A Cross-National Study Examining the Role of Executive Function and Emotion Regulation in the Relationship between Children’s Television Exposure and Consumer Behavior Abstract Across industrialized nations, children and teens are a highly prized target for the advertising industry because young people have a tremendous influence on family purchases; however, media scholars have long suggested that young people are a fundamentally vulnerable audience because they lack the necessary developmental competencies to adequately process and protect themselves from advertising communications. Yet, the precise developmental mechanisms have not been clearly articulated nor is there a clear understanding of how these competencies extend across childhood contexts (e.g., developmental phase, cultures). The current study seeks to lend clarity to this matter by looking at the potential influence that children’s executive function and emotion regulation have on the relationship between television exposure (as a proxy of exposure to advertising messages and other consumption-oriented media content) and consumer behavior across a broad range of ages from two wealthy industrialized countries. Mothers of young elementary school children (5–8 years) and early adolescents (9–12 years) in the Netherlands (N = 333, 51.7% female child) and the United States of America (N = 810, 49.6% female child) took part in an online survey to report on their child’s cognitive/affective development, media use, and consumer behavior (i.e., purchase requests, purchase related conflict). The results showed that across ages, executive function via attentional shifting moderated the link between purchase requests and purchase conflict, whereas positively valenced emotion regulation moderated the same relationship but only for older children. Lastly, the findings revealed that while there are differences in reported behavior among children in these two countries, the developmental processes tend to work in the same manner. The discussion focuses on what these findings mean for children’s consumer development as they approach adolescence and how researchers and child advocates should take these developmental factors into account when considering children’s potential vulnerability as consumers.

Investigating the Association Between Posttraumatic Risky Behavior and Offending in Adolescents Involved in the Juvenile Justice System Abstract Risky behavior is common among traumatized youth and is associated with juvenile offending. This study examined predictors of posttraumatic risky behavior, the unique contribution of posttraumatic risky behavior in predicting offending, and tested whether a distinct class of youth was characterized by high levels of posttraumatic risky behavior. Participants were 400 adolescents (25% girls) between the ages of 12 and 19 years old (M = 15.97, SD = 1.25) who were involved in the Utah juvenile justice system. Approximately 54% of the sample identified as an ethnic minority. Youth completed self-report measures of trauma exposure, posttraumatic risky behavior, posttraumatic stress symptom severity, and offending. Formal legal records of offending were also collected. The results indicated that female sex was significantly related to posttraumatic risky behavior, though age was not significantly associated with posttraumatic risky behavior. Age and ethnicity were associated with both self-reported and formal offending, and male sex was associated with formal offending. Posttraumatic risky behavior was not related to formal offending, but was related to self-reported offending in some of the tested models. Latent class analysis identified 92 youth characterized by high levels of posttraumatic risky behavior; these youth also evidenced the highest rates of trauma exposure, posttraumatic stress symptom severity, and self-reported offending. There were no ethnic, age, or sex differences between youth in the high and low posttraumatic risky behavior groups. These results add to the extant literature documenting the associations among exposure to trauma, posttraumatic stress, and juvenile offending.

Does it Matter If I Am a Worrier? The Effect of Worry as a Moderator between Career Decision-Making Difficulties and Negative Dysfunctional Emotions Abstract The association between career decision difficulties and negative emotions of adolescents has been researched; however, less is known about what moderates this relationship. Based on the transactional model of stress and cognitive theories, it was hypothesized that career decision-making difficulties in high school students are associated with psychological distress and this relationship will be moderated by worry. To test the hypothesis, 384 students from five public high schools in Romania (54% adolescent females, mean age 17.9 years) were assessed. Analyses indicated that career decision-making difficulties (lack of readiness, lack of information, inconsistent information) are associated with negative dysfunctional emotions, and this association is significantly moderated by worry. The results help us to better understand the circumstances in which career decision-making difficulties activate psychological distress.

Do Conduct Problem Pathways Differ for Black and Minority Ethnic Children in the UK? An Examination of Trajectories from Early Childhood to Adolescence Abstract A substantial body of evidence has examined developmental pathways into and out of conduct problems. However, there is a dearth of research examining whether the same conduct problem pathways are evident in minority ethnic, as in white, populations. Drawing on the UK Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), a nationally representative longitudinal study of children born between 2000 and 2002, this study examines differences in group-based trajectories of conduct problems according to broad categories of ethnicity. Using pathways identified in a prior study (n = 17,206, 49% female, 18% ethnic minority), including persistently high (8%), childhood-limited (23%), adolescent-onset (13%), and low (56%), significant ethnic differences were found. As a result, trajectories of conduct problems were identified separately for Asian, black, mixed ethnicity, and white children. For Asian, black, and mixed ethnicity children, three trajectories were identified: persistently high, childhood-limited, and low, but not adolescent-onset. Although these pathways have similar labels, their patterns and shapes seem to differ among the three ethnic groups. For white children, the same four trajectory groups were identified as in the prior study. Risk factors also differed among the groups according to ethnicity, although a worse child-parent relationship was a significant predictor of the higher problem trajectories for all ethnic groups. Overall, the findings suggest that black and minority ethnic children may follow different developmental pathways of conduct problems than white children, particularly during adolescence, having implications for service use and early intervention.

