This study compared young adults (ages 18 to 26) with and without childhood attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) on self-reported risky sexual behaviors. Participants were 175 men with c...

Cognitive models of psychopathology posit that the content or focus of information-processing biases (e.g., attentional biases) is disorder specific: Depression is hypothesized to be characterized by attentional biases specifically for depression-relevant stimuli (e.g., sad facial expressions), whereas anxiety should relate particularly to attentional biases to threat-relevant stimuli (e.g., angry faces). However, little research has investigated this specificity hypothesis and none with a sample of youths. The present study examined attentional biases to emotional faces (sad, angry, and happy compared with neutral) in groups of pure depressed, pure anxious, comorbid depressed and anxious, and control youths (ages 9-17 years; N = 161). Consistent with cognitive models, pure depressed and pure anxious youths exhibited attentional biases specifically to sad and angry faces, respectively, whereas comorbid youths exhibited attentional biases to both facial expressions. In addition, control youths exhibited attentional avoidance of sad faces, and comorbid boys avoided happy faces. Overall, findings suggest that cognitive biases and processing of particular emotional information are specific to pure clinical depression and anxiety, and results inform etiological models of potentially specific processes that are associated with internalizing disorders among youths.

Most prior literature examining the relations among attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), conduct disorder (CD), and substance use and abuse suggests that CD fully account for the ADHD-substance abuse relation. This study sought to test an alternate theory that individuals with symptoms of both ADHD and CD are at a special risk for substance abuse. Relations between childhood ADHD and CD symptoms, and young adult tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, and hard drug use and dependence symptoms, were examined in a sample of 481 young adults. ADHD and CD symptoms interacted to predict marijuana dependence symptoms and hard drug use and dependence symptoms, such that individuals with high levels of both ADHD and CD had the highest levels of these outcomes.