Associations between friend conflict and affective states in the daily lives of adolescents

Back to Normal? Harnessing Long Short-term Memory Network to Examine the Associations Between Adolescent Social Interactions and Depressive Symptoms During Different Stages of COVID-19

Adolescence is a developmental period in which social interactions are critical for mental health. While the onset of COVID-19 significantly disrupted adolescents' social environments and mental health, it remains unclear how adolescents have adapted to later stages of the pandemic. We harnessed a machine learning architecture of Long Short-Term Memory recurrent networks (LSTM) with gradient-based feature importance, to model the association among daily social interactions and depressive symptoms during three stages of the pandemic. A year before COVID-19, 148 adolescents reported social interactions and depressive symptoms, every day for 21 days. One hundred sixteen of these youths completed a 28-day diary after schools closed due to COVID-19. Seventy-nine of these youths and additional 116 new participants completed a 28-day diary approximately a year into the pandemic. Our results show that LSTM successfully predicted depressive symptoms from at least a week of social interactions for all three waves (r2 > .70). Our study shows the utility of using an analytic approach that can identify temporal and nonlinear pathways through which social interactions may confer risk for depression. Our unique analysis of the importance of input features enabled us to interpret the association between social interactions and depressive symptoms. Collectively, we observed a return to pre-pandemic patterns a year into the pandemic, with reduced gender and age differences during the pandemic closures. This pattern suggests that the system of social influences in adolescence was affected by COVID-19, and that this effect was attenuated in more chronic stages of the pandemic.

Friend Emotional Support and Dynamics of Adolescent Socioemotional Problems

Emotional support from friends is a crucial source of social support for adolescents, significantly influencing their psychological development. However, previous research has primarily focused on how this support correlates with general levels of socioemotional problems among adolescents, neglecting the significance of daily fluctuations in these problems. The aim of this study was to explore the relationship between friend emotional support and both the average and dynamic indicators of daily emotional and peer problems in adolescents. These dynamic indicators include within-domain dynamics-such as inertia, which reflects the temporal dependence of experiences, and volatility, which indicates within-person variance-and cross-domain dynamics, such as transactional effects, which measure the strength of concurrent or lagged associations between daily emotional and peer problems. Participants were 315 seventh-grade Chinese adolescents (Mage = 13.05 years, SD = 0.77 years; 48.3% girls). Adolescents reported on their friends' emotional support at baseline and then completed measures of daily emotion and peer problems over a 10-day period. Using dynamic structural equation models, the results revealed that higher levels of friend emotional support were associated with fewer daily socioemotional problems. This was evident both in terms of average levels and dynamic aspects, characterized by lower mean levels of daily emotional and peer problems, reduced inertia and volatility of these problems, and a weaker spillover effect from daily emotional issues to peer problems. These findings highlight the significant role of friend-emotional support in mitigating adolescents' daily socioemotional challenges.

The added value of a micro-level ecological approach when mapping self-regulatory control processes and externalizing symptoms during adolescence: a systematic review

Deficits in self-regulatory control (SRC) represent a core characteristic of externalizing (EXT) symptoms (e.g., rule-breaking behavior or aggressive behaviors) in adolescents. This review aims to specify the added value of ecologically valid assessments at a micro-level when examining the associations between SRC and EXT symptoms in adolescents. This systematic review was reported according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) 2020. The search strategy addressed the added value of (1) naturalistic assessment for the understanding of the relationship between (2) SRC and (3) EXT symptoms in (4) adolescents. We conducted comprehensive searches in bibliographic databases. An additional search was conducted in Google Scholar and supplementary studies were identified through backward and forward citation tracking. Twenty-four studies (n = 4071 adolescents) met the inclusion criteria. The methods used to assess naturalistic aspects included the experience sampling method (ecological momentary- or ambulatory assessment) and the time-course approach (i.e., real-time assessment of SRC processes referring to situations approximating real-life experience where SRC are to be engaged such as in frustrating situations). Micro-level ecological assessments, when mapping the intra-individual relationships between SRC processes and EXT symptoms over time in adolescents within their natural context (i.e., real world) of expression in real time, added a finer-grained observation alongside with a higher ecological validity. Micro-level approaches may enhance the understanding of the complex interplay between SRC and EXT symptoms in adolescence, especially in interventional studies, allowing for the acquisition of endpoints with a higher relevance for everyday functioning.

