Margot Peeters

Utrecht University | UU · Youth Studies

Previous research has identified working memory (WM) as a possible risk factor for problem drinking in adolescence. At the same time, results suggest that WM functioning is negatively influenced by the use of alcohol. To get a better understanding of the nature of this relationship, the present study examined the prospective bidirectional associati...

Few studies have explored the contribution of family and school factors to the association between ADHD symptoms and lower education. Possibly, having more ADHD symptoms contributes to poorer family functioning and less social support, and consequently a lower educational level (i.e., mediation). Moreover, the negative effects of ADHD symptoms on e...

Higher family affluence is associated with healthier behaviours in adolescents, but the strength of this association varies across countries. Differences in social mobility at the country-level, i.e. the extent to which adolescents develop a different socioeconomic status (SES) than their parents, may partially explain why the association between f...

Both social causation and health-related selection may influence educational gradients in alcohol use in adolescence and young adulthood. The social causation theory implies that the social environment (e.g. at school) influences adolescents’ drinking behaviour. Conversely, the health-related selection hypothesis posits that alcohol use (along othe...

Social causation and health-related selection may contribute to educational differences in adolescents’ attention problems and externalizing behaviour. The social causation hypothesis posits that the social environment influences adolescents’ mental health. Conversely, the health-related selection hypothesis proposes that poor mental health predict...

Background Social causation as well as health-related selection may contribute to educational gradients in adolescents' attention problems (AP) and externalizing behaviour (EB). From past studies it is unclear which of these mechanisms predominates, as AP and EB have the potential to disrupt adolescents' educational careers, but may also be affecte...

Explanations about differences in drinking and smoking rates between educational tracks have so far mainly focused on factors outside the classroom. The extent to which these behaviors are rewarded with popularity within a classroom—so called popularity norms—and their interaction with individual characteristics could explain the observed differenc...

Background Social causation and health-related selection may contribute to educational gradients in adolescents’ attention problems (AP) and externalizing behaviour (EB). From past studies it is unclear which of these mechanisms predominates, as AP and EB have the potential to interfere with educational performance, but may also be affected by diff...

The trend toward large-scale collaborative studies gives rise to the challenge of combining data from different sources efficiently. Here, we demonstrate how Bayesian evidence synthesis can be used to quantify and compare support for competing hypotheses and to aggregate this support over studies. We applied this method to study the ordering of mul...

Background Both social causation and health-related selection may influence educational gradients in alcohol use in adolescence. From past studies it is unclear which of these mechanisms predominates, as drinking may be both a cause and consequence of low educational attainment. Furthermore, gradients in alcohol use may reflect 'third variables' al...

This study aimed at assessing developmental trajectories of risk behaviors from adolescence into young adulthood and their associations with outcomes in young adulthood (i.e. education, employment). Data of the TRacking Adolescents’ Individual Lives Survey (TRAILS) including 2,149 participants (mean age = 13.6, SD = 0.5, 51% girls) were used to exa...

Background and aims: For most youngsters, gaming is a fun and innocent leisure activity. However, some adolescents are prone to develop problematic gaming behavior. It is therefore important to have a comprehensive understanding of psychosocial and game-related characteristics that differentiate highly engaged gamers from problematic gamers. To th...

Longitudinal developmental research is often focused on patterns of change or growth across different (sub)groups of individuals. Particular to some research contexts, developmental inquiries may involve one or more (sub)groups that are small in nature and therefore difficult to properly capture through statistical analysis. The current study explo...

Introduction: This two-wave prospective study investigated the bidirectional relation between Internet-specific parenting (reactive restrictions, Internet-specific rules, and frequency and quality of communication about Internet) and adolescents' symptoms of social media disorder (SMD) and Internet gaming disorder (IGD). In addition, we investigat...

Background: Working memory capacity has been found to be impaired in adolescents with various psychological problems, such as addictive behaviors. Training of working memory capacity can lead to significant behavioral improvements, but it is usually long and tedious, taxing participants' motivation to train. Objective: This study aimed to evalua...

This article demonstrates the usefulness of Bayesian estimation with small samples. In Bayesian estimation, prior information can be included, which increases the precision of the posterior distribution. The posterior distribution reflects likely parameter values given the current state of knowledge. An issue that has received little attention, how...

Background and Aims Problematic gaming behavior in adolescence is becoming a bigger societal problem. An increasing number of adolescents have difficulties in controlling their game play and are at risk for the development of Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) symptoms already at a young age. Design In this longitudinal study, 354 adolescents (mean ag...

Objective: Risk taking, such as heavy alcohol use, is commonplace among adolescents. Nevertheless, prolonged alcohol use at this age can lead to severe health problems. The goal of this study was to develop and evaluate a serious game training ("The Fling"), aimed at increasing behavioral control in adolescents and thereby helping them to improve...

BACKGROUND Working memory capacity has been found to be impaired in adolescents with various psychological problems, such as addictive behaviors. Training of working memory capacity can lead to significant behavioral improvements, but it is usually long and tedious, taxing participants’ motivation to train. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to evaluate w...

