Early Behavior Problems Appear to Lead to Peer Rejection, Friendlessness

Behavior problems in the early grades appear to lead to peer rejection and a lack of friends in elementary school. This, in turn, can lead to early adolescent depression and loneliness.

Those are the findings of a new study by researchers at the Universities of Montreal and Oslo; the study is published in the July/August 2007 issue of the journal Child Development.

Researchers collected information from 551 children beginning when the children were 6 years old and continuing annually until they were 13. They also collected information from the children’s teachers, mothers, and peers.

Specifically, teachers and mothers described the children’s levels of anxiety (including a tendency to prefer solitary play and to fear new situations) and their disruptiveness (including physical aggression and hyperactivity) when the children were 6 and 7. Classroom peers reported on the children they liked most and least each year from ages 8 to 11. Children reported how many friends they had each year from ages 8 to 11, as well as their own levels of depression, loneliness, and involvement with delinquent behaviors at ages 12 and 13.

The researchers found that children who were disruptive in early childhood were more likely to be rejected and lack friends in elementary school. Anxious children also tended to have few friends, although they were not more likely to be rejected by their peers.

The study also found that rejection contributes to the risk that children won’t have friends. Children who are rejected early in elementary school are more likely to lack friends later in elementary school.

Both rejection and a lack of friends in elementary school put children at risk for adjustment problems in adolescence, the researchers found. Specifically, children who are rejected in elementary school are more likely to be lonely as adolescents, while children who lack friends in the early grades—a critical time for the development of close, reciprocal relationships—are more likely to be lonely and depressed as teenagers. In contrast, rejection and a lack of friends don’t put children at risk for delinquency—only early disruptiveness does that.

“The study’s findings indicate that the developmental consequences of risky peer relations are not limited to childhood,” according to Sara Pedersen, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Montreal’s Research Unit on Children’s Psychosocial Maladjustment and lead author of the study. “These results suggest that interventions to prevent adolescent depression and loneliness should target elementary school peer relationships. The results also reveal that interventions targeting only childhood rejection and friendlessness are unlikely to prevent later delinquency.”

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Teen Risk-Taking May Be Biologically Driven and Inevitable, Research Says

While the government spends billions of dollars on educational and prevention programs to persuade teens not to do things like smoke, drink or do drugs, a Temple University psychologist suggests that competing systems within the brain make adolescents more susceptible to engaging in risky or dangerous behavior, and that educational interventions alone are unlikely to be effective.

Laurence Steinberg, distinguished university professor and the Laura H. Carnell professor of psychology at Temple, outlines his argument in, “Risk Taking in Adolescence: New Perspectives from Brain and Behavioral Science,” in the April issue of the journal, Current Directions in Psychological Science.

“While it is probably not fair to say that none of the programs we have developed works, most of the educational efforts to persuade kids to not smoke or to not use drugs or alcohol, to engage in safe sex or to drive more safely have not been effective,” says Steinberg, director of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice. “There is a program here or there that works, but, by and large, we have spent billions of dollars on initiatives that have not really had much of an impact.”



Steinberg says that over the past 10 years there has been a great deal of new research on adolescent brain development that he believes sheds light on why kids engage in risky and dangerous behavior, and why the educational programs or interventions that have been developed have not been especially effective.



According to Steinberg, heightened risk taking in adolescence is the result of competition between two very different brain systems, the socioemotional and cognitive-control networks, that are undergoing maturation during adolescence, but along very different timetables. During the adolescence, the socioemotional system becomes more assertive during puberty, while the cognitive-control system gains strength only gradually and over a longer period of time.
The socioemotional system, which processes social and emotional information, becomes very active during puberty allowing adolescents to become more easily aroused and experience more intense emotion, and to become more sensitive to social influence.



Conversely, says Steinberg, the cognitive-control system is the part of the brain that regulates behavior and makes the ultimate decisions, but is still maturing during adolescence and into a person’s mid-20s at least.



In the article, Steinberg says that the socioemotional network is not in a state of constantly high activation during adolescence. When the socioemotional network is not highly activated -- for example, when individuals are not emotionally excited or are alone -- the cognitive-control network is strong enough to impose regulatory control over impulsive and risky behavior, even in early adolescence.



In the presence of peers, however, or in situations where emotions run high, the socioemotional network becomes sufficiently activated to diminish the regulatory effectiveness of the cognitive-control network.


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Foundation Announces $500 Million Commitment to Reverse Childhood Obesity in U.S.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) today announced it will commit at least $500 million over the next five years to tackle one of the most urgent public health threats facing the United States: childhood obesity. This is the largest commitment by any foundation to this issue, RWJF says. The foundation's goal is to reverse the epidemic of childhood obesity in the United States by 2015.

During the past four decades, obesity rates have soared among all age groups, more than quadrupling among children ages 6 to 11. Today, more than 33 percent of children and adolescents -- approximately 25 million kids -- are overweight or obese.

Preventing obesity during childhood is critical, because habits that last into adulthood frequently are formed during youth. Research shows that overweight adolescents have up to an 80 percent chance of becoming overweight or obese adults. Earlier onset of obesity leads to the earlier onset of related illnesses, such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and certain types of cancer.

In addition to the toll on U.S. health, obesity also poses a tremendous financial threat to the U.S. economy and health care system. It's estimated that the obesity epidemic costs the United States $117 billion per year in direct health care costs and lost productivity. Childhood obesity alone carries a huge price tag -- up to $14 billion per year in