Matching Items (14)
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- All Subjects: Developmental Psychology
- Creators: Updegraff, Kimberly
Description
Accumulating evidence implicates exposure to adverse childhood experiences in the development of hypocortisolism in the long-term, and researchers are increasingly examining individual-level mechanisms that may underlie, exacerbate or attenuate this relation among at-risk populations. The current study takes a developmentally and theoretically informed approach to examining episodic childhood stressors, inherent and voluntary self-regulation, and physiological reactivity among a longitudinal sample of youth who experienced parental divorce. Participants were drawn from a larger randomized controlled trial of a preventive intervention for children of divorce between the ages of 9 and 12. The current sample included 159 young adults (mean age = 25.5 years; 53% male; 94% Caucasian) who participated in six waves of data collection, including a 15-year follow-up study. Participants reported on exposure to negative life events (four times over a 9-month period) during childhood, and mothers rated child temperament. Six years later, youth reported on the use of active and avoidant coping strategies, and 15 years later, they participated in a standardized psychosocial stress task and provided salivary cortisol samples prior to and following the task. Path analyses within a structural equation framework revealed that a multiple mediation model best fit the data. It was found that children with better mother-rated self-regulation (i.e. low impulsivity, low negative emotionality, and high attentional focus) exhibited lower total cortisol output 15 years later. In addition, greater self-regulation in childhood predicted greater use of active coping in adolescence, whereas a greater number of negative life events predicted increased use of avoidant coping in adolescence. Finally, a greater number of negative events in childhood predicted marginally lower total cortisol output, and higher levels of active coping in adolescence were associated with greater total cortisol output in young adulthood. Findings suggest that children of divorce who exhibit better self-regulation evidence lower cortisol output during a standardized psychosocial stress task relative to those who have higher impulsivity, lower attentional focus, and/or higher negative emotionality. The conceptual significance of the current findings, including the lack of evidence for hypothesized relations, methodological issues that arose, and issues in need of future research are discussed.
ContributorsHagan, Melissa (Author) / Luecken, Linda (Thesis advisor) / MacKinnon, David (Committee member) / Wolchik, Sharlene (Committee member) / Doane, Leah (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
The study of tomboys offers useful insights for the field of gender development. Tomboys have been the focus of several studies aimed at defining what a tomboy is (Bailey, Bechtold, & Berenbaum, 2002; Plumb & Cowan, 1984; Williams, Goodman, & Green, 1985) and what it means for children and adults who are tomboys (Morgan, 1998; Williams et al., 1985). These and further questions necessitate understanding the correlates and consequences for children exhibiting tomboy behaviors. This study aims to address these gaps in the literature as part of a longitudinal study assessing children's gendered attitudes, relationships, and beliefs. A group of 4th grade girls (N=98), were administered questionnaires asking them about their tomboy gender identity and related behaviors and beliefs. The first research question concerns how we identify tomboys through parent, teacher, and child self-report, and the application of groupings of tomboys as never, sometimes, and always tomboys. It was found that children who fall into different classifications of tomboyism differ on their similarity to own- and other-sex peers on a number of dimensions (e.g. similarity, peer preference, activity preference). Never tomboys had the most similarity and interest to own-sex peers, always tomboys, to other-sex peers, and sometimes tomboys exhibited the most flexibility with interest similar to both own- and other-sex peers. Peer-related adjustment consequences and experiences were considered for the different groups of tomboys, with always tomboys being the most efficacious with other-sex peers, never tomboys being the most efficacious with own-sex peers, and sometimes tomboys showing both own- and other-sex peer interactions and the least exclusion of any group.
ContributorsEngland, Dawn (Author) / Martin, Carol L (Thesis advisor) / Zosuls, Kristina (Committee member) / Updegraff, Kimberly (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This study investigated the role of broad cognitive processes in the development of mathematics skills among children and adolescents. The participants for this study were a subsample of a nationally representative sample used in the standardization of the Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Cognitive Abilities and the Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Achievement, Normative Update (Woodcock, McGrew, & Mather, 2007). Participants were between 5 years old and 18 years old (N = 4721; mean of 10.98 years, median of 10.00 years, standard deviation of 3.48 years), and were 50.7% male and 49.3% female. Structural equation models supported the theoretical suggestion that broad cognitive processes play significant and specific roles in the development of mathematical skills among children and adolescents. Implications for school psychology researchers and practitioners are discussed.