De adolescentie kenmerkt zich veelal door een toename van risicogedrag, zoals het experimenteren met grote hoeveelheden alcohol. Hoewel dit soort gedrag niet per se tot problemen hoeft te leiden, kan overmatig drankgebruik op deze leeftijd wel gezondheidsproblemen of schooluitval veroorzaken en vergroot het de kans op verslaving op latere leeftijd....

Neurodevelopmental theories of risk behavior hypothesize that low behavioral control in combination with high reward sensitivity explains adolescents’ risk behavior. However, empirical studies examining this hypothesis while including actual risk taking behavior in adolescence are lacking. In this study we tested whether the imbalance between behav...

Behavioral control weaknesses are a strong predictor of problematic behaviors in adolescents, such as heavy alcohol use. Heavy alcohol use at this young age can lead to health and school-related problems and is a severe societal problem. Strengthening of cognitive control mechanisms through computerized training has been shown to have positive effe...

Objective: Recent studies suggest that the predictive effect of implicit alcohol associations is context dependent. Findings indicate that implicit associations are more easily retrieved in an alcohol-associated setting or context (e.g., bar) compared with a neutral setting. In line with this reasoning, we hypothesized that alcohol availability at...

In this experimental study, it was examined to what extent peers and sex were important predictors of risk taking behavior of adolescents. Participants were 140 Dutch adolescents (52.9% boys, 12-15 years) who completed the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) as a measure of risk taking behavior, either individually or in the presence of homogenous or...

Cognitive training has been studied in the context of many psychological disorders, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), anxiety, depression, and addiction. While several studies have found clinically relevant training effects, both in preclinical (experimental) and in clinical settings, cognitive training is often experienced...

Background: We investigated the joint development between implicit approach bias and early adolescent alcohol use, and examined whether the link between approach bias and alcohol use was moderated by working memory (WM). Methods: The current study used data from a 2-year, 4-wave online sample of 378 Dutch early adolescents (mean age 14.9 years,...

Many researchers face the problem of missing data in longitudinal research. Especially, high risk samples are characterized by missing data which can complicate analyses and the interpretation of results. In the current study, our aim was to find the most optimal and best method to deal with the missing data in a specific study with many missing da...

Recently, it has been suggested that impairments in executive functioning might be risk factors for the onset of alcohol use rather than a result of heavy alcohol use. In the present study, we examined whether two aspects of executive functioning, working memory and response inhibition, predicted the first alcoholic drink and first binge drinking e...

Introduction: To prospectively predict the onset of use of alcohol, cigarettes and marijuana among Dutch adolescents, using behavioral and self-report measures of impulsivity-related facets. Specifically, we investigated whether behavioral measures of impulsivity predicted the onset of substance use above and beyond self-report measures of impulsiv...

Contains paragraph describing reward structure, and tables of regression results when baseline users are included.

Objective: Early onset of alcohol use and persistent use of alcohol during adolescence have been associated with later problem behavior, such as heavy drinking and the use of other substances. Several personality characteristics have been related to the onset and persistent use of alcohol during adolescence. In the present study, we examined the r...

Aims: To examine the impact of an important context variable (alcohol-specific parental rules) and an important person variable (risky personality traits) and their interaction on prospective adolescent drinking. Methods: Participants were 252 adolescents, 67.9% female, between 13 and 16 years old. Data were collected via online assessments during...

Adolescence is a developmental period characterized by increased risk-taking behavior, including the initiation of alcohol and other substance use. In this brief review paper we describe psychological and cognitive constructs that are associated with heavy drinking during adolescence. These associations raise the question of causality: is alcohol s...

Appendix S1 Methods.

We investigated reciprocal prospective relationships between multiple behavioural impulsivity tasks (assessing delay discounting, risk-taking, and disinhibition) and alcohol involvement (consumption, drunkenness, and problems) among adolescents. We hypothesised that performance on the tasks would predict subsequent alcohol involvement, and that alc...

This study examined the bi-directional prospective link between automatic alcohol-approach tendencies and alcohol use in a group of young adolescents (mean age = 13.6 years). The adolescents in the present study were assumed to be at-risk of early alcohol use and later problem drinking. It was hypothesized that alcohol use and automatic approach te...

Aims. Adolescence is a developmental period characterized by increased risk-taking behavior, including the initiation of alcohol and other substance use. In this brief review paper we describe psychological and cognitive constructs that are associated with heavy drinking during adolescence. These associations raise the question of causality: is alc...

This study examined the association between automatic processes and drinking behavior in relation to individual differences in response inhibition in young adolescents who had just started drinking. It was hypothesized that strong automatic behavioral tendencies toward alcohol-related stimuli (alcohol-approach bias) were associated with higher leve...

This study examined the heterogeneity of bullying among adolescents. It was hypothesized that bullying behavior serves different social functions and, depending on these functions, bullies will differ in their skills, status and social behavior. In a total sample of 806 8th graders, 120 adolescents (52 boys, 68 girls) were identified as bullies bas...