Friend Emotional Support and Dynamics of Adolescent Socioemotional Problems.

Emotional support from friends is a crucial source of social support for adolescents, significantly influencing their psychological development. However, previous research has primarily focused on how this support correlates with general levels of socioemotional problems among adolescents, neglecting the significance of daily fluctuations in these problems. The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between friend emotional support and both the average and dynamic indicators of daily emotional and peer problems in adolescents. These dynamic indicators include within-domain dynamics-such as inertia, which reflects the temporal dependence of experiences, and volatility, which indicates within-person variance-and cross-domain dynamics, such as transactional effects, which measure the strength of concurrent or lagged associations between daily emotional and peer problems. Participants were 315 seventh-grade Chinese adolescents (Mage = 13.05 years, SD = 0.77 years; 48.3% girls). Adolescents reported on their friends' emotional support at baseline and then completed measures of daily emotion and peer problems over a 10-day period. Using dynamic structural equation models, the results revealed that higher levels of friend emotional support were associated with fewer daily socioemotional problems. This was evident both in terms of average levels and dynamic aspects, characterized by lower mean levels of daily emotional and peer problems, reduced inertia and volatility of these problems, and a weaker spillover effect from daily emotional issues to peer problems. These findings highlight the significant role of friend-emotional support in mitigating adolescents' daily socioemotional challenges.

Adolescent emotion regulation trajectories: The influence of parent and friend emotion socialization.

With mounting evidence demonstrating the link between child emotion regulation (ER) and emotion socialization, we conducted a longitudinal study to understand (a) emotion-specific trajectories of adolescent ER and (b) how specific parent and friend emotion socialization strategies impact ER over 4 years. Participants were 209 adolescents (52.5% girls; Mage  = 12.66 years; 75.7% White) and their parents. Latent growth curve models identified unique trajectories for anger and sadness/worry regulation. Anger regulation increased across time, whereas sadness/worry regulation remained highly stable longitudinally, lacking variance for growth modeling. Friend emotion socialization emerged as a more salient predictor of anger regulation than parent emotion socialization. Friend reward, override, and punish responses predicted initial levels. Friend punish and parent magnify responses predicted the slope.

Pathways to Reciprocated Friendships: A Cross-Lagged Panel Study on Young Adolescents' Anger Regulation towards Friends.

Adolescents' close friendships are an important and unique learning context in which adolescents can practice and hone their emotion regulation skills within an egalitarian, supportive relationship structure that provides important feedback on the effectiveness of the regulation strategies. This longitudinal study examined whether adolescents' involvement in supportive reciprocal friendships influenced the way in which they regulated angry feelings arising in these friendships. A sample of 299 German adolescents began a 30-month, 3-wave longitudinal study in grade 7 (151 boys, M age = 12.6 years; 100% White). They completed a social network inventory (LueNIC), a peer-nomination measure, and the questionnaire on Strategies of Anger Regulation for Adolescents (SAR-A) in every wave. Cross-lagged-panel modeling indicated a pattern of socialization effects even when controlling for previous friendship involvement, previous anger regulation, peer acceptance, gender, classroom membership, and possible friendship selection influences. Adolescents with more reciprocal friends at Time 1 (T1) reported using aggressive strategies of anger regulation (i.e., verbal and relational aggression, fantasies of revenge) and ignoring the friend less often at Time 2 (T2). Similar results were obtained between T2 and Time 3 (T3). There was a marginally significant effect for one of three non-aggressive strategies such that a higher involvement in friendships at T2 explained more reappraisal of the anger-eliciting event at T3 but significant effects did not emerge for the strategies of redirection of attention and explanation and reconciliation. The results are discussed within a socialization of emotion framework with implications for social skills training modules.

Peer emotion socialization and somatic complaints in adolescents.