ContributorsCalderón, Carlos Oreste (Author) / Caterino, Linda (Thesis advisor) / Nakagawa, Kathryn (Thesis advisor) / Knight, George (Committee member) / Mcgrew, Kevin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
The nature and correlates of emerging internalizing symptoms in young children are largely unknown. Maternal factors such as psychological symptoms and detached parenting style have been found to be present in children with anxiety and depression. Further, child attentional control in task completion has been associated with difficulty related to internalizing problems. This study tested hypotheses that child anxiety and depression at age five could be predicted by a combination of maternal distress and maternal detached behavior recorded at age three. An additional hypothesis was tested to determine if child attentional control at age four may be a partial mediator of the relation between maternal symptoms and parenting to child internalizing symptoms. Using structural equation modeling, no hypotheses were supported; child internalizing problems were not significantly predicted by maternal distress nor detached parenting. Further, child attentional control was not predicted by maternal distress or detached behavior, nor did attentional control predict internalizing problems. Findings indicate that over a two-year interval, childhood internalizing problems at age five are likely best predicted by early internalizing problems at age three. There was no support that the mother or child factors tested were predictive of child outcomes.
ContributorsSkelley, Shayna (Author) / Crnic, Keith A (Thesis advisor) / Eisenberg, Nancy (Committee member) / MacKinnon, David (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2010
Description
The purpose of this study was to expand on existing parental socialization models of youth achievement motivation for engaging in physical activity. This study examined the extent to which youth affective reactions and expectancy-value beliefs mediated the relation between parental influence tactics and youth physical activity. More specifically, the direct and indirect effects of parents' positive, negative and sedentary-control tactics, the direct effect of parents' desire to change their child's physical activity, and the moderating role of the socio-emotional climate on the relation between parental influence tactics and child outcomes were investigated. Data were collected from 171 4th, 5th, 7th, 8th and 9th grade students and their parents. Pedometers were used to collect youth physical activity data and all participants completed questionnaires. Youth expectancy-value beliefs and negative affective reactions to parental influence tactics were both positively related to youth physical activity. Path analyses revealed that youth expectancy-value beliefs and negative affective reactions fully mediated the direct effects of positive and negative parental influence tactics on youth physical activity, respectively. Moreover, parents' desire to change their child's physical activity was negatively related to parent's use of positive influence tactics. Although several moderators were examined, none were statistically significant (lowest p >.05). The results suggest that additional explanatory power is gained by including a broader range of parental influence tactics and youth affective reactions in models of achievement motivation. The findings are in accord with prior recommendations made to parents with sedentary children.
ContributorsPugliese, John (Author) / Okun, Morris (Thesis advisor) / Tinsley, Barbara J (Thesis advisor) / Kulinna, Pamela (Committee member) / Knight, George (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
The purpose of this paper is to examine cross-cultural differences between the United States and Turkey by coding multiple dimensions, such as parental intrusiveness, child persistence, and various others. The main research questions of this paper were as follows: (1) How does parental intrusiveness vary by country? (2) How does child persistence vary by country? and (3) Are parental intrusiveness and child persistence correlated, and if so, what is the direction of the correlation? The hypotheses were that (1) Turkish parents would score higher on parental intrusiveness, (2) American children would show higher levels of persistence, and (3) Parental intrusiveness and child persistence are correlated, with higher levels of parental intrusiveness resulting in lower levels of child persistence. While all of the hypotheses were supported with statistically significant results, it was found that in the U.S., higher parental intrusiveness does result in lower levels of child persistence, but in Turkey, parental intrusiveness was not a predictor of child persistence. The findings are therefore able to support cross-cultural differences in the correlation between parental intrusiveness and child persistence.
