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Introduction
Skills and Expertise
Publications
Publications (50)
Although it is assumed that loneliness in one relationship might put one at risk of experiencing loneliness in another relationship, this association has rarely been examined as such. In this longitudinal study, we examined the associations between peer- and parent-related loneliness in a sample of 3391 adolescents across three waves (Mage Wave 1 =...
To limit the spreading of the SARS-CoV-2-virus, governments worldwide have introduced behavioral measures that require considerable effort from their citizens to adhere to. Grounded in Self-Determination Theory, the present research sought to examine in a study among Belgian citizens the cross-sectional (total N=45975, Mage=50.42), week-to-week (su...
Youth with type 1 diabetes (T1D) must adhere to a complex treatment regimen to prevent health complications. Friends may provide diabetes-specific support to help youth manage diabetes, but evidence on whether youth benefit from diabetes-specific friend support is inconclusive. The present study first investigated whether satisfaction with friend s...
Background:
Repetitive Negative Thinking (RNT) is a well-established predictor in adolescents of emotional problems, such as depression. Surprisingly little research, however, has looked at the relative importance of RNT vs. more interpersonally relevant variables in the context of depression, such as loneliness and lack of social connectedness....
Background
Despite clear evidence that peers are crucial for youth development, research on the role of peers for youth with Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is scarce.
Purpose
The present study identified trajectory classes of perceived peer functioning in youth with T1D, based on peer support and extreme peer orientation (EPO). Further, classes were compar...
Youth with type 1 diabetes are confronted with the challenging task of integrating diabetes into their identity. This integration process, referred to as illness identity, may play an important role in how youth with type 1 diabetes cope with normative and illness-specific challenges. In line with socio-ecological theorizing, the present study inve...
Different theoretical contentions on gender differences in loneliness exist, often including the emergence of gender differences in particular developmental periods. To explain those ideas, the current meta‐analysis synthesizes the available evidence on gender differences in loneliness across the lifespan. Three‐level meta‐analyses were conducted w...
Social relationships are of vital importance for children’s and adolescents’ development, and disruptions in these relationships can have serious implications. Such disruptions play a central role in both loneliness and social anxiety. Although both phenomena are closely related, they have largely been studied separately, and important questions ha...
Many longitudinal studies have investigated whether self‐esteem predicts depressive symptoms (vulnerability model) or the other way around (scar model) in adolescents. The most common method of analysis has been the cross‐lagged panel model (CLPM). The CLPM does not separate between‐person effects from within‐person effects, making it unclear wheth...
Co-rumination has been shown advantageous for friendship quality, but disadvantageous for mental health. Recently, two components have been distinguished, with co-brooding predicting increases in depressive symptoms and co-reflection decreases. The current study aimed to replicate these findings and investigated whether both components also show di...
Adolescents are particularly vulnerable to experiencing feelings of loneliness. Changes in different social contexts and the inability to cope with these changes can result in different types of loneliness. According to the multidimensional view on loneliness, loneliness can be experienced in relationships with peers and parents and can be placed i...
In adolescence, when establishing and maintaining satisfying social relationships is a key developmental task, chronic loneliness is related to a host of negative outcomes. This study aimed at examining motivational and regulatory factors related to chronic loneliness. Specifically, this study investigated chronically lonely adolescents' responses...
Table S1. Variance–Covariance Matrices Study 1–3
Table S2. Measurement Invariance Models Study 1–3
Table S3. Measurement Invariance Within Measurement Waves Study 2
Table S4. Standardized RI‐CLPM Estimates Complete Case Analyses Study 1–3
Table S5. Standardized CLPM estimates Complete Case Analyses Study 1–3
Table S6. Model Fit Comparisons of RI‐CL...
Open Practices Disclosure
In the present multi-informant study, we examined dyadic combinations of adolescent and maternal conflict management styles through stepwise latent class analysis. We investigated how these dyadic conflict classes related to adolescents' and mothers' perceptions of individual and relational functioning (depressive symptoms, self-esteem, conflict fr...
Theory and research suggest that adolescents differ in their appraisals and coping reactions in response to parental regulation. Less is known, however, about factors that determine these differences in adolescents’ responses. In this study, we examined whether adolescents' appraisals and coping reactions depend upon parents’ situation-specific aut...