Interpersonal Factors, Peer Relationship Stressors, and Gender Differences in Adolescent Depression

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

Compared to boys, girls value close relationships more. Thus, heightened affiliative proclivities may serve as a particularly salient psychosocial risk factor for depression in adolescent girls. The purpose of this review is to examine whether the preponderance of depression in girls is because of gender differences in interpersonal vulnerabilities and peer relationship stressors and/or in the associations between these factors and depression.

RECENT FINDINGS

Girls (vs. boys) exhibit higher levels of co-rumination and affective empathy, but not excessive reassurance-seeking. The prevalence of different forms of peer relationship stressors (e.g., peer victimization) varies by gender depending on the specific type. Evidence is mixed regarding gender differences in the association between peer victimization and depression. Gender differences in the association between peer victimization and depression not only depend on peer victimization subtype but also on the country. Most studies were conducted in non-clinical samples, highlighting the need for future research to assess major depressive disorder (not just depressive symptoms). Future research should also assess interpersonal factors (e.g., co-rumination) and peer relationship stressors together.

Adolescent emotion regulation trajectories: The influence of parent and friend emotion socialization

With mounting evidence demonstrating the link between child emotion regulation (ER) and emotion socialization, we conducted a longitudinal study to understand (a) emotion-specific trajectories of adolescent ER and (b) how specific parent and friend emotion socialization strategies impact ER over 4 years. Participants were 209 adolescents (52.5% girls; Mage  = 12.66 years; 75.7% White) and their parents. Latent growth curve models identified unique trajectories for anger and sadness/worry regulation. Anger regulation increased across time, whereas sadness/worry regulation remained highly stable longitudinally, lacking variance for growth modeling. Friend emotion socialization emerged as a more salient predictor of anger regulation than parent emotion socialization. Friend reward, override, and punish responses predicted initial levels. Friend punish and parent magnify responses predicted the slope.

Examining the indirect contributions of irritability and chronic interpersonal stress on symptoms of anxiety and depression in adolescents

BACKGROUND

Chronic interpersonal stress has been identified as predictive of anxiety and depression. However, more research is needed to understand predictors of chronic interpersonal stress and mediators of its relationship with anxiety and depression. Irritability, a transdiagnostic symptom closely related to chronic interpersonal stress, may provide more insight into this relationship. While some research has demonstrated that irritability is related to chronic interpersonal stress, directionality is unknown. A bidirectional relationship between irritability and chronic interpersonal stress was hypothesized, such that irritability mediates the relationship between chronic interpersonal stress and internalizing symptoms and chronic interpersonal stress mediates the relationship between irritability and internalizing symptoms.

METHODS

This study used three cross-lagged panel models to investigate the indirect effects of irritability and chronic interpersonal stress on anxiety and depression symptoms using data from 627 adolescents (68.9 % female, 57.7 % white) over a six-year period.

RESULTS

In partial support for our hypotheses, we found that the relationships between chronic interpersonal stress and both fears and anhedonia were mediated by irritability, and that the relationship between irritability and anhedonia was mediated by chronic interpersonal stress.

LIMITATIONS

Study limitations include some temporal overlap in symptom measurements, an irritability measure that has not been previously validated to measure the construct, and lack of a lifespan perspective.

CONCLUSIONS

More targeted approaches in intervention for both chronic interpersonal stress and irritability may improve prevention and intervention efforts to address anxiety and depression.

Teen Dating Relationships: How Daily Disagreements are Associated with Relationship Satisfaction

Being in a satisfying romantic relationship in adolescence is associated to many short- and long-term benefits. However, more research is needed to better understand what promotes relationship satisfaction in adolescence. To address this gap, this study used a diary approach to examine the relation between disagreements and daily variations in adolescent romantic relationship satisfaction. A sample of 186 adolescents was recruited (Mage = 17.08 years, SD = 1.48; 56% female). Multilevel modeling was used to evaluate how disagreement occurrences, resolution, and resolution strategies were related to daily perceived relationship satisfaction at both the between- and within-subjects levels. At the within-subjects level, satisfaction was lower on days when a disagreement occurred, especially for girls. Adolescents also reported lower relationship satisfaction on days when they used more destructive strategies than usual, and higher relationship satisfaction on days when they successfully resolved disagreements. This study demonstrates that adolescents' evaluations of their daily relationship satisfaction vary as function of disagreement processes.

