The COVID-19 pandemic introduced new landscapes for research and public engagement participation. This shift was accompanied by significant challenges and unique opportunities for engaging youth as active participants and collaborators. This commentary will reflect on insights gained from conducting a variety of virtual youth engagement activities during the pandemic, within a rights-based and empirical approach. The team reflected on challenges, opportunities, and suggestions for engaging youth as participants and collaborators in research using virtual platforms. This commentary outlines opportunities for growth and challenges worthy of consideration for future virtual youth engagement activities. These considerations are put forth with the goal of upholding autonomy, diversity, and amplifying the voices of youth in research through virtual environments. Considering our insights on engaging youth, we hope to contribute to the expanding field of youth engagement, and advance future research that utilizes virtual modalities.

We examined early adolescent predictors of later distress and adaptive coping in early adulthood, using data from a prospective longitudinal cohort study ( = 786). In early adolescence (age 13), we assessed indicators of mental health (internalizing symptoms), stressor exposure (cumulative stressful life events), and family socialization (supportive parent-child interactions). In early adulthood (age 22), during the first COVID-19-related Swiss national lockdown, we assessed cumulative pandemic-related stressors, distress (poor well-being, hopelessness, and perceived disruptions to life) and adaptive coping. Early adolescent internalizing symptoms predicted lower well-being, more hopelessness, and perceived lifestyle disruptions in early adulthood, during the pandemic. Cumulative stressful life events during early adolescence moderated the association between cumulative pandemic-related stressors and perceived lifestyle disruptions. Supportive parent-child interactions fostered subsequent engagement in adaptive coping, which, in turn, predicted less hopelessness and better well-being. Findings reveal that early adolescent development is linked with distress and adaptive coping in later periods.

Connections between prosociality and antisocial behaviors have been recognized; however, little research has studied their developmental links longitudinally. This is important to illuminate during early adolescence as a sensitive period for social development in which prosociality could protect against the development of later antisocial behaviors. This study investigates the within-person developmental links between prosociality and antisocial behaviors, as well as a potential mediating role of peer relationships, across ages 11, 13, and 15 ( = 1526; 51% male) using random-intercept cross-lagged panel models. Results indicated that neither self-reported nor teacher-reported prosociality was associated with reduced aggressive behaviors but suggested a direct protective ('promotive') effect of teacher-reported prosociality on bullying perpetration. These findings suggest that promoting prosociality in early adolescence may help reduce some antisocial behaviors over early to mid-adolescent development. Improving prosociality could be explored as a target in intervention approaches such as school-based anti-bullying interventions.

The literature linking adulthood criminality to cumulative disadvantage and early school misbehavior demonstrates that understanding the mechanisms underlying student behavior and the responses of teachers and administrators is crucial in comprehending racial/ethnic disparities in actual or perceived school misbehavior. We use data on 19,160 ninth graders from the nationally representative High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 to show that boys' and girls' negative achievement and negative experiences with teachers relate more closely to school misbehavior than the contextual measures (e.g., negative peer climate, proportion Black) that have often been emphasized as most salient for misbehavior. Differences in negative achievement and experiences completely explain Black boys', Latinx boys', and Black girls' heightened levels of school misbehavior relative to White youth, and Asian boys' and girls' lower levels of school misbehavior. In contrast, differences in negative achievement and experiences only partially explain Latinx girls' higher levels of school misbehavior relative to White girls.

There has been concern about the potential sequelae of mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) in children. This study used data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study to investigate associations between mTBI and behavior and sleep in school-aged children. Generalized additive mixed models were run to examine the association between TBI and parent-reported Child Behavior Checklist and Sleep Disturbance Scale for Children scores. mTBI with or without loss of consciousness (LOC) in 9- and 10-year old children was associated with 1) higher internalizing, externalizing and total problems and 2) greater sleep disturbance scores on the CBCL. The study also demonstrated a higher incidence of mTBI with and without LOC in boys compared to girls. This study shows a statistically significant but modest association between mTBI and behavioral and sleep changes, suggesting that in a non-clinical, sociodemographically diverse community sample of school-aged children mTBI does not result in clinically significant behavioral or psychological sequelae.

