A Within-Family Examination of Interparental Conflict, Cognitive Appraisals, and Adolescent Mood and Well-Being

A Daily Diary Study of the Reciprocal Relation between Parental Psychological Aggression and Adolescent Anxiety in China

The daily reciprocal relations between parental psychological aggression and adolescent anxiety and the heterogeneity, i.e., whether these relations vary across different adolescents, remain unclear. This study examined this issue with a 15-day daily diary study among 326 Chinese adolescents (Mage = 14.53 years, SD = 0.60, 47.2% girls). Dynamic structural equation models revealed that parental psychological aggression co-fluctuated with adolescent anxiety within a day. For lagged associations, only father-driven effects were supported but not mother-driven effects, whereas child-driven effects were supported for both parents. These within-person associations were heterogeneous across adolescents. Moreover, adolescents with more parental psychological aggression reported higher anxiety. This study revealed the reciprocal relations between parental psychological aggression and adolescent anxiety at the micro timescale and also highlighted that the within-person associations were heterogeneous across different adolescents.

Children's empathy moderates the association between perceived interparental conflict and child health

Interparental conflict is known to negatively impact child well-being, including behavioral and physiological well-being. Children's empathy - that is, vicariously experiencing others' emotions - may increase children's sensitivity to and the biological repercussions of interparental conflict. Although empathy represents a valued trait and is an important part of socioemotional development, its influence on children's physical health is unknown. This study examined whether empathy moderates the association between perceived interparental conflict and both child systemic inflammation and parent-rated overall child health in a sample of children between the ages of seven to nine. Children and their parents participating in the long-term evaluation of the Family Foundations program, a randomized trial of a perinatal preventative intervention, provided data approximately eight years following enrollment into the program. We collected peripheral blood samples via dried blood spots, anthropometric measurements, and child and parent psychosocial questionnaires. Results indicated significant positive main effects of child empathy on both C-reactive protein (CRP; B = 0.26, SE = 0.11, p =.026) and Interleukin-6 (IL-6; B = 0.20, SE = 0.10, p =.045) levels. Further, child affective empathy moderated the associations between perceived interparental conflict and both CRP (B = 0.39, SE = 0.19, p =.050) and parent-reported child health (B = 0.30, SE = 0.13, p =.021), such that greater empathy strengthened the negative associations between interparental conflict and child health. Overall, findings suggests that there may be a biological cost of being more empathic in high-conflict environments and highlight the need for tools to help more empathic children appropriately manage vicarious emotions.

The longitudinal role of family conflict and neural reward sensitivity in youth's internalizing symptoms

Adolescence is often associated with an increase in psychopathology. Although previous studies have examined how family environments and neural reward sensitivity separately play a role in youth's emotional development, it remains unknown how they interact with each other in predicting youth's internalizing symptoms. Therefore, the current research took a biopsychosocial approach to examine this question using two-wave longitudinal data of 9353 preadolescents (mean age = 9.93 years at T1; 51% boys) from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study. Using mixed-effects models, results showed that higher family conflict predicted youth's increased internalizing symptoms 1 year later, whereas greater ventral striatum (VS) activity during reward receipt predicted reduced internalizing symptoms over time. Importantly, there was an interaction effect between family conflict and VS activity. For youth who showed greater VS activation during reward receipt, high family conflict was more likely to predict increased internalizing symptoms. In contrast, youth with low VS activation during reward receipt showed high levels of internalizing symptoms regardless of family conflict. The findings suggest that youth's neural reward sensitivity is a marker of susceptibility to adverse family environments and highlight the importance of cultivating supportive family environments where youth experience less general conflict within the family.

