Ting Lu

Parent−adolescent relationships, religiosity, and the social adjustment of Indonesian Muslim adolescents.

Parent-adolescent relationships invariably occur within a complex cultural context that in some populations include strong religious influences. Using data from multiple sources that were analyzed using structural equation modeling, we found that parental warmth and parental religiosity predicted adolescent religiosity in a sample of 296 Indonesian 15-year-old adolescents. The significant interaction of parental warmth and parent religiosity indicated that parental warmth moderated the relation between parent religiosity and adolescent religiosity. We expanded this model to predict externalizing and prosocial behavior where direct paths from adolescent religiosity to outcomes were significant for prosocial but not antisocial behavior; parental warmth, parent religiosity, and their interaction did not predict either outcome. Adolescent religiosity was found to be a mediator of these relations between predictor and outcomes for prosocial but not antisocial behavior. These results suggest that, in Indonesia and perhaps other highly religious cultures, parent-adolescent relationships and social competence may be interconnected with religion.

Maternal Sensitivity and Child Secure Base Use in Early Childhood: Studies in Different Cultural Contexts

This study tested whether maternal sensitivity and child security are related during early childhood and whether such an association is found in different cultural and social contexts. Mother-child dyads (N = 237) from four different countries (Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and the United States) were observed in naturalistic settings when children were between 36 and 72 months of age. Maternal and child behavior during interactions at home and in the playground were described using Q methodology. Findings reveal that across cultures, concurrent maternal sensitivity and more specific behavioral domains of maternal care (e.g., contributions to harmonious interactions and secure base support) are important for childrens attachment security during early childhood. Implications for the study of attachment relationships beyond infancy and in diverse contexts are highlighted.

Attachment Ties in Military Families: Mothers’ Perception of Interactions with Their Children, Stress, and Social Competence

Families with deployed military parents endure substantial separations during which children and “at home” partners experience periods of drastically reduced availability from the deployed member and changes in the dynamics and relationship structure of the home. Little is known about whether deployment experiences and stressors associated with them are linked to caregivers’ ability to provide sensitive care, children’s ability to use their parents as a secure base, and children’s exchanges with others outside the home. Analyses of data based on mothers’ reports, indicate that indices of maternal caregiving quality decrease as mothers’ perceived stress increases. Similarly, maternal quality of care increases as perceived social support increases. Further, indicators of quality of maternal care were associated with children’s markers of security, and both, quality of care and security were in turn associated with children’s social competence with peers.

Relations between popularity and prosocial behavior in middle school and high school Chinese adolescents

The concurrent and longitudinal associations between popularity, likeability, and prosocial behavior were evaluated in this three-year study of middle school and high school Chinese adolescents. The initial sample included 766 middle school (mean age = 13.3 years) and 668 high school participants (mean age = 16.6 years); there were 880 (399 girls) middle school and 841 (450 girls) adolescents who participated in at least one year of data collection. Significant positive associations between popularity, prosociality, and academic achievement were found. Both popularity and likeability concurrently predicted significant unique variance in prosocial behavior after controlling for academic achievement; longitudinal cross-lagged analyses revealed bi-directional associations between popularity and prosocial behavior such that popularity positively predicted subsequent prosocial behavior and prosocial behavior predicted subsequent popularity. Cross-cultural research on popularity may profitably focus on variation in prosocial behavior as the relative salience of coercive and prosocial control strategies may vary across cultures.

Adolescents’ experience of parental psychological caregiving and neglect: Construct development.

Psychological or emotional neglect is a recognized form of child maltreatment in the United States. However, neglect as a form of maltreatment and particularly psychological neglect as a subtype are understudied relative to other forms of maltreatment. One reason for this is that few measures of psychological (or emotional) neglect are available and there remains some uncertainty about how to define and measure it. In this article, we put forth a theoretical definition of psychological caregiving, including omission of care or psychological neglect of adolescents by their primary caregivers. We present an operationalization of psychological caregiving/neglect using adolescent self-reported survey items. A confirmatory latent variable modeling approach was used to measure and validate psychological caregiving/neglect in 2 adolescent (age 11 to 17) population cohorts involved with Child Protective Services (CPS) in the United States. The latent variable fits the samples well in both cohort populations indicating a valid construct, is mostly invariant across gender and age, is stable over time, and has good reliability. The measure also shows concurrent validity, associating strongly with all problem behavior domains. Questionnaire items similar to those used in this measure could be included along with other items in future studies of adolescent populations. We recommend further dialogue and development of this construct as a potential major contributing factor to the health and well-being of individuals and to advance research in the area of emotional care and neglect experiences in adolescence.

Tobacco Use by Middle and High School Chinese Adolescents and their Friends

Understanding the similarity of the tobacco use of youth and their friends and unraveling the extent to which this similarity results from selection or socialization is central to peer influence models of tobacco use. The similarity between the tobacco use of Chinese adolescents and their friends were explored in middle (880, 13.3 years, 399 girls) and high school (849, 16.6 years, 454 girls) cohorts assessed yearly at three times. Boys were more similar to their friends in tobacco use than were girls. Growth curve models revealed escalation of use during middle school and stable use during high school for boys, whereas models for girls could not be computed. Evidence of selection effects emerged from cross-lagged panel analyses revealing pathways from boys’ tobacco use to subsequent changes in their friends’ use; assessment of selection and influence processes could not be assessed for girls. The results from this study suggest that peer influence processes may differ for Chinese boys and girls and that further quantitative and qualitative research is necessary to understand these processes.

Longitudinal associations between popularity and aggression in Chinese middle and high school adolescents.

The longitudinal associations between popularity, overt aggression, and relational aggression were assessed in middle school and high school cohorts drawn from a large urban Northwest Chinese city. The middle school (n = 880; 13.33 years.) and high school samples (n = 841; 16.66 years.) were each followed for 2 years. In the concurrent regression analyses, overt aggression was more strongly and consistently associated with popularity than relational aggression after controlling for likability. Cross-lagged analyses revealed that popularity predicted subsequent increases in overt and relational aggression throughout middle and high school whereas overt aggression at 7th and 10th grade predicted increases in popularity 1 year later. These findings provide further evidence that popularity is associated with aggression and suggest that overt and relational aggression may be a consequence rather than a contributor to popularity in Chinese adolescents.

The joint impact of parental psychological neglect and peer isolation on adolescents’ depression

Adolescents receive psychological or emotional care from both parents and peers, which is crucial for mental health at this stage. Little research has been undertaken to evaluate the experience and consequences of caregiver psychological neglect during adolescence. Less is known about the unique and combined impacts of neglectful experiences with parents and peers. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship between exposure to caregiver psychological neglect and isolation from peers with depression for a population of at-risk adolescents. A sample of 2776 adolescents who represent a cohort population of adolescents in contact with Child Protective Services in the U.S. was studied. Data come from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-being (NSCAW) and are pooled across four waves representing seven years duration. Structural equation modeling with latent variables was used to estimate within-time associations. A two-stage-least squares path model was used to determine within-time reciprocal effects between depression and neglectful experiences. Adolescents who are emotionally neglected by their primary caregivers and are isolated from peers have substantially increased depression, a combined standardized effect of 0.78-0.91. Isolation from peers is more impactful for depression compared to psychological neglect by caregivers. The effects of deficits in these two primary sources of emotional support explain 40 percent of the variation in depression. The relationships between depression and peer isolation and depression and psychological neglect are reciprocal, but the primary direction of effect is from neglectful experiences to depression.