The developmental precursors of blunted cardiovascular responses to stress.

Blunted cardiovascular responses to stress have been associated with both mental and physical health concerns. This multi-method, longitudinal study examined the role of chronic social-developmental stress from adolescence onward as a precursor to these blunted stress responses. Using a diverse community sample of 184 adolescents followed from age 13 to 29 along with friends and romantic partners, this study found that high levels of parental psychological control at age 13 directly predicted a blunted heart rate response and indirectly predicted blunted respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) reactivity under stress. Heart rate effects were mediated via indicators of a developing passive response style, including observational measures of withdrawal during conflict with friends and romantic partners, social disengagement, and coping with stressors by using denial. RSA effects were mediated via withdrawal during conflict with romantic partners and coping by using denial. The current findings are interpreted as suggesting a mechanism by which a key social/developmental stressor in adolescence may alter relational and ultimately physiological patterns of stress responding into adulthood.

After Child Maltreatment: The Importance of Voice for Youth in Foster Care.

Once social services steps in to protect children from violence and neglect in their homes, many youth become wards of the specialized juvenile or family court that assists in child protection (e.g., the dependency court). Some of these children will be ordered into foster care. Within this "dependency system," such children often feel a lack of voice. This study tests the prediction that foster youth who perceive having more opportunity for voice, even indirectly via a representative, more favorably rate the dependency system. Adolescents (n = 110), aged 17 years, involved in foster care and age-matched nonfoster youth rated "how good or bad the foster care/dependency court is for foster youth." The foster youth were also asked about their interactions with the court and with their attorney representatives. Foster and nonfoster youth did not significantly differ in dependency system ratings when considered at the overall group level. However, foster and nonfoster youth ratings significantly differed when foster youth's views of relevant prior legal experiences (e.g., frequency of child-attorney contact, quality of attorney representation) were taken into account: Youth with the highest perceived quality of experiences indicated more positive views than any other group. The importance of perceived quality of experience adds insight into mechanisms for improving adolescents' feelings of voice in the legal system.

The Connection Project: Changing the peer environment to improve outcomes for marginalized adolescents.

This study evaluated a school-based intervention to enhance adolescent peer relationships and improve functional outcomes, building upon Ed Zigler's seminal contribution in recognizing the potential of academic contexts to enhance social and emotional development. Adolescents (N = 610) primarily from economically or racially/ethnically marginalized groups were assessed preintervention, postintervention, and at 4-month follow-up in a randomized controlled trial. At program completion, intervention participants reported significantly increased quality of peer relationships; by 4-month follow-up, this increased quality was also observable by peers outside of the program, and program participants also displayed higher levels of academic engagement and lower levels of depressive symptoms. These latter effects appear to have potentially been mediated via participants' increased use of social support. The potential of the Connection Project intervention specifically, and of broader efforts to activate adolescent peer relationships as potent sources of social support and growth more generally within the secondary school context, is discussed.

Different factors predict adolescent substance use versus adult substance abuse: Lessons from a social-developmental approach.

This 17-year prospective study applied a social-developmental lens to the challenge of distinguishing predictors of adolescent-era substance use from predictors of longer term adult substance use problems. A diverse community sample of 168 individuals was repeatedly assessed from age 13 to age 30 using test, self-, parent-, and peer-report methods. As hypothesized, substance use within adolescence was linked to a range of likely transient social and developmental factors that are particularly salient during the adolescent era, including popularity with peers, peer substance use, parent-adolescent conflict, and broader patterns of deviant behavior. Substance abuse problems at ages 27-30 were best predicted, even after accounting for levels of substance use in adolescence, by adolescent-era markers of underlying deficits, including lack of social skills and poor self-concept. The factors that best predicted levels of adolescent-era substance use were not generally predictive of adult substance abuse problems in multivariate models (either with or without accounting for baseline levels of use). Results are interpreted as suggesting that recognizing the developmental nature of adolescent-era substance use may be crucial to distinguishing factors that predict socially driven and/or relatively transient use during adolescence from factors that predict long-term problems with substance abuse that extend well into adulthood.

Interactions between anxiety subtypes, personality characteristics, and emotional regulation skills as predictors of future work outcomes.

INTRODUCTION: This study examined long-term predictive links between different types of anxiety in late adolescence and work-related outcomes in young adulthood. The presence of adaptive personality traits and positive emotion regulation and coping skills were hypothesized to buffer these associations, reducing the negative effects of anxiety on future work outcomes. METHODS: Hypotheses were tested using multi-reporter data from a community sample of 184 youth in the United States followed from ages 17-30. Trait anxiety, anxious arousal, rejection sensitivity, and implicit rejection were each examined in late adolescence as predictors of work-related ambition, work performance, job satisfaction, and career satisfaction in young adulthood. Conscientiousness, grit, emotion regulation (ER) and coping skills were examined as potential moderators. RESULTS: Although trait anxiety was the only anxiety variable directly predictive of work outcomes in regression analyses, personality variables and ER skills interacted with multiple types of anxiety to predict work outcomes. Interestingly, findings reflected a pattern in which a combination of greater conscientiousness and greater anxiety, and greater ER skills and greater anxiety, predicted more positive work outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: These findings not only suggest that the development of traits such as conscientiousness and ER skills may be helpful for youth with higher levels of anxiety, but also that higher levels of anxiety, when appropriately balanced by other qualities, may be adaptive for promoting positive career development for some youth.

Romantic Relationship Churn in Early Adolescence Predicts Hostility, Abuse, and Avoidance in Relationships Into Early Adulthood.

