Jie Luo

The Positive Youth Development (PYD) framework highlights that all youth have the potential to thrive, though the expression and development of their strengths can differ significantly. Recognizing these individual differences is critical for designing effective interventions that help youth apply their strengths to meet developmental demands. This study investigated the variability in three PYD‐related strengths: social‐emotional adjustment, prosocial behavior, and academic competence. The sample consisted of 1719 school‐age youth from Grades 1 to 12 (ages 6–17), drawn from Wave 1 of the second National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well‐Being (NSCAW‐II). Latent Profile Analysis was conducted using seven key indicators. Four distinct profiles were identified: Social‐Emotional‐Behavioral Vulnerable (20%), Academically Struggling (16%), Academically Competent with Emotional‐Behavioral Challenged (36%), and Well‐Functioning (28%). These profiles reflect diverse patterns of strengths and challenges across PYD domains, highlighting the need for tailored support strategies—particularly those aimed at strengthening social and emotional competencies.

Purpose: Children’s reading development is shaped through a complex interplay of genetic and environmental influences within families. This exploratory study investigated the intergenerational transmission of reading achievement within biological families. Prior studies have often measured different constructs in parents and children; many have included only mothers in models; and few have examined whether transmission varies by parent and child sex. We systematically examined whether parent-child associations in reading achievement varied by reading subcomponent, parent sex, and child sex. Method: Participants included 80 families (mother, father, child[ren] aged 7–12 years; n = 267). All participants completed identical standardized assessments across four reading subcomponents. Sex-stratified linear mixed models were used to estimate associations by parent and child sex, with shared reading explored as a mediator. Results: Sex-discordant dyads (father-daughter, mother-son) exhibited statistically significant associations across passage comprehension, reading fluency, and phonemic decoding efficiency, with sight word reading efficiency showing consistent trends but non-significant associations. Direct coefficients in significant sex-discordant dyads ranged from b = 0.49 to b = 0.89 (standard score units), with 99-100% sign stability under Monte Carlo cross-validation. Sex-concordant dyads showed non-significant associations. Permutation-based contrasts indicated that differences between sex-concordant and sex-discordant dyads were significant for passage comprehension, with suggestive evidence (confidence intervals excluding 0) for phonemic decoding. Shared reading did not significantly mediate associations. Conclusion: Observed associations were numerically stronger between children and opposite-sex parents, challenging assumptions of uniform transmission by dyad type. Passage comprehension and sentence reading fluency showed strongest similarity, while associations for sight word reading were weak. These exploratory findings underscore the importance of measure selection and the consideration of sex as a biological variable in familial control research.

Mental health and reading achievement are critical and dynamically interconnected in child development. This study investigated associations between general psychopathology factor (p-factor) and reading achievement in 1,057 Chinese school-aged children (Mage = 9.41, SD = 1.75; 45.51% female). Longitudinal analyses showed that higher p-factor predicted lower future reading achievement. Puberty status, rather than chronological age, moderated this relationship, with stronger predictive effect of p-factor on reading after puberty onset. Furthermore, the polygenic risk score for p-factor predicted lower reading achievement at puberty onset, suggesting puberty may amplify this genetic vulnerability. Results suggest that p-factor may be a developmental risk factor for reading underachievement, particularly after puberty onset. Consideration puberty status, alongside age, are important in academic and mental health interventions.

Emotional well-being (EWB) is a multifaceted construct essential for human health, conceptualized as an umbrella term for related psychometric concepts such as psychological well-being (PWB), positive mental health, health-related quality of life, thriving, and subjective well-being (SWB). However, varying definitions have prompted calls for a consensus definition. Understanding the neural mechanisms of EWB is crucial for health and intervention efforts, yet findings remain inconsistent in both empirical studies and systematic reviews. The inconsistencies in prior systematic reviews may arise from diverse definitions, an emphasis on task-independent over task-dependent modalities, and biases introduced when statistical analyses are lacking. To address these gaps, this study presents the first preliminary systematic review and meta-analysis of the neural correlates of EWB using a consensus definition developed in 2023 by NIH EWB Research Network, which includes five domains: goal pursuit, life satisfaction, positive affect, quality of life, and sense of meaning. Importantly, we used a hypothesis-driven approach a to separately examine task-dependent (task-based fMRI; n = 14) and task-independent modalities (resting-state fMRI and structural MRI; n = 7 each), clarifying their distinct and overlapping neural contributions of EWB. Our results identify the left pallidum as a key region associated with task-dependent modality, likely reflecting incentive and reward processing, while task-independent findings implicate the right superior temporal gyrus (STG) and insula, suggesting roles in social cognition and interoceptive awareness. Across both modalities, frontoparietal regions emerge as shared substrates likely contributing to cognitive control processes central to EWB. Although the limited sample size calls for cautious interpretation, these findings lay an empirical foundation for future large-scale neuroimaging reviews and offer a preliminary neural framework for EWB. This integrated framework we proposed highlights the potential neural mechanisms and key processes underlying EWB, advancing paradigm development and guiding evidence-based strategies to promote EWB.

