Family socioeconomic status and adolescent substance use: The role of parent-adolescent brain similarity and parental monitoring.

Greater neural similarity between parents and adolescents may reduce adolescent substance use. Among 70 parent-adolescent dyads, we tested a longitudinal path model in which family economic environment is related to adolescent substance use, directly and indirectly through parent-adolescent neural similarity and parental monitoring. Neural similarity was measured as parent-adolescent pattern similarity in functional brain connectivity at Time 1. Parents reported socioeconomic status and parental monitoring at Time 1. Adolescents reported parental monitoring at Time 1 and substance use at Time 2. Higher family socioeconomic status was associated with greater neural similarity. Greater neural similarity was associated with lower adolescent substance use, mediated through greater adolescent-perceived parental monitoring. Parent-adolescent neural similarity may attenuate adolescent substance use by bolstering parental monitoring. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Maternal executive function, authoritarian attitudes, and hostile attribution bias as interacting predictors of harsh parenting.

Executive function (EF) plays a key role in healthy development and human functioning across multiple domains, including socially, behaviorally, and in the self-regulation of cognition and emotion. Prior research has associated lower levels of maternal EF with harsher and more reactive parenting, and mothers' social cognitive attributes like authoritarian child-rearing attitudes and hostile attribution biases also contribute to harsh parenting practices. There have been few studies that explore the intersection of maternal EF and social cognitions. The present study addresses this gap by testing whether the relationship between individual differences in maternal EF and harsh parenting behaviors is statistically moderated separately by maternal authoritarian attitudes and hostile attribution bias. Participants were 156 mothers in a socioeconomically diverse sample. Multi-informant and multimethod assessments of harsh parenting and EF were utilized, and mothers self-reported on their child-rearing attitudes and attribution bias. Harsh parenting was negatively associated with maternal EF and hostile attribution bias. Authoritarian attitudes significantly interacted with EF (and the attribution bias interaction was marginally significant) in prediction of variance in harsh parenting behaviors. Commensurate with social information processing theory, EF and social cognitive attributes play critical and distinct roles in the causes of harsh caregiving practices. Findings elucidate that reforming parental social cognitions, in addition to targeting EF, may be effective prevention and intervention methods for yielding more positive parenting behaviors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

A Longitudinal Examination of the Family Stress Model of Economic Hardship in Seven Countries.

The Family Stress Model of Economic Hardship (FSM) posits that economic situations create differences in psychosocial outcomes for parents and developmental outcomes for their adolescent children. However, prior studies guided by the FSM have been mostly in high-income countries and have included only mother report or have not disaggregated mother and father report. Our focal research questions were whether the indirect effect of economic hardship on adolescent mental health was mediated by economic pressure, parental depression, dysfunctional dyadic coping, and parenting, and whether these relations differed by culture and mother versus father report. We conducted multiple group serial mediation path models using longitudinal data from adolescents ages 12-15 in 2008-2012 from 1,082 families in 10 cultural groups in seven countries (Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, the Philippines, Thailand, and the United States). Taken together, the indirect effect findings suggest partial support for the FSM in most cultural groups across study countries. We found associations among economic hardship, parental depression, parenting, and adolescent internalizing and externalizing. Findings support polices and interventions aimed at disrupting each path in the model to mitigate the effects of economic hardship on parental depression, harsh parenting, and adolescents' externalizing and internalizing problems.

Processes linking socioeconomic disadvantage and neural correlates of cognitive control in adolescence.

Socioeconomic status (SES) is broadly associated with self-regulatory abilities across childhood and adolescence. However, there is limited understanding of the mechanisms underlying this association, especially during adolescence when individuals are particularly sensitive to environmental influences. The current study tested perceived stress, household chaos, parent cognitive control, and parent-adolescent relationship quality as potential proximal mediators of the association between family SES and neural correlates of cognitive control. A sample of 167 adolescents and their primary caregivers participated in a longitudinal study across four years. SES was indexed by caregivers' education and income-to-needs ratio at Time 1. At Time 2, adolescents reported on their perceived stress, household chaos, and relationship with parents, and parents completed a cognitive control task. Two years later, adolescents completed the same cognitive control task while blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) response was monitored with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). A parallel mediation model indicated that parent cognitive control, but not other proximal factors, explained the relation between SES and adolescents' activation in the middle frontal gyrus during a cognitive control task. The results suggest potential targets for intervention and prevention efforts that may positively alter neurocognitive outcomes related to socioeconomic disadvantage.

Individual differences in executive function partially explain the socioeconomic gradient in middle-school academic achievement.