Research on peer-related loneliness in adolescence has paid insufficient attention to the distinction between intimate loneliness (i.e., in a dyadic relationship with a friend) and relational loneliness (i.e., in the broader peer group). This study examined the correlations among a broad set of loneliness scales. A sample of adolescents from Belgiu...
Across adolescence, an increase has been found in the prevalence of loneliness (Qualter et al., 2015) and social anxiety (Nelemans et al., 2014). Both phenomena detrimentally affect youth well-being and are related to one another. A positive cross-sectional association between the two has been found, but estimates vary considerably (ranging from .1...
Because loneliness is a subjective experience, it is often examined using self-reports. Yet, researchers have started to use other-reports to examine loneliness. As previous research suggests that discrepancies between self- and other views might have important implications for adolescents' mental health, the current study examines discrepancies in...
In adolescence, feeling lonely and dealing with time spent alone become particularly salient. The present study examined the co-occurrence of parent- and peer-related loneliness, and positive and negative attitudes toward aloneness, using cluster analysis. In three independent samples, covering about 1,800 adolescents (61% female), six meaningful g...
Loneliness is a universal phenomenon that can be experienced throughout life (Qualter et al., 2015). It is defined as the unpleasant feeling that occurs when people perceive their network of social relationships to be deficient in a quantitative or qualitative way (Perlman & Peplau, 1981). Throughout the lifespan, sources of loneliness differ and m...
The experience of solitude changes across development (Larson, 1990). Whereas solitude is usually not a constructive experience in childhood, it becomes more meaningful – but also more lonely – during adolescence. Especially in Western cultures, the tension between social connection and individuation peaks during adolescence (Larson et al., 1996)....
Contradicting evidence exists regarding the link between loneliness and sensitivity to facial cues of emotion, as loneliness has been related to better but also to worse performance on facial emotion recognition tasks. This study aims to contribute to this debate and extends previous work by (a) focusing on both accuracy and sensitivity to detectin...
The present study examined the factor structure and construct validity of the Children’s Loneliness Scale (CLS), a popular measure of childhood loneliness, in Belgian children. Analyses were conducted on two samples of fifth and sixth graders in Belgium, for a total of 1,069 children. A single-factor structure proved superior to alternative solutio...
The goal of this study was to identify mechanisms associated with chronic loneliness by examining the effect of adolescents' accumulated history of loneliness on responses to new social situations. Specifically, this study investigated whether attributions and emotions in situations of social inclusion and exclusion differ between chronically lonel...
Most people have experienced loneliness and have been able to overcome it to reconnect with other people. In the current review, we provide a life-span perspective on one component of the evolutionary theory of loneliness-a component we refer to as the reaffiliation motive (RAM). The RAM represents the motivation to reconnect with others that is tr...
The Experiences in Close Relationships Scale – Revised Child version (ECR-RC; Brenning, Soenens, Braet, & Bosmans, 2011a) is a valuable tool for measuring anxious and avoidant attachment to parents in middle childhood and adolescence. However, given its substantial length, the present study aimed to develop an abridged ECR-RC. Four separate samples...
This study introduces the construct of sociotropic differentiation – the figurative array of people whose acceptance and rejection matter to a person – and examines whether differences in sociotropic differentiation predict social and emotional well-being during the transition to college. A total of 104 freshmen (40% men) participated in a two-wave...
Benefits and disadvantages of solitude for adolescents are often highlighted. However, research focusing on adolescents’ attitudes towards solitude and their associations with such disadvantages or benefits is rather limited. The present study provides a personcentred perspective on the co-occurrence of two attitudes towards solitude (i.e., aversio...
Several studies have linked rumination to substance use. However, only one study thus far has focused on the differential associations between the subtypes of rumination (brooding and reflection) and substance use. This previous study was cross-sectional in nature, so less is known about how these variables are related across time. To address this...
The present study builds on the child-by-environment model and examines the joint contribution of intra-individual characteristics (i.e., self-esteem and shyness) and peer experiences (i.e., social acceptance, victimization, friendship quantity, and friendship quality) in the association with loneliness. A total of 884 adolescents (Mage= 15.80; 68...
