Adolescence represents a pivotal neurodevelopmental period marked by escalating anxiety symptoms and heightened approach motivations. Although anxiety is typically linked to avoidance, concurrent shifts in motivational systems and neurocircuitry may alter its behavioral and neural expression, shaping developmental trajectories and treatment response. This study investigated how approach motivations (Behavioral Activation System; BAS) interact with anxiety to influence behavior and brain function in N = 121 adolescents (ages 9–13; 44% girls; 33.1% White, 22.3% Latino, 19.8% Asian, 14.9% Black, 9.9% Mixed Race). Participants completed a decision-making task and resting-state fMRI. Dimensional analyses examined joint effects of anxiety and BAS on risk-taking behaviors, task-evoked neural activity and connectivity, and intrinsic connectivity at rest. Higher anxiety was associated with risk aversion and inhibition when BAS was low, but with risk-taking and impulsivity when BAS was high (risk-taking: β = 0.25, p = .012; inhibitory control: β = 0.13, p < .001). During risk-taking, anxiety and BAS showed interactive effects on striatal (β = −0.10, p = .006) and amygdala (β = 0.10, p = .005) activity alongside distinct effects on prefrontal–subcortical connectivity (β = −0.30, p = .014; β = 0.17, p = .01). Higher BAS was associated with stronger intrinsic prefrontal–striatal connectivity (β = 0.23, p = .012), while anxiety showed no significant resting-state effects. Findings underscore the role of reward-related systems in adolescent anxiety and support developmentally informed, personalized intervention strategies.

What is the mechanism by which a linguistic change advances across successive generations of speakers? We explore this question by using the model of incrementation provided in Labov 2001 and analyzing six current changes in English. Extending Labov's focus on recent and vigorous phonological changes, we target ongoing morphosyntactic(-semantic) and discourse-pragmatic changes. Our results provide a striking validation of the incrementation model, confirming its value as a key to understanding the evolution of linguistic systems. However, although our findings reveal the predicted peak in the apparent-time progress of a change and corroborate the female tendency to lead innovation, there is no absolute contrast between men and women with respect to incrementation. Instead, quantitative differences in the social embedding of linguistic change correlate with the rate of the change in the speech community.

Low socioeconomic status (SES) is linked to pubertal development, mental health issues, and academic performance. However, the role of early pubertal development in the link between low SES and mental health and academic outcomes is unclear. Using longitudinal data from the ABCD Study (9–10 years at baseline, N = 9,848, 52.2% males) across four time points, we examined associations between household and neighborhood disadvantage, pubertal development, and mental health and academic achievement. Greater household and neighborhood disadvantage were associated with more advanced pubertal status at baseline in both males and females. Among females, higher pubertal status at baseline mediated the association between lower household income and neighborhood disadvantage with greater mental health problems and poorer school performance. Additionally, slower pubertal tempo attenuated the relationship between neighborhood disadvantage and these outcomes in females. These findings underscore the importance of considering both household and neighborhood contexts in shaping adolescent development and highlight pubertal development as a potential pathway underlying socioeconomic disparities in mental health and academic achievement.

Friends and popular peers are important sources of influence across the transition into adolescence. The present study examines the assertion that the magnitude of influence from friends and popularity-based norms varies across behavioral domains. Participants were 543 (268 girls, 275 boys) students from 29 5th–8th grade (ages 10 to 14) classrooms in three Lithuanian public middle schools. Most were ethnic Lithuanians. Self-reports of socioemotional adjustment, including emotional problems, lack of emotional clarity, problem behaviors, social media use, and weight concerns, were collected in the fall and winter of a single academic year, approximately three months apart. Popularity and academic achievement were assessed through peer nominations. Top-ranked best friends were identified from outgoing nominations. Status-based norms, calculated separately for each socioemotional adjustment variable in the fall (Time 1), represented popularity-weighted classroom averages. Results from longitudinal Group Actor-Partner Interdependence Model analyses indicated that best friends and status-based norms exerted differing amounts of influence over different behaviors. When both were included in the same model (with shared effects removed), best friends influenced emotional problems, lack of emotional clarity, and problem behaviors. Among older adolescents, best friends also influenced academic achievement. Status-based norms influenced social media use and, among older adolescents, weight concerns.

In the decades since Nolen-Hoeksema’s (1991) original work on response styles, research on rumination has flourished within psychological science. This literature often emphasizes the association of impaired problem-solving with rumination. Spikes in the prevalence of rumination coincide with the entry into adolescence, as youth become increasingly sensitive to social feedback and interpersonal relationships. This article introduces the idea that rumination represents a socially reinforced process in adolescent girls, who are particularly likely to engage in rumination and to find interpersonal stress aversive. In the event that relationships evoke distress, girls may be able to generate solutions through ruminative coping; however, they are unwilling to accept and enact these solutions when these solutions have the potential to be further socially disruptive. Although ruminative inaction may have grave consequences for the moods of youth, it maintains an interpersonal harmony that some youth may prioritize and, in the process, avoids changing a social milieu, angering or displeasing others, or generating unwanted social controversy or conflict. This serves as reinforcement for ruminative coping, creating the risk that rumination will become an entrenched habit with the potential to further erode mood over time.

