Journal of Research on Adolescence最新文献

Middle school years are a turbulent period for students to develop their adaptive academic motivation and engagement. However, a person-centered longitudinal investigation on changes in academic motivation and engagement is scarce. Through a two-wave survey with a four-month interval, this study investigated the configurations, transitions, and the predictive roles of basic psychological needs satisfaction on transitions in academic motivation and engagement profiles among 502 Chinese seventh graders (261 boys; Mean age = 12.34 at Time 1). Latent profile analysis revealed three profiles at both measurement occasions: highly motivated-and-engaged, moderately motivated-and-engaged, and demotivated-and-disengaged profiles. Latent transition analysis showed that while 61.16% of students maintained their initial profiles, 15.54% transitioned to more adaptive profiles and 24.30% shifted to less adaptive profiles. Notably, autonomy need satisfaction emerged as the protective factor preventing the highly motivated-and-engaged students from falling into the moderately motivated-and-engaged status. Implications and future research directions for middle school students' motivation and engagement are discussed.

Childhood conduct problems are associated with problematic substance use in adulthood; however, little is known about what might explain these associations outside of high-income countries where the majority of research is conducted. Data were analyzed from 4599 young people from the 1993 Pelotas Birth Cohort in Brazil. The exposure was conduct problems (age 11 years). Outcomes included hazardous alcohol consumption and illicit drug use (age 22 years). Mediators included police arrest (by age 18 years), gang membership (ages 18 and 22 years), and school noncompletion (by age 22 years). We performed counterfactual mediation using the parametric g-computation formula to estimate the indirect effect via all three mediators simultaneously. After adjusting for confounders (including hyperactivity problems), conduct problems were weakly associated with police arrest (OR [95% CI] = 1.45 [0.97, 2.16]) and school noncompletion (OR [95% CI] = 1.46 [1.22, 1.74]), but not with gang membership. Police arrest and gang membership were associated with illicit drug use (OR [95% CI] = 3.84 [2.46, 5.99]; OR [95% CI] = 7.78 [4.30, 14.10], respectively) and with hazardous alcohol use (OR [95% CI] = 1.60 [1.08, 2.38]; OR [95% CI] = 1.88 [1.07, 3.30]), after adjusting for confounders (including hyperactivity and emotional problems). There was no association between school noncompletion and either outcome after confounder adjustment. There was little evidence for an indirect effect of conduct problems on hazardous alcohol use and illicit drug use via all three mediators after confounder adjustment. Findings highlight the importance of school professionals being aware of the risk for school noncompletion for those with conduct problems. Additionally, programmes designed to reduce substance use in Brazil should focus on young people involved in gangs, and in the criminal justice system.

This study explored the connections among adolescents' Theory of Mind (ToM), social anhedonia, loneliness, and self-concept. Research with clinical populations shows interrelations between mainly poor ToM skills, higher loneliness, a weaker self-concept, and high levels of social anhedonia. This study extends this work by investigating their relation in a nonclinical adolescent population of 236 Canadian adolescents from ages 11–18. Results revealed that ToM negatively predicted social anhedonia, with adolescents with poorer ToM skills reporting higher levels of social anhedonia. Loneliness, but not self-concept, significantly mediated the relation between ToM and social anhedonia. Adolescents with lower ToM skills were more likely to report feelings of loneliness, which in turn predicted greater social anhedonia. Implications include support for developmentally appropriate and culturally informed interventions that promote strong social connections and loneliness reduction.

Although peer victimization is an established risk factor for behavioral problems in adolescents, the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. To address this gap, this study examined whether peer victimization may be indirectly associated with behavioral problems through executive function and whether these associations may be moderated by resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) in adolescents. A total of 298 Chinese adolescents (M_age = 12.88 years, SD_age = 0.69 years, 53% female) participated in this study. Participants completed questionnaires on peer victimization, executive function, and internalizing and externalizing problems. They also participated in a 3-min resting electrocardiogram recording, during which their resting RSA was measured. The results showed that exposure to peer victimization was associated with higher levels of internalizing and externalizing problems in adolescents through its relation to executive function. Additionally, resting RSA moderated these relations, with the indirect associations between peer victimization and behavioral problems through executive function being stronger in adolescents with low rather than high resting RSA. Our findings highlight that poor executive function serves as a potential mechanism linking peer victimization to adolescents' internalizing and externalizing problems, with this process varying by individual cardiac vagal tone.

Along with the rapid popularization of short-form video applications, adolescents' addiction to short-form videos has received increasing attention, but research on the bidirectional relationship between short-form video addiction (SFVA) and anxiety symptoms is limited. Therefore, the present study aimed to fill this gap by examining the interrelationship between these two variables and the potential mediating role of delayed gratification. This study surveyed 1143 Chinese high school students (50.04% male; M_age = 15.87, SD = 0.88 at time 1) across two waves of data collection spaced 6 months apart, measuring SFVA, delay of gratification, and anxiety symptoms at both time points. Using cross-lagged panel modeling, this study found that anxiety symptoms positively predicted subsequent SFVA, and SFVA positively predicted subsequent anxiety symptoms, suggesting a bidirectional relationship; furthermore, delay of gratification significantly mediated the relationship in both directions; specifically, anxiety symptoms increased the risk of SFVA by decreasing the ability to delay gratification, and vice versa. These findings emphasize the mediating role of delayed gratification, implying that interventions targeted at improving delayed gratification in adolescents may help to disrupt the vicious cycle of anxiety symptoms and SFVA.