Interparental conflict, family climate, and threat appraisals: Early adolescent exposure and young adult psychopathology risk

Long-term studies evaluating threat appraisals as an intervening variable linking interparental conflict (IPC) and internalizing problems are lacking, as are longitudinal studies evaluating the role of the broader family context in these models. Guided by the cognitive-contextual framework, this study followed 225 adolescents (53% females) and their families from age 11 into young adulthood (age 19.6) to evaluate the long-term implications of IPC and threat appraisals for young adult internalizing symptoms. First, a long-term mediation model revealed that increases in IPC from age 11 to 14 (but not initial levels) best accounted for adolescent threat appraisals at age 14. In turn, threat appraisals mediated the association between IPC and young adult (age 19.6) internalizing problems. Second, the family climate-defined as high levels of cohesion and organization-moderated the relation between IPC and threat appraisals. Adolescents in families that experienced declines in positive family climate and increasing IPC had the highest threat appraisals; however, families that maintained (or increased in) positive family climate were protective against increasing IPC. Interestingly, the combination of decreasing IPC and decreasing positive family climate corresponded with the lowest threat appraisals in the sample, contrary to expectations. This finding seems consistent with a family disengagement perspective which may be less threatening to adolescents but may confer risk for other problem outcomes. This study underscores the importance of IPC and threat appraisals during adolescence, and offers new insights into the role of the family climate in protecting against escalating IPC for young adult internalizing risk. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Emotional Reactivity to Daily Family Conflicts: Testing the Within-Person Sensitization

Although the sensitization hypothesis posits that heightened reactivity to interparental conflict is linked to adolescent psychopathology, limited studies tested whether sensitization would emerge in parent-adolescent conflict and across ethnicity or culture. This study revisits the sensitization hypothesis by examining adolescent emotional reactivity to interparental and parent-adolescent conflicts on a daily timescale. The sample included 163 adolescents (55% girls; Mage  = 12.79) and their parents (78% females; Mage  = 45.46) who completed a 10-day reports in Taiwan. Multilevel modeling results showed that, instead of interparental conflict, adolescents with greater histories of parent-adolescent conflict exhibited higher emotional reactivity when parent-adolescent conflict was higher. The findings underscore the importance of parent-adolescent conflict in evaluating adolescent developmental risk.

Maternal and adolescent depressive symptoms and family conflict: An autoregressive cross-lagged examination of competing models in multi-stressed mothers and adolescents

Maternal and adolescent depression are challenges that often co-occur. Many studies have drawn bivariate associations between maternal depressive symptoms, adolescent depressive symptoms, and family conflict, but few have examined reciprocal effects. Even among extant studies, there is a lack of clarity related to directionality of influence. Three competing theoretical models may explain the relationship between maternal depressive symptoms, adolescent depressive symptoms, and family conflict, and these processes may differ by adolescents' sex. Using three time points of data from 187 diverse mother-adolescent dyads, we fit a taxonomy of autoregressive cross-lagged structural equation models to simultaneously evaluate the competing theoretical models and also examine differences by sex using multiple-group analyses. Results indicate a symptom-driven model whereby adolescent depressive symptoms predicted increases in family conflict. Sex differences were also found. For males, but not females, greater adolescent depressive symptoms predicted subsequent increases in maternal depressive symptoms, which then predicted lower family conflict-possibly indicating maternal disengagement/withdrawal. Our findings suggest addressing adolescent depressive symptoms in order to prevent family conflict and that distinctive targets for the prevention/intervention of family conflict should account for differences by adolescents' sex.

The roles of caregivers and friends in adolescent daily emotion dynamics

Daily emotion dynamics provide valuable information about individuals' emotion processes as they go about their lives. Emotion dynamics such as emotion levels (mean), emotion variability (degree of fluctuation), and emotion network density (strength of temporal connections among emotions) are associated with risks for various psychopathology in youth and adults. Prior work has shown that caregivers and friends play crucial socializing roles in adolescent emotional well-being, but less is known about their roles in daily emotion dynamics. This study examined whether caregiver emotion coaching, caregiver-adolescent closeness, and friendship quality were associated with adolescents' emotion levels, emotion variability, and emotion network density. Further, we examined whether caregiver-adolescent closeness moderated the associations between coaching and emotion dynamics. Participants were 150 adolescents (61% girls; Mage = 14.75) and one of their caregivers (95% female; Mage = 43.35) who completed a baseline survey and 21 daily surveys. Results showed that caregiver emotion coaching interacted with caregiver-adolescent closeness in predicting emotion levels and variability. Specifically, when closeness was higher, emotion coaching was significantly associated with lower sadness and anger levels, higher happiness levels, and lower happiness variability. Caregiver emotion coaching, independent of closeness, was also associated with lower anxiety levels, lower sadness variability, and lower emotion network density. Friendship quality was significantly associated with lower levels of sadness, anxiety, and anger, higher levels of happiness, and lower variability in anxiety and anger. These findings suggest that caregivers and friends are central to everyday emotion levels and variability and a more flexible emotion system in adolescents.