The current study examines intrapersonal characteristics or factors (i.e., resilience), peer (i.e., quality of peer relationships), and family processes (i.e., parental involvement, critical comparison) as potential risk and protective factors for mental health of Chinese adolescents during COVID- 19 pandemic. A total of 504 seventh-grade students (52% boys) and their caregivers in Beijing, China completed an online survey in September 2020. Youth reported experiencing various COVID-19-related stressful life events (i.e., conflicts with parents, poor learning environment and efficiency, family financial pressure), and about 15% reported slightly elevated scores of mental health difficulties. Findings suggested personal resilience and quality of peer relationship predicted positive mental health (i.e., covitality or co-occurrence of positive psychological dispositions) and less mental health difficulties. Parent's critical comparison intensified the negative link between stressful life events and youth mental health. Implications for promoting youth mental health as schools reopen are discussed.

The current study examined concurrent and longitudinal associations between experiences of racial discrimination and private regard (i.e., feelings about being Black and other Black people) among 346 Black early adolescents who completed four assessments over two years. Between-person (interpersonal) and within-person (intrapersonal) effects were tested to provide a rigorous and comprehensive examination of these associations. There was minimal evidence of significant between-person effects in which youth experiencing varying levels of racial discrimination differed in their private regard. However, at the within-person level, there were significant negative concurrent associations between racial discrimination and private regard, indicating that youths' positive racial identity was undermined at times when they were encountering higher levels of racial discrimination than they typically did. Results highlight significant intrapersonal links between racial discrimination and private regard and underscore the continued need for interventions to eliminate racial discrimination and to support Black youth experiencing it.

Bias-based aggression at school in the form of homophobic name-calling is quite prevalent among early adolescents. Homophobic name-calling is associated with low academic performance, higher risky sexual behaviors, and substance abuse, among other adverse outcomes. This longitudinal study examined risk and protective factors across multiple domains of the social ecology (individual, peer, family, school and community) and levels of analysis (within- and between-person) associated with homophobic name-calling perpetration and victimization. Students from four middle schools in the U.S. Midwest ( = 1,655; age = 12.75; range = 10-16 years) were surveyed four times (Spring/Fall 2008, Spring/Fall 2009). For homophobic name-calling perpetration, significant risk factors included impulsivity, social dominance, traditional masculinity, family violence, and neighborhood violence; while empathy, peer support, school belonging, and adult support were significant protective factors. For homophobic name-calling victimization, significant risk factors included empathy (between-person), impulsivity, traditional masculinity, family violence, and neighborhood violence, while empathy (within-person), parental monitoring, peer support, school belonging, and adult support were significant protective factors.

This study using PROSPER data ( = 977, age 11.5 to age 15) investigated the longitudinal within-family associations between parent-reported parental monitoring and adolescent aggression. Importantly, this study is the first one to examine parent gender and adolescent gender differences on these within-family associations. Results differed between mothers and fathers. There was a negative, bidirectional within-family association between maternal monitoring and adolescent aggression, such that more maternal monitoring than usual was associated with fewer adolescent aggressive behavior problems than usual within the same family, and vice versa. In contrast, during mid-adolescence, a positive, bidirectional within-family association between paternal monitoring and adolescent males' aggression was found, such that more paternal monitoring than usual was related to more adolescent males' aggression than usual within the same family, and vice versa. Practical implications on intervention strategies are discussed.

Among U.S. Mexican adolescents living in established immigrant communities, high familism values are positively associated with compliant, emotional, and dire prosocial behaviors via sociocognitive and cultural psychological mechanisms. Less is known about the behavioral mechanisms that may explain these associations, or about prosocial behaviors among U.S. Latinxs residing in emerging immigrant destinations. We examined the cross-sectional, intervening variable associations among familism values, family assistance behaviors, and culturally salient prosocial behaviors among 547 U.S. Latinx adolescents residing in an emerging immigrant destination ( age = 12.8 years; 55.4% girls). Familism values and family assistance behaviors promoted emotional and dire prosocial behaviors for boys and girls, and promoted compliant prosocial behaviors for boys only. Familism also had direct associations with all three prosocial behaviors for boys and girls. Family assistance behaviors may be a mechanism via which adolescents develop compliant, emotional, and dire prosocial behaviors.

