Based on the Systems Model of Privacy, this study examined within-family associations between maternal worry about adolescents, maternal privacy invasion perceptions, and adolescent emotion dysregulation. Participants were 208 adolescent-mother dyads (Adolescents: 56.7% female, Mage = 15.00; Mothers: Mage = 42.63) in mainland China. All participants completed daily diaries for 21 days. Both adolescents and mothers reported greater maternal invasion on days when mothers felt greater worry, but only adolescent-perceived invasion predicted their own emotion dysregulation. Mothers' daily emotion dysregulation did not moderate associations between maternal worry and privacy invasion, but did directly predict both greater adolescent emotion dysregulation and mother-reported invasion. Findings suggest that maternal privacy invasions, especially those perceived by adolescents, can disrupt the daily intrapersonal regulatory functions that privacy serves in the Chinese family context.
Most parenting measures were developed outside Latino contexts and may not capture dimensions relevant to Latino parents. This brief report describes preliminary psychometric evaluation of the English-language Latino Parenting Styles and Behaviors Scale in 150 English-speaking Latino parents from South Florida. Items were drawn from parenting instruments and Latino parenting literature, revised after pilot interviews, and analyzed using principal axis exploratory factor analysis with oblique rotation. Analysis supported a 24-item, six-domain structure: Warmth, Autonomy Granting, Accommodation, Control, Reactive Discipline, and Firm and Fair Disciplinary Structure. Internal consistency ranged from weak to acceptable, one-week stability was adequate in a small, matched retest subsample, and convergent validity was broadly supported. Findings are preliminary and require confirmatory replication.
The mechanisms of within-person changes in proactive aggression among senior high school students remain unclear. A Victimization-Expectancy Model of Proactive Aggression (VEMPA), inspired by ideas of the General Aggression Model (GAM) and Social Learning Theory (SLT), was developed to address this issue. Specifically, we conducted a longitudinal study to examine how bullying victimization has an effect on within-person changes in proactive aggression through positive aggression outcome expectancies (positive AOE) in 641 senior high school students (43.1% girls, Mage = 16.76 years, SD = 0.68) across one year. A Random Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Model (RI-CLPM) analysis indicated that positive AOE at Time 2 mediated the effect of bullying victimization at Time 1 on proactive aggression at Time 3 at the within-person level, after controlling for reactive aggression. These results partially support the VEMPA, which provides an effective theoretical framework for understanding the mechanisms of within-person changes in proactive aggression among senior high school students. These findings have implications for developing targeted interventions for proactive aggression.
The present study spotlights the positive sport support behaviors enacted by Latinx families to facilitate the sports participation of Latina adolescent athletes through the development and validation of the Behavioral FAmily Sport SupporT (BFaSST) Scale. We adopted a modified exploratory sequential design to develop a scale that provided contextually relevant insight of family sport support dynamics with Latina athletes. Grounded in the voices of Latina athletes and guided by House's support typologies as a guiding framework, we generated 20 initial sport-specific items for the BFaSST. Using a split-sample approach, exploratory factor analysis (EFA; n = 152) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA; n = 152) supported a two-factor model, which included a Booster support subscale (nine items) and Team Manager support subscale (seven items) in a sample of 304 ninth and 10th-grade Latina student-athletes recruited through CloudResearch, a research panel platform. In providing evidence for the culturally-bound validation of the BFaSST, we affirm a narrative where Latinx family sport support is culturally and sport compatible, contrasting discourses that portray Latinx families as disengaged or unsupportive of Latina adolescent athletes. With the BFaSST, we provide an assessment tool that offers coaches and stakeholders an opportunity to expand on how family sport support can be conceptualized broadly and use it as an entry to inform ways to integrate family sport support.
When Latine first-generation college students transition to college, they must renegotiate a balance between autonomy and relatedness with their families-a process known as individuation. Individuation encompasses five dimensions: support seeking, connectedness, intrusiveness, self-reliance, and fear of disappointing parents. Existing measures of individuation prioritize westernized assumptions about parent-child relationships (e.g., egalitarianism, mutual respect) over those more salient in Latine families (e.g., respeto, familismo). To build more culturally grounded perspectives on individuation, we studied Latine first-generation students' memorable messages-enduring messages shaping socialization and identity development-to and from their parents. We collected memorable messages through a cross-sectional survey (n = 77) and longitudinal interviews (n = 8) with Latine first-generation students before and after the college transition. Analyses revealed how immigration history, gender, and social class intersected to highlight the interrelatedness among the dimensions, including how connectedness functioned as the primary lens from which to understand the other dimensions of individuation.
