The Association between Cyberbullying Victimization and Depression among Children: A Moderated Mediation Model.

Cyberbullying victimization is becoming more prevalent and adversely affects mental health. This research explores the relationship between the two variables and the underlying mechanism, especially for children, as the impact of mental health in childhood might last a lifetime. Primary school students (N = 344; Mage = 9.90; 43.90% girls) completed self-report questionnaires regarding cyberbullying victimization, self-perceived social competence, optimism, and depression at school. Gender and grade were controlled as covariates. Depression was positively predicted by cyberbullying victimization, while self-perceived social competence played a partially mediating role. In addition, optimism directly and indirectly moderated the effects of cyberbullying victimization on depression. Specifically, the effects were stronger for children with low levels of optimism. Therefore, efforts to enhance children's self-perceived social competence and optimism may reduce their depression resulting from cyberbullying victimization.

Parent-adolescent discrepancies in educational expectations, relationship quality, and study engagement: a multi-informant study using response surface analysis.

Whether parental educational expectations for adolescents serve as a source of motivation or stress depends on the extent to which adolescents hold expectations for themselves. Previous research on the discrepancies between parental and adolescent educational expectations and their impact on learning engagement has been limited by traditional statistical tests, and lacking an examination of the internal mediating mechanism of parent-child relational quality from both parental and adolescent perspectives. This cross-sectional study, utilizing a multi-informant design, examined the association between discrepancies in parents' and adolescents' reports of expectations, and adolescents' study engagement, as well as the mediating role of parent-child relational qualities perceived by both parties. The sample for this study consisted of 455 adolescents and their parents from 10 classes in a junior high school in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. The adolescents had an average age of 12.8 years, and 51.6% of them were boys. Both parents and adolescents reported on their expectations and perceived relational quality, while adolescents also filled out questionnaires assessing their learning engagement. Data were analyzed using polynomial regressions with response surface analysis. The results revealed that when adolescents reported high expectations, regardless of whether their parents reported high or low expectations, adolescents reported satisfied relationships and high learning engagement. In contrast, parents reported satisfied relationships when both parties reported high expectations, or when parents reported higher expectations than adolescents. Lastly, the association between discrepancies in expectations and learning engagement was significantly mediated by adolescent-reported relationships but not parent-reported ones. These findings highlight the importance of considering multiple perspectives when studying the association between expectations and adolescent study engagement. This research advances our comprehension of the dynamics between parent-adolescent educational expectation discrepancies and adolescent learning engagement, offering insights for more nuanced and effective parenting strategies tailored to foster optimal educational outcomes.

Trade-offs of praise and criticism: Parents' responses to children's performance and children's resilience and depression.

In contrast to cognitive outcomes, parental success-oriented responses to children's performance enhanced the emotional well-being of children. Conversely, parental failure-oriented responses had the opposite impact. Thus, it remains unclear which response or combination of responses parents should employ to maximize their children's development. This research aimed to examine the combined effect of children's perceptions of parental success- and failure-oriented responses on children's depression, with a focus on the mediating role of resilience. A total of 651 pupils (44.7% female, Mage = 10.31, range = 8-12) were investigated in China using polynomial regression and response surface analyses. Our findings suggest that when success- and failure-oriented responses are congruent, failure-oriented responses counteract the protective effect of success-oriented responses against children's depression. The two equally matched responses demonstrated a curvilinear main effect on resilience, indicating that higher resilience was associated with the upper-middle range of the two responses. Moreover, children who reported more success-oriented responses than failure-oriented responses showed greater resilience and decreased depression. Resilience acted as a mediator for the combined effects of parental success and failure-oriented responses on children's depression. The study addressed the parenting dilemma, specifically the trade-off between success- and failure-oriented responses in promoting children's optimal development.

Physical activity and its fluctuations in relation to depressive symptoms: A national longitudinal study among Chinese adults.