Background: The Positive Youth Development (PYD) framework highlights that all youth have the potential to thrive, though the expression and development of their strengths can differ significantly. Recognizing these individual differences is critical for designing effective interventions that help youth apply their strengths to meet developmental demands. Objective: This study investigated the variability in three PYD-related strengths: prosocial behavior, social-emotional adjustment, and academic competence. Method: The sample consisted of 1,719 children and adolescents aged 6 to 17 years, drawn from Wave 1 of the second National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW II). Latent Profile Analysis was conducted using seven key indicators. Results: Four distinct profiles were identified: Social-Emotional-Behavioral Vulnerable (20%), Academically Struggling (16%), Academically Competent with Emotional-Behavioral Challenged (36%), and Well-Functioning (28%). Conclusion: These profiles reflect diverse patterns of strengths and challenges across PYD domains, highlighting the need for tailored support strategies—particularly those aimed at strengthening social-emotional competence.

This scoping review provides an overview of previous empirical studies that used brain imaging techniques to investigate the neural correlates of emotional well-being (EWB). We compiled evidence on this topic into one accessible and usable document as a foundation for future research into the relationship between EWB and the brain. PRISMA 2020 guidelines were followed. We located relevant articles by searching five electronic databases with 95 studies meeting our inclusion criteria. We explored EWB measures, brain imaging modalities, research designs, populations studied, and approaches that are currently in use to characterize and understand EWB across the literature. Of the key concepts related to EWB, the vast majority of studies investigated positive affect, followed by life satisfaction, sense of meaning, goal pursuit, and quality of life. The majority of studies used functional MRI, followed by EEG and event-related potential-based EEG. The neural basis of experienced affect (predominantly positive mood) has been studied significantly more often than evaluative (e.g., life satisfaction, sense of meaning) aspects of EWB. Our findings suggest that future studies should investigate EWB in more diverse samples, especially in children, individuals with clinical disorders, and individuals from various geographic locations. Future directions and theoretical implications are discussed, including the need for more longitudinal studies with ecologically valid measures that incorporate multi-level approaches allowing researchers to better investigate and evaluate the relationships among behavioral, environmental, and neural factors.

The present study examined the relationship between substance use and reasoning in adolescents, and further investigated the modulation role of growth mindset on this relationship. A total of 1759 adolescents in China with substance use experience were investigated. The results showed that substance use (smoking, drinking, and illicit drug use) was negatively correlated with reasoning (r = −0.24 ∼−0.39, p < 0.01) and growth mindset (r = −0.18 ∼−0.32, p < 0.01). Regression analysis revealed that after controlling for the background variables (i.e., age, family annual income, and parents’ educational level), only illicit drug use was the significant predictor of reasoning (β = −0.325, t = −14.28, p < 0.001). The interaction effect between growth mindset and illicit drug use was also a significant predictor of reasoning (β = −0.067, t = −2.92, p = 0.004), indicating growth mindset modulated the relationship between illicit drug use and reasoning ability. Further analysis found that the negative correlation between frequency of illicit drug use and reasoning in high growth mindset group was weaker than that of low growth mindset group (F_(3,1733) = 332.51, p < 0.001, f² = 0.22). This suggests that growth mindset plays a significant moderating role in the relationship between substance use and reasoning. Overall, substance use has adverse effect on adolescent reasoning, however, growth mindset could reduce this adverse effect.