Teenage parents face the unique challenge of simultaneously navigating adolescence and parenthood. Rising adolescent pregnancy rates in the Philippines necessitate urgent efforts to better understand and support them. Using photovoice, Filipino teenage parents captured their lived experiences through photographs, resulting in eight themes: (1) managing stresses and conflicts in partner relationships, (2) peers as a source of emotional support, (3) support and strain in family relationships, (4) shifts in normative adolescent experiences and priorities, (5) strain and agency in balancing roles, (6) desire to enhance parenting knowledge and skills, (7) environmental drivers of early sexual exposure, and (8) sexual knowledge from social media. Interpreted through Elder's life course theory, results revealed challenges framed by relationship strains and support in the transition to parenthood, and structural and sociocultural norms within low-resource contexts. Teen parents demonstrated agency in balancing education and employment and desiring to enhance caregiving. The study highlights the value of participatory approaches centering on adolescent voices so as to provide contextually grounded insights to inform interventions for adolescent and parent well-being and prevention of early pregnancy.
The present study qualitatively examined how Asian American college students thought their participation in organized after-school activities during high school was related to their Asian American identity and Asian American racial identity ideological values. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with 25 Asian American-identifying undergraduate students (80% female, 96% U.S.-born) enrolled in a 4-year, public university in Southern California. Thematic analysis, employing both inductive and deductive approaches, identified two key mechanisms through which Asian American college students thought organized activities helped them understand their Asian American identity: (1) exposure to same and different ethnic-racial peers and activity staff, and (2) ethnic-racial socialization. Additionally, students identified that some activities supported their engagement with Asian American racial identity ideological values-Asian American unity, interracial solidarity, and transnational critical consciousness-through peer interactions and intentional activity content. Findings highlight how organized activities may serve as meaningful spaces for ethnic-racial identity development among Asian American college students, including their engagement with Asian American racial identity ideological values. The current findings not only contribute to theories on ethnic-racial socialization but also have practical implications for organized activities of all types to support and affirm Asian American college students' ethnic-racial identity and identity ideological values.
Although family acceptance varies across cultural contexts, it consistently predicts wellness among LGBTQ+ people. We validated a Spanish-language adaptation of the LGBTQ+ Caregiver Acceptance Scale (LCAS-S) to assess culturally grounded expressions of acceptance and rejection among Spanish-speaking Latinx caregivers of LGBTQ+ youth. Following procedures from the LCAS development study, the 40-item measure was translated and back-translated using established guidelines to ensure linguistic and conceptual equivalence. A total of 256 Spanish-speaking Latinx caregivers participated, representing 15 countries of origin; the largest groups were born in the United States (46%), Mexico (20%), Puerto Rico (12%), and Cuba (6%). Scale validation included internal consistency reliability, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, and convergent validity testing with established measures of caregiver acceptance, family functioning, and homonegativity. The LCAS-S demonstrated strong overall reliability (α = .89) and yielded a six-factor structure: Concealment and Respeto, Supportive Actions, Public Opinion, Fear of Family Rejection, Affirming the LGBTQ+ Child's Place in the Family, and Outness. The factor structure both overlapped with and diverged meaningfully from the English version. Convergent validity patterns aligned with theoretical expectations, with restrictive dimensions correlating positively with family conflict and homonegativity and affirming dimensions correlating positively with acceptance-related constructs. Findings provide preliminary empirical support for the LCAS-S as a culturally and linguistically responsive tool for researchers and practitioners seeking to understand and promote acceptance among Spanish-speaking Latinx caregivers of LGBTQ+ youth in the United States.
Although peer victimization and school refusal tendencies are well documented in early adolescence, the specific within-person directional associations between the two remain underexplored. Employing a three-wave Random Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Model (RI-CLPM), this study disentangled stable between-person differences from within-person fluctuations in a sample of 510 Chinese early adolescents (53.92% boys; Mage at T1 = 10.30 years, SD = .61), and explored potential gender differences in these processes. Results showed that at the within-person level, peer victimization significantly predicted prospective school refusal tendencies-a directional transmission most prominent during the initial wave interval (T1-T2)-whereas school refusal tendencies did not predict prospective peer victimization. Multi-group analysis indicated no significant gender differences in these cross-lagged associations. These findings highlight the developmentally sensitive role of peer victimization in precipitating school avoidance and emphasize the need for trait-controlled, timely peer interventions.
