The daily diary method was employed to examine the daily dynamics of adolescent sleep time, activities, and psychological well being among an ethnically diverse sample of over 750 adolescents approximately 14 to 15 years of age. Studying and stressful demands during the day were modestly but consistently associated with less sleep that evening. Receiving less sleep at night, in turn, was modestly but consistently related to higher levels of anxiety, depressive feelings, and fatigue during the following day. In addition, the daily variability in adolescents’ sleep time was notable and just as important for the youths’ average levels of daily psychological well being as was the average amount of time spent sleeping each night. A small number of ethnic and gender differences emerged in the dynamics of adolescent sleep, activities, and well being. Discussion focuses on the importance of examining daily variability in adolescents’ sleep behaviors in order to better understand the implications of sleep for adolescent well being and development.

The role of ethnic identity in adolescents’ family processes was examined among ninth graders from Latin American, Asian, and European backgrounds. Stronger ethnic affirmation and exploration were associated with family processes across a variety of indicators, but links with culturally-relevant processes such as family respect and obligation were stronger than links with dyadic cohesion with parents. Similarly, links between ethnic identity and time spent assisting the family on a daily basis were stronger than links between identity and time spent engaging in family leisure activities. Mediational analyses indicated that the greater sense of respect, obligation, and time spent assisting the family among adolescents with Latino and Asian backgrounds were due in part to their stronger ethnic identification. Longitudinal analyses suggest that identity and family processes continue to be linked throughout development.

Given previously established links with physical and psychosocial health, there has been renewed scientific interest in investigating the behavioral and neural development underlying prosocial behavior. It has been proposed that empathy is critical to the maturation of prosocial behavior during adolescence; however, there are missing gaps in our understanding of the behavioral and neural development underlying empathy in adolescence. Research is needed to clarify how processes constituting empathy, such as perspective-taking (understanding another’s emotional state), empathic concern (feeling another’s emotional state), and empathic responses such as personal distress, differ by age and relate to neural processing. This dissertation sought to examine age differences in the development of empathy and its associated neural activation during adolescence. Specifically, this dissertation had 3 primary aims 1) examine age-related differences in empathy (i.e., empathic concern, perspective-taking, personal distress) during adolescence, 2) investigate age-differences in neural activation among brain regions linked with pain processing, social cognition, and emotion regulation that are associated with empathy, and 3) assess the moderating role of brain regions linked with emotion regulation in the association between personal distress and prosocial behaviors. This research was accomplished by examining a sample (N = 147) of human adolescent responses to a validated empathy task that youth (aged 11-17 years old) completed while undergoing a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan. Findings from this dissertation demonstrated age-differences in self-reported state empathy, but not trait empathy, as a function of gender. Neuroimaging findings did not replicate the age by gender association in empathy. Youth, irrespective of age and gender, showed positive neural activation to empathy in the bilateral anterior insula, dACC, dmPFC, and vlPFC, intimating the involvement of brain regions linked with pain processing, social cognition, and emotion regulation in empathy during adolescence. While the neural correlates of empathic concern and perspective-taking were not as clear, there was evidence of an association between lower personal distress and higher activation in the dlPFC, vlPFC, and OFC. Furthermore, preliminary evidence emerged to suggest that the bilateral OFC moderates the association between personal distress and prosocial behavior. Suggestions for future research and implications for behavioral interventions are discussed.

Purpose and meaning are primary facets of eudaimonic well-being, yet are understudied in adolescent development. Using data from 579 adolescents from Latin American, Asian, and European backgrounds, demographic differences in purpose and meaning, links with psychological and academic adjustment, links with ethnic identity, and the mediating role of purpose and meaning in associations between ethnic identity and adjustment were examined. Although no generational or gender differences in purpose and meaning were found, Asians reported higher search for meaning than did Latin Americans and Europeans. Presence of meaning was positively associated with self-esteem, academic attitudes and motivation, daily well-being, and ethnic affirmation and exploration, whereas search for meaning was related to lower self-esteem and less stability in daily well-being. Presence of meaning mediated associations between ethnic identity and adjustment, explaining 28-52% of the initial effect of ethnic identity and providing one mechanism to account for ethnic identity’s protective effect on development. Key Words: purpose and meaning in life, ethnic identity, adolescent adjustment

A self-report, multiple-item measure developed to assess adolescents’ sense of obligation to support, assist, and respect the family is described. The measure was designed to be a simple, straightforward, and meaningful way to the importance of family obligation in adolescents’ daily lives. The development of the measure is described along with a summary of results from a set of studies that have employed it among adolescents from different ethnic and cultural groups. Findings suggest that the measure succeeds at capturing an aspect of family processes that although differentially endorsed across different groups of adolescents, has important consequences for fundamental aspects of adolescent development in a variety of social and cultural groups.