Juvenile delinquency has significant impacts on physical and mental health in adulthood, yet longitudinal research investigating cognitive consequences of delinquent behavior is limited. This study investigates potential pathways linking adolescent delinquent behavior to memory performance in adulthood, with particular attention to proximal psychosocial and behavioral mediators. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health and employing school fixed-effects models, we examine the association between juvenile delinquency and memory performance in adulthood. We distinguish between nonviolent and violent delinquent behaviors to investigate differential associations. Moreover, we conduct multivariate bootstrapped mediation analyses with several mechanism variables, including disciplinary action, substance use, psychological factors, sleep behaviors, and social support. The association between juvenile delinquency and memory performance in adulthood was confounded by individual and family-level characteristics. Differentiating between violent and nonviolent behaviors, violent delinquency was negatively associated with memory performance, even after adjusting for individual and family characteristics as well as school fixed effects. Mediation analyses indicated that disciplinary action, psychological factors, and social support mediated the association between violent delinquency and memory performance. Depressive symptoms (25.7%) and suspension (17.7%) emerged as the most salient mediating factors, followed by perceived care from teachers (8.6%). Our findings further demonstrate that these early psychosocial and behavioral disruptions may impair memory performance in adulthood by undermining educational attainment. The results of this study suggest that engagement in violent behaviors during adolescence is longitudinally associated with worse memory performance in adulthood. We also provide evidence on the potential pathways through which violent delinquency can impact future memory performance, prompting considerations for more effective intervention strategies for delinquent youth.

The relationship between low self-esteem and bullying involvement, particularly the temporal antecedence of the relationship, has been inconclusive. A potential explanation for these mixed findings is the limited consideration of bullying subtypes (i.e., physical, verbal, and relational) within longitudinal frameworks. This study examines the longitudinal relationships of self-esteem with each type of bullying perpetration and victimization by gender. Random intercept cross-lagged panel models were analyzed with the data from 3617 South Korean adolescents (female = 48.3%, age mean = 12.43, SD = 1.48 in the first wave) of the Seoul Education Longitudinal Study for three waves (7th to 9th grade). The results revealed that self-esteem was an outcome of both bullying perpetration and victimization. That is, it is not personal traits such as self-esteem that lead adolescents to engage in or become victims of bullying, but rather, involvement in bullying results in a subsequent decline in self-esteem. When all three subtypes of bullying involvement were considered simultaneously, only physical perpetration and relational victimization negatively predicted subsequent self-esteem. These findings underscore the importance of differentiating bullying subtypes in longitudinal analyses of self-esteem and point to the need for closer attention to the possibility that physical perpetration and relational victimization may be associated with subsequent decreases in self-esteem.

Research suggests that adolescents often perceive parental behaviors—such as expressions of warmth and affection—differently than their parents do. These parent–adolescent discrepancies offer meaningful insight into family functioning during adolescence and adolescent mental health, though existing findings remain mixed. Grounded in interpersonal acceptance–rejection theory (IPARTheory), this study investigates longitudinal, bidirectional associations between parent–adolescent discrepancies in perceived parental warmth and adolescent internalizing symptoms. The sample included 1219 parent–adolescent dyads (both mothers and fathers) from 12 cultural groups across 9countries, followed across three time points spanning 5 years, with children's mean age being 10.72 years (SD = 0.67) at Wave 1, 13.19 years (SD = 0.90) at Wave 2, and 15.60 years (SD = 0.94) at Wave 3. The results of latent congruence models showed that mothers reported higher warmth than adolescents, whereas no significant discrepancies emerged between fathers and adolescents. The cross-sectional analyses indicated that a higher parent–adolescent discrepancy in parental warmth perceptions was linked to increased internalizing symptoms in adolescents and lower overall warmth perceived by parents and adolescents in the dyad. However, over the long term, marginal effects were observed only between greater internalizing symptoms in adolescents and lower overall warmth experienced, and vice versa. Additionally, some cross-cultural differences in the discrepancies between parents and adolescents were identified. These findings highlight the importance of congruence between parents' and adolescents' perceptions of parental warmth, which may play a critical role in reducing adolescent internalizing symptoms, at least in the short term. Future research should deepen these dynamics across different cultures and developmental stages to improve intervention strategies and strengthen family-based mental health support.

The co-development of intolerance of uncertainty (IU) and distress tolerance (DT) and adolescent problematic mobile phone use (PMPU) and their relationships at both the between- and within-person levels remain poorly understood, particularly among Chinese adolescents navigating the highly stressful pre-college entrance examination period in East Asia. Further, the potential moderating effects of early-life environmental unpredictability (EEU) on these relationships are yet to be tested. This large-sample Chinese cohort study seeks to address these gaps through a three-wave design. A total of 4548 Chinese high school students (50.70% female; M_age = 16.87, SD = 0.81) were surveyed at baseline. The study employed latent growth curve modeling (LGCM) and the random intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM). Univariate LGCMs identified an average continuous decline in PMPU among all adolescents. Parallel LGCMs indicated that individuals with higher PMPU levels also tended to report greater IU and DT (between-person effects). The results of the RI-CLPM revealed that DT consistently predicted subsequent PMPU and IU, while PMPU also predicted DT and IU (within-person effects). Importantly, all these findings exhibited different patterns of differentiation across groups with varying levels of EEU. In summary, this study highlights the complex relationship among IU, DT, and adolescent PMPU, emphasizing the crucial moderating role of EEU in these dynamic associations.