Emotion contagion within parent-adolescent dyads represents a fundamental mechanism through which daily family interactions shape adolescent emotional well-being. Yet little is known about how adolescent suicidal ideation reorganizes daily patterns of emotional transmission between parents and adolescents. The present study examined daily parent-adolescent emotion contagion and the role of adolescent suicidal ideation using a 14-day daily diary design and a multi-group actor-partner interdependence modeling framework. Participants were 156 adolescent-parent dyads (adolescents: M = 14.66 years, SD = 1.47; 58% female) recruited from communities in Texas. Results showed that limited emotion contagion between parents and adolescents was observed in families of adolescents without suicidal ideation. In families with adolescent suicidal ideation, two novel prospective partner effects emerged: parent positive emotions predicted lower adolescent positive emotions the following day, and adolescent positive emotions predicted lower parent positive emotions the following day. These findings indicate that adolescent suicidal ideation may characterize daily parent-adolescent emotion contagion processes, such that the presence of suicidal ideation is associated with distinct patterns of dyadic emotional transmission compared to families without suicidal ideation.
Friends play a critical role in adolescent development, yet relatively little is known about how friendship interactions in adolescents' daily lives relate to their affective experiences. This study examined bidirectional associations between friendship interaction quality (i.e., warmth and conflict) and momentary affect, as well as whether these associations were moderated by individual differences (i.e., depressive symptoms, habitual rumination, and gender). 247 adolescents (Mage = 12.94, SDage = 0.41, 108 females, 224 identified as Belgian) participated in an ecological momentary assessment (EMA) study involving five surveys per day over two consecutive weeks. Pre-registered Dynamic Structural Equation Modeling (DSEM) analyses revealed that higher momentary negative affect was associated with greater friendship conflict in the subsequent hours, whereas friendship warmth was associated with higher subsequent positive affect. These associations were not consistently moderated by depressive symptoms, habitual rumination, and gender. Exploratory analyses examining temporarily closer associations (i.e., affect and friendship interaction quality assessed at the same time) suggest that conflictual interactions with friends were associated with higher levels of negative affect and lower levels of positive affect, whereas, warm interactions with friends were associated with lower levels of negative affect and higher levels of positive affect. Overall, findings highlight short-term, micro-level associations between adolescents' friendship interaction quality and their affective experiences in daily life.
Refugee children's school adjustment is often associated with host country language proficiency, peer victimization, and school belonging, but longitudinal associations among these constructs may reflect both stable child differences and time-varying school-experience processes. This three-wave longitudinal study examined English language proficiency, bullying victimization, and school belonging in 68 Syrian refugee children in Canada. We estimated a cross-lagged panel model (CLPM) and a random intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM), both with family-clustered robust inference and controlling for child's age and gender, to distinguish stable child effects from time-varying school-experience processes. The former addresses correlation (e.g., children show trait stability in the three constructs and their associations over time) while the latter addresses whether time-varying school experiences precede later change (e.g., bullying is followed by lower host country language proficiency). In the CLPM, significant cross-lag paths showed that higher Wave 1 bullying victimization predicted lower Wave 2 English language proficiency, higher Wave 1 English language proficiency predicted higher Wave 2 school belonging, higher Wave 1 school belonging predicted higher Wave 2 bullying victimization and higher Wave 2 school belonging predicted higher Wave 3 English language proficiency. In the RI-CLPM with the stable child effect removed, only two significant cross-lags were seen: higher Wave 1 bullying victimization predicted lower Wave 2 English language proficiency (expected), and higher Wave 1 school belonging predicted higher Wave 2 bullying victimization (unexpected). The difference in the findings from the two models suggests that observed longitudinal associations between English language proficiency, bullying victimization, and school belonging are primarily stable between-child differences, whereas early bullying was associated with lower later English language proficiency.
Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are associated with social isolation, a known contributor to diminishing mental health with consequences for adolescent development. We evaluated effects of the SKY Schools program, which combines social emotional learning (SEL) with training in autonomic regulation (breathwork), on social connectedness (SC) in female Latinx adolescents with high ACEs, a group particularly vulnerable to ACEs effects. In this longitudinal study, female Latinx students (N = 174, 14-18 years; M = 14.97; SD = 0.97) in two Southern California high schools with high (≥4) and low (<4) ACEs either completed the four-week SKY Schools program plus 8 weeks of daily breathwork or underwent their usual physical education curriculum (control). We administered the Social Connectedness Scale before and after the program and again after 8 weeks. Relative to baseline, the high ACEs intervention group showed increased SC (7%) after daily breathwork compared with the control groups (low ACEs: 3%, high ACEs: -3%) and the low ACEs intervention group (-3%) (p < .01). Biopsychosocial programs that combine SEL and breathwork can reduce feelings of social isolation in socially vulnerable Latinx female adolescents, facilitating healthy adolescent development.
Latine lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) youth in the United States (U.S.) experience compounded forms of oppression that increase vulnerability to both school-based and cyberbullying. Guided by the Minority Stress Theory (MST) and the Temporal Intersectional Minority Stress Model (TIMSM), this study examined how intersectional bullying relates to future outlook among Latine LGBTQ+ youth, and whether internalized stigma, depression, and caregiver acceptance mediate or moderate these associations. Data were drawn from a national U.S. sample of 1772 Latine LGBTQ+ adolescents aged 13-18. Participants completed validated measures assessing intersectional school and cyberbullying, LGBTQ+ internalized stigma, depression-anxiety, caregiver acceptance, and beliefs about the future. Serial indirect-effects and moderation analyses were conducted. Both school-based bullying and cyberbullying were indirectly associated with more negative beliefs about the future through increased LGBTQ+ internalized stigma and depressive/anxiety symptoms. Cyberbullying demonstrated slightly stronger links to internalized stigma, whereas school bullying was more closely tied to depressive/anxiety outcomes. LGBTQ+ caregiver acceptance at high levels significantly buffered the effects of both forms of bullying on internalized stigma and depression. Findings underscore the cumulative impact of intersectional bullying on Latine LGBTQ+ youths' mental health and future outlook within the U.S. sociocultural context. Culturally responsive interventions that strengthen caregiver acceptance, promote affirming school climates, and address digital victimization are essential for fostering resilience and hope among Latine LGBTQ+ youth in the U.S.
Poor mental health among adolescents and young adults in the United States today is a critical concern. Sports team participation, combining physical activity and social belonging, may be an effective component of interventions to improve mental health among this population. This study examines both short and long-term associations between sports team participation in adolescence and anxiety and depression from adolescence to young adulthood, using the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a population-based longitudinal birth cohort study of urban US children. In this sample of 2766 young adults (52% female, Mage = 22.3), controlling for a rich set of child and family characteristics, including prior mental health, we found that frequent sports participation in adolescence (33% of the sample), compared to none, was associated with substantially lower depression and anxiety symptoms among all adolescents. We also found that sustained sports participation in adolescence was associated with a lower likelihood of depression in young adulthood, but only for young adult males. Exploring heterogeneity in associations further by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status, the strongest associations were found among young adult males who are non-Hispanic white and Latino, and from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. These results suggest sustained sports team participation throughout adolescence may be a valuable intervention component for improving mental health among adolescents and young adults.
Irritability and executive function, which continue to develop from late childhood to early adolescence, predict important functional impairments. Although correlated, longitudinal research has often focused only on how executive function affects irritability, overlooking the reverse pathway. This study proposes that irritability may also contribute to later executive function difficulties and investigates their bidirectional associations across three components, including inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility, as well as whether these associations vary by sex. Random-intercept cross-lagged panel models were applied to data drawn from four waves of a longitudinal study involving 491 participants (Mage = 9.84 years, SD = 0.71; 48.1% boys), collected in June 2021, December 2021, June 2022, and March 2023. Results showed that inhibitory control consistently predicted later irritability across waves, with a reciprocal effect emerging in early adolescence. For working memory, a bidirectional relationship appeared earlier, with irritability consistently predicting later working memory. For cognitive flexibility, only a unidirectional effect was found, where earlier cognitive flexibility predicted later irritability, with no reverse effect. Sex moderated only the effect of cognitive flexibility at T3 on irritability at T4. These within-person findings regarding irritability-executive function dynamics suggest that improving inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility may reduce irritability, while lowering irritability could benefit working memory, with no need for sex-differentiated approaches.