Somatic symptoms tend to increase during early adolescence and although youth's social environments and emotional functioning play a role in somatic symptoms, few studies have examined mechanisms through which social interaction could influence youth's somatic wellbeing. Participants were 132 youth (61.6% girls, Mage = 12.61 years, 84.7% Caucasian) and their mothers. Reciprocated best-friend dyads participated in a video-taped problem discussion task to assess peer emotion socialization responses. Two supportive friend responses (i.e., emotion-focused, problem-focused) and two unsupportive responses (i.e., punitive, neglect) were examined. Mothers reported on their child's somatic complaints. Friends who provided emotion-focused, problem-focused, punitive, and neglect responses to their close friend's emotional disclosures had significantly fewer somatic symptoms. However, youth who received punitive responses to their emotional disclosures from their close friends had more somatic complaints. These findings provide initial evidence of a link between emotion socialization responses within close friendships and somatic complaints in early adolescence.

The management and expression of pride: Age and gender effects across adolescence.

Understanding of the role that positive emotions play in adolescent social development requires studying the normative development of these emotions. This research examined pride expression and management across adolescence, focusing on gender and developmental differences. Participants were 206 Caucasian youth (52.9% girls) in grades 5 (Mage = 11.10 years), 8 (Mage = 14.45), 11 (Mage = 17.26), and university (Mage = 19.61). Youth responded to two vignettes assessing reactions to pride-eliciting situations. Compared to boys, girls reported more intense pride experience and a higher likelihood of expressing pride. Increases across adolescence were found for self-efficacy in suppressing pride expression, and for expressing modesty in pride-eliciting situations. Older adolescents were less likely than younger adolescents to expect to receive a negative peer reaction when inhibiting pride. These results indicate the importance of gender-specific examinations of pride across adolescent development with implications for adaptive psychosocial functioning and positive psychology.

Children's experiences of maternal incarceration-specific risks: predictions to psychological maladaptation.

Children of incarcerated mothers are at increased risk for social and emotional difficulties, yet few studies have investigated potential mechanisms of risk within this population. This research simultaneously examined the association of children's experience of incarceration-specific risk factors (e.g., witness mother's arrest) and environmental risks (e.g., low educational attainment) to children's psychological maladaptation using a multi-informant design and a latent variable analytic approach. Participants were 117 currently incarcerated mothers (64.1% African American), their 151 children (53.6% boys, M age = 9.8 years, range = 6-12 years, 61.7% African American), and the 118 caregivers (74.8% female, 61.9% grandparents, 62.2% African American) of the children. Mothers, children, and caregivers each provided accounts of children's experiences related to maternal incarceration and children's internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. Mothers and caregivers each supplied information about 10 environmental risk factors. Findings from structural equation modeling indicate that children's incarceration-specific risk experiences predict internalizing and externalizing behavior problems whereas the influence of environmental risks was negligible. Follow-up analyses examining the contribution of specific risks indicate that significant predictors differ by reporter and separate into effects of family incarceration history and direct experiences of maternal incarceration. Incarceration-specific experiences place children at higher risk for maladjustment than exposure to general environmental risk factors. These findings indicate the need to critically examine children's exposure to experiences related to maternal incarceration and family incarceration history to help to clarify the multifaceted stressor of maternal incarceration.

A longitudinal examination of emotion regulation: pathways to anxiety and depressive symptoms in urban minority youth.

BACKGROUND: Difficulty regulating emotions is a symptom of many psychological disorders yet little research has examined the longitudinal relations of particular facets of emotion regulation (ER) that may differentiate between internalizing symptoms. METHOD: At-risk youth (n = 102; 44.1% boys, 77.5% Black; Mage  = 9.65) and caregivers (n = 74; 87.1% mothers) participated in a 2-year longitudinal study. Children reported on their ER, and children and caregivers on symptomatology. RESULTS: Different patterns, varying by emotion facet (dysregulation, inhibition, coping) and type (anger, sadness, worry), predicted anxiety and depression symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: Anxiety and depression are entities with distinct patterns of emotion-related antecedents.

Relationship processes and resilience in children with incarcerated parents.