Autonomy - acting volitionally with a sense of choice - is a crucial right for children. Given parents' pivotal position in their child's autonomy development, we examined how parental autonomy support and children's need for autonomy were negotiated and manifested in the context of children's independent mobility - children's ability to play, walk or cycle unsupervised. We interviewed 105 Canadian children between 10 and 13-years-old and their parents ( = 135) to examine child-parents' negotiation patterns as to children's independent mobility. Four patterns emerged, varying on parental autonomy support and children's need/motivation for independent mobility: (1) child/parent dyad wants to increase independent mobility; (2) child only wants to increase independent mobility while parents do not; (3) child does not want to increase independent mobility while parents do; and (4) child/parent dyad does not want to increase independent mobility. Findings illuminate the importance of recognizing children as active and capable agents of change.

We examined US parent and youth perceptions of how life events, both positive and negative, associated with COVID-19 resulted in changes in family and youth functioning. Families ( = 105, 80% white, 48% male, and 87% mothers) completed surveys during the pandemic (May to July 2020) and 3 years prior (for youth ages . Declines in youth, though not parent, report of open family communication, parental support, and family satisfaction were found. Declines were associated with various domains of pandemic-related stress in parent report, though positive life events served as buffers. Pre-pandemic family functioning also predicted pandemic stress. Spillover effects in turn impacted youth functioning. The current findings shed light on how experiences of the pandemic are linked with family functioning and have implications for how to support families during this time.

This study examined beliefs about aggression and self-efficacy for nonviolent responses as mediators of longitudinal relations between exposure to violence and physical aggression. Participants were a predominantly African American (79%) sample of 2,705 early adolescents from three middle schools within urban neighborhoods with high rates of violence. Participants completed measures across four waves (fall, winter, spring, and summer) within a school year. Beliefs supporting proactive aggression, beliefs against fighting, and self-efficacy for nonviolence partially mediated relations between witnessing violence and physical aggression. Indirect effects for beliefs supporting proactive aggression and self-efficacy were maintained after controlling for victimization and negative life events. Beliefs supporting proactive aggression mediated the effects of violent victimization on physical aggression, but these effects were not significant after controlling for witnessing violence and negative life events. The findings underscore the importance of examining the unique pathways from witnessing community violence versus violent victimization to physical aggression.

Early adolescents (aged 12-15) were observed during dyadic conflict discussions with their siblings ( = 23) and mothers ( = 32) in their homes. The verbal conflict behaviors and affect of family members were coded continuously. Sequential analyses identified temporal associations between individuals' affect and their own and their partners' verbal conflict behaviors. In addition, within-family and across-context similarities in behavior were examined. Results revealed that while many links between emotion and behavior were consistent with previous research (e.g., attack/assert when frowning/upset, withdraw/concede when sad), several differences emerged depending on the relationship (sibling vs. mother-adolescent) and position in the family (e.g., adolescent vs. mother). Furthermore, many within-family similarities were observed in responses to emotion, while adolescents showed few similarities in their behavior across contexts. Results are discussed in relation to the developmental context of early adolescence and family systems theory.

The current study investigates how and under what conditions family obligation benefits Mexican American adolescents' adjustment. The study used two waves of data from 604 Mexican American adolescents (54.3% female, Mage.wave1 = 12.41 years, = 0.97) and their parents. Structural equation modeling revealed that both adolescents' and parents' sense of family obligation related to more supportive parenting (i.e., parental monitoring, warmth, and inductive reasoning), which linked to better adolescent adjustment (i.e., sense of life meaning, resilience, and grades). There were parent gender differences: Adolescents' family obligation was more strongly related to their reports of maternal (vs. paternal) parenting. The links also varied across informants for parenting: (a) individuals' sense of family obligation related only to their own perceptions of parenting and (b) there were more evident associations between adolescent-reported (vs. parent-reported) parenting and adolescent outcomes.