Gender-sexuality alliances (GSAs) provide critical support for 2SLGBTQ+ youth, yet the role of advisors-particularly in their self-efficacy to address race-, ethnicity-, and immigration-related issues, including how these intersect with sexual and gender identity, a construct we term racial-ethnic, immigration, and intersectional self-efficacy (REISE)-remains understudied. This study examined (a) which advisor-, GSA-, and school-related factors are associated with advisors' REISE, and (b) how this efficacy relates to youth members' socioemotional experiences. Data were collected from 627 GSA members at three time points and from 64 advisors at one time point from 51 GSAs in Massachusetts, New York City, and California. Advisors' REISE was associated with personal, advisor-related, contextual, GSA-related, and school-related factors, and with GSA youth members' reported school experiences. Advisors of color and those who felt more confident in supporting GSA members-particularly regarding 2SLGBTQ+ issues-reported higher REISE. Higher REISE was also observed in advisors of GSAs with a greater proportion of members of color, in schools offering culturally responsive curricula and race/ethnicity-focused events, and of GSAs characterized by open and inclusive climates. The extent to which advisors felt more efficacious was unrelated to how long they had served as a GSA advisor or to the frequency of GSA meetings. Moreover, random-intercept multilevel models showed that members with advisors who reported higher REISE perceived their GSAs and advisors to be more supportive at that same time point. Beyond the GSA itself, advisors' higher REISE also predicted higher positive affect and lower victimization among members, with these benefits lasting for several months. These associations did not vary by GSA members' race/ethnicity or victimization, suggesting that advisor REISE may serve as a universal protective resource for diverse youth.
Investigating adolescents' dynamic emotional responses to stressors is critical in understanding how their psychological symptoms develop. However, prior research has primarily examined either adolescents' emotional reactions to daily stressors or major life events. This study bridges this gap by focusing on exams-a naturalistic, high-stakes, and common stressor-and how parental emotional socialization shapes late adolescents' dynamic emotional experiences during exams and subsequent psychological symptoms. Participants were 216 Chinese late adolescents (Mage = 19.11 years, SD = 0.95 years; 80.8% female). At baseline, students reported parental emotion socialization and anxiety and depression symptoms. They were then surveyed three times across the exam period for their negative emotions. Six months later, anxiety and depressive symptoms were reassessed. Using latent change score models, results showed that maternal unsupportive emotion socialization was associated with adolescents' greater anxiety and depressive symptoms via heightened pre-exam negative emotion reactivity, whereas maternal supportive emotion socialization predicted fewer anxiety symptoms via stronger down-regulation of negative emotions during the exam week. These findings highlight that dynamic emotional changes in response to normative, high-stakes stressors reflect vulnerability to psychological maladjustment and underscore the continuing influence of mothers in shaping the emotional experiences and mental health of Chinese late adolescents.
While social media affords youths the opportunity to enhance their online status via the accumulation of likes, followers, and other quantifiable metrics, not all youths engage in digital status-seeking. Individual differences in adolescents' neural sensitivity to low popular peers and social motivations may help explain why some youth engage more strongly in digital status-seeking than others. We examined how adolescents' social motivation such as their need for approval (NFA; approach & avoidance) moderate the links between neural sensitivity to low popular peers in the ventral striatum (VS) and amygdala and digital status-seeking among 95 adolescents (Mage = 13.40 years, SD = 0.58, females = 50.5%). Participants were part of a larger 5-year longitudinal study of 873 adolescents from the Southeastern U.S. At wave 2, we assessed for NFA and had adolescents perform an fMRI task involving images of their real-life classmates. Notably, we used peer-nominated sociometric ratings from 873 students across 3 middle-schools to select images of their most and least popular peers. We then assessed digital status-seeking 2 years later. Results show that NFA moderated the links between neural sensitivity to low popular peers and digital status-seeking, such that sensitivity to low popular peers in the VS predicted greater digital status-seeking 2 years later, but only for adolescents with high avoidance NFA. Similarly, sensitivity to low popular peers in the amygdala significantly predicted greater digital status-seeking 2 years later, but only for adolescents with high approach NFA, as well as adolescents with high avoidance NFA. These results suggest that neural sensitivity to low popular peers, or NFA in isolation, does not predict digital status-seeking, but the heightened combination of both may underlie digital status-seeking in adolescence.