BACKGROUND: Physical activity (PA) may prevent depressive symptoms, however, PA fluctuations may have different effects. Using three waves of nationally representative data, this study aimed to examine the effects of PA fluctuations on depressive symptoms. METHODS: Participants comprised 7633 adults free of depressive symptoms at the first two waves (Mage = 45.26, 54.70 % males). They completed the China Family Panel Study in 2016 (T1), 2018 (T2), and 2020 (T3), respectively. Depressive symptoms were measured by the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CES-D) scale using a cutoff of 16. Participants' PA levels were split into regular PA or infrequent PA groups. Changes in PA levels between T1 and T2 were classified into four groups: maintained infrequent PA, initiated regular PA, ceased regular PA, and persisted regular PA. RESULTS: The incidence of depressive symptoms was 20.22 % (19.05 % possible and 1.17 % severe depression). After multivariate adjustment, Poisson regression showed that persistent regular PA had 17.8 % (95 % CI: 0.724, 0.934) lower risks of incident depressive symptoms compared to maintained infrequent PA. And adults who ceased regular PA were more likely to experience depressive symptoms than those who persisted in regular PA (RR = 1.188, 95 % CI: 1.010, 1.398). LIMITATIONS: All items were self-reported. CES-D only examined self-diagnosed depressive symptoms, not medical diagnoses. CONCLUSION: Adults who persisted in regular PA may have a lower possibility of developing depressive symptoms. The finding might serve as an empirical reference to depression prevention.

Does childhood psychological maltreatment encourage you to become a cyberbullying perpetrator? The mediating role of negative affect and the moderating role of meaning in life.

Objective: With the development of information and communication technology, cyberbullying among Chinese college students has become more frequent, bringing many negative consequences to both society and students themselves. Childhood psychological maltreatment may be one of the influencing factors of cyberbullying, but its internal mechanism remains poorly understood. This study aimed to explore the relationship between childhood psychological maltreatment and cyberbullying among college students and to further explore the mediating effect of negative emotion and the moderating effect of meaning in life. Methods: In this study, 656 college students (48.7% males) were recruited to complete anonymous questionnaires assessing their perceptions of child psychological maltreatment, negative affect, meaning in life and cyberbullying. SPSS23.0 and Hayes PROCESS macro for SPSS were used to conduct statistical analysis. Results: (1) Childhood psychological maltreatment was significantly positively associated with cyberbullying; (2) Negative affect played a partially mediating role between childhood psychological maltreatment and cyberbullying; and (3) Meaning in life moderated the direct association between childhood psychological maltreatment and cyberbullying and moderated the association between negative affect and cyberbullying. Conclusion: In this study, a moderated mediation model was constructed and the internal mechanism of childhood psychological maltreatment and cyberbullying among college students was found. The results provided both theoretical contributions and practical suggestions for preventing cyberbullying.

Parental Attachment and Proactive-Reactive Aggression in Adolescence: The Mediating Role of Self-Control and Perspective Taking.

Introduction: Identifying risk and protective factors of aggressive behavior during adolescence is beneficial for the intervention and prevention treatments. Although studies show that attachment quality is closely related to aggression, the underlying psychological mechanisms remain unclear. This study aimed to investigate the links of parental attachment with proactive and reactive aggression and to examine the mediating role of perspective taking and self-control among Chinese adolescents. Methods: A cluster sampling method was used to recruit participants from several high schools located in the central regions of China. A total of 2982 participants (Mage = 17.28, SD = 0.83, range 15~20 years; 1602 girls, 1380 boys) were included in the final analysis. Results: Correlation analysis showed that participants possessing higher attachment security with parents were more likely to report lower levels of proactive and reactive aggression. And, self-control and perspective taking were positively associated with parental attachment, and negatively associated with both types of aggression. Moreover, structural equation models indicated that parental attachment directly, and indirectly predicted proactive and reactive aggression through self-control and perspective taking. Discussion: Overall, this study contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the explanatory mechanisms that link adolescent-parent attachment and aggression, and suggest that high quality of adolescent-parent interactions may promote adolescents' self-control and perspectives taking, which further reduces their aggression propensity.

Reciprocal relationships between self-control and self-authenticity: a two-wave study.

Both self-control and self-authenticity are critical to individuals' mental health and social adjustment, but their relationship has received little attention. Research demonstrates that exerting self-control could help individuals achieve true self and might be promoted by perceiving authenticity. Accordingly, this study utilized a longitudinal design and investigated the temporal relationship between self-control and self-authenticity in a large sample of 2,982 Chinese adolescents (Mage = 17.53, SD = 0.84). Correlation analysis showed that participants possessing higher self-control were associated with greater self-authenticity. Cross-lagged path analysis revealed a reciprocal relationship between self-control and self-authenticity over time. Moreover, bivariate latent change score model indicated that self-control predicted an increase in self-authenticity across time, and vice versa. Overall, this study advances our understanding and suggests that restraining temptation and impulse can promote adolescents' authenticity, and that the experience of authenticity, in turn, facilitates their self-regulation.

Heterogeneity in subjective cognitive decline in the Sino Longitudinal Study on Cognitive Decline(SILCODE): Empirically derived subtypes, structural and functional verification.

