Current prominent models of identity face challenges in bridging across divergent perspectives and apparent dichotomies such as personal or social-collective, conscious or unconscious, and epigenetic or discursive-relational, and affording pursuit of research questions that allows integrative answers. This article presents a coherent theoretical…

The family stress model represents a common framework through which to examine the effects of environmental stressors on adolescent adjustment. The model suggests that economic and neighborhood stressors influence youth adjustment via disruptions to parenting. Incorporating integrative developmental theory, we examined the degree to which parents'…

The first months after becoming a new parent are a unique and important period in human development. Despite substantial research on the many social and biological changes that occur during the first months of parenthood, little is known about changes in mothers' attachment. The present study examines developmental stability and change in…

The Conscientiousness (C) of the self and significant others influences health by way of mediational chains involving socioeconomic attainment, the avoidance and neutralization of stressors, the promotion of health behaviors and the minimization of risk behaviors, and the management of symptoms and diseases. Yet, meta-analyses reveal that these…

The adaptive calibration model (ACM) is an evolutionary-developmental theory of individual differences in stress responsivity. In this article, we tested some key predictions of the ACM in a middle childhood sample (N = 256). Measures of autonomic nervous system activity across the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches validated the 4-pattern…

Child sleep and adjustment research with community samples is on the rise with a recognized need of explicating this association. We examined reciprocal relations between children's sleep and their internalizing and externalizing symptoms using 3 waves of data spanning 5 years. Participants included 176 children at Time 1 (M = 8.68 years; 69%…

This study tests the ability of classroom emotional climate to moderate anxious solitary children's risk for peer exclusion over a 3-year period from 3rd through 5th grade. Six hundred eighty-eight children completed peer nominations for anxious solitude and peer exclusion in the fall and spring semesters of each grade, and observations of…

This study tested the association between parent illicit drug use disorder (DUD) in early adulthood and observed parenting practices at ages 27-28 and examined the following 3 theoretically derived models explaining this link: (a) a disrupted parent adult functioning model,(b) a preexisting parent personality factor model, and (c) a disrupted…

This short-term longitudinal study examined the relations among family and school characteristics, family-level processes (youth perceptions of parent-adolescent interactions), school-level processes (youth perceptions of school belonging, school climate), adolescents' school engagement, and later academic performance. Participants were an…

This study presents an extended children-of-twins model, which allowed the authors to test the direction of the association between parenting and child adjustment. Three mechanisms were examined: direct phenotypic influence of parenting on child behavior (controlling for both parental and child genotype), passive genotype-environment correlation,…

Adolescent girls and their parents and a sibling completed questionnaires that measured several family variables and were observed interacting. Found that family economic pressures led to parents' depression, marital conflict, and disrupted parenting. Parents' depressed mood and disrupted child-rearing practices affected girls' adjustment. (BC)

Tested the generalizability of the specificity model of environmental action to the domain of mastery motivation in infants. Found that the specificity model successfully predicted that aspects of the environment uniquely related to dimensions of mastery motivation, and that infant sex and temperament mediated the relation of environment to…

Evaluates the epigenetic landscape metaphor in light of behavioral development. Cites two common errors in integrated models of behavior and biology: (1) fixing behavior as structure, thereby robbing it of dynamics and plasticity; and (2) assuming that a single optimal trajectory applies to development of organisms or systems. (BC)

Assessed stressful life events and psychological symptoms of 211 children and young adolescents and their parents. Findings supported a model in which daily stressors mediated the relation between major life events and psychological symptoms for family members. (RJC)