Children from families with low socioeconomic status (SES) earn lower grades, perform worse on achievement tests, and attain less education on average than their peers from higher-SES families. We evaluated neurocognitive mediators of SES disparities in achievement in a diverse sample of youth whose data were linked to administrative records of performance on school-administered tests of 7th grade reading and math proficiency (N = 203). We used structural equation modeling to evaluate whether associations between SES (measured at ages 8-9) and achievement (measured at age 13) are mediated by verbal ability and executive function (measured at age 10), a suite of top-down mental processes that facilitate control of thinking and behavior. Children from relatively higher-SES families performed better than their lower-SES peers on all neurocognitive and achievement measures, and SES disparities in both reading and math achievement were partially mediated by variation in executive function, but not verbal ability. SES disparities in executive function explained approximately 37% of the SES gap in math achievement and 17% of the SES gap in reading achievement. Exploratory modeling suggests that SES-related variation in working memory may play a particularly prominent role in mediation. We discuss potential implications of these findings for research, intervention programming, and classroom practice.

Reward sensitivity, impulse control, and social cognition as mediators of the link between childhood family adversity and externalizing behavior in eight countries.

Using data from 1,177 families in eight countries (Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, the Philippines, Sweden, Thailand, and the United States), we tested a conceptual model of direct effects of childhood family adversity on subsequent externalizing behaviors as well as indirect effects through psychological mediators. When children were 9 years old, mothers and fathers reported on financial difficulties and their use of corporal punishment, and children reported perceptions of their parents' rejection. When children were 10 years old, they completed a computerized battery of tasks assessing reward sensitivity and impulse control and responded to questions about hypothetical social provocations to assess their hostile attributions and proclivity for aggressive responding. When children were 12 years old, they reported on their externalizing behavior. Multigroup structural equation models revealed that across all eight countries, childhood family adversity had direct effects on externalizing behaviors 3 years later, and childhood family adversity had indirect effects on externalizing behavior through psychological mediators. The findings suggest ways in which family-level adversity poses risk for children's subsequent development of problems at psychological and behavioral levels, situated within diverse cultural contexts.

Household chaos as a context for intergenerational transmission of executive functioning.

Executive functioning (EF) may be transmitted across generations such that strengths or deficiencies in parent EF are similarly manifested in the child. The present study examined the contributions of parent EF and impulsivity on adolescent EF, and investigated whether household chaos is an environmental moderator that alters these transmission processes. American adolescents (N = 167, 47% female, 13-14 years old at Time 1) completed behavioral measures of EF and reported household chaos at Time 1 and one year later at Time 2. Parents completed behavioral measures of EF and self-reported impulsivity at Time 1. Results indicated that lower parent EF at Time 1 predicted lower adolescent EF at Time 2 (controlling for adolescent EF and IQ at Time 1), but only in the context of high household chaos. Findings suggest that household chaos may be a risk factor that compounds influences of poor parent EF and compromises adolescent EF development.

Development in reading and math in children from different SES backgrounds: the moderating role of child temperament.

Socioeconomic risks (SES risks) are robust risk factors influencing children's academic development. However, it is unclear whether the effects of SES on academic development operate universally in all children equally or whether they vary differentially in children with particular characteristics. The current study aimed to explore children's temperament as protective or risk factors that potentially moderate the associations between SES risks and academic development. Specifically, latent growth modeling (LGM) was used in two longitudinal datasets with a total of 2236 children to examine how family SES risks and children's temperament interactively predicted the development of reading and math from middle childhood to early adolescence. Results showed that low negative affect, high effortful control, and low surgency mitigated the negative associations between SES risks and both reading and math development in this developmental period. These findings underline the heterogeneous nature of the negative associations between SES risks and academic development and highlight the importance of the interplay between biological and social factors on individual differences in development.

GENDER IN LOW- AND MIDDLE-INCOME COUNTRIES: INTRODUCTION

How do girls and boys in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) in the majority world vary with respect to central indicators of child growth and mortality, parental caregiving, discipline and violence, and child labor? How do key indicators of national gender equity and economic development relate to gender similarities and differences in each of these substantive areas of child development? This monograph of the SRCD is concerned with central topics of child gender, gendered parenting, gendered environments, and gendered behaviors and socializing practices in the underresearched and underserved world of LMIC. To examine protective and risk factors related to child gender in LMIC around the world, we used data from more than 2 million individuals in 400,000 families in 41 LMIC collected in the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, a household survey that includes nationally representative samples of participating countries. In the first chapter of this monograph, we describe the conceptual "gender similarities" and "bioecological" frameworks that helped guide the monograph. In the second chapter, we detail the general methodology adhered to in the substantive chapters. Then, in topical chapters, we describe the situations of girls and boys with successive foci on child growth and mortality, parental caregiving, family discipline and violence, and child labor. We conclude with a general discussion of findings from the substantive chapters in the context of gender and bioecological theories. Across 41 LMIC and four substantive areas of child development, few major gender differences emerged. Our data support a gender similarities view and suggest that general emphases on early child gender differences may be overstated at least for the developing world of LMIC.

Hostile attributional bias and aggressive behavior in global context.