AIMS: We evaluated whether Subjective Cognitive Decline (SCD) subtypes could be empirically derived within the Sino Longitudinal Study on Cognitive Decline (SILCODE) SCD cohort and examined associated neuroimaging markers, biomarkers, and clinical outcomes. METHODS: A cluster analysis was performed on eight neuropsychological test scores from 124 SCD SILCODE participants and 57 normal control (NC) subjects. Structural and functional neuroimaging indices were used to evaluate the SCD subgroups. RESULTS: Four subtypes emerged: (1) dysexecutive/mixed SCD (n = 23), (2) neuropsychiatric SCD (n = 24), (3) amnestic SCD (n = 22), and (4) cluster-derived normal (n = 55) who exhibited normal performance in neuropsychological tests. Compared with the NC group, each subgroup showed distinct patterns in gray matter (GM) volume and the amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (ALFF). Lower fractional anisotropy (FA) values were only found in the neuropsychiatric SCD group relative to NC. CONCLUSION: The identification of empirically derived SCD subtypes demonstrates the presence of heterogeneity in SCD neuropsychological profiles. The cluster-derived normal group may represent the majority of SCD individuals who do not show progressive cognitive decline; the dysexecutive/mixed SCD and amnestic SCD might represent high-risk groups with progressing cognitive decline; and finally, the neuropsychiatric SCD may represent a new topic in SCD research.

Cyberchondria and Chinese Adolescent Mental Health in the Age of COVID-19 Pandemic.

One of the far-reaching impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic is that it has become the fertile soil of cyberchondria. Adolescents' mental health was severely hit by this by-product of the COVID-19 pandemic both due to the direct effects and its indirect effects on security. This study investigated whether and how cyberchondria was associated with Chinese adolescents' mental health (i.e., well-being and depressive symptoms). Based on a large Internet sample (N = 1,108, 67.5 percent female, Mage = 16.78 years), cyberchondria, psychological insecurity, mental health, and a series of covariates were assessed. Preliminary analyses were conducted in SPSS Statistics software and main analyses were conducted in Mplus. Path analyses indicated that (a) cyberchondria was negatively associated with well-being (b = -0.12, p = 0.001) and positively associated with depressive symptoms (b = 0.17, p < 0.001); (b) psychological insecurity could fully mediate the association between cyberchondria and mental health (indirect effect well-being = -0.15, 95% confidence interval [CI -0.19 to -0.12] and indirect effect depressive symptoms = 0.15, 95% CI [0.12 to 0.19]); (c) the two dimensions (social insecurity and uncertainty) of psychological insecurity could play the mediating role in the associations between cyberchondria and mental health, uniquely and parallelly; and (d) these results did not vary by gender. This study suggests that cyberchondria may arouse individuals' psychological insecurity about interpersonal interaction and the development of events, which ultimately decreases their well-being and increases the risk of depressive symptoms. These findings facilitate the establishment and implementation of relevant prevention and intervention programs.

The inferior frontal gyrus spontaneous activity mediates the association of early life adversity with self-control ability in late adolescents.

Self-control, the ability to regulate prepotent desires or impulses in order to realize one's valued goal, has been found to be associated with early life adversity. However, the neural correlates underlying this relationship remain poorly understood. The present study employed resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate this issue among late adolescents (N = 538). Results showed that family unpredictability rather than family harshness of early life adversity was negatively correlated with self-control ability. The whole brain analysis showed that self-control was associated with enhanced ALFF in the right middle and inferior frontal gyrus, the left anterior insula, and with decreased ALFF in the left precuneus. Moreover, the mediating analysis showed that ALFF in the inferior frontal gyrus could partially mediated the association of family unpredictability with self-control ability. These findings suggested that the brain regions implicating in executive control might be the neural correlates underlying the relationship between early life adversity and self-control ability, which advances the mechanistic understanding of how early family environment relates to the development of self-regulation in late adolescence.

The Effect of Social Support on Depression among Economically Disadvantaged College Students: The Mediating Role of Psychological Resilience and the Moderating Role of Geography.

The study examined the influence of social support on depression, including the mediating role of psychological resilience and the moderating role of geography. Questionnaires were completed by 424 economically disadvantaged college students in two provinces, X, a coastal province, and Y, an inland province. The results indicated that (1) the social support of economically disadvantaged college students was positively correlated to psychological resilience (ß = 0.62, t = 11.22, p < 0.001); (2) the psychological resilience of economically disadvantaged college students was negatively correlated with depression (ß = -0.24, t = -10.3, p < 0.001); (3) the social support of economically disadvantaged college students was negatively correlated with depression (ß = -0.08, t = -2.85, p < 0.001); (4) the psychological resilience of economically disadvantaged college students played a partial mediating role between social support and depression; and (5) geography played a moderating role in the effect of social support on depression.