Parental reflective functioning – parents’ capacity to envision the mental states underlying their child’s behavior – plays an important role in parenting behavior, parental well-being, and children’s psychosocial outcomes. Most studies have examined parental reflective functioning in terms of relatively stable interindividual differences between parents. This is unfortunate because theoretical accounts suggest that this capacity is susceptible to intraindividual fluctuations. Parenting stress, in particular that associated with difficult child behavior, has been described as a factor that can put parental reflective functioning under pressure. Using a multilevel approach, this 7-day diary study investigated day-to-day fluctuations in parental reflective functioning and its associations with daily parenting stress and perceived internalizing and externalizing adolescent difficulties. Parents of community adolescents (N = 128) and adopted adolescents (N = 28) were sampled because adoptive parents face unique stressors that may challenge their reflective capacities. Results indicated that daily parenting stress was associated with more daily prementalizing (i.e., severely biased mentalizing), less daily certainty about mental states, and less interest and curiosity in the adolescent’s mental states. Whereas externalizing difficulties were similarly related to more daily prementalizing and less certainty about mental states, findings for internalizing difficulties were mixed. Most associations were consistent across biological and adoptive parents.

Alterations in hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis function may underlie the relation between childhood maltreatment and nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) behaviors. This study examined how co-occurring patterns of maltreatment types influenced adolescent NSSI behaviors and the mediating role of diurnal cortisol, using a longitudinal design. The sample included 295 Chinese adolescents (Mage = 10.79 years, SD = 0.84 years; 67.1% boys). The study employed latent profile analysis to identify childhood maltreatment patterns and conducted path analysis to examine the mediating mechanism. Four maltreatment patterns were identified: Low Maltreatment (67.8%), High Neglect (15.6%), Moderate Maltreatment (10.2%), and High Abuse with Moderate Neglect (6.4%). Furthermore, compared to the Low Maltreatment profile, adolescents in the High Neglect profile were at increased risk for later NSSI behaviors through higher waking cortisol levels, while those in the High Abuse with Moderate Neglect profile were at increased risk through a steeper diurnal slope. Disturbances in diurnal cortisol rhythm serve as a pathway through which childhood maltreatment “gets under the skin” to lead to adolescent NSSI behaviors. These findings offer promise for identifying maltreated youth at risk for NSSI behaviors and informing targeted prevention strategies.

A large body of evidence suggests that adolescent mental health has worsened in recent years, particularly amongst young women. We investigated three putative risk factors which are very prevalent in the modern-day life of adolescents: social media use, sexting, and body dissatisfaction We wanted to investigate how these potential risk factors influence adolescents’ mental health, and whether the effects differ between genders.

We used a population-based survey of predominantly students (mean age 15 years) conducted in secondary schools in Ireland (September–December 2021) in one urban area (North County Dublin) and two rural areas (Cavan, Monaghan) – The “Planet Youth North Dublin, Cavan and Monaghan study”. We examined three mental health outcomes (using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ)) and self-harm behaviours. We fitted linear mixed models to examine associations between risk factors and mental health outcomes in both genders separately, adjusting for confounders.

All three risk factors were associated with poorer mental health in both genders, with larger effects in females. High social media usage (>4 hrs/day) was associated with increased poor mental health risk. Body dissatisfaction was linked to self-harm and worse mental health, being more prevalent in females (60% vs 36%). Sending sexually explicit messages was associated with poor mental health and self-harm risk in both genders.

Our findings show that high digital use, body image disturbance and sexting behaviours in teenage life have a strong association with poor mental health and self-harm, with these factors being more prevalent in females.

Maternal affect contributes to children’s psychosocial adjustment. How maternal daily affect intensity and dynamics (i.e., inertia and variability) are associated with adolescents’ psychopathological symptoms, however, remains unclear. This preregistered study examined (1) associations of maternal day-to-day positive and negative affect intensity, inertia, and variability with psychopathological symptoms in adolescence and young adulthood, and (2) how mother–adolescent affect congruency moderates these associations. Mother–adolescent dyads (N = 488) reported positive and negative affect in 75 daily assessments across ages 13 – 17 years. Adolescents rated their psychopathological symptoms at ages 14 – 18, 20, and 27 years. Maternal affect intensity was associated with adolescent psychopathological symptoms, while maternal affect dynamics were inconsistently associated with symptoms in young adulthood. Mother–adolescent affect congruency only moderated the effects of positive affect intensity and variability, in that high-congruent adolescents reported lower internalizing symptoms at age 20 than low-congruent adolescents. No other interaction effects were found. While maternal affect intensity and dynamics seem to contribute to youth psychopathology, evidence for the role of mother–adolescent affect congruency remained limited.