ContributorsPatel, Sonia (Author) / Lucca, Kelsey (Thesis director) / Updegraff, Kimberly (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Human Evolution & Social Change (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2022-05
Description
The goal of this study is to contribute to the understanding of Mexican-American three- to five-year-old children’s effortful control (EC) and negative emotionality (NE) development by examining whether Mexican-American adolescent mothers’ parenting transacts with their three- to five-year-old children’s EC and NE and by exploring whether mothers’ familism acts as a protective factor. I hypothesized that mothers’ harshness and warmth would transact with EC and NE over time. I further hypothesized that mothers’ familism values would (a) positively predict mothers’ warmth and negatively predict mothers’ harshness, and (b) act as a buffer between low EC and high NE, and high harshness and low warmth. These hypotheses were tested within a sample of Mexican-American adolescent mother-child dyads (N = 204) and assessed longitudinally when children were 36, 48, and 60 months. Mothers were predominantly first generation (i.e., mothers’ parents were born in Mexico; 67%) and spoke English (65%). When children were 36 months, average family income (i.e., wages, public assistance, food stamps) was $24,715 (SD = $19,545) and mothers had started community college (13%) or completed high school/GED (30%), 11th grade (19%), 10th grade (8%), or less than 9th grade (14%). In this sample, transactions between harshness or warmth and EC or NE were not found, but a bidirectional association between NE and harshness was found. Familism marginally negatively predicted harshness, but not warmth. Familism moderated the relation between NE and harshness such that there was only a negative relation between NE and harshness when familism was high. However, familism did not moderate the relations between NE and warmth, or EC and harshness or warmth. The results of this study are discussed with respect to (a) current methodological limitations in the field, such as the need to test or develop parent-report measures of Mexican-American children’s temperament and value-driven socialization goals, (b) future avenues for research, such as person-centered studies of clusters of mothers’ values and how those relate to clusters of parenting behaviors, and (c) implications for interventions addressing parenting behavior of adolescent mothers.
ContributorsBerger, Rebecca H (Author) / Wilkens, Natalie (Thesis advisor) / Spinrad, Tracy (Committee member) / Updegraff, Kimberly (Committee member) / Crnic, Keith (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
The transition out of high school is a major milestone for adolescents as they earn greater autonomy and responsibilities. An estimated 69.2% of adolescents enroll in higher education immediately following high school completion, including increasing numbers of Latino adolescents (National Center for Education Statistics, 2016). Integrative model (García Coll et al., 1996) suggests a need for research on promotive and protective contextual factors for ethnic minority children and adolescents. Guided by the model, the proposed research will explore a salient Latino cultural value, familism, and family communication as predictors of changes in depressive symptoms from high school to university among Latino adolescents (N = 209; 35.6% male; Mage=17.59, SD=.53). Furthermore, sleep, a key bioregulatory mechanism, was explored as a potential moderator of these processes (Dahl & El-Sheikh, 2007). On average, familism values were not associated with college depressive symptoms, but family communication was significantly negatively associated with college depressive symptoms. Neither sleep duration nor sleep problems significantly moderated the association between familism values and college depressive symptom. Patterns were similar for family communication. The interaction between sleep problems and familism-support values were significantly associated with college depressive symptoms. However, when simple slopes were probed, none were significant.
ContributorsPark, HyeJung (Author) / Doane, Leah (Thesis advisor) / Infurna, Frank (Committee member) / Updegraff, Kimberly (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
Anxiety and depression are among the most prevalent disorders in youth, with prevalence rates ranging from 15% to 25% for anxiety and 5% to 14% for depression. Anxiety and depressive disorders cause significant impairment, fail to spontaneously remit, and have been prospectively linked to problematic substance use and legal problems in adulthood. These disorders often share a high-degree of comorbidity in both clinical and community samples, with anxiety disorders typically preceding the onset of depression. Given the nature and consequences of anxiety and depressive disorders, a plethora of treatment and preventative interventions have been developed and tested with data showing significant pre to post to follow-up reductions in anxiety and depressive symptoms. However, little is known about the mediators by which these interventions achieve their effects. To address this gap in the literature, the present thesis study combined meta-analytic methods and path analysis to evaluate the effects of youth anxiety and depression interventions on outcomes and four theory-driven mediators using data from 55 randomized controlled trials (N = 11,413). The mediators included: (1) information-processing biases, (2) coping strategies, (3) social competence, and (4) physiological hyperarousal. Meta-analytic results showed that treatment and preventative interventions reliably produced moderate effect sizes on outcomes and three of the four mediators (information-processing biases, coping strategies, social competence). Most importantly, findings from the path analysis showed that changes in information-processing biases and coping strategies consistently mediated changes in outcomes for anxiety and depression at both levels of intervention, whereas gains in social competence and reductions in physiological hyperarousal did not emerge as significant mediators. Knowledge of the mediators underlying intervention effects is important because they can refine testable models of treatment and prevention efforts and identify which anxiety and depression components need to be packaged or strengthened to maximize intervention effects. Allocating additional resources to significant mediators has the potential to reduce costs associated with adopting and implementing evidence-based interventions and improve dissemination and sustainability in real-world settings, thus setting the stage to be more readily integrated into clinical and non-clinical settings on a large scale.