Children with incarcerated parents are at risk for a variety of problematic outcomes, yet research has rarely examined protective factors or resilience processes that might mitigate such risk in this population. In this volume, we present findings from five new studies that focus on child- or family-level resilience processes in children with parents currently or recently incarcerated in jail or prison. In the first study, empathic responding is examined as a protective factor against aggressive peer relations for 210 elementary school age children of incarcerated parents. The second study further examines socially aggressive behaviors with peers, with a focus on teasing and bullying, in a sample of 61 children of incarcerated mothers. Emotion regulation is examined as a possible protective factor. The third study contrasts children's placement with maternal grandmothers versus other caregivers in a sample of 138 mothers incarcerated in a medium security state prison. The relation between a history of positive attachments between mothers and grandmothers and the current cocaregiving alliance are of particular interest. The fourth study examines coparenting communication in depth on the basis of observations of 13 families with young children whose mothers were recently released from jail. Finally, in the fifth study, the proximal impacts of a parent management training intervention on individual functioning and family relationships are investigated in a diverse sample of 359 imprisoned mothers and fathers. Taken together, these studies further our understanding of resilience processes in children of incarcerated parents and their families and set the groundwork for further research on child development and family resilience within the context of parental involvement in the criminal justice system.

Profiles of adolescents' sadness, anger, and worry regulation: Characterization and relations with psychopathology.

Adaptive emotion regulation (ER) reflects competence in effective emotion expression and emotion coping, both of which are critical to mitigating psychopathology risk. The current study extends past work on adolescent ER in three ways. First, using a functionalist framework, we focused on discrete emotions, examining how adolescents may differentially express and cope with sadness, anger, and worry. Second, we used a person-centered approach to determine whether subgroups of youth report different patterns of managing emotions. Third, to provide indices of validity and replicability, we characterized ER profiles in two independent community samples of adolescents and in relation to psychological adjustment (i.e., depression, anxiety, aggression), concurrently and longitudinally. Sample A comprised 202 youths (Mage = 12.90 years, 52.5% girls) participating at two time points 2 years apart. Sample B comprised 500 adolescents (Mage = 14.06 years, 60.2% girls), 99 of whom participated again 6 months later. Latent profile analyses per sample revealed similar three-profile solutions, such that adolescents were classified into the Expressive Coping (i.e., high regulation coping, low inhibition), Inhibited Coping (i.e., high regulation coping, high inhibition), or Dysregulated Anger (i.e., low anger coping, low anger inhibition) group. Youth in the Dysregulated Anger group reported elevations in depression and, in some instances, anxiety and aggression. Psychological adjustment for the other groups differed by sample. Profile membership did not predict change in symptoms over time. As such, adolescents vary in the extent to which their ER is global versus emotion-specific, in both replicable and, potentially, clinically meaningful ways. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Children's emotion regulation across and within nations: a comparison of Ghanaian, Kenyan, and American youth.

This research examined national, regional, developmental, and gender differences in children's reported management of anger and sadness. Participants (8-15 years) were 103 Ghanaian children from a village setting, 142 Ghanaian children from a middle-class urban context, 106 Kenyan children from an impoverished urban context, and 170 children from the United States in lower to middle-class urban areas (58.8% Caucasian). Children completed the Children's Anger and Sadness Management Scales (Zeman, Shipman, & Penza-Clyve, 2001) to assess emotion management (i.e., effortful control, over control, under control). Comparisons across nations indicated that Ghanaian youth reported more overt anger expression than youth from Kenya and the United States and less anger inhibition than Kenyan youth. U.S. children reported less overt expression and more constraint over sadness than Kenyan and Ghanaian children, although Kenyans reported being calmer when experiencing sadness than Ghanaian and American youth. Comparing Ghanaian regional contexts, village children reported more anger control than urban children. Regardless of nationality, boys reported more control over sadness than girls who reported more under control of sadness and more over control of anger than boys. Future research is needed to build on these descriptive, preliminary findings examining under-studied cross-national contexts.

Methodological implications of the affect revolution: a 35-year review of emotion regulation assessment in children.

