Adolescence is often thought of as a period during which parent–child interactions can be relatively stressed and conflictual. There are individual differences in this regard, however, with only a modest percent of youth experiencing extremely conflictual relationships with their parents. Relatively little empirical research, however, addresses individual differences in the quality of parent–adolescent interactions concerning potentially conflictual issues. The research reported in this monograph examined dispositional and parenting predictors of the quality of parents’ and their adolescent children’s emotional displays and positive and negative verbalizations when dealing with conflictual issues. Of particular interest were patterns of continuity and discontinuity in the factors related to conflicts. A multimethod, multireporter (mother, teacher, and sometimes adolescent reports) longitudinal approach(over 4 years) was used to assess adolescents’ dispositional characteristics (control/regulation, resiliency, and negative emotionality), youths’ externalizing problems, and parenting variables (warmth, positive expressivity, discussion of emotion, positive and negative family expressivity). Parentadolescent conflicts appear to be influenced by both child characteristics and quality of prior and concurrent parenting, and child effects may be more evident than parent effects in this pattern of relations.

The research reported in this book examined dispositional parenting predictors of the quality of parents' and their adolescent children's emotional displays and positive and negative verbalizations when dealing with conflictual issues.

"[Rakison and Lupyan] present a domain-general framework called constrained attentional associative learning to provide a developmental account for how and when infants form concepts for animates and inanimates that encapsulate not only their surface appearance but also their movement characteristics. ... "--p. vii.

Adolescent disclosure to parents is a positive feature of parent-adolescent relationships. Although self-reported disclosure to parents typically declines across adolescence, little is known about age and gender differences in real-time adolescent disclosures, nor about the impact that maternal emotions can have on such disclosures. The present study examined the frequency, intensity, and duration of adolescent emotional and informational disclosures to mothers in real-time. Specifically, I (1) explored gender differences in adolescent disclosure, (2) explored age differences in adolescent disclosure, and 3) examined associations between maternal emotion behaviors, adolescent disclosures, and mother- and adolescent-reported satisfaction with a conflict discussion. Adolescents (N = 49, Mage = 14.84 years) and mothers participated in a 10-minute conflict discussion. Adolescent disclosures and maternal emotions were coded moment-to-moment. Results showed that older adolescents engaged in longer durations and more intense instances of informational disclosures compared to younger adolescents. Male adolescents engaged in longer instances of informational disclosure compared to female adolescents. Results also showed that maternal validation was positively associated with the duration of adolescent informational disclosure as well as the duration of instances where both forms of disclosure were displayed. In contrast, maternal negative emotion was negatively correlated with frequency and duration of informational disclosure. Lastly, adolescent discussion satisfaction was positively correlated with both the frequency and total duration of informational disclosure. Implications for applying observational methodologies to the adolescent disclosure literature will be discussed.

Parent-adolescent discord is often handled from a unitary perspective, whether the focus is on enhancing parenting skills, resolving conflicts in family relationships, or working to improve the behavior of the individual child. This important work shows the clinician how to incorporate all of these crucial elements into a single, research-based treatment program. Presented is the authors' influential integration of cognitive-behavioral constructs and family systems theory, grounded in consideration of adolescent developmental concerns. The book describes effective ways to conceptualize and assess the problems of embattled parents and teens; use assessment data in treatment planning; overcome resistance and other therapeutic hurdles; and implement carefully sequenced skills training, cognitive restructuring, and functional/structural interventions. The theoretical and empirical bases of the treatment approach are also discussed in depth.

Over the past several decades, the demographic populations of many countries such as Canada as well as the United States have greatly transformed. Most striking is the influx of recent immigrant families into North America. As children lead the way for a 'new' North America, this group of children and youth is not a singular homogenous group but rather, a mosaic and diverse ethnic, racial, and cultural group. Thus, our current understanding of 'normative development' (covering social, psychological, cognitive, language, academic, and behavioral development), which has been generally based on middle-class Euro-American children, may not necessarily be 'optimal' development for all children. Researchers are widely recognizing that the theoretical frameworks and models of child development lack the sociocultural and ethnic sensitivities to the ways in which developmental processes operate in an ecological context. As researchers progress and develop promising forms of methodological innovation to further our understanding of immigrant children, little effort has been placed to collectively organize a group of scholarly work in a coherent manner. Some researchers who examine ethnic minority children tended to have ethnocentric notions of normative development. Thus, some ethnic minority groups are understood within a 'deficit model' with a limited scope of topics of interest. Moreover, few researchers have specifically investigated the acculturation process for children and the implications for cultural socialization of children by ethnic group. This book represents a group of leading scholars' cutting-edge research which will not only move our understanding forward but also to open up new possibilities for research, providing innovative methodologies in examining this complex and dynamic group. Immigrant Children: Change, Adaptation, and Cultural Transformation will also take the research lead in guiding our current knowledge of how development is influenced by a variety of sociocultural factors, placing future research in a better position to probe inherent principles of child development. In sum, this book will provide readers with a richer and more comprehensive approach of how researchers, social service providers, and social policymakers can examine children and immigration.