Parents and their children can have congruent or incongruent perceptions of parenting, which has been shown to have downstream effects on certain adolescent outcomes. However, little is known about whether such effect holds for various domains of developmental outcomes or across adolescent boys and girls. Investigating 2268 parent-girl (Mage = 15.73, SDage = 0.29, 75.5% were mothers) and 2090 parent-boy (Mage = 15.75, SDage = 0.29, 71.8% were mothers) dyads from Hong Kong, this study examined the associations between parent-adolescent (in)congruence and adolescent emotional symptoms, positive emotions, and academic performance. Polynomial regression and response surface analyses revealed that both congruence and incongruence were linked to emotional symptoms and positive emotions in varying patterns, but only congruence was tied to academic performance. Associations between (in)congruence and developmental outcomes generally were similar between boys and girls. These findings underscore the importance of decomposing (in)congruence effects in family processes and emphasizing the complexity of adolescent development.
Abundant evidence highlights the psychological and interpersonal benefits of self-compassion during adolescence, yet the developmental trajectory and influencing factors during this period remain relatively unexplored. This study investigated the developmental trajectory of self-compassion and illustrated the longitudinal relationship between parenting styles and self-compassion using latent growth curve models (LGCM), cross-lagged panel models (CLPM) and random-intercept cross-lagged panel models (RI-CLPM) in a sample of Chinese youth (N = 871; Mage = 15.21, SD = 0.73; 45.4% girls) across two years. Results demonstrated an increase developmental trend of self-compassion over two years. The parallel process LGCMs suggested that changes in parental autonomy support was positively related to the changes in self-compassion, whereas the relationship between parental psychological control and self-compassion was significant only at initial levels. CLPM consistently supported a bidirectional relationship between parental autonomy support and self-compassion in Chinese youth at between-person level. Although within-person changes in the study variables were not significant in a bidirectional manner based on the results of RI-CLPMs, changes in parental autonomy support/parental psychological control and self-compassion were concurrently associated. These results suggested that besides stable connections between parenting styles and adolescents' self-compassion, changes in parenting styles and self-compassion are developmentally linked as well. Overall, this study underscores the potentially beneficial impact of parental autonomy support on adolescent self-compassion and reveals nuanced effects of parental psychological control within the Chinese cultural context.
Although research has established the immediate, detrimental impact of discrimination on sleep, how changes in experiences of discrimination may be related to changes in sleep duration over multiple years is less clear. This three-year longitudinal study investigated: (1) intercept-only and linear trajectories of sleep and everyday discrimination across three years of high school; (2) ethnic/racial differences in these trajectories; and (3) the associations between changes in sleep and changes in everyday discrimination. The sample consisted of ethnically/racially minoritized adolescents from five northeast U.S. public high schools (n = 329; 70% female, 30% male, 0% non-binary; 42% Asian, 21% Black, 37% Latiné; Mage = 14.72, SD = 0.54). Latent growth curve models found that both sleep duration and everyday discrimination declined linearly throughout the first three years of high school and varied by race/ethnicity. Asian adolescents reported longer sleep duration in the 9th grade relative to Black and Latiné adolescents but underwent a significant decline such that these differences were no longer significant in the 10th and 11th grades. In addition, Black and Latiné, but not Asian, adolescents reported a significant decline in discrimination from the 9th–11th grades. Although average sleep duration declined for the entire sample, slower declines in discrimination were associated with faster decreases in sleep duration. This was particularly salient among Black adolescents. The current study contributes to research on ethnic/racial disparities in sleep by highlighting that everyday discrimination can have both an immediate and cumulative detrimental impact on sleep duration.
Given the heightened difficulties in social adjustment and the potential diminishment of social networks encountered by migrant children, family functioning may play a crucial role in their development. Existing research has highlighted the significance of family environment in shaping adolescent self-compassion and emotion regulation, which can serve as protective factors against adverse emotional outcomes. However, there remains a lack of comparative studies to examine the specific effects of family functioning on fostering self-compassion and emotion regulation in both migrant and their non-migrant counterparts. The present study utilized a three-wave longitudinal design with 12-month intervals to examine the longitudinal effects of family functioning on self-compassion and emotion regulation, while also examining potential variations in these associations between migrant and non-migrant children. A total of 244 migrant children and 491 non-migrant children from a high school in Guangdong Province (357 females; Mage = 15.3 at Time 1, SDage = 0.53) participated in this study. Random-intercept cross-lagged panel models (RI-CLPMs) were utilized to examine the longitudinal associations among family functioning, self-compassion, and emotion regulation in both groups. The results showed that, at the within-person level, family functioning reciprocally predicted self-compassion over time among migrant children, and it also exerted an indirect effect on emotion regulation, mediated by self-compassion. Among non-migrant children, emotion regulation positively predicted self-compassion over time, with no other observed cross-lagged effects.
