Interparental relationship dissatisfaction plays an important role in adolescent mental health. Past research examining mechanisms underlying this association has highlighted the role of the parent-child relationship as a mediating mechanism through which associations may be understood; however, there has been relatively limited examination of wider social relationship processes that may explain how interparental relationship dissatisfaction leads to adolescent mental health outcomes. Using data from the Growing Up in Ireland Study (Cohort '98), this study examined parent-child conflict and insecure peer attachment as mediators of the association between interparental relationship dissatisfaction and multiple adolescent mental health outcomes (emotional, conduct, and peer problems, and prosocial behaviors). Results showed that: (1) interparental relationship dissatisfaction at age 9 was indirectly linked to adolescent mental health at age 13 through parent-child conflict at age 9 and insecure peer attachment at age 13 (total indirect effect = 0.12, 95% CI [0.093, 0.141], p < .001); (2) parent-child conflict and insecure peer attachment sequentially mediated this association (serial indirect effect = 0.01, 95% CI [0.007, 0.015], p < .001); and (3) both total and serial indirect effects remained significant when each mental health dimension was modelled individually. These findings suggest that coordinated family- and school-based interventions aimed at reducing family conflict and fostering supportive peer relationships are potentially helpful in improving adolescent mental health.
This study examined how early school readiness skills at Head Start (HS) exit predicted children's academic trajectories in math and reading from kindergarten through third grade and whether these associations differed between English-monolinguals and Spanish-English dual language learners (DLLs). Using an integrated dataset combining HS program evaluation data with public school district records (N = 390), we employed latent growth curve modeling to examine the unique predictive associations of early math, early literacy, executive function, social-emotional skills, and behavior problems with third-grade academic achievement and growth trajectories. Results indicated that early math and executive function uniquely predicted higher third-grade achievement in both math and reading after accounting for other school readiness skills and child and family characteristics. Executive function also uniquely predicted steeper growth in both academic domains, while early literacy uniquely predicted third-grade reading achievement and reading growth. Teacher-reported social-emotional skills and behavior problems did not emerge as significant unique predictors of academic achievement or growth. Multi-group analyses revealed no significant differences in these predictive associations between Englishmonolingual children and Spanish-English DLLs. These findings highlight the importance of early math and executive function as predictors of subsequent academic development and suggest the value of strengthening these foundational skills in HS programs to support children's long-term academic success across language groups.
Conscientiousness is a foundational aspect of children's development and is closely associated with parental monitoring. However, the developmental relationship between these two constructs remains poorly understood. This study investigated the developmental association between children's conscientiousness and parental monitoring across construct-level, heterogeneous, and item-level processes. A total of 3582 children (46.8% female) aged 15 years or younger from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) were followed across five waves (2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020). Parallel-process latent growth curve modeling (PP-LGCM), parallel-process latent class growth modeling (PP-LCGM), and dynamic time warping (DTW) were used to examine overall developmental associations, heterogeneous joint developmental trajectories, and item-level developmental synchrony between children's conscientiousness and parental monitoring. PP-LGCM revealed significant crossdomain associations between initial levels and subsequent developmental changes, whereas the associations between their rates of change were not significant. PP-LCGM identified three distinct joint developmental trajectories, indicating diverse developmental pathways across families. Undirected DTW analyses revealed the strongest developmental synchrony between children's compliance with rules and parental supervising homework. Supervising homework and controlling media access also emerged as the strongest bridge nodes. Overall, the developmental association between children's conscientiousness and parental monitoring varied across analytical levels, showing limited parallel change at the construct level, heterogeneous developmental pathways across families, and behavior-specific developmental correspondence at the item level. These findings provide a more nuanced perspective on child-parent developmental processes and may inform family education practices, although the generalizability of these findings across developmental and cultural contexts warrants further investigation.
Children's question-asking is an important means of information seeking and learning, yet little is known about how it changes during and following sustained individualized dialogic practice. In a two-group controlled trial, 190 first-grade children (ages 6-7) were allocated to one-to-one individualized dialogic practice delivered by an AI conversational agent or to instructor-led whole-class discussion, matched in content, materials, and session duration, across seven weekly sessions. At pretest and posttest, children completed assessments without instructional or AI-generated support. Children in the individualized-practice condition demonstrated substantially higher pretest-adjusted posttest question frequency (unadjusted posttest d = 1.23). Among children who produced at least one valid question at both assessments, those in the individualized-practice condition also demonstrated higher pretest-adjusted mean cognitive complexity at posttest (unadjusted posttest d = 0.53). An exploratory, post hoc analysis including all 190 children further indicated that children in the individualizedpractice condition produced explanation-or-higher questions at a higher adjusted rate (adjusted count ratio = 3.1, 95% CI [2.5, 4.0]). Within the individualized-practice condition, question frequency showed marked phase-specific growth across practice sessions, whereas mean per-question quality increased only gradually, providing no support for a quantity-before-quality ordering. Because interaction format, per-child practice opportunities, feedback immediacy, facilitator identity, and delivery medium covaried in this design, the findings support sustained individualized dialogic practice as implemented here, rather than AI per se.