This study examined early adolescent romantic "churning," defined here as having a large number of boyfriends/girlfriends by age 13, as a problematic marker likely to predict hostility, abuse, and avoidance during conflict in later relationships. A sample of 184 adolescents was followed through age 24 to assess predictions of hostility, abuse, and avoidance during conflict from early romantic churning. Controlling for gender and family income, romantic churning at age 13 predicted relative decreases in peer preference and relative increases in conflict and betrayal in close friendships from ages 13-16, as well as higher observable hostility and self and partner-reported abuse in romantic relationships by age 18 and greater avoidance during conflict with romantic partners by age 24. Findings remained after accounting for attachment security, social competence, and friendship quality in early adolescence, suggesting that early romantic churning may uniquely predict a problematic developmental pathway.

The Intensity Effect in Adolescent Close Friendships: Implications for Aggressive and Depressive Symptomatology.

This study examined the effect of close friendship intensity as a potential amplifier of an adolescent's preexisting tendencies toward depressive and aggressive symptoms. A diverse community sample of 170 adolescents and their closest friends was assessed via multiple methods, and adolescents were followed from age 16 to 17. Results supported the hypothesized effect, with more intense close friendships interacting with higher baseline levels of behavioral symptoms to predict greater relative increases in symptoms over time. Effects were observed for both depressive and aggressive symptoms, and appeared with respect to multiple observational measures of friendship intensity. Findings are interpreted as suggesting that seemingly disparate phenomena (e.g., co-rumination for depression and deviancy-training for aggression) may both be dependent upon the intensity of the adolescent's social connections.

Adolescent Peer Relationship Qualities as Predictors of Long-Term Romantic Life Satisfaction.

Adolescent-era predictors of adult romantic life satisfaction were examined in a multimethod, prospective, longitudinal study of 165 adolescents followed from ages 13 to 30. Progress in key developmental tasks, including establishing positive expectations and capacity for assertiveness with peers at age 13, social competence at ages 15 and 16, and ability to form and maintain strong close friendships at ages 16-18, predicted romantic life satisfaction at ages 27-30. In contrast, several qualities linked to romantic experience during adolescence (i.e., sexual and dating experience, physical attractiveness) were unrelated to future satisfaction. Results suggest a central role of competence in nonromantic friendships as preparation for successful management of the future demands of adult romantic life.

Beyond deviancy-training: Deviant adolescent friendships and long-term social development.

Adolescent association with deviant and delinquent friends was examined for its roots in coercive parent-teen interactions and its links to functional difficulties extending beyond delinquent behavior and into adulthood. A community sample of 184 adolescents was followed from age 13 to age 27, with collateral data obtained from close friends, classmates, and parents. Even after accounting for adolescent levels of delinquent and deviant behavior, association with deviant friends was predicted by coercive parent-teen interactions and then linked to declining functioning with peers during adolescence and greater internalizing and externalizing symptoms and poorer overall adjustment in adulthood. Results are interpreted as suggesting that association with deviant friends may disrupt a core developmental task-establishing positive relationships with peers-with implications that extend well beyond deviancy-training effects.

Close Friendship Strength and Broader Peer Group Desirability as Differential Predictors of Adult Mental Health.

Middle adolescents' close friendship strength and the degree to which their broader peer group expressed a preference to affiliate with them were examined as predictors of relative change in depressive symptoms, self-worth, and social anxiety symptoms from ages 15 to 25 using multimethod, longitudinal data from 169 adolescents. Close friendship strength in midadolescence predicted relative increases in self-worth and decreases in anxiety and depressive symptoms by early adulthood. Affiliation preference by the broader peer group, in contrast, predicted higher social anxiety by early adulthood. Results are interpreted as suggesting that adolescents who prioritize forming close friendships are better situated to manage key social developmental tasks going forward than adolescents who prioritize attaining preference with many others in their peer milieu.

The body remembers: Adolescent conflict struggles predict adult interleukin-6 levels.

Struggles managing conflict and hostility in adolescent social relationships were examined as long-term predictors of immune-mediated inflammation in adulthood that has been linked to long-term health outcomes. Circulating levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6), a marker of immune system dysfunction when chronically elevated, were assessed at age 28 in a community sample of 127 individuals followed via multiple methods and reporters from ages 13 to 28. Adult serum IL-6 levels were predicted across periods as long as 15 years by adolescents' inability to defuse peer aggression and poor peer-rated conflict resolution skills, and by independently observed romantic partner hostility in late adolescence. Adult relationship difficulties also predicted higher IL-6 levels but did not mediate predictions from adolescent-era conflict struggles. Predictions were also not mediated by adult trait hostility or aggressive behavior, suggesting the unique role of struggles with conflict and hostility from others during adolescence. The implications for understanding the import of adolescent peer relationships for life span physical health outcomes are considered.

Using Advances From Cognitive Behavioral Models of Anxiety to Guide Treatment for Social Anxiety Disorder.

This case features an adult male with moderate social anxiety disorder and mild depressive symptoms who showed an initial positive response to an earlier experience of cognitive behavior therapy, but then relapsed when he started avoiding social situations again because of continuing beliefs that experiencing anxiety was unacceptable. His treatment at our clinic focused on shifting unhelpful thinking about the likelihood and consequences of becoming anxious and reengaging in avoided social situations so he could learn to tolerate negative affect and uncertainty. The treatment approach draws from cognitive behavioral models of social anxiety and highlights advances in clinical science, especially recent work on the causal role of interpretation biases (the tendency to assign negative or threatening meaning to ambiguous situations) in the maintenance and reduction of anxiety.