This investigation analyzed the methods used over the past 35 years to study emotion regulation (ER) in children. Articles published from 1975 through 2010 were identified in 42 child clinical, developmental, and emotion psychology journals. Overall, 61.1% of published ER articles relied on one method and 23.6% used two methods. Analyses revealed (a) 82.8% of published ER research occurring within the past decade; (b) higher rates of observational methods with infant and toddler/preschool samples, but more use of self-report methodology with middle childhood and adolescent samples; (c) a longer history of published ER research with samples of infants to 5-year-olds, including the use of more longitudinal design, compared with older samples; and (d) a positive association between journal impact ratings and the use of physiological and observational measurement. Review of the measurement tools used to capture ER revealed great diversity in how emotion processes are understood and evaluated.

Parent-child discussions of anger and sadness: the importance of parent and child gender during middle childhood.

This chapter provides conceptual background and empirical evidence that parental emotion socialization continues well into middle childhood and is influenced by the social context. Data are presented to illustrate the influence of parent and child gender on parental socialization of emotion in 113 Caucasian, middle-class children. Mothers and fathers discussed historical sadness- and anger-eliciting events with their sons and daughters. Fathers appear to play a unique role in sadness socialization whereas mothers' influence seems distinctive for the socialization of anger. Socialization of emotion is a transactional process in which parents and children are both socializing agents and emotion regulators.

Co-Rumination Moderates the Relation between Emotional Competencies and Depressive Symptoms in Adolescents: a Longitudinal Examination.

Research suggests co-rumination during adolescence has developmental tradeoffs that result in elevated self-disclosure and intimacy between friends but also can be associated with increases in depression (Rose et al. 2007; Rose 2002). The current study further examined this paradox by assessing the role of emotional competencies in co-rumination as they predict depressive symptoms over a 2-year period. We tested whether co-rumination moderated the relation between emotional awareness and emotion regulation and depressive symptoms in reciprocated best friend dyads. At Time 1, 202 adolescents (101 same-sex best friend dyads; Mage = 12.68, 52.5% girls, 76.6% White, middle-class) reported on their emotional competencies (i.e., emotional awareness and perceptions of their friend's anger and sadness regulation), and depressive symptoms as well as engaged in a discussion task where co-rumination was observed. Multilevel modeling (Actor-Partner Interdependence Modeling) was used to account for similarity within friend dyads. The results indicated that when girls engaged in high levels of co-rumination, poor emotional awareness was related to greater depressive symptoms in their friend. Regarding the analyses of emotion regulation, at high levels of co-rumination, Friend A's perceptions of stronger anger regulation by Friend B predicted fewer depressive symptoms in Friend A. Stronger sadness regulation in Friend B at high levels of co-rumination predicted fewer depressive symptoms in Friend B. Our findings highlight the potentially adaptive nature of emotional competencies that may ameliorate the negative sequelae of co-rumination as adolescents are afforded the opportunity to discuss problems, better understand their emotions, skills that are then associated with fewer depressive symptoms over time.

Implicit and Explicit Attitudes Toward Autistic Adults.

