent-reports due to concerns about childrens' cognitive abilities to understand diagnostic questions. However, parents may also be unreliable reporters due to a lack of understanding of their child's...

Children with depressed parents are at greater risk of developing depression than children whose parents do not have depression. Activity scheduling has been shown to mitigate depressive symptoms; however, research has yet to fully determine what components of activities (i.e., physical activity of sports vs. socialization of organizations) impact...

The measurement of avoidance behavior in youth with anxiety and related disorders is essential. Historically, the behavioral avoidance task (BAT) has been used as a measure of avoidance that can be tailored to a youth’s particular fear. Although in use for over 90 years, there has yet to be a systematic review of its use, properties, etc. Here we e...

The current study examined the role negative self-statements have on the comorbidity between anxious symptomatology and ADHD-combined presentation (ADHD-C) and ADHD-predominantly inattentive (ADHD-I). A total of 114 children and adolescents with ADHD (M age = 10.15; SD = 2.30; range = 7-16) from a clinic-referred sample were grouped based on a semi...