Yang Qu’s research while affiliated with Northwestern University and other places

The quality of parental involvement in children's homework are vital parenting practices that influence children's academic and emotional functioning. Therefore, studies on the contributing factors of parents' homework involvement quality are warranted. Notably, environmental, parental, and child‐related factors may put parents under pressure that impairs parents' homework involvement quality. Yet, extant literature lacks an examination of this issue holistically, especially in non‐Western societies. The current research addressed this gap by investigating how Chinese mothers' perceived stress in life, child‐based worth, and children's general helplessness toward homework, which created pressures on mothers, uniquely contributed to mothers' daily homework involvement quality. Chinese mothers (N = 261, mean age = 40.90 years, SD = 2.65) of fourth graders reported on these pressures via survey and their daily constructive (i.e., positive emotions, autonomy support, and mastery‐oriented teaching) and unconstructive homework involvement (i.e., negative emotions, control, and performance‐oriented teaching) for 14 consecutive days after the completion of the survey. Results from multilevel modeling indicated that mothers' perceived stress negatively predicted their constructive involvement, while mothers' child‐based worth and children's helplessness toward homework positively predicted their unconstructive involvement over the daily diaries. The findings highlight the importance of understanding daily family processes holistically by considering environmental, parental, and child factors, and extending knowledge about the contributing factors of parents' homework involvement quality in real‐life settings. Practitioners and educators are encouraged to alleviate multiple pressures parents may experience to make parents' homework involvement constructive to child development.

Parental burnout is a chronic condition of experiencing exhaustion, inefficacy, and emotional distance in one's parental role. Given the detrimental influence of parental burnout on both parents and children, it is important to study the antecedents and consequences of parental burnout, particularly at the within‐family level. Using a three‐wave sample of 443 Chinese parents (70% mothers; mean age = 41.81 years, SD = 3.81 years) of middle school adolescents (50% girls; mean age = 13.35 years, SD = 0.36 years), the present study examined the transactional processes between parental burnout and parent–adolescent conflict. Random intercept cross‐lagged panel modeling allowed the present study to focus on within‐family effects by using random intercepts to account for between‐family effects. In this way, this study can rule out time‐invariant confounds by focusing on whether the ups and downs of parental burnout at a family level contribute to the changes in parent–adolescent conflict, and vice versa. At the within‐family level, parental burnout predicted greater parent–adolescent conflict over time, and parent–adolescent conflict also predicted greater parental burnout over time. Notably, multigroup comparisons showed that the link from parent–adolescent conflict to parental burnout was only significant among parents with lower but not higher educational attainment, and the link from parental burnout to parent–adolescent conflict was only evident among mothers but not fathers. Taken together, the findings suggest that parental burnout and parent–adolescent conflict positively shape and sustain one another over time, highlighting the necessity to adapt the designs of family conflict interventions in treating and preventing parental burnout.

Despite evidence that parental communication about COVID-19 can have short-term benefits such as adolescents’ increased health behaviors, less is known about the potential long-term associations between such communication and adolescent adjustment, as well as the family characteristics that facilitate such communication. Moreover, it is important to examine such processes beyond Western societies and broaden the understanding of parental communication in non-Western societies. To fill these gaps in the literature, a two-wave longitudinal study on Chinese families spanning 1 year during the pandemic (July 2020–July 2021) was conducted. Analyses revealed that the relation between parent–adolescent closeness and parental communication about COVID-19 was moderated by parental burnout. Higher parent–adolescent closeness was linked with more communication about COVID-19 only when parents experienced low, but not high, parental burnout. Moreover, the longitudinal associations between parental communication about COVID-19 and adolescent adjustment (i.e., depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and resilience) 1 year later were also moderated by parental burnout. More parental communication about COVID-19 was associated with lower levels of depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and higher levels of resilience 1 year later only when parents experienced low, but not high, parental burnout. Findings suggest future interventions to target family communication to promote adolescent well-being during challenging times, especially for families who experience higher levels of parental burnout.

The transition to adolescence is a critical period for mental health development. Socio-experiential environments play an important role in the emergence of depressive symptoms with some adolescents showing more sensitivity to social contexts than others. Drawing on recent developmental neuroscience advances, we examined whether hippocampal volume amplifies social context effects in the transition to adolescence. We analyzed 2-y longitudinal data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD ® ) study in a diverse sample of 11,832 youth (mean age: 9.914 y; range: 8.917 to 11.083 y; 47.8% girls) from 21 sites across the United States. Socio-experiential environments (i.e., family conflict, primary caregiver’s depressive symptoms, parental warmth, peer victimization, and prosocial school environment), hippocampal volume, and a wide range of demographic characteristics were measured at baseline. Youth’s symptoms of major depressive disorder were assessed at both baseline and 2 y later. Multilevel mixed-effects linear regression analyses showed that negative social environments (i.e., family conflict, primary caregiver’s depressive symptoms, and peer victimization) and the absence of positive social environments (i.e., parental warmth and prosocial school environment) predicted greater increases in youth’s depressive symptoms over 2 y. Importantly, left hippocampal volume amplified social context effects such that youth with larger left hippocampal volume experienced greater increases in depressive symptoms in more negative and less positive social environments. Consistent with brain–environment interaction models of mental health, these findings underscore the importance of families, peers, and schools in the development of depression during the transition to adolescence and show how neural structure amplifies social context sensitivity.