Social contexts are often ignored as a possible explanation for ethnic group differences in reports of family obligation. One reason is that too often, social scientists rely on the false dichotomy between economic versus cultural explanations as the culprit behind ethnic differences in family behavior. This study adds much needed nuance to the literature on family obligation among ethnic minority youth by using data from urban and rural North Carolina and Southern California to investigate how social contexts are associated with family obligation. Using a sample of Latino adolescents we find that attending schools in neighborhoods with higher concentrations of co-ethnics is positively associated with family obligation, as is having a strong sense of ethnic identity. In addition, we find that among adolescents attending schools in neighborhoods with other Hispanics, levels of family obligation are higher for those with a stronger, rather than a weaker sense of ethnic belonging.

The influence of immigrant-background adolescents’ heritage language proficiency and use of the language on parent-adolescent relationships and ethnic identity was investigated in a sample of 414 ninth-grade participants from Latin American and Asian backgrounds. Heritage language proficiency, but not language use, was found to be positively associated with the quality of the parent-adolescent relationship, especially for Asian American adolescents. Although heritage language proficiency and language use were both associated with strength of ethnic identity, when taken together, only heritage language proficiency emerges as a reliable predictor of ethnic identity. These findings indicate that it is the development of proficiency in the heritage language that influences adolescents’ successful adjustment, rather than their own choice of languages.

Given the size and rapid growth of Latinos—and that they tend to fall behind academically—it is important to understand factors that contribute to achievement. This dissertation seeks to contextualize parental academic behaviors by examining the role of stress and family dynamics in their involvement. The first study examines how stress may interfere with the academic involvement Mexican-origin parents provide for their adolescents. Parents of ninth and tenth grade students from two high schools in Los Angeles (N = 428) completed quantitative interviews. Results revealed that chronic stress (i.e., financial strain) predicted less involvement at school—and that acute stressors (i.e., major family life events) predicted less involvement at home, even after controlling for demographics and the other stressor in each model. Furthermore, this study found that these associations were mediated by lower levels of emotional support to adolescents, but not conflict in the home or parental distress (i.e., depressive symptoms and somatic symptoms). Findings suggest that the reason that stress is associated with lower levels of involvement is because stress may limit the positive relationship quality between parents and adolescents. The second study examined parental involvement in organized after-school activities—as these are beneficial to academic achievement, but Latino students tend to be under-involved. Latino adolescents and their caretakers (N = 154) sampled from four middle schools across the Phoenix-area completed quantitative interviews. Linear regressions controlling for demographics and achievement revealed that parental support—instrumental support, verbal encouragement and activity involvement (e.g., talking to the activity leader)—was linked with adolescent reports of motivation and participation in their organized after-school activity. Furthermore, parental support was associated with higher adolescent motivation in families that reported more chaos—suggesting the importance of parental involvement, especially in disadvantaged families. By acknowledging the salient role of family and stressors in the lives of Latino families, this dissertation contributes to a more complete understanding of the ways families strive to develop academic resilience

This investigation examined the assistance that approximately 630 college—bound young adults from Asian, Latin American, and European backgrounds provided to their families and the implications of that assistance for their postsecondary educational progress. Students from Filipino and Latin American backgrounds spent more hours helping their parents and siblings on a daily basis as compared to their peers from East Asian and European backgrounds. Those from Latin American backgrounds provided financial support to their families at a higher rate than those from East Asian and European backgrounds, and males provided more financial support than females. Young adults who provided daily and financial assistance to their families were less likely to pursue or obtain bachelor’s degrees and more likely to pursue or obtain an associate’s degrees. This association did not vary across subgroups of adolescents and group differences in family assistance did not account for group differences in postsecondary degree persistence.