Family resilience is crucial for individual's psychological health. Previous studies explored the protective factors of anxiety at the individual level, with less attention paid to the impact of family interaction from a dyadic perspective. This study utilized the Actor-Partner Interdependence Mediation Model to investigate the relationship between family resilience, emotional flexibility, and anxiety symptoms. A sample of 2144 Chinese parent-adolescent dyads (36% upper grades of primary school, 64% secondary school, 49.39% girls; 70.38% mothers) was recruited. Perceived family resilience was inversely related to anxiety symptoms, directly or indirectly, through the mediation of emotional flexibility at the individual level. At the dyadic level, adolescents' perceived family resilience was significantly associated with parents' anxiety symptoms through their own or parents' emotional flexibility. Parents' perceived family resilience was inversely link to adolescents' anxiety symptoms through parents' emotional flexibility. Parents emotional flexibility also mediated the association between adolescents' perceived family resilience and their anxiety symptoms. These findings contribute to understanding the intricate dynamics of family resilience and psychological outcomes in parent-child relationships under adversity, emphasizing the need for child-centered interventions to improve family members' mental health.
Depressive symptoms and sleep problems are extremely prevalent in adolescence, and future time perspective has been found to be strongly associated with them. However, little is known about the longitudinal relationship and the temporal dynamics of future time perspective, sleep problems, and depressive symptoms. Moreover, it is unclear whether sleep problems mediate the associations between future time perspective and depressive symptoms. To address this gap, a one-year longitudinal study was performed using data collected at three waves from 622 Chinese college students (aged 17-22 years, Mage = 18.16, SD = 1.49, 46.95% males). The results of cross-lagged panel models showed a bidirectional relationship between future time perspective and depressive symptoms, and that sleep problems were a mediating mechanism for these relationships. The results of random intercept cross-lagged panel models showed that at the within-person level, the change of sleep problems and depressive symptoms significantly affected the development of future time perspective, but the reverse effect not significant. Moreover, sleep problems mediated the within-person effect of depressive symptoms on future time perspective. These findings deepen the understanding of the longitudinal relationship between future time perspective, sleep problems and depressive symptoms, and emphasize the important role of sleep health in adolescent mental health and future development.
As a common form of negative interpersonal interaction in childhood, school bullying is closely related to individual negative cognition. Few studies have assessed whether there is an interaction between different kinds of school bullying roles and negative cognition. The present study administered four questionnaire follow-up tests among Chinese children over two years to explore the bidirectional relation and underlying mechanisms between bullying/victimization and negative automatic thoughts (about self/others). A total of 993 children with MT1age = 9.66 ± 0.72 participated in the study, including 647(65.16%) boys and 346(34.84%) girls. Results indicated a bidirectional relation between victimization and negative automatic thoughts (about self/others); negative automatic thoughts (about self/others) predicting bullying; negative automatic thoughts (about self/others) form two vicious cycles with victimization separately, in which victimization plays a mediating role. The findings suggest that considering improving children's negative cognition of self and others is an important pathway to reduce the occurrence of bullying and victimization in children and to stop children from falling into the cycle of victimization, which is crucial for children to have healthy relationships later in adolescence.
Studies have shown that there are protective and risk factors related to cyber dating violence. However, the effect size of these factors is unclear. This study aims to clarify the effect size of the associations of protective and risk factors, as well as symptoms of mental health conditions, with cyber dating violence perpetration and victimization. Databases, including PubMed, Web of Science (WoS), ProQuest, Scopus, and EBSCOhost were searched to identify relevant studies. Forty-nine studies were included in the current study. Results revealed statistically significant and medium relationships between cyber dating violence perpetration and some risk factors, including offline dating violence perpetration-related factors (i.e., physical, psychological, sexual, relational, verbal/emotional, and threat) and offline dating violence victimization-related factors (i.e., physical and psychological); and small relationships with other risk factors (i.e., sexual offline dating violence victimization, attachment styles, and jealousy), protective factors (i.e., family support and emotional regulation), and mental health symptoms (i.e., depression, anxiety, and alcohol use). There was also statistically significant and robust relationship between cyber dating violence victimization and verbal/emotional offline dating violence victimization (i.e., risk factor); medium relationships with some risk factors, including offline dating violence perpetration-related factors (i.e., psychological and verbal/emotional) and offline dating violence victimization-related factors (i.e., physical, psychological, sexual, relational, and threat); small relationships with other risk factors (i.e., physical offline dating violence perpetration, attachment styles, childhood sexual abuse), protective factors (i.e., family support, emotional regulation, and self-esteem), and mental health symptoms (i.e., depression, anxiety, stress, alcohol use, and drug use). The study’s results highlight risk and protective factors associated with cyber dating violence and demonstrate its association with mental health symptoms.