Commentary: A Practical Guide for Translating Basic Research on Affective Science to Implementing Physiology in Clinical Child and Adolescent Assessments

The National Institute of Mental Health recently launched the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC). RDoC is a framework that facilitates the dimensional assessment and classification of processes relevant to mental health (e.g., affect, regulation, cognition, social affiliation), as reflected in measurements across multiple units of analysis (e.g., physiology, circuitry, genes, self-reports). A key focus of RDoC involves opening new lines of research examining patients’ responses on biological measures, with the key goal of developing new therapeutic techniques that effectively target mechanisms of mental disorders. Yet applied researchers and practitioners rarely use biological measures within mental health assessments, which may present challenges in translating RDoC-guided research into improvements in patient care. Thus, if RDoC is to result in research that yields clinical tools that reduce the burden of mental illness and improve public health, we ought to develop strategies for effectively implementing biological measures in the context of clinical assessments. In this special issue, we sought to provide an initial step in this direction by assembling a collection of articles from leading research teams carrying out pioneering work on implementing multimodal assessments (biological, subjective, behavioral) of affective processes in applied settings. In this commentary, we expand upon the work presented in this special issue by making a series of suggestions for how to most parsimoniously conduct multimodal assessments of affective processes in applied research and clinical settings. We hope that this approach will facilitate translations of the RDoC framework into applied research and clinic settings.