Psychological maltreatment (PM) is a widespread form of child maltreatment, both in high-risk and maltreating parents, yet there are no intervention programs that target it directly. In this study, the content of parenting programs for high-risk and maltreating parents was assessed to determine whether the program manuals include content on PM.…

The measurement of parenting behaviors is important to the field of psychology and the goal of remediating problematic parenting as a means of reducing child problem behaviors. The Parenting Young Children (PARYC) is a self-report measure designed to address parenting behaviors relevant for the caregivers of young children, and was assessed in…

Infancy is a time of extreme opportunity, but it is also a time of extreme vulnerability, particularly for those reared in high-risk environments. Although infant exposure to any risk is important to understand, this brief focuses on the experience and impact of "trauma," defined as witnessing or experiencing an event that poses a real…

Depression is the most common psychiatric disorder worldwide. Conservative estimates Suggest that 20% of Americans will experience depression during their lifetime, inflicting high interpersonal, labor market, and health care costs. Although depression is highly heritable, environmental factors can powerfully influence its development both…

Personal religiosity has been identified as a protective factor against juvenile delinquency. However, the influence of familial religiosity on delinquent behavior is less known. This study addresses this gap by investigating how family participation in organizational religious activities is related to delinquent involvement in early adolescence.…

This study further explored the impact of sectarian violence and children's emotional insecurity about community on child maladjustment using a 4-wave longitudinal design. The study included 999 mother-child dyads in Belfast, Northern Ireland (482 boys, 517 girls). Across the 4 waves, child mean age was 12.19 (SD = 1.82), 13.24 (SD = 1.83), 13.61…

Although studies have established associations between parenting characteristics and adolescent suicidality, the strength of the evidence for these links remains unclear, largely because of methodological limitations, including lack of accounting for possible child effects on parenting. This study addresses these issues by using autoregressive…

Disclosure and lying to mothers and fathers about different activities, as defined within social domain theory, were examined as a function of Latino family values in 109 Puerto Rican lower socioeconomic status middle adolescents (M = 15.58 years, SD = 1.18) living in the United States. Questionnaires revealed that teens sometimes disclosed to…

Callous-unemotional (CU) traits (i.e., lack of empathy/guilt, uncaring attitudes) are believed to be a developmental antecedent to adult psychopathy and identify antisocial youth at risk for severe and persistent aggression. The psychosocial histories of antisocial and aggressive individuals with psychopathic traits are characterized by abusive or…

This study aimed to characterize affective functioning in families of youth at high familial risk for depression, with particular attention to features of affective functioning that appear to be critical to adaptive functioning but have been underrepresented in prior research including: positive "and" negative affect across multiple contexts,…

This study examined the intergenerational transmission of psychopathology symptoms with 7-12 year-old children (N = 97; 44 boys, 53 girls, M age = 9.14, SD = 1.38) and their mothers (M age = 38.46, SD = 6.86). Child emotion regulation mediated the links between maternal psychopathology and child internalizing and externalizing symptoms. In turn,…

Research suggests that early self-regulatory difficulties among high-risk newborns can lead to poor interactional difficulties and negative long-term cognitive and social-emotional outcomes if not identified and treated early. This article describes why an individualized, developmentally supportive, relationship-based program, such as the Newborn…

Data from a nationally representative sample from Turkey (N = 1,017) were used to investigate the environmental factors that support the receptive vocabulary of 3-year-old children who differ in their developmental risk due to family low economic status and elevated maternal depressive symptoms. Children's vocabulary knowledge was strongly…

This study examined parental monitoring (PM) as a potential moderator of the relation between parent-child communication (PCC) and pre-coital sexual behaviours (PCSB) in an urban, minority, early adolescent population. Seventh-grade students (n = 1609) reported PCC, PM and PCSB. Multivariable logistic regression was conducted to assess for…

There is a continued need to consider ways to prevent early adolescent engagement in a variety of harmful risk-taking behaviours for example, violence, road-related risks and alcohol use. The current prospective study examined adolescents' reports of intervening to try and stop friends' engagement in such behaviours among 207 early adolescents…