Background: Research examining attitudes toward autistic adults has relied on explicit self-report measures, which may be susceptible to socially desirable responding. Because implicit attitudes predict behavioral rejection, understanding both implicit and explicit attitudes toward autistic adults is important. Furthermore, previous research has almost exclusively examined attitudes toward autistic children and has not investigated attitudes toward autistic adults who may also experience prejudice from their peers. Methods: We created an implicit association test (IAT) to examine implicit attitudes toward autistic adults. In Study 1, we examined 94 neurotypical adults' (mean [M]age = 31.37 years) implicit attitudes and explicit attitudes toward autistic adults as well as autistic behaviors. In Study 2 (n = 137; M age = 33.43 years), we assessed the same variables using an IAT with descriptive rather than stereotypical words. Results: Participants from both studies demonstrated negative implicit attitudes but positive explicit attitudes toward autistic adults. In Study 2, analyses examining self-reported traits related to autism revealed that more autistic behaviors were associated with less implicit bias. Conclusions: These findings may help explain why autistic adults report discrimination from their peers. The results suggest that there may be benefits in modifying interventions that reduce implicit bias toward other marginalized groups for use with implicit bias against autistic adults. Lay summary: Why was this study done?: The goal of this study was to understand how neurotypical adults in the United States feel and think about autistic adults. Negative attitudes can lead to discrimination against autistic adults or to harmful interactions between autistic and neurotypical adults. Although research has previously examined the attitudes that neurotypical adults have toward autistic adults, most of this work has directly asked people about their attitudes, assessing their explicit, or conscious, attitudes. Neurotypical adults, however, may not be able or willing to admit that they have negative attitudes toward autistic adults. Therefore, it is important to evaluate implicit attitudes, which are underlying attitudes at the unconscious level of awareness.What was the purpose of this study?: This study investigated the implicit and explicit attitudes that neurotypical adults in the general U.S. population have about autistic adults. Assessing both kinds of attitudes is important because each type of attitude predicts different sorts of behaviors toward and judgments of individuals.What did the researchers do?: We conducted this study online using a crowdsourcing method of data collection (Amazon's Mechanical Turk) that gave us access to adults throughout the United States. We developed and administered a reaction-time task to examine implicit attitudes toward autistic adults. In this task, participants rapidly categorized words associated with autism and words not associated with autism as being "good" or "bad." We assessed explicit attitudes with questions about people's knowledge of autism and their liking for autistic adults. Study 1 measured 94 neurotypical adults' (average age = 31.37 years) implicit and explicit attitudes toward autistic adults; Study 2 measured 137 neurotypical adults' (average age = 33.43 years) implicit and explicit attitudes. Whereas Study 1's implicit task used words associated with stereotypes about autistic adults (e.g., extraverted, independent), Study 2 used nonstereotypical words associated with autism (e.g., autistic, spectrum).What were the results of the studies?: Participants in both studies reported positive explicit attitudes but negative implicit attitudes toward autistic adults. In one study, we also found that neurotypical adults with more autistic traits themselves had more positive implicit attitudes toward autistic adults.What do these findings add to what was already known?: Although previous research examined neurotypical adults' explicit attitudes toward autistic adults, the current study demonstrated that neurotypical adults hold negative implicit attitudes toward autistic adults. These findings may help explain why autistic adults experience discrimination from neurotypical adults. Furthermore, our findings suggest that having more autistic traits can lead to a better understanding of the behaviors associated with autism.What are the potential weaknesses in the study?: Limitations of the study were that we collected the data online rather than in person and we only included neurotypical adults as participants.How will these findings help autistic adults now or in the future?: These results shed light on underlying reasons for the potential negative judgments and discrimination that autistic adults face from neurotypical adults. These findings should encourage policy makers to design and implement training programs to reduce neurotypical adults' negative attitudes toward autistic adults.

Social contextual links to emotion regulation in an adolescent psychiatric inpatient population: do gender and symptomatology matter?

BACKGROUND: The regulation of emotion is essential for adaptive functioning. However, delineating the pathways of emotion regulation (ER) processes that lead to psychological adaptation remains under-studied, with mixed evidence for the specificity vs. generality of ER deficits in relation to specific forms of psychopathology. To examine this issue, this study investigated links among ER, social-contextual factors (family, peer), and psychological adjustment (internalizing, externalizing). METHOD: Participants were 140 adolescents (71% female, 83.3% Caucasian, M age = 16.03 years) who were consecutive psychiatric admissions over a one-year period. Adolescents completed measures on family environment and peer relationship experiences. Both adolescents and parents reported on adolescents' characteristic patterns of ER and psychopathology. RESULTS: Discriminant analyses revealed that two functions, ER skills and impulsivity/lability, differentiated among adolescents who were elevated in internalizing symptoms only, in externalizing symptoms only, in both domains, or in neither domain. Regarding social contextual variables, family cohesion was associated with adaptive ER behaviors for girls along the internalizing dimension and all adolescents reporting externalizing behaviors. Relational victimization predicted difficulties with ER in both symptom domains for all adolescents. Within the internalizing domain, friendship support was related to adaptive ER. CONCLUSION: Facets of ER do differentiate between global indices of internalizing and externalizing behaviors and suggest that both general and specific factors contribute to adolescents' unique learning history with emotions and characteristic patterns for managing emotions.

Common and specific emotion-related predictors of anxious and depressive symptoms in youth.