A randomised controlled trial of a relationship-focussed mobile phone application for improving adolescents' mental health

BACKGROUND

This study evaluated the acceptability and effectiveness of a relationship-focussed mobile phone application (WeClick) for improving depressive symptoms and other mental health outcomes in adolescents.

METHODS

A randomised controlled trial involving 193 youth (M age: 14.82, SD: 0.94, 86.5% female) from Australia was conducted. Youth were recruited via the Internet and randomly allocated to the intervention or a 4-week wait list control condition, stratified for age and gender. The primary outcome was change in depressive symptom scores measured using the Patient Health Questionnaire for Adolescents (PHQ-A) at baseline, 4-week post-test and 12-week follow-up. Secondary outcomes included anxiety, psychological distress, wellbeing, help-seeking intentions for mental health, social self-efficacy and social support. Participants in the intervention condition received access to the intervention for four weeks. Thematic analysis was utilised to identify and examine acceptability.

RESULTS

The change in PHQ-A scores from baseline to 4-week post-test did not differ significantly (d = 0.26, p = .138) between the intervention (Mchange = -2.9, SD = 5.3) and wait list control conditions (Mchange = -1.7, SD = 4.3). However, significant between-group improvements were observed in wellbeing (d = 0.37, p = .023), help-seeking intentions (d = 0.36, p = .016) and professional help-seeking intentions for mental health problems (d = 0.36, p = .008). Increases in help-seeking intentions were sustained at follow-up in the intervention condition. No differential effects were found for generalised anxiety, separation anxiety, social self-efficacy or for any social support outcomes. Over 90% of participants indicated the app was enjoyable, interesting and easy to use. The app provided 'advice and direction' (n = 42; 46.15%), an 'opportunity for self-reflection' (n = 33; 36.3%) and 'normalised experiences' (n = 21; 23.1%).

CONCLUSIONS

The WeClick app was found to be effective for improving wellbeing and help-seeking intentions for mental health in adolescents. A larger, adequately powered trial is now required to establish differential effects on depressive symptoms. This trial was registered with the Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ANZCTR): ACTRN12618001982202.

Developmental changes in associations between depressive symptoms and peer relationships: a four-year follow-up of Chinese adolescents

Interpersonal theories have suggested that depressive symptoms influence and are influenced by peer relationships, but little is known about how depressive symptoms-peer relationships associations change with age. This study examined the longitudinal associations between both group- and dyadic-level peer relationships and depressive symptoms in a community sample of Chinese youth (n = 2179; 47.9% girls) from grades 6 to 9. Results demonstrated correlations between stable trait-like components of peer acceptance/rejection and depressive symptoms, with no dynamic state-like associations being observed. The results also suggested that conflict with friends operated as a consistent interpersonal risk for subsequent depressive symptoms across late childhood to middle adolescence. Support from friends was not significantly associated with depressive symptoms in early adolescence, but influenced and was influenced by depressive symptoms in middle adolescence. This study highlights that depressive symptoms are associated with youth's peer social status and friendship in different ways and that the interactions between friendship and depressive symptoms get strengthened with the transition to adolescence.

Factorial Invariance, Latent Mean Differences of the Panas and Affective Profiles and Its Relation to Social Anxiety in Ecuadorian Sample

Positive (PA) and negative affect (NA) are related with aspects that are part of people’s psychological well-being, and the possibility of combining both dimensions to create four affective profiles, self-fulfilling (high PA and low NA), low affective (low PA and low NA), high affective (high PA and high NA) and self-destructive (low PA and high NA), has recently appeared. The current work aims to validate the short version of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) in Ecuador, test the existence of the four affective profiles and analyze its relation with social anxiety. The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule for Children and the Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents was employed in a sample of 1786 Ecuadorian students aged from 15 to 18 years (M = 16.31, SD = 1.01). The factorial invariance of the scale across sex and age groups was proved and latent mean analyses showed that girls and 18-year-old students obtained the highest scores in negative affect. With regard to the affective profiles, the cluster analyses confirmed the existence of the four mentioned profiles, and the self-fulfilling profile obtained the lowest scores in all the dimensions of social anxiety, whereas the self-destructive profile obtained the highest scores.