We tested a model that children's tendency to attribute hostile intent to others in response to provocation is a key psychological process that statistically accounts for individual differences in reactive aggressive behavior and that this mechanism contributes to global group differences in children's chronic aggressive behavior problems. Participants were 1,299 children (mean age at year 1 = 8.3 y; 51% girls) from 12 diverse ecological-context groups in nine countries worldwide, followed across 4 y. In year 3, each child was presented with each of 10 hypothetical vignettes depicting an ambiguous provocation toward the child and was asked to attribute the likely intent of the provocateur (coded as benign or hostile) and to predict his or her own behavioral response (coded as nonaggression or reactive aggression). Mothers and children independently rated the child's chronic aggressive behavior problems in years 2, 3, and 4. In every ecological group, in those situations in which a child attributed hostile intent to a peer, that child was more likely to report that he or she would respond with reactive aggression than in situations when that same child attributed benign intent. Across children, hostile attributional bias scores predicted higher mother- and child-rated chronic aggressive behavior problems, even controlling for prior aggression. Ecological group differences in the tendency for children to attribute hostile intent statistically accounted for a significant portion of group differences in chronic aggressive behavior problems. The findings suggest a psychological mechanism for group differences in aggressive behavior and point to potential interventions to reduce aggressive behavior.

Socioeconomic risk moderates the link between household chaos and maternal executive function.

We examined the link between household chaos (i.e., noise, clutter, disarray, lack of routines) and maternal executive function (i.e., effortful regulation of attention and memory), and whether it varied as a function of socioeconomic risk (i.e., single parenthood, lower mother and father educational attainment, housing situation, and father unemployment). We hypothesized that: 1) higher levels of household chaos would be linked with poorer maternal executive function, even when controlling for other measures of cognitive functioning (e.g., verbal ability), and 2) this link would be strongest in the most socioeconomically distressed or lowest-socioeconomic status households. The diverse sample included 153 mothers from urban and rural areas who completed a questionnaire and a battery of cognitive executive function tasks and a verbal ability task in the laboratory. Results were mixed for Hypothesis 1, and consistent with Hypothesis 2. Two-thirds of the variance overlapped between household chaos and maternal executive function, but only in families with high levels of socioeconomic risk. This pattern was not found for chaos and maternal verbal ability, suggesting that the potentially deleterious effects of household chaos may be specific to maternal executive function. The findings implicate household chaos as a powerful statistical predictor of maternal executive function in socioeconomically distressed contexts.

Childrearing discipline and violence in developing countries.

The present study examined the prevalence and country-level correlates of 11 responses to children's behavior, including nonviolent discipline, psychological aggression, and physical violence, as well as endorsement of the use of physical punishment, in 24 countries using data from 30,470 families with 2- to 4-year-old children that participated in UNICEF's Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey. The prevalence of each response varied widely across countries, as did the amount of variance accounted for by country in relation to each response. Country-level indicators of life expectancy, educational attainment, and economic well-being were related to several responses to children's behavior. Country-level factors are widely related to parents' methods of teaching children good behavior and responding to misbehavior.

Physical discipline and children's adjustment: cultural normativeness as a moderator.

Interviews were conducted with 336 mother-child dyads (children's ages ranged from 6 to 17 years; mothers' ages ranged from 20 to 59 years) in China, India, Italy, Kenya, the Philippines, and Thailand to examine whether normativeness of physical discipline moderates the link between mothers' use of physical discipline and children's adjustment. Multilevel regression analyses revealed that physical discipline was less strongly associated with adverse child outcomes in conditions of greater perceived normativeness, but physical discipline was also associated with more adverse outcomes regardless of its perceived normativeness. Countries with the lowest use of physical discipline showed the strongest association between mothers' use and children's behavior problems, but in all countries higher use of physical discipline was associated with more aggression and anxiety.

Task orientation, parental warmth and SES account for a significant proportion of the shared environmental variance in general cognitive ability in early childhood: evidence from a twin study.

Prior research suggests shared environmental influences on cognitive performance are important in early childhood. However, few studies have attempted to identify the factors comprising this shared environmental variance. To address this issue, we examined the covariance between task orientation, parental warmth, socioeconomic status and general cognitive ability in a British twin study of 125 pairs of identical and same-sex fraternal twins. Task orientation correlated r =.41 with general cognitive ability Bivariate genetic analyses suggested that this correlation was mediated by shared environmental influences. Additional analyses suggested that SES and parental warmth mediated about two-thirds of the shared environmental covariance between task engagement and cognitive skills.

The development of attitudes about physical punishment: an 8-year longitudinal study.

We examined young adolescents' endorsement of parental use of corporal punishment to elucidate processes underlying the intergenerational transmission of discipline strategies. The community sample was ethnically and socioeconomically diverse. Mothers completed interviews and questionnaires when the target children were entering kindergarten (n = 566) and in 6th and 8th grades. Adolescents completed questionnaires when they were in 8th grade (n = 425). Adolescents' attitudes about corporal punishment varied widely. Those adolescents who had been spanked by their own mothers were more approving of this discipline method, regardless of the overall frequency, timing, or chronicity of physical discipline they had received. However, there was no correlation among adolescents for whom physical maltreatment in early or middle childhood was suspected.