This study examined whether specific emotion-related constructs may be uniquely related to anxious or depressive symptoms in youth. Although anxiety and depression are comorbid in both youth and adult populations, delineation of these disorders is a worthwhile endeavor given that such differentiation may lead to a clearer conceptualization of the disorders that in turn may facilitate more efficient diagnosis and effective treatment. Children in the 4th and 5th grades (N = 187; M age = 10 years, 3 months) completed measures to assess symptoms of anxiety and depression and emotion-related functioning. Using structural equation modeling, emotion-related variables were identified that were common to both anxiety and depression (poor emotion awareness, emotion dysregulation, poor emotion regulation coping, high frequency of negative affect), most strongly related to depression (low frequency of positive affect), and most distinctly associated with anxiety (frequency of emotion experience, somatic response to emotion activation). The findings suggest that comprehensive theoretical formulations of anxiety and depression in youth should consider emotion-related variables. The results also suggest potential avenues that may facilitate more efficient assessment and treatment of such youth.

Trajectories of non-suicidal self-injury in adolescent girls following inpatient hospitalization.

This study explored the growth of non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) frequency over 2.5 years in a clinical sample of adolescent girls. Following a functional model of NSSI, the contribution of emotion dysregulation, peer victimization, and psychological maladjustment were evaluated as the predictors of NSSI trajectories. Participants of 99 girls (Mage = 16.03 years) were admitted for psychiatric hospitalization, who responded to questionnaires assessing NSSI, emotion dysregulation, relational and overt peer victimization, and internalizing and externalizing symptoms. NSSI was also assessed at 6 months and 2.5 years following the baseline assessment. Linear mixed modeling estimated NSSI frequency over time. The findings highlight the stable nature of NSSI and the contribution of emotion dysregulation and internalizing symptoms to NSSI patterns. Peer victimization and externalizing behavior problems were not the significant predictors. Developing interventions targeting these NSSI predictors early in girls' development may prevent the emergence and maintenance of NSSI.

Maternal Incarceration, Children's Psychological Adjustment, and the Mediating Role of Emotion Regulation.

Children who live in the context of maternal incarceration (MI) are exposed to both general environmental risk and incarceration-specific risk increasing the probability of their developing externalizing and internalizing behaviors problems. Little research has examined the socio-emotional mechanisms that account for the psychological effects of MI. This research examined children's anger and sadness regulation as mediators between environmental and incarceration-specific risk and psychological functioning. Participants were 117 children (60% Black; 52% boys; M age = 9.85 years, SD = 1.65 years), their incarcerated mother, and current caregiver. All informants completed questionnaires assessing children's anger and sadness regulation as well as externalizing and internalizing behaviors. Mothers and caregivers provided information concerning children's exposure to environmental risk and all three reporters provided information on incarceration-specific risk experiences (ISRE). Structural equation modeling was used to test indirect effects of risk variables (ISRE, environmental) on psychological functioning (externalizing, internalizing behaviors) via emotion regulation (anger, sadness). Gender, age, and race were covariates. The analyses revealed significant indirect effects of incarceration-specific risk on both externalizing and internalizing behavior problems via anger regulation but not via sadness regulation. The findings highlight the centrality of emotion regulation as a mechanism that helps explain the negative psychological outcomes experienced by children exposed to ISRE with implications for preventive interventions.

Adolescent controversial status brokers: A double-edged sword.

Using a 3-wave longitudinal, multidimensional approach, this study investigated the influence of social network position and social status on the psychosocial outcomes of 440 youth (45.1% girls; Mage = 16.1 years; 90.9% Caucasian) over 26 months, focusing on the controversial status classification (i.e., youth who are highly liked and disliked by their peers). Brokerage (i.e., the degree to which a person has relationships with peers who do not have a direct relationship with each other) was examined in conjunction with sociometric status to explain potential heterogeneity of outcomes for controversial status youth. Adolescents completed peer nominations and self-reports of adjustment. Results demonstrated that brokerage was related to poorer psychosocial outcomes for controversial compared to average status youth. Brokerage appears to add predictive value to youths' adjustment beyond traditional sociometric classifications, especially for controversial status youth. (PsycINFO Database Record