Teachers’ Conditional Regard and Students’ Need Satisfaction and Agentic Engagement: A Multilevel Motivation Mediation Model Abstract Teachers’ conditional positive regard and conditional negative regard are common motivational techniques in the classroom. This study investigated their respective effects on adolescent students’ agentic engagement, while considering students’ basic psychological needs for autonomy and relatedness as potential mediators. Data collected from 30 teachers and 651 7th to 10th graders (52% female) were used to test a multilevel mediation model. The results indicated that teachers’ conditional negative regard undermined students’ agentic engagement by frustrating both of their autonomy and relatedness needs. Teachers’ conditional positive regard thwarted students’ sense of autonomy, which consequently undermined their agentic engagement. The findings are discussed in terms of conditional positive and negative regard as undesirable classroom motivational practices and the mechanisms through which they operate. The discussion also notes the importance of investigating contextual factors at the classroom level.

The Interplay of Adolescents’ Aggression and Victimization with Friendship and Antipathy Networks within an Educational Prosocial Intervention Abstract How the interplay between peer relationships and behaviors unfolds and how this differs between classrooms is an understudied topic. This study examined whether adolescents befriend or dislike peers whom they consider as aggressor or victim and whether these results differ in classrooms that received an intervention to promote prosocial behavior compared to classrooms without the intervention. The sample was composed of 659 seventh graders (Mage = 12.32; 48% girls) from nine intervention and seven control classrooms in eight schools in Santiago, Chile. It was hypothesized that adolescents in intervention classrooms would be less befriended and more disliked by classmates who considered them as aggressors, and more befriended and less disliked by classmates who considered them as victims, compared to control classrooms. Longitudinal multiplex social network analyses (RSiena) indicate that antipathies toward peers considered as aggressive and victimized were significantly lower in intervention classrooms than in control classrooms, but no significant differences were found for friendships. These findings suggest that the impact of an educational intervention may go beyond changing individual behavior and extend to the way peer relations develop in classrooms.

Cultivating Adolescents’ Academic Identity: Ascertaining the Mediating Effects of Motivational Beliefs Between Classroom Practices and Mathematics Identity Abstract Teaching mathematics involves helping students develop mathematical skills and empowering students to see themselves as capable of participating in and being knowers and doers of mathematics. Extant research has postulated that mathematics identity is a critical contributor to adolescents’ mathematics achievement and subsequent academic success. Guided by motivation and instructional quality theories, this classroom-based study examined a mediating mechanism through which teacher practices associated with mathematics identity through motivational beliefs (i.e., expectancies, task values, and cost value). Participants included 525 sixth-grade students (48.6% male; 64% European American, 34% African American, 2% other race; 58.6% free-or-reduced lunch) in the United States. The findings suggest that competence beliefs and task values, except for cost value, mediated the association between teacher practices and mathematics identity. These mediation pathways also differed by race. The mediating role of mathematics expectancies was stronger for European American adolescents, while the mediating role of mathematics task values was stronger for African American adolescents, though effect sizes were relatively modest. Teachers seeking to develop students’ mathematics identity—especially in their minority or stereotyped students—might consider enhancing their sensitivity to students’ psychological needs, quality of feedback, and instructional learning supports in their daily interaction with students.

Reactions of Boys and Girls to Sexual Abuse and to Sexual Encounters with Peers Abstract To understand the etiology and consequences of child sexual abuse it is important to study the victims’ subjective reactions to such incidents. Because researchers have not been able to survey children about sexual abuse, not much is known about how subjective reactions are related to gender, age, age difference, and the social relationship between the offender and victim. The present study fills this gap using data gathered from a large, nationally representative sample of Finnish children ages 11 to 17 (N = 32,145). Analyses of abuse are based on a sample of 1520 children (78% girls), while analyses of peer sexual experiences are based on a sample of 3551 children (55% girls). Multivariate analyses adjusted for the use of coercion, the intimacy of the sexual experience, and other incident characteristics. It was hypothesized that, as a result of sex differences in sexuality and attitudes toward deviant behavior, girls are more sensitive than boys to age and age difference. Three findings supported the hypothesis: (1) girls were more likely than boys to have a negative reaction to sexual encounters regardless of the age difference; (2) for girls, age was negatively associated with the likelihood of a negative reaction, but age had no effect for boys; and (3) girls reacted negatively to age difference while boys did not. However, girls did not react more negatively unless the offender was at least eight years older. The results highlight the susceptibility of adolescent boys to encounters with older women. They further suggest that ignoring the role of the victim limits understanding of the vulnerability of young people to sexual abuse.

Companionship Patterns and Emotional States During Social Interactions for Adolescents With and Without Siblings Abstract For decades, researchers and the general public have debated whether children without siblings differ from children with siblings in ways that are meaningful for development. One area that is underexplored in the literature on only children versus children with siblings concerns time use and emotional states in alone time and in social interactions. Resource dilution theory and the prior literature suggests that adolescent only children and adolescents with siblings may differ in some social interactions, such as in time with parents, but not in others, such as in time alone, due to offsetting effects or the universality of certain experiences among adolescents. This study tested these arguments by comparing companionship patterns and four emotional states (happiness, sadness, stress, and meaningfulness) among adolescents (ages 15–18) without siblings (N= 465) and adolescents with siblings (N= 2513) in the nationally representative American Time Use Survey (2003–2017). Relative to adolescents with siblings, adolescents without siblings spent more time alone, similar amounts of time with peers, and more time exclusively with parents. Only children were not as happy when spending time alone and with peers as adolescents with siblings, but their emotions in these settings were not more negative or less meaningful. In most other social interactions, emotional states were similar between adolescents with and without siblings. These findings show that adolescents with and without siblings differed mainly in their companionship patterns within the household and in their levels of happiness when alone and with peers.

Nathan W. Fisk: Framing Internet Safety: The Governance of Youth Online 2016