How and for Whom Is Mobile Phone Addiction Associated with Mind Wandering: The Mediating Role of Fatigue and Moderating Role of Rumination.

With the increasing prevalence of mobile phone addiction, mobile phone addiction has been considered a prominent risk factor for internalizing or externalizing problems, such as psychological distress and irrational procrastination. However, few studies shed light on the effect of mobile phone addiction on mind wandering and the underlying mechanisms. This study speculated that the direct effect of mobile phone addiction on mind wandering may be linked to fatigue and that the level of an individual's personality characteristics, such as rumination, may influence both the direct and indirect effects of mobile phone addiction on mind wandering. To test these hypotheses, we recruited 1811 college students to complete the self-report questionnaires. The results indicated that mobile phone addiction was positively associated with mind wandering. This direct effect could be mediated by fatigue, and both the direct and indirect effects of mobile phone addiction on mind wandering could be moderated by rumination. Specifically, both the direct and indirect effects were stronger for students with high rumination. These findings enrich our understanding of how, why, and for whom mobile phone addiction is correlated with mind wandering.

How the Dark Triad associated with internet gaming disorder? The serial mediation of basic psychological needs satisfaction and negative coping styles.

According to the I-PACE model, this study focused on the role of need satisfaction and negative coping styles in the relationship between the Dark Triad (i.e., Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism) and internet gaming disorder (IGD). In a sample of 749 emerging adult gamers, a multiple mediation model with Dark Triad as the distal variable, psychological need satisfaction and negative coping style as mediating variables, and IGD as the outcome variable was tested. Results indicated that Machiavellianism and psychopathy were found to be significant predictors of IGD when mediated by psychological need satisfaction and negative coping styles. Narcissism predicts IGD only through the indirect effect of negative coping styles. The findings enhanced our understanding that Machiavellianism and psychopathy are characterized by compensatory use of internet games, as well as added new perspectives to the understanding of addiction mechanisms in narcissists.

Relational Victimization and Video Game Addiction among Female College Students during COVID-19 Pandemic: The Roles of Social Anxiety and Parasocial Relationship.

Video game addiction, a common behavioral problem among college students, has been more prominent during the COVID-19 pandemic; at the same time, females' video game usage has also attracted considerable research attention. Against this background and under the perspective of social interaction, this study aimed to examine the relationship between relational victimization and video game addiction among female college students, as well as its underlying mechanism-the mediating roles of social anxiety and parasocial relationships with virtual characters. Female college students (N = 437) were recruited to complete a set of questionnaires voluntarily in June 2022. Through the mediating effect analysis, the results found that (1) relational victimization was positively associated with female college students' video game addiction; (2) social anxiety and parasocial relationships with virtual characters could independently mediate this relation; (3) social anxiety and parasocial relationships with virtual characters were also the serial mediators in this association. These findings not only expand previous studies by revealing the social motivation of video game usage and the underlying mechanism accounting for video game addiction, but also provide basis and guidance for the prevention and intervention of video game addiction in the current context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Parents' Response to Children's Performance and Children's Self-Esteem: Parent-Child Relationship and Friendship Quality as Mediators.

Previous research has revealed that parents' success-oriented response to children's performance promotes children's self-esteem, while failure-oriented response damages their self-esteem. However, the potential mediating mechanisms are unclear. Therefore, the present study investigated whether parent-child relationship and friendship quality mediated the relation between parents' response to children's performance and children's self-esteem. For this purpose, 859 children in Central China completed the Parents' Response to Children's Performance Scale, Buchanan Scale of Closeness to Parents (CPS), Friendship Quality Questionnaire (simplified version), and Self-Perception Profile tests. Structural equation modeling (SEM) revealed that: (1) parents' success-oriented response was positively associated with parent-child relationship, friendship quality, and children's self-esteem. Parents' failure-oriented response was negatively associated with parent-child relationship and children's self-esteem, but it was positively associated with friendship quality. (2) Parent-child relationship and friendship quality were identified as the serial mediators between parents' success- or failure-oriented response and children's self-esteem. These findings suggest that parents' failure-oriented response should be reduced and parents' success-oriented response should be increased to develop children's self-esteem and establish a sound social network system for children.

