This qualitative study examines the intergenerational transmission of trauma by exploring how adult children perceive and make sense of their experiences. Drawing on in-depth, open-ended interviews with 15 participants, the study investigates participants’ understanding of how trauma is transmitted within families, its psychological and relational impacts, and the coping strategies employed. Thematic analysis identified key mechanisms through which trauma was transmitted, including patterns of harsh parenting, socioeconomic adversity, and unresolved parental trauma. These inherited patterns significantly shaped participants’ mental health, self-concept, and interpersonal relationships, commonly manifesting as anxiety, low self-worth, and difficulties with intimacy. Coping strategies varied, ranging from resilience-building and seeking social support to boundary-setting and emotional disengagement. The findings underscore the enduring influence of familial trauma and highlight the importance of trauma-informed interventions that address both individual and relational dimensions of healing.

This research investigates how screen time moderates the association between social avoidance and social adjustment in young Chinese children. The participants were N = 211 children (112 boys, 99 girls) ages 43–66 months (M age = 58.84 months, SD = 5.30) recruited from eight classrooms in two public kindergartens in Shanghai, China. Maternal reports were obtained for measures of social avoidance and screen time, whereas teachers provided ratings of children’s social adjustment. Results showed that social avoidance was positively correlated with internalizing problems, asocial behaviors, peer exclusion, and hyperactivity distraction, and negatively correlated with prosocial behaviors. There was a significant interaction between social avoidance and screen time. Specifically, the association between social avoidance and social adjustment problems strengthened as screen time increased in young Chinese children, with screen time moderating the associations of social avoidance with internalizing problems and with peer exclusion. This finding confirms that excessive screen time may exacerbate the tendency of social avoidance, thus negatively impacting children’s social adjustment.

Research identifies parental maladaptive behaviors, such as psychological control and harsh punishment, as key risks for adolescent involvement with deviant peer groups. However, bidirectional dynamics between these specific parenting practices and deviant peer affiliation at the within-person level remain underexplored, particularly regarding sex differences. Our study addresses this gap using a four-wave longitudinal design with 4,731 Chinese adolescents (44.9% girls; Mean age = 10.91, SD = 0.72), assessed biannually. The random intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM) was applied to disentangle between- and within-person effects. The RI-CLPM results revealed that increases in parental psychological control or harsh punishment were positively associated with subsequent increases in deviant peer affiliation. Conversely, changes in peer affiliation were not associated with later variations in maladaptive parenting. Notably, boys demonstrated greater susceptibility to the influence of harsh punishment on deviant peer involvement compared to girls. These findings underscore the critical need to differentiate within-person processes from between-person differences in this domain and advocate for sex-specific intervention strategies to enhance effectiveness and improve developmental trajectories for both sexes.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness and sustainability of the Social Skills-Based Early Intervention Program designed for socially introverted preschool children. The study group consisted of a total of 20 children, including 10 in the experimental group and 10 in the control group, all aged between 36 and 72 months and attending a preschool institution. The children in the experimental group participated in the Social Skills-Based Early Intervention Program for eight weeks, three days a week, one hour each day. When examining the post-test scores of the children in both the experimental and control groups, it was found that the difference in anxiety-introversion scores was significantly in favor of the experimental group. Following the Social Skills-Based Early Intervention Program, changes were observed in the play behaviors of children in the experimental group; instead of playing alone, they began participating in group games with their peers. It was noted that the children used their social communication skills during play, exhibiting behaviors such as joining a game, initiating a game, and inviting others to play. The results of this study are believed to provide a stepping stone for more comprehensive research into early intervention programs targeting the social skills of socially introverted preschool children especially those who are excessively shy, anxious, or exhibit behavioral inhibition.

In recent years, research has increasingly explored the role of sadness in children’s emotional and social functioning, providing original evidence of the adaptive function sadness plays in socioemotional development. However, contemporary Western society has largely overlooked the value of sadness, often pathologizing it or promoting its suppression in favor of constant happiness. This study examines the associations among state sadness (defined as an emotion contingent on specific events), sympathy, and prosocial behavior in middle childhood. A total of 505 children aged 7–10 years old reported the intensity of sadness experienced during a significant personal event and while recalling peers’ sad experiences. Children also completed measures of sympathy and prosocial behavior. Using Structural Equation Modeling with Latent Variables, results showed that both personal and peer-related state sadness were positively associated with sympathy, which in turn was strongly related to prosocial behavior. No direct links emerged between sadness and prosociality, suggesting the central mediating role of sympathy in this relationship. These findings highlight how sadness, contingent on meaningful experiences, may reflect emotional sensitivity and be connected to morally relevant responses. Rather than simply a sign of suffering to be avoided, sadness can represent a significant component of social and moral development, with important implications for the psychological development of children and educational practices that support healthy emotional expression.