Within-Person Temporal Associations Among Self-Reported Physical Activity, Sleep, and Well-Being in College Students

OBJECTIVE

A holistic understanding of the naturalistic dynamics among physical activity, sleep, emotions, and purpose in life as part of a system reflecting wellness is key to promoting well-being. The main aim of this study was to examine the day-to-day dynamics within this wellness system.

METHODS

Using self-reported emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, anxiousness) and physical activity periods collected twice per day, and daily reports of sleep and purpose in life via smartphone experience sampling, more than 28 days as college students ( n = 226 young adults; mean [standard deviation] = 20.2 [1.7] years) went about their daily lives, we examined day-to-day temporal and contemporaneous dynamics using multilevel vector autoregressive models that consider the network of wellness together.

RESULTS

Network analyses revealed that higher physical activity on a given day predicted an increase of happiness the next day. Higher sleep quality on a given night predicted a decrease in negative emotions the next day, and higher purpose in life predicted decreased negative emotions up to 2 days later. Nodes with the highest centrality were sadness, anxiety, and happiness in the temporal network and purpose in life, anxiety, and anger in the contemporaneous network.

CONCLUSIONS

Although the effects of sleep and physical activity on emotions and purpose in life may be shorter term, a sense of purpose in life is a critical component of wellness that can have slightly longer effects, bleeding into the next few days. High-arousal emotions and purpose in life are central to motivating people into action, which can lead to behavior change.

The moderating effect of marital conflict on the relationship between social avoidance and socio-emotional functioning among young children in suburban China

Social avoidance has been found to be related to negative social adjustment, yet evidence of the relationship between social avoidance and social adjustment is very limited in suburban preschoolers in China. Moreover, the underlying mechanisms that help to explain the associations between social avoidance and socio-emotional adjustment remain poorly considered. The goal of the present study was to examine the moderating effect of marital conflict in the link between social avoidance and indices of socio-emotional functioning among young children in mainland China. Participants were N = 256 children aged from 49 to 72 months (125 boys, 131 girls, M_age  = 59.06 months, SD = 6.58) attending preschools/kindergartens in suburban areas of Shanghai, People's Republic of China. Multi-source assessments were employed, with mothers reporting marital conflict as well as rating their children's social withdrawal (i.e., social avoidance, shyness, unsociability), and teachers assessing indices of children's socio-emotional functioning at school (i.e., anxious-fearful behavior, peer exclusion, and loneliness). Children were asked about their loneliness. Among the results, social avoidance was positively associated with anxious-fearful behavior, peer exclusion, and loneliness (marginal significance). Moreover, as hypothesized, marital conflict was found to exacerbate the relations between social avoidance and peer exclusion, and loneliness. Results are discussed in terms of the etiology and implications of social avoidance among young children in mainland China.

Mental Health Service Urgency in Children's Mental Health: Factors Impacting the Need for Expedited Services

Delayed access to mental health services for children and adolescents has been linked to an increased risk of harm and nonattendance to scheduled appointments. While studies suggest that the lack of standardized assessments for prioritizing individuals has contributed to long wait times, the inconsistent use of assessments across service sectors in Ontario continues to persist. This has contributed to a paucity of information surrounding which children and adolescents may require urgent mental health services. Using a large secondary data set, this study examined whether service sector (e.g., school), and other individual client characteristics (e.g., age, sex, legal guardianship, interpersonal and school conflict) predicted greater mental health service urgency in 61,448 children and adolescents assessed using the interRAI Child and Youth Mental Health Screener. Binary logistic regression revealed that all predictors, except for sector, showed a significant effect on service urgency. Findings are instrumental in prioritization, reducing the likelihood that children with acute needs remain on waitlists.