Cognitive reactivity and emotional dysregulation mediate the relation of paternal and maternal harsh parenting to adolescent social anxiety.

BACKGROUND: Extant models of the association between harsh parenting and social anxiety among adolescents are mostly partial mediation models, leaving much of the relationship unaccounted for. OBJECTIVE: The current study intends to test a two-mediator model in which adolescents' cognitive reactivity and emotional dysregulation were assumed to mediate the potential impact of harsh parenting on their social anxiety. PARTICIPANTS AND SETTINGS: A sample of 726 adolescent students with their parents was recruited from two middle schools located in a provincial city of Northern China. METHODS: Both fathers and mothers were required to report on their spouse's harsh parenting practices. The "Behind your back" task was used to assess cognitive reactivity of adolescents who also reported on their emotional dysregulation and social anxiety. Moderated mediation model and simple slope analyses were used to examine the meditational relations and the moderating role of child sex. RESULTS: For the current model, cognitive reactivity and emotional dysregulation could completely mediate the potential influence of harsh fathering and harsh mothering on adolescents' social anxiety. Moreover, harsh fathering has a greater effect on adolescents' social anxiety than harsh mothering, especially for girls. CONCLUSIONS: Cognitive reactivity in conjunction with emotional dysfunction can better account for the relationship from harsh fathering and harsh mothering to adolescents' social anxiety.

Prediction of Online Psychological Help-Seeking Behavior During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Interpretable Machine Learning Method.

Online mental health service (OMHS) has been named as the best psychological assistance measure during the COVID-19 pandemic. An interpretable, accurate, and early prediction for the demand of OMHS is crucial to local governments and organizations which need to allocate and make the decision in mental health resources. The present study aimed to investigate the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on the online psychological help-seeking (OPHS) behavior in the OMHS, then propose a machine learning model to predict and interpret the OPHS number in advance. The data was crawled from two Chinese OMHS platforms. Linguistic inquiry and word count (LIWC), neural embedding-based topic modeling, and time series analysis were utilized to build time series feature sets with lagging one, three, seven, and 14 days. Correlation analysis was used to examine the impact of COVID-19 on OPHS behaviors across different OMHS platforms. Machine learning algorithms and Shapley additive explanation (SHAP) were used to build the prediction. The result showed that the massive growth of OPHS behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic was a common phenomenon. The predictive model based on random forest (RF) and feature sets containing temporal features of the OPHS number, mental health topics, LIWC, and COVID-19 cases achieved the best performance. Temporal features of the OPHS number showed the biggest positive and negative predictive power. The topic features had incremental effects on performance of the prediction across different lag days and were more suitable for OPHS prediction compared to the LIWC features. The interpretable model showed that the increase in the OPHS behaviors was impacted by the cumulative confirmed cases and cumulative deaths, while it was not sensitive in the new confirmed cases or new deaths. The present study was the first to predict the demand for OMHS using machine learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study suggests an interpretable machine learning method that can facilitate quick, early, and interpretable prediction of the OPHS behavior and to support the operational decision-making; it also demonstrated the power of utilizing the OMHS platforms as an always-on data source to obtain a high-resolution timeline and real-time prediction of the psychological response of the online public.

Effective Prediction and Important Counseling Experience for Perceived Helpfulness of Social Question and Answering-Based Online Counseling: An Explainable Machine Learning Model.

The social question answering based online counseling (SQA-OC) is easy access for people seeking professional mental health information and service, has become the crucial pre-consultation and application stage toward online counseling. However, there is a lack of efforts to evaluate and explain the counselors' service quality in such an asynchronous online questioning and answering (QA) format efficiently. This study applied the notion of perceived helpfulness as a public's perception of counselors' service quality in SQA-OC, used computational linguistic and explainable machine learning (XML) methods suited for large-scale QA discourse analysis to build an predictive model, explored how various sources and types of linguistic cues [i.e., Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), topic consistency, linguistic style similarity, emotional similarity] contributed to the perceived helpfulness. Results show that linguistic cues from counselees, counselors, and synchrony between them are important predictors, the linguistic cues and XML can effectively predict and explain the perceived usefulness of SQA-OC, and support operational decision-making for counselors. Five helpful counseling experiences including linguistic styles of "talkative", "empathy", "thoughtful", "concise with distance", and "friendliness and confident" were identified in the SQA-OC. The paper proposed a method to evaluate the perceived helpfulness of SQA-OC service automatically, effectively, and explainable, shedding light on the understanding of the SQA-OC service outcome and the design of a better mechanism for SQA-OC systems.