This preregistered, longitudinal study examined how much adolescents value and integrate their parents' and peers' attitudes into their own attitudes from early to middle adolescence. Across three waves, participants (N = 172, 91 female, 11-16 years across three waves; 439 data points) decided whether to pay money to learn their parents' or peers'…

This tribute to Albert Bandura shows how his lifetime of work on Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) has contributed to a greater understanding of school bullying. Managing children and adolescents' problematic behavior is a major challenge for schools with reducing bullying a priority. Here, the principles of SCT relevant to school bullying are…

Using alcohol, cigarettes, and marijuana during adolescence is associated with risks, yet there is no single cause for adolescent substance use. The etiology of substance use develops over time, across multiple levels of influence. Informed by developmental perspectives, in this review, we provide an overview of biological (e.g., genetic,…

The aim of the current study was to investigate the relationship between adolescents' social support, their internalising and externalising behaviour problems, and their alcohol consumption. Adolescents attending Grade 7-10 (N = 329), answered questionnaires regarding their perceived social support (from parents, teachers, classmates, and…

Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is a significant public health concern, with severely impacts for adolescent mental health. As awareness of the harmful effects of NSSI grows, there is an increasing emphasis on understanding the underlying mechanisms in this age group. This study explores how internalizing and externalizing issues related to…

Studies have identified concurrent, longitudinal, and bidirectional associations between language difficulties and internalizing problems. This is commonly explained by social exclusion or withdrawal from peers, but underlying mechanisms are not well understood. This study uses sibling data to investigate if the comorbidity between language…

Objective: The secondhand effects of alcohol use (SEA) are adverse consequences caused by another's drinking. This study explored the relationship among the experience of SEAs, alcohol use, and alcohol related consequences (ARC). In addition, we examined whether coping (i.e., adaptive, maladaptive, substance use coping, maladaptive coping without…

This study examined how peer norms condition the effect of romantic involvement on adolescents' externalizing and internalizing problem behaviors. We hypothesized that, as a result of social control and social learning, adolescents who start a romantic relationship report more problem behavior when romantic involvement was not normative behavior…

Although research has demonstrated that both parents and peers influence adolescent development, it is not clear whether these relationships also serve as contexts for emotion socialization. In the current longitudinal study, we investigated whether maternal and peer emotion socialization were related to adolescent girls' daily emotions, emotion…

The current study explored early adolescent child-level predictors (physical aggression, impulsivity, empathy) and contextual-level predictors (peer deviance, neighborhood dangerousness) of violent and nonviolent antisocial behavior (AB) in late adolescence. Additionally, we tested the moderating role of rejecting parenting on these associations…

We study the peer effects of grade retention in the context of Indiana's statewide third-grade retention policy. When a retention occurs, it changes the peer group for two cohorts: rising fourth graders who lose a peer and rising third graders who gain a peer. We identify peer effects in both cohorts by leveraging plausibly exogenous variation in…

Despite research on peer dynamics in mainstream classrooms and in mental health interventions, investigations of peer dynamics in self-contained classrooms for students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) are limited. This study examined the influence of classroom behavior norms on individual behavior in a school for students with…

Adolescence is a very complex period. Various teen problems haunt when they grow up to become adults. The same teenagers successfully face the challenges of their development so that they are free from a variety of risky behaviors. However, some of them also smoke, consume alcohol, have free sex, commit violence, and use drugs. This research is a…

Researchers have identified effective instructional strategies for teaching peer imitation, including embedded classroom-based interventions. However, there is a dearth of strategies that have been effective for teaching generalization of imitation skills to novel contexts. Building on previous research, we examined the use of progressive time…

Starting from observed gender differences in educational effort and because research considers motivation to be a personal student feature, this study had two aims. First, it examined whether autonomous and controlled motivation are shared by students within a school and whether such a motivation culture is associated with the school's student…