ContributorsStoll, Ryan (Author) / Pina, Armando A (Thesis advisor) / MacKinnon, David (Committee member) / Knight, George (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
The current study utilized data from two longitudinal samples to test mechanisms in the relation between a polygenic risk score indexing serotonin functioning and alcohol use in adolescence. Specifically, this study tested whether individuals with lower levels of serotonin functioning as indexed by a polygenic risk score were vulnerable to poorer self-regulation, and whether poorer self-regulation subsequently predicted the divergent outcomes of depressive symptoms and aggressive/antisocial behaviors. This study then examined whether depressive symptoms and aggressive/antisocial behaviors conferred risk for later alcohol use in adolescence, and whether polygenic risk and effortful control had direct effects on alcohol use that were not mediated through problem behaviors. Finally, the study examined the potential moderating role of gender in these pathways to alcohol use.
Structural equation modeling was used to test hypotheses. Results from an independent genome-wide association study of 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid in the cerebrospinal fluid were used to create serotonin (5-HT) polygenic risk scores, wherein higher scores reflected lower levels of 5-HT functioning. Data from three time points were drawn from each sample, and all paths were prospective. Findings suggested that 5-HT polygenic risk did not predict self-regulatory constructs. However, 5-HT polygenic risk did predict the divergent outcomes of depression and aggression/antisociality, such that higher levels of 5-HT polygenic risk predicted greater levels of depression and aggression/antisociality. Results most clearly supported adolescents’ aggression/antisociality as a mechanism in the relation between 5-HT polygenic risk and later alcohol use. Deficits in self-regulation also predicted depression and aggression/antisociality, and indirectly predicted alcohol use through aggression/antisociality. These pathways to alcohol use might be the most salient for boys with low levels of socioeconomic status.
Results are novel contributions to the literature. The previously observed association between serotonin functioning and alcohol use might be due, in part, to the fact that individuals with lower levels of serotonin functioning are predisposed towards developing earlier aggression/antisociality. Results did not support the hypothesis that serotonin functioning predisposes individuals to deficits in self-regulatory abilities. Findings extend previous research by suggesting that serotonin functioning and self-regulation might be transdiagnostic risk factors for many types of psychopathology.
Structural equation modeling was used to test hypotheses. Results from an independent genome-wide association study of 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid in the cerebrospinal fluid were used to create serotonin (5-HT) polygenic risk scores, wherein higher scores reflected lower levels of 5-HT functioning. Data from three time points were drawn from each sample, and all paths were prospective. Findings suggested that 5-HT polygenic risk did not predict self-regulatory constructs. However, 5-HT polygenic risk did predict the divergent outcomes of depression and aggression/antisociality, such that higher levels of 5-HT polygenic risk predicted greater levels of depression and aggression/antisociality. Results most clearly supported adolescents’ aggression/antisociality as a mechanism in the relation between 5-HT polygenic risk and later alcohol use. Deficits in self-regulation also predicted depression and aggression/antisociality, and indirectly predicted alcohol use through aggression/antisociality. These pathways to alcohol use might be the most salient for boys with low levels of socioeconomic status.
Results are novel contributions to the literature. The previously observed association between serotonin functioning and alcohol use might be due, in part, to the fact that individuals with lower levels of serotonin functioning are predisposed towards developing earlier aggression/antisociality. Results did not support the hypothesis that serotonin functioning predisposes individuals to deficits in self-regulatory abilities. Findings extend previous research by suggesting that serotonin functioning and self-regulation might be transdiagnostic risk factors for many types of psychopathology.
ContributorsWang, Frances Lynn (Author) / Chassin, Laurie (Thesis advisor) / Eisenberg, Nancy (Committee member) / Lemery-Chalfant, Kathryn (Committee member) / MacKinnon, David (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017