The internal consistency and construct validity of the RULS-8, a brief measure of loneliness for use with adolescents, was examined in three samples of Dutch-speaking adolescents in Belgium (for a total of N = 6,236). The measure showed high levels of internal consistency (ranging between .80 and .82), strong convergence with the original 20-item i...
Within a dual-level model of personality, loneliness, and attitudes toward aloneness can be regarded as phase-specific adaptations that are influenced by personality traits. Therefore, we examined the associations between personality traits (i.e., the Big Five, sociotropy, and autonomy), loneliness, and attitudes toward aloneness in two samples of...
Purpose:
Acquiring close peer relationships is an important developmental task in adolescence. This task may be particularly demanding for adolescents with congenital heart disease (CHD), who face disease-specific challenges putting them at risk for social isolation and loneliness. This study compared cross-sectional levels of loneliness in adoles...
Low self-esteem has been shown to relate to concurrent and later feelings of loneliness in adolescence. However, it remains unclear why low self-esteem puts adolescents at risk for experiencing loneliness. Further, longitudinal research on the direction of effects between loneliness and self-esteem is virtually non-existent. The present study aims...
The present study employed latent growth mixture modeling to discern distinct trajectories of loneliness using data collected at 2-year intervals from age 7-17 years (N = 586) and examine whether measures taken at age 5 years were good predictors of group membership. Four loneliness trajectory classes were identified: (1) low stable (37% of the sam...
Caring for adolescents with congenital heart disease requires attention to physical health but also to psychosocial functioning. Identifying how such psychosocial variables influence one another over time is important for designing health care strategies. The present study examined how depressive symptoms, loneliness, paternal and maternal support,...
Loneliness and depressive symptoms are closely related constructs. However, mixed evidence exists on their prospective associations and only very few studies to date focused on intervening mechanisms. The present manuscript examined the direction of effects between loneliness and depressive symptoms in two longitudinal studies sampling college stud...
Although loneliness is a common problem across late adolescence, its developmental course has not been investigated in depth in this period of life. The present study aims to fill this gap by means of a five-wave cohort-sequential longitudinal study spanning ages 15 to 20 (N = 389). Both variable-centered (i.e., latent growth curve modeling) and pe...
Coping strategies and identity processes are hypothesized to influence one another over time. This three-wave longitudinal study (N = 458; 84.9% women) examined, for the first time, how and to what extent identity processes (i.e., commitment making, identification with commitment, exploration in breadth, exploration in depth, and ruminative explora...
Identity formation and the perceived quality of one's peer relationships are theorized to be intimately linked in emerging adulthood. The present study examined the associations between identity styles (i.e., information-oriented, normative, and diffuse-avoidant styles) and the quality of relationships with peers (as indexed by friendship quality a...
Although feelings of loneliness often are accompanied by depressive symptoms, little is known about underlying mechanisms in this association. The present study sampled 370 college freshmen and investigated whether rumination (and its components of Uncontrollability, Causal Analysis, and Understanding) functioned as a mediator or moderator in the r...
Based on current theories of depression, reciprocal links between loneliness and depressive symptoms are expected to occur. However, longitudinal studies on adolescent samples are scarce and have yielded conflicting results. The present five-wave longitudinal study from mid- to late adolescence (N=428, M age at T1=15.22 years; 47% female) examined...
Adolescent identity and parent-adolescent conflict have each attracted considerable research interest. However, few studies have examined the important link between the two constructs. The present study examined the associations between adolescent identity processing styles and adolescent conflict resolution styles in the mother-adolescent dyad. Qu...
The present study set out to develop a typology of illness coping (as assessed through tackling spirit, illness integration, passive resignation, and avoidance coping) in a sample of 194 emerging adults (18-30 years) with Type 1 diabetes. Four groups, each with their own unique profile scores on illness coping, were identified through cluster analy...
a b s t r a c t The present study tested a four-factor model of adolescent loneliness and solitude that comprises peer-related loneliness, family loneliness, negative attitude toward solitude, and positive attitude toward sol-itude. Nine different instruments for a total of 14 scales and derivative subscales were completed by a sample of mid-adoles...
