Objective: The growing prevalence of obesity among college students is a major public health issue, as over one-third are overweight or obese. This study used gender-stratified multivariate analyses to examine psychological distress and social contextual factors as key determinants of obesity. Participants: Students of a large public university in…

Rumination about anger experiences prolongs anger arousal and increases the likelihood of aggression. School violence perpetrators have ruminated angrily. Research measures and personal accounts of anger rumination often contain revenge-planning as a subtheme, the relevance of which has received insufficient attention in accounting for aggressive…

Three decades of research have examined children's challenge and threat appraisals, yet unresolved issues remain. This study provides new insight about three central, open questions in this field: How do challenge and threat appraisals relate to events eliciting discrete negative emotions? How do challenge appraisals develop across childhood, and…

Introduction: The investigation of school belonging is crucial due to its established significant associations with mental health, academic achievement, and risky behaviours coupled with the limited research documenting the configurations of children's school belonging experiences. Objective: This study sought to better understand elementary…

Background: Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) appears more prevalent among children with intellectual disabilities (ID) as compared to children with typical development. However, it remains unclear what drives this difference. Methods: Data from 70 youth with typical development (TD) and 20 youth with ID were drawn from (The Collaborative Family…

Although numerous studies have shown that child obesity is associated with internalizing symptoms, relatively few studies have examined the role of parenting behaviors on this relationship. Youth meeting obesity status may be at higher risk of psychosocial maladjustment when exposed to more vulnerable parenting contexts. The current study…

Background: Exposure to advertisements for tobacco products and tobacco warning labels evokes emotions. This study evaluated the association of discrete positive and negative emotions with interest in alternative tobacco products. Method: In 2013, 1,226 U.S. adult nonsmokers and current smokers viewed advertisements for moist snuff, snus, and…

Certain psychopathologies are often linked to dysregulation of specific emotions (e.g., anxiety is associated with dysregulation of fear), but few studies have examined how regulatory repertoires for specific emotions (e.g., the strategies a person uses to regulate fear) relate to psychopathology, and fewer still have examined this in childhood. A…

Overexcitability (OE) and optimal flow are variables shared by talented individuals. This study demonstrated that the dancer (n = 86) and opera singer (n = 61) groups shared higher OE profiles compared to the athlete group (n = 50). Two self-report instruments assessed flow (global and subscales) and the five OE dimensions. All groups endorsed…

Research on family socialization of positive emotion has primarily focused on the infant and toddler stages of development, and relied on observations of parent-child interactions in highly structured laboratory environments. Little is known about how children's spontaneous expressions of positive emotion are maintained in the uncontrolled…

The purpose of this study was to help parents, educators, and policymakers understand how to help transnational children adjust to their psychological challenges at school in the United States. A total of 109 Korean transnational adolescents aged 11 to 19 participated in this study. They had been staying in the country alone or with one of their…

Compared to the general pediatric population, children with autism have higher rates of co-occurring medical and psychiatric illnesses, yet very little is known about the general health status of adults with autism. The objective of this study was to describe the frequency of psychiatric and medical conditions among a large, diverse, insured…

Adopting a risk and resilience perspective, the current study examined whether family cohesion and peer support functioned as protective factors against the negative effects of racial/ethnic discrimination by peers. The sample included 142 ethnically diverse college students. The results showed that while greater perceived discrimination was…

This study examines the general and differential effects of spiritual/religious engagement on affective college outcomes (i.e., leadership skills, interpersonal skills, social satisfaction, sense of belonging, and psychological well-being) across different gender and racial groups among undergraduate students at research universities. The study…

This study examined the usefulness of a survey on underage drinking in a rural American Indian community health clinic. One hundred ninety-seven youth (90 male, 107 female; age range 8-20 years) were recruited from clinic waiting rooms and through community outreach. The study revealed that the usefulness of the survey was twofold: Survey results…