Sex differences in the psychophysiological response to an intergroup conflict

Conflict induces psychophysiological responses, but less is known about responses to intergroup conflict. Intergroup relationships activate social processes, adding complexity to people's physiological responses. This study analyzes the psychophysiological responses to intergroup conflict considering sex differences. Thus, 150 young people were distributed in 50 groups in two conditions (conflict vs. non-conflict). Conflict was created in the interaction between two groups (three people each) in the laboratory. Their responses were compared to a control group. Mood, heart rate variability, cortisol, and testosterone were measured. Results showed that intergroup conflict induced a less pronounced decrease in negative and positive mood, and a reduction in parasympathetic activity (RMSSD of IBI). Moreover, women in conflict showed lower testosterone levels than men in conflict and control women. Finally, women's conflict perception correlated with their psychophysiological response. Results suggest that intergroup conflict induces emotional, cardiovascular, and endocrine responses, and that men and women interpret conflict differently.

Relationships between sociocultural factors (gender, immigrant and socioeconomic background), peer relatedness and positive affect in adolescents

INTRODUCTION

During adolescence, experiencing positive emotions at school is important for motivation as well as for academic success and psychological well-being. In the present study, on the basis of Self-Determination Theory (SDT), we investigated the relationships between sociocultural factors (gender, immigrant and socioeconomic background), peer relatedness (acceptance and friendship) and positive affect at school.

METHODS

Data was based on a random sample of 36,712 tenth grade Italian adolescents. Their average age was 15.6 years (SD = 0.77), 50.6% were males, while 6.1% were first-generation immigrants and 3.8% were second-generation immigrants. Firstly, comparing latent means, we established peer relatedness and positive affect profiles of adolescents with different sociocultural backgrounds. Subsequently, we tested a structural equation model, based on SDT, according to which the effects of sociocultural factors on experiencing positive affect at school are mediated by peer relatedness dimensions.

RESULTS

Latent mean comparisons showed that immigrant adolescents, students with a lower-SES and girls had fewer friendships with their classmates, lower levels of positive affect at school and were less accepted by their peers. A well-fitting structural equation model corroborated the mediating role of acceptance and friendship, which accounted for 16% of variance in positive affect.

CONCLUSIONS

Due to sociocultural factors, some groups of adolescents proved to be more at risk of being socially excluded and of experiencing less positive affect at school. Moreover, our findings support the claim of SDT that the satisfaction of basic psychological needs, such as relatedness, is more important than sociocultural factors in determining adolescents' psychological well-being.

The Interplay of Friends and Parents in Adolescents' Daily Lives: Towards A Dynamic View of Social Support

This daily diary study investigated the interplay of perceived friend and parent support in adolescents' everyday lives. Specifically, we tested the interactive effects of friend and parent support on adolescent well-being at both the intra- and inter-individual level. A diverse sample of 119 adolescents (M _age=15.36) completed diary reports for two weeks. Multivariate multilevel models demonstrated that on days adolescents felt more supported by their friends or parents, they experienced increases in their happiness and social connectedness. Additionally, parent support emerged as a protective factor for youth lacking friend support, although patterns differed at the intra- versus inter-individual level. The findings underscore the dynamic nature of social support in adolescents' daily lives and highlight the interactive roles of friends and parents in promoting youth well-being.

Protective Factors Associated with Daily Affective Reactivity and Instability During Adolescence

The daily emotional experiences of adolescents are dynamic, vary significantly across individuals, and are crucial to their psychological adjustment, warranting a need to identify factors that promote adaptive affective responses to stressors and attenuated affective instability. The objective of this study, therefore, was to examine protective factors linked to individual differences in daily affective reactivity and instability utilizing a daily diary design in a national sample of 100 U.S. adolescents (13-17 years; 40% girls; 79% White). Adolescents completed a baseline survey and then 14 daily online surveys. Better mother-adolescent communication predicted lower negative affect reactivity, whereas greater use of problem-focused coping strategies predicted higher positive affect reactivity. Greater trait resilience and instrumental support seeking predicted lower negative affect instability. Conversely, more emotional support seeking predicted higher negative affect instability. No factors were associated with positive affect instability, and father-adolescent communication was unrelated to daily affective reactivity and instability. The findings implicate specific protective factors associated with distinct aspects of affective reactivity and instability.