The current study examined the roles of gender, and gender-role orientation in young adolescents' empathetic concern. In addition, this study aimed to explore the contribution of Theory of Mind in participants' empathetic concern. Finally, this study examined whether gender and gender-role orientation were implicated in emerging adolescents' Theory of Mind understanding. One-hundred-fifty 11- to 12-year-olds (79 self-identified females) completed questionnaires measuring their empathetic concern, Theory of Mind, and their perceived gender-role orientation. Results showed that gender-role orientation, specifically, femininity and masculinity predicted empathetic concern above and beyond gender. In addition, the effects of cognitive and affective Theory of Mind are explored and discussed in relation to empathetic concern. Finally, neither gender nor gender-role orientation was found to contribute to participants' Theory of Mind understanding. These findings suggest that emerging adolescents' perceived gender roles, as well as their ability to consider another's beliefs, play a role in their expression of empathetic concern.

Emotion-driven impulse control difficulties are associated with negative psychological outcomes. Extant research suggests that high frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV) may be indicative of emotion-driven impulse control difficulties and potentially moderated by negative emotion. In the current study, 248 eleven- to 14-year-olds and their parent engaged in a negatively emotionally arousing conflict task at Time 1. Adolescents' HF-HRV and negative emotional expression and experience were assessed before, during, and/or after the task. Adolescents reported on their levels of emotion-driven impulse control difficulties at Time 1 and one year later. Results revealed that higher levels of HF-HRV reactivity (i.e., higher HF-HRV augmentation) predicted higher levels of emotion-driven impulse control difficulties one year later among adolescents who experienced higher negative emotion. These findings suggest that negative emotional context should be considered when examining HF-HRV reactivity as a risk factor for emotion-driven impulse control difficulties and associated outcomes.

Adolescents, particularly early adolescents, are vulnerable to stress created by negative peer interactions. Stress, in turn, can lead to increased mental health problems and reduced academic engagement, in addition to negative long-term consequences for cognitive development and physical health. Using four waves (2 years) of data from a cluster randomized trial ( = 15 middle schools, 1,890 students, 47.1% female, 75.2% White), we evaluated whether enhancements to peer relations, brought about through carefully structured small-group learning activities (i.e., ), could reduce stress and emotional problems and promote academic engagement. We hypothesized that the increased social contact created by cooperative learning would promote greater peer relatedness, reducing student stress and, in turn, reducing emotional problems and promoting academic engagement. Our results confirmed these hypotheses. We conclude that cooperative learning can provide social, behavioral, academic, and mental health benefits for students.

Few longitudinal studies examine how in parent-child relationships are associated with changes in youth internalizing problems. In this longitudinal study, we investigated how developmental trends (linear change) and year-to-year lability (within-person fluctuations) in parental warmth and hostility across Grade 6-8 predict youth internalizing problems in Grade 9 ( = 618) and whether these linkages differ for boys and girls. Developmental trends (greater decreases in warmth, increases in hostility) were associated with more youth internalizing problems. Greater year-to-year lability (more fluctuations) in father hostility and warmth were also associated with more internalizing problems. Greater lability in mother warmth was associated with more internalizing problems for girls only. The strongest effects of lability on internalizing problems were found for youth with the highest lability scores. This study underscores the importance of differentiating developmental trends from lability in parent-child relationships, both of which may be important for youth internalizing problems.

This study examined early adolescent romantic "churning," defined here as having a large number of boyfriends/girlfriends by age 13, as a problematic marker likely to predict hostility, abuse, and avoidance during conflict in later relationships. A sample of 184 adolescents was followed through age 24 to assess predictions of hostility, abuse, and avoidance during conflict from early romantic churning. Controlling for gender and family income, romantic churning at age 13 predicted relative decreases in peer preference and relative increases in conflict and betrayal in close friendships from ages 13-16, as well as higher observable hostility and self and partner-reported abuse in romantic relationships by age 18 and greater avoidance during conflict with romantic partners by age 24. Findings remained after accounting for attachment security, social competence, and friendship quality in early adolescence, suggesting that early romantic churning may uniquely predict a problematic developmental pathway.