Negative risk-taking behavior poses a significant threat to adolescent health and development. Drawing on a strengths-based framework, this study investigated whether and how gratitude—an other-focused positive emotion—serves as a protective factor against such behavior in adolescents. Specifically, we examined the mediating roles of compassionate goal orientation and dual-mode self-control (i.e. poor control and good control). A sample of 646 Chinese adolescents (drawn from one university and two secondary schools) completed validated measures of trait gratitude, negative risk-taking behavior, compassionate goal, and dual-mode self-control. Results from structural equation modeling revealed that gratitude directly predicted lower levels of negative risk-taking. Furthermore, it exerted an indirect effect through a sequential pathway: by fostering a compassionate goal orientation, which in turn reduced impulsive tendencies (poor control), ultimately leading to less risk-taking. The mediating role of enhanced reflective control (good control) was not significant. These findings underscore gratitude as a psychological resource that can mitigate adolescent risk-taking by shifting focus toward others and strengthening impulse regulation, offering insights for interventions aimed at promoting positive youth development.

With studies primarily focusing on the influence of individual parents’ marital satisfaction, less is known about the combined influence of fathers and mothers. Using polynomial regressions and response surface analyses, this study aims to explore the congruence and incongruence between fathers’ marital satisfaction and mothers’ marital satisfaction on child depression by the child’s developmental stage and gender. Participants were 902 Chinese one-child families (in terms of child gender, 41.7% were girls and 58.3% were boys; in terms of child age, 49.7% were emerging adults and 50.3% were minors). Compared to the inconsistent high mother/low father marital satisfaction direction, emerging adult daughter depression was higher when in the inconsistent low mother/high father marital satisfaction direction. On congruence, emerging adult daughters were less depressed when the degree of congruence between father and mother marital satisfaction tended to be moderate. These results emphasize that depression interventions for emerging adults should consider the combined influence of fathers’ and mothers’ marital satisfaction.

Parents play a crucial role in fostering children’s emotion regulation skills during early childhood. The Parental Assistance with Child Emotion Regulation (PACER) Questionnaire was newly developed to assess how parents support their children’s use of specific emotion regulation strategies. This study was aimed to validate the PACER in the Chinese context. Data were collected from 2002 mothers and 1069 fathers of preschool-aged children in China. The results supported the intended 10-factor structure of the PACER. All subscales demonstrated good to excellent internal consistencies. Measurement invariance was achieved across both child gender and parent gender. The study further explored how parent and child genders were related to parents’ reports on the PACER. Using data from a subset of the families that provided both maternal and paternal reports (n = 507), we found that parents’ responses generally did not differ between daughters and sons. However, significant gender differences among parents were found, albeit the effect sizes were small. Mothers were more likely to adopt adaptive strategies and less likely to rely on maladaptive strategies compared to fathers. These findings validated the applicability of the PACER in Chinese culture. The parental gender differences observed underscore the need to create tailored interventions for mothers and fathers regarding children’s emotion socialization.

This cross-sectional study examined the associations among physical activity, psychological resilience, emotional distress (anxiety and depression), and short video dependency in Chinese adolescents, with a particular focus on the potential chain mediating roles of psychological resilience and emotional distress. A total of 1,002 adolescents completed self-report measures assessing physical activity, psychological resilience, anxiety, depression, and short video dependency. Correlation analyses showed that physical activity was negatively associated with anxiety, depression, and short video dependency, and positively associated with psychological resilience. Psychological resilience was negatively related to emotional distress and short video dependency, while anxiety and depression were positively associated with short video dependency. Chain mediation analyses indicated that psychological resilience and emotional distress jointly mediated the association between physical activity and short video dependency. Overall, the findings suggest that higher levels of physical activity are associated with lower short video dependency, partly through greater psychological resilience and reduced emotional distress, highlighting the potential relevance of physical activity for adolescent mental well-being and healthier digital media use.

Alexithymia refers to difficulties in the expression of one’s own emotions. The development of alexithymic traits and the associated risk factors have been extensively studied in primary-school children and adolescents. In contrast, few data are available concerning the preschool period. Therefore, in the present study we used a parent report instrument, the Children’s Alexithymia Measure, to assess emotional expression difficulties in a sample of 130 children between 3 and 5 years of age. We also examined the relations of alexithymic scores with concurrent language and temperament measures. The results indicated that children’s difficulties were negatively associated with social orientation and naming abilities but positively associated with negative emotionality. Furthermore, the significance of these relations differed across boys and girls. Overall, these data shed light on the factors that contribute to the development of emotional expression difficulties in the preschool period. Future studies should determine whether these same factors may be used to predict the emergence of alexithymic traits in later ages.