The phenomenon of discordance between parents' and children's ratings of the child's mental health symptoms or of parenting behavior until recently has been treated as a problem of reliability. More recent work has sought to identify factors that may influence discordance, yet much remains to be learned about why informants' ratings of…

Parenting behaviors have been linked to children's self regulation, but it is less clear how they relate to adolescent psychological flexibility. Psychological flexibility is a broad construct that describes an individual's ability to respond appropriately to environmental demands and internal experiences in the service of their goals. We examined…

Little is known about the adolescent risk factors and young adult health-related outcomes associated with running away from home. We examined these correlates of running away using longitudinal data from 4,329 youth (48% female, 85% white) who were followed from Grade 9 to age 21. Nearly 14% of the sample reported running away in the past year at…

Past studies have investigated relationships between peer acceptance and peer-rated social behaviors. However, relatively little is known about the manner in which indices of well-being such as optimism and positive affect may predict peer acceptance above and beyond peer ratings of antisocial and prosocial behaviors. Early adolescence--roughly…

The present investigation examines mediated pathways from pubertal development to changes in depressive affect and aggression. Participants were 100 white girls who were between the ages of 10 and 14 (M=12.13, SD=0.80); girls were from well-educated, middle-to upper-middle class families, and attended private schools in a major northeastern urban…

To understand whether difficulties in emotional functioning distinguish between body dissatisfaction and disordered eating, a set of emotion regulation (i.e., negative emotion, emotional awareness, coping), demographic (i.e., age), and physical (i.e., BMI (Body Mass Index)) factors were assessed in 234 early adolescent girls, grades six to eight.…

This study examined changes in extreme weight change attitudes and behaviors (exercise dependence, food supplements, drive for thinness, bulimia) among adolescent boys and girls over a 16 month period. It also investigated the impact of body mass index, puberty, body image, depression and positive affect on these attitudes and behaviors 16 months…

The study examined the impact of body mass index (BMI), negative affect, self-esteem, and sociocultural influences in the development of weight and muscle concerns among preadolescent boys. Body dissatisfaction, importance placed on weight and muscles, weight loss strategies, and strategies to increase muscles were evaluated. Participants were 237…