ADVANCED BIOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT IN ADOLESCENTS IS NEGATIVELY ASSOCIATED WITH ANXIETY BUT POSITIVELY WITH DEPRESSION AT MODERATE NEGATIVE AFFECTIVITY

Adolescence is a key developmental phase with regard to affective processing and is associated with affective lability, development of adult-like emotion regulation skills, and onset of internalizing pathologies. Yet, beyond research on pubertal development, less is known about the unique associations of biological development and chronological age with affective processing and there is a paucity of research on anxiety and boys. Aims were to examine, in a sample of N=96 adolescents (22% female; Mage=14.96 years, SD=.525), first, whether biological and chronological age are associated with negative (NA) and positive (PA) affectivity, and emotion regulation as indices of affective processing; and second, the relation of this association with internalizing problems. Specifically, given evidence for a bidirectional link between affectivity/emotion regulation and internalizing pathology, we examined both internalizing problems as a moderator of the association between developmental variables and affective processing and affective processing as a moderator of the association between developmental levels and internalizing problems. In bivariate analyses, biological age was not and chronological age was weakly associated with one index of emotion dysregulation. In moderational analyses, bone age but not chronological age predicted NA above and beyond anxiety and depression, such that more advanced biological development was associated with lower NA. At moderate levels of NA, an interaction between bone age and one domain of internalizing symptoms (but not chronological age) predicted the other domain of internalizing symptoms, such that at moderate levels of NA, more advanced biological development was associated with lower anxiety but higher depressive problems. Results suggest composite internalizing scores may mask unique effects of the different domains of internalizing problems. Results further suggest that in adolescents at-risk for developing internalizing problems (because of heightened NA), the effect of biological development may exert anxiolytic but also depressogenic effects and the environment likely interacts differently with that development in bringing about adolescent onset internalizing problems.