Inconsistencies exist regarding the relation between physical activity (PA) and internalizing symptomology in early adolescence, and there is need for investigation of potential moderators that may account for these discrepancies. The current study utilized a Self-Determination Theory Framework to investigate the main effects of five key motivations to exercise and their moderating effects between PA and internalizing problems in an underserved sample of adolescents ( = 167; mean age = 12.19 years; 73% African American). Analyses showed that intrinsic motivations were negatively related to internalizing problems and extrinsic motivations were positively related. PA was only protective against internalizing problems when intrinsic motivations were high and had iatrogenic effects when these were low. Exploratory analyses further delineated the unique effects of motivational orientations. Clinical implications and future research directions are discussed.

Research has shown that sibling victimization may be as detrimental to adolescent outcomes as peer victimization. However, many questions remain unanswered with regard to potential protective parenting factors and consequences sibling victimization among adolescents. This study tested a mediation model of sibling victimization with parental monitoring, a positive parenting factor, as a predictor and parent and peer-adolescent attachment as mediated by adolescent self-perceptions as potential outcomes. A three path mediation from parental monitoring → sibling victimization → adolescent self-perceptions → peer/parent-adolescent attachment was also tested. Structural Equation Modeling revealed that parental monitoring was negatively associated with sibling victimization only for girls. Sibling victimization had negative direct and indirect effects on parent- and peer-adolescent attachment via adolescent self-perceptions of social competence and self-worth. Findings suggest that parental monitoring may be important in the prevention of sibling victimization and self-perceptions may be an important point of intervention adolescents experiencing sibling victimization.

This study focused on early adolescents' stress of language brokering and examined the moderating role of family cumulative risk in the relation of language brokering to adjustment problems. Data came from self-reports of 604 low-income Mexican American adolescent language brokers (54% female; ; = 0.97; 75% born in the United States) and their parents (99% foreign-born) in central Texas. Path analyses revealed that brokering stress, but not frequency, was positively associated with adolescents' adjustment problems, including depressive symptoms, anxiety, and delinquency. We also found that the relation between stress of brokering for mothers and adolescents' depressive symptoms was stronger among families with a high cumulative risk. Further, with a high cumulative risk, adolescents exhibited delinquent behaviors regardless of the levels of stress from translating for fathers. Current findings underscore the importance of examining family contexts in assessing the consequences of language brokering for Mexican American early adolescents' well-being.

The current study investigated early adolescents' experiences of friend-related stress across middle school and its developmental consequences following the transition to high school. Using a sample of approximately 1,000 middle school students, four unique friend-related stress trajectories were observed across middle school: consistently low friend-related stress (57% of the sample), consistently high friend-related stress (7%), moderate and increasing friend-related stress (22%), and moderate but decreasing friend-related stress (14%). Groups characterized by higher levels of friend-related stress across middle school were linked to subsequent poorer socioemotional well-being, lower academic engagement, and greater involvement in and expectancies around risky behaviors following the transition to high school. Increased friend-related stress across the high school transition was also linked to poorer outcomes, even after taking into account earlier stress trajectories. Gender differences highlighted the particular struggles girls experience both in friend stress and in the links between friend stress and subsequent well-being.

In line with family systems theory, we examined patterns of hostile interactions within families and their associations with externalizing problems among early-adolescent children. Using hostility scores based on observational data of six dyadic interactions during a triadic interaction ( = 462) (i.e., child-to-mother, mother-to-child, child-to-father, father-to-child, mother-to-father, father-to-mother)-Latent Profile Analysis supported three distinct profiles of hostility. The profile included families with the lowest levels of hostility across dyads; families in the profile scored higher on parent-child hostility, but lower on interparental hostility; the profile showed higher levels of parent-to-child and interparental hostility, but lower child-to-parent hostility. Concerning links to youth outcomes, youth in the profile reported the highest level of externalizing problems, both concurrently and longitudinally. These results point to the importance of examining larger family patterns of hostility to fully understand the association between family hostility and youth adjustment.