Culture provides unique resources to support youth in navigating developmental changes during adolescence. This article starts with an introduction of the conceptualization of culture and reviews adolescents' adjustment from different cultures, including academic adjustment, psychological health, and externalizing problems. We further discuss the role of culturally guided social contexts, including family, peers, and schools, in adolescents' development. Future directions regarding the role of culture in positive youth development, adolescents' brain development, social media use and impact, and multiple understudied realms of social contexts including sibling relationships are discussed. Lastly, we offer recommendations about the use of new technology in culture and adolescent research.

In past decades, the positive role of self‐control in students' academic success has attracted plenty of scholarly attention. However, fewer studies have examined the link between adolescents' neural development of the inhibitory control system and their academic achievement, especially using a longitudinal approach. Moreover, less is known about the role of parents in this link. Using large‐scale longitudinal data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study (N = 9574; mean age = 9.94 years at baseline, SD = .63; 50% girls), the current study took an integrative biopsychosocial approach to explore the longitudinal link between early adolescents' fronto‐striatal connectivity and their academic achievement, with attention to the moderating role of parental warmth. Results showed that weaker intrinsic connectivity between the frontoparietal network and the striatum was associated with early adolescents' worse academic achievement over 2 years during early adolescence. Notably, parental warmth moderated the association between fronto‐striatal connectivity and academic achievement, such that weaker fronto‐striatal connectivity was only predictive of worse academic achievement among early adolescents who experienced low levels of parental warmth. Taken together, the findings demonstrate weaker fronto‐striatal connectivity as a risk factor for early adolescents' academic development and highlight parental warmth as a protective factor for academic development among those with weaker connectivity within the inhibitory control system.

Parents' familism values predict a variety of Latinx American youth's academic adjustment. However, it is unclear how cultural values such as familism interact with youth's brain development, which is sensitive to sociocultural input, to shape their academic adjustment. Using a sample of 1916 Latinx American youth (mean age = 9.90 years, SD = .63 years; 50% girls) and their primary caregivers (mean age = 38.43 years, SD = 6.81 years; 90% mothers) from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, this study examined the longitudinal relation between parents' familism values and youth's school disengagement, as well as the moderating role of youth's neural sensitivity to personal reward. Parents' familism values predicted youth's decreased school disengagement 1 year later, adjusting for their baseline school disengagement and demographic covariates. Notably, this association was more salient among youth who showed lower (vs. higher) neural activation in the ventral striatum and the lateral OFC during the anticipation of a personal reward. These findings underscore the protective role of familism for Latinx American youth, highlighting the necessity of developing culturally informed interventions that take into consideration a youth's brain development.

Research on social determinants of health has highlighted the influence of neighborhood characteristics (e.g., neighborhood safety) on adolescents’ health. However, it is less clear how changes in neighborhood environments play a role in adolescent development, and who are more sensitive to such changes. Utilizing the first three waves of data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) project (N = 7932, M (SD) age = 9.93 (.63) years at T1; 51% boys), the present study found that increases in neighborhood safety were associated with decreased adolescent externalizing symptoms, internalizing symptoms, but not sleep disturbance over time, controlling for baseline neighborhood safety. Further, adolescents’ insula and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) reactivity to positive emotional stimuli moderated the association between changes in neighborhood safety and adolescent adjustment. Among youth who showed higher, but not lower, insula and ACC reactivity to positive emotion, increases in neighborhood safety were linked with better adjustment. The current study contributes to the differential susceptibility literature by identifying affective neural sensitivity as a marker of youth’s susceptibility to changes in neighborhood environment. The findings highlight the importance of neighborhood safety for youth during the transition to adolescence, particularly for those with heightened affective neural sensitivity.

Past research suggests that parents’ familism values play a positive role in Latinx American youth’s prosocial tendencies. However, little is known about how individual differences in youth’s neural development may contribute to this developmental process. Therefore, using two-wave longitudinal data of 1916 early adolescents (mean age = 9.90 years; 50% girls) and their parents (mean age = 38.43 years; 90% mothers) from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study, this pre-registered study took a biopsychosocial approach to examine the moderating role of youth’s neural reward sensitivity in the link between parents’ familism values and youth’s prosocial behaviors. Results showed that parents’ familism values were associated with increased prosocial behaviors among youth two years later, controlling for baseline prosocial behaviors and demographic covariates. Notably, parents’ familism values played a larger role in promoting youth’s prosocial behaviors among youth who showed lower ventral striatum activation during reward anticipation. Moreover, such association between parents’ familism values and youth’s later prosocial behaviors was stronger among youth who showed lower levels of prosocial behaviors initially. Taken together, the findings highlight individual differences in neurobiological development and baseline prosocial behaviors as markers of sensitivity to cultural environments with regard to Latinx American youth’s prosocial development.