Young People’s Coping Strategies When Dealing With Their Own and a Friend’s Symptoms of Poor Mental Health: A Qualitative Study

Young people struggle to seek help for their mental health, despite having different resources available. As the coping process is very complex, and elements such as trust and availability of resources have been said to influence it, this study aimed to understand how young people cope with their own or a friend’s symptoms of poor mental health. Eleven young people (13–15 years old) were interviewed. Thematic Analysis of the interviews showed that participants reported different coping strategies for dealing with their own hypothetical symptoms and those of a friend. Participants identified the social impact of experiencing symptoms of poor mental health and choice of resources as the main factors influencing their coping strategies. For their own symptoms, young people expressed concern about being judged and that they would only disclose to someone they trust. Participants would not disclose a friend’s symptoms because they did not want to break their trust. Finally, choice of resources was mainly influenced by the severity of symptoms being experienced, especially when it comes to asking for professional help. This study contributes to a better understanding of the different ways in which young people cope with their own symptoms and symptoms experienced by a friend.

Distal and proximal family contextual effects on adolescents' interparental conflict appraisals: A daily diary study

Adolescent appraisals of interparental conflict (IPC)-perceiving IPC as threatening to their well-being or that of the family, and self-blaming attributions-are well-established processes through which IPC confers risk for developmental disruptions and psychopathology. Recent work documents intraindividual change in IPC and appraisals that occur on a daily timescale. However, considerably less is known about how the broader family context may temper appraisals of IPC. This study provides a novel examination of the implications of distal (global ratings of family relationships in general) and proximal (fluctuations in daily family relationships) family context (family cohesion, parent-adolescent closeness, and parent-adolescent conflict) for adolescents' propensity to form negative appraisals of daily IPC. This sample included 144 adolescents (63% female) in two-parent families, who participated in a 21-day daily diary study. Findings indicate that intraindividual variability in adolescents' perception of family cohesion, parent-adolescent closeness, and parent-adolescent conflict all correspond to adolescent appraisals of IPC through direct relations and moderating effects. Unique patterns emerged for boys and girls, suggesting gender differences in how adolescents incorporate the family context into their appraisals of IPC. This study expands our awareness of the importance of daily fluctuations in family relationships for adolescent risk during exposure to IPC. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Child Appraisals of Interparental Conflict: The Effects of Intimate Partner Violence and Parent-Child Relationship Quality

Children's appraisals of interparental violence, including appraisals of high threat and low coping efficacy, are robust predictors of behavioral and emotional problems. However, few studies have examined the factors that account for children's use of these maladaptive appraisals, particularly among children exposed to more severe forms of interparental conflict. The current study examines parent-child relationship quality as a mediator of the effect of intimate partner violence (IPV) exposure on children's appraisals of conflict. Participants were 118 mother-child dyads (54 girls and 64 boys), recruited from three Midwestern counties. Consistent with previous reports, child exposure to IPV, as reported by children's mothers, predicted higher threat and lower coping efficacy appraisals. In addition, mediation analyses showed child reports of parent-child relationship quality mediated the association between IPV and coping efficacy, but not the effects of IPV on threat appraisals. The role of parent-child relationships in shaping cognitive appraisals in the context of IPV exposure can have implications for prevention and intervention efforts as well as public policy.

Does Dispositional Mindfulness Buffer the Links of Stressful Life Experiences with Adolescent Adjustment and Sleep?

According to the mindfulness stress buffering hypothesis, mindfulness protects individuals from negative effects of stress. Prior investigations focused on the potential of mindfulness for reducing internalizing symptoms for adults in the context of general stress. We provided the first test of the mindfulness stress buffering hypothesis in the context of both adolescent general stress and interparental conflict (IPC) in relation to internalizing and externalizing, as well as sleep. Participants were 150 adolescents who reported dispositional mindfulness, perceived stress, IPC, internalizing, and externalizing. Participants wore an actigraph which objectively measured sleep for a week. Results suggested a stress buffering effect of mindfulness for the effects of general stress on internalizing symptoms at trend levels. Mindfulness stress buffering was not evident in relation to externalizing or sleep, or for the effect of IPC appraisals on adjustment or sleep. Greater IPC appraisals were associated with greater sleep onset latency, but mindfulness was not associated with objective measures of sleep quality or quantity. This study indicates that mindfulness may protect adolescents from the internalizing problems that often result from general stress, but that these stress buffering effects of mindfulness may not generalize to all types of stressors or adjustment/health outcomes.

Implications of Family Cohesion and Conflict for Adolescent Mood and Well-Being: Examining Within- and Between-Family Processes on a Daily Timescale

Family-level conflict and cohesion are well-established predictors of adolescent mental health. However, traditional approaches focusing on between-family differences in cohesion and conflict may overlook daily intrafamily variability that might provide important new information. We used data from a 21-day daily diary protocol in a sample of 151 caregivers (95.3% female) and their adolescent child (61.5% female) in two-caregiver families to test whether daily changes in family functioning are associated with daily changes in adolescent well-being and whether adolescent well-being depends on average levels of family functioning. We examined family cohesion and conflict in relation to adolescent angry, depressed, and anxious mood, as well as happiness, life satisfaction, and meaning and purpose in life in multilevel models. Both cohesion and conflict exhibited meaningful daily variation. Adolescent-reported cohesion and conflict had unique within-family associations with all six adolescent outcomes. Models using parent reports of family functioning yielded fewer associations than models with adolescent reports; however, several findings remained. Cross-level interactions indicated that within-family variations in cohesion were only associated with adolescent depression in families with lower average levels of cohesion across days. In sum, this study provides compelling evidence that families exhibit meaningful variability from day to day and that daily variation has important implications for adolescent well-being.

Hunters, busybodies and the knowledge network building associated with deprivation curiosity

The open-ended and internally driven nature of curiosity makes characterizing the information seeking that accompanies it a daunting endeavour. We use a historico-philosophical taxonomy of information seeking coupled with a knowledge network building framework to capture styles of information-seeking in 149 participants as they explore Wikipedia for over 5 hours spanning 21 days. We create knowledge networks in which nodes represent distinct concepts and edges represent the similarity between concepts. We quantify the tightness of knowledge networks using graph theoretical indices and use a generative model of network growth to explore mechanisms underlying information-seeking. Deprivation curiosity (the tendency to seek information that eliminates knowledge gaps) is associated with the creation of relatively tight networks and a relatively greater tendency to return to previously visited concepts. With this framework in hand, future research can readily quantify the information seeking associated with curiosity.

Children's self-blame appraisals about their mothers' depressive symptoms and risk for internalizing symptoms

Maternal depressive symptoms are a robust predictor of children's risk for internalizing symptoms, yet not all children are negatively affected by exposure to their mothers' symptoms. The present study tested children's self-blame appraisals as a moderator of the association between maternal depressive symptoms and children's internalizing symptoms, controlling for children's negative attributional style. We hypothesized that the relation between maternal depressive symptoms and children's internalizing symptoms would be stronger for children who blamed themselves more for their mothers' symptoms. Participants were 129 mother-child dyads (M child age = 13.63, SD = 2.2; 52.7% female; 38.8% White, 31% African American, 22.5% Latinx/Hispanic) recruited from the community. Results indicated that maternal depressive symptoms were associated with higher levels of children's internalizing symptoms for children who reported higher, but not lower, levels of self-blame appraisals. Results were consistent using mothers' or children's reports of their own and each other's symptoms. The findings highlight the importance of assessing children's appraisals about their mothers' depressive symptoms, and suggest that preventive interventions should target children who endorse higher levels of self-blame appraisals. Furthermore, children's self-blame appraisals about mothers' depressive symptoms should be considered as a target of treatment for child internalizing disorders. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

When do adolescents feel loved? A daily within-person study of parent-adolescent relations

Feeling loved has many benefits, but research is limited on how daily behaviors of one person in a relationship shape why someone else feels more or less loved from day to day. The parent-adolescent relationship is a primary source of love. We expected parent-reported warmth and conflict would explain daily fluctuations in how loved adolescents reported feeling. In a sample of 151 families (adolescent M_Age = 14.60; 61.6% female) over a 21-day period, we used multilevel models to disentangle within-family (daily variability) and between-family (average levels) parent-reported daily warmth and conflict in relation to adolescents' daily reports about how loved they were feeling. Findings indicated adolescents in families with higher parent-reported warmth across days and higher adolescent-reported closeness with parents felt more loved by their parents, on average. At a within-person level, we found considerable day-to-day variability in how loved adolescents reported feeling that was partially explained by meaningful variability in both parent-reported warmth and conflict across days. On days when parents reported more warmth than usual and less conflict than usual, adolescents reported feeling more loved. Further, a significant within-day interaction indicated that the importance of days' parent warmth was greater on high conflict days, but when parents directed more warmth toward their adolescents, the difference between high- and low-conflict days was negligible. Theoretical implications for studying daily emotional love in parent-youth relationships and suggestions for parenting interventions that focus on daily practices of parent warmth are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Elaborating on premature adolescent autonomy: Linking variation in daily family processes to developmental risk

This study revisits the premature autonomy model by examining parents' use of positive behavior support (PBS) practices on a daily timescale to better understand underlying processes in developmental changes in family disengagement and the implications for adolescent problem behavior and substance use. This study included 151 9th and 10th grade adolescents (61.5% female) and their caregivers, who participated in a baseline assessment, a 21-day daily diary burst, and a 1-year follow-up assessment. Four key findings emerged: (a) on days when parents used more PBS, adolescents felt more close and connected to their caregivers; (b) adolescents who exhibited a larger-magnitude of change in connectedness with caregivers in relation to variation in positive parenting (termed fragile connectedness) were at higher risk for antisocial behavior, deviant peer involvement, and substance use one year later; (c) individual differences in initial levels of antisocial behavior and effortful control accounted for between-person variation in fragile connectedness; and (d) day-level adolescent anger and parent-adolescent conflict predicted within-family variation in parents' use of PBS. Implications for the premature autonomy model and intervention science are discussed.

Within-person variability in sensation-seeking during daily life: Positive associations with alcohol use and self-defined risky behaviors

Sensation-seeking is the seeking of varied, novel, and intense experiences and the willingness to take risks to engage in these experiences. Sensation-seeking is associated with engagement in risky behaviors but questions remain concerning the role of within-person variability in sensation-seeking. We use data from a 21-day daily diary from 167 participants (mean age = 25.37, SD = 7.34) to test within-person associations between sensation-seeking and both alcohol use and self-reported risk-taking. Participants also reported the riskiest behavior they engaged in each day, allowing insight into the perceived risky behaviors that participants take during daily life. Results indicate those days of higher than usual sensation-seeking are more likely to be days on which alcohol is consumed relative to days of no alcohol use. The association between day's sensation-seeking and alcohol use does not extend to the quantity of alcohol consumed. Risk-taking is higher than usual on days of higher than usual sensation-seeking. Using network science tools, we reduce 2,490 self-reports of the day's riskiest behavior to 20 communities reflecting a wide range of risk domains, including social, school, work, and drug use risks. Creating a risk-taking diversity score based on the identified domains of risk behaviors, we find that trait sensation-seeking is positively associated with greater diversity in the types of risks reported. In summary, we observe that sensation-seeking and both alcohol use and other risky behaviors are associated at the within-person level, and provide insight into the types of risks taken during the course of daily life. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Implications of interparental conflict for adolescents' peer relationships: A longitudinal pathway through threat appraisals and social anxiety symptoms

The goal of this study was to broaden the developmental understanding of the implications of interparental conflict (IPC) and threat appraisals of conflict for adolescents' relationships with peers. Guided by the cognitive contextual framework and evolutionary perspectives, we evaluated a developmental model in which adolescents who are exposed to IPC perceive these conflicts as threatening to their well-being or that of their family. In turn, threat appraisals of IPC increase risk that adolescents experience worries and fears about the peer context (i.e., social anxiety), leading to decreased support from friends and increased feelings of loneliness and engagement with antisocial peers. Autoregressive analyses were conducted with a sample of 768 two-parent families across four measurement occasions. Exposure to IPC was related to increases in youths' perceived threat, which increased their risk for social anxiety symptoms. Consistent with our hypothesis, heightened social anxiety symptoms undermined youths' subsequent functioning in the peer context. Specifically, youth with greater adolescent social anxiety symptoms experienced increased feelings of loneliness and decreased perceptions of friendship support. Significant indirect effects were substantiated for adolescent loneliness and friendship support. Findings did not vary as a function of adolescent gender. The findings highlight the enduring implications of IPC and threat appraisals of IPC for youths' functioning, which can be expanded beyond broad measures of youth psychopathology, and the critical role of social anxiety symptoms as an explanatory mechanism in this process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Adolescent Emotion Network Dynamics in Daily Life and Implications for Depression

Emotion network density describes the degree of interdependence among emotion states across time. Higher density is theorized to reflect rigidity in emotion functioning and has been associated with depression in adult samples. This paper extended research on emotion networks to adolescents and examined associations between emotion network density and: 1) emotion regulation and 2) symptoms of depression. Data from a daily diary study (t = 21 days) of adolescents (N = 151; 61.59% female; mean age = 14.60 years) were used to construct emotion network density scores. Emotion regulation was measured using The Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale Short Form (DERS-SF). Depression was measured using the Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale-Short Version (RCADS-SV). Associations between emotion network density and DERS-SF were examined through Pearson correlations. Multiple regression analyses examined associations between emotion network density and depression. Emotion network density was not associated with the DERS-SF. Follow-up analyses showed that it was positively associated with non-acceptance of emotions (a subscale of the DERS-SF). Emotion network density was positively associated with RCADS-SV depression. Non-acceptance of emotions may encourage the spread of emotion across time and states given that a feature of non-acceptance is to have secondary emotional responses to one's emotions. Emotion networks that are self-predictive may be a risk factor for adolescent depression.

Child-present and child-themed marital conflict in daily life of parents of children with and without autism spectrum disorder

Parents of 5- to 12-year-old children (half had been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder [ASD] and half were typically developing) provided reports of the most significant marital conflict of the day and ratings of child behaviors problems on a daily basis for 14 days. Mothers and fathers in the ASD group reported having more conflicts in daily life with any children present and more conflicts with the target child present than their counterparts with typically developing children did. Fathers (but not mothers) in the ASD group reported more conflicts as including child-related themes, although parents across the groups did not differ in their reporting marital conflict that specifically discussed the study's target child. Results from multilevel modeling revealed within-person associations between child presence during marital conflict and parents' emotions; specifically, child presence was related to lower dyadic positivity and higher dyadic anger, according to both mothers and fathers. In addition, results identified significant, positive within-person associations between child presence during marital conflict and discussing certain conflict topics (increased likelihoods of discussing any children and the study's target children). These direct associations were found consistently across mothers' and fathers' reports, and did not vary across ASD and comparison families. Multilevel models focused on implications of the marital conflict for the study's target children generally found child presence during conflict and discussion of child-themed conflict topics to predict higher levels of behavior problems in daily life. One moderating effect was identified, with child presence during conflict related to higher behavior problems according to mothers in the ASD group but not those in the comparison group. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

The Promise and Challenges of Intensive Longitudinal Designs for Imbalance Models of Adolescent Substance Use

Imbalance models of adolescent brain development attribute the increasing engagement in substance use during adolescence to within-person changes in the functional balance between the neural systems underlying socio-emotional, incentive processing, and cognitive control. However, the experimental designs and analytic techniques used to date do not lend themselves to explicit tests of how within-person change and within-person variability in socio-emotional processing and cognitive control place individual adolescents at risk for substance use. For a more complete articulation and a more stringent test of these models, we highlight the promise and challenges of using intensive longitudinal designs and analysis techniques that encompass many (often >10) within-person measurement occasions. Use of intensive longitudinal designs will lend researchers the tools required to make within-person inferences in individual adolescents that will ultimately align imbalance models of adolescent substance use with the methodological frameworks used to test them.