This study examined the mediating effect of friends' characteristics (problem behavior and academic achievement) in the association between students' background (family and individual factors) and later academic adjustment, as operationalized by problem behavior and academic achievement. We recruited 998 participants in three public middle schools and used three annual waves of data collection (Grades 6, 7, and 8). We found that students' own academic achievement and problem behavior are predictors of later adjustment. Friendship choices are identified as a mediation mechanism that contributes to consistent adjustment from the beginning to the end of middle school. Specifically, high-achieving students in Grade 6 tend to associate with high-achieving friends and are unlikely to associate with friends who exhibit problem behavior in Grade 7, which results in continued achievement in Grade 8. Associating with high-achieving friends in Grade 7 also mediated the link between adolescent problem behavior in Grade 6 and academic achievement by Grade 8. Friends' characteristics in Grade 7 did not mediate the effect of any family factor measured in Grade 6. In general, our results suggest friendship selection is central to sustained success throughout the middle school years.

Peer relations researchers have suggested that dyadic and peer group relationship characteristics may interact with each other to affect behavior. Building on prior work that has pitted the relative effects of dyadic and peer group relationship characteristics on susceptibility to peer influence, the present study sought to integrate dyadic and group characteristics into a moderational model by testing whether friendship quality and peer group identification together exacerbate risk for conforming to peer norms for substance use. This longitudinal study included 387 early adolescents assessed annually for 4 years. Participants completed measures of perceived peer delinquency, friendship quality, peer group identification, and substance use frequency. Results indicated that perceived peer delinquency had the strongest association with substance use for adolescents characterized by high friendship quality and high peer group identification. These findings highlight the importance of considering the joint effects of multiple peer relationship characteristics on susceptibility to peer influence.

The current study investigated the mechanisms through which a parenting intervention for military families fosters positive peer adjustment in children. A sample of 336 families with a history of parental deployment enrolled in a randomized controlled trial of the After Deployment Adaptive Parenting Tools (ADAPT) preventive intervention. ADAPT is a 14-week preventive intervention designed to strengthen parenting in military families. The intervention was associated with improvements in mother's and father's parental locus of control (i.e., a more internal locus of control) at a 6-month follow-up assessment while controlling for baseline levels. Mothers' parental locus of control was positively associated with improvements in children's peer adjustment 12 months following the intervention while controlling for baseline peer adjustment. A significant indirect effect revealed that participation in ADAPT resulted in improved 12-month peer adjustment by improving mothers' parental locus of control. Implications for supporting youth resilience to stressors associated with deployment are discussed.

The present study examined associations between effortful control, a trait marker of self-regulation, adaptive HPA system functioning (as reflected by the CAR), and concurrent and longitudinal depressive problems, in a sample of preadolescent Latino youth ( = 119, mean age = 11.53 years, 59% female). We hypothesized that trait readiness for self-regulation (e.g., effortful control) could be related to physiological state readiness for self-regulation (e.g., CAR), and that both may counter depressive problems. We found that youth's CAR was positively associated with effortful control, and negatively with youth depressive problems. Effortful control and youth depressive problems were also negatively associated. Longitudinal relations of CAR and effortful control on depressive problems at T2 were not significant in the structural equation model after controlling for T1 depressive problems, although these variables were significant in the bivariate correlations. Results suggest that both trait-regulation and physiological regulation may counter depressive problems in Latino youth.

Identification of goals is a key social-cognitive process that guides whether adolescents engage in aggressive or nonviolent behavior during social conflicts. This study investigated early adolescents' goals in response to hypothetical social conflict situations involving close friends and peers. Participants ( = 160; = 12.7, 53% female) were 7th graders from two urban and one rural middle school. On average, participants identified 2.5 goals for each situation. Qualitative analysis using a grounded theory approach identified nine themes representing the goals generated by participants: and . Quantitative analysis indicated that female participants identified more goals than male participants, but there were few differences in their types of goals. There were few differences across school sites. The findings highlight the variety of social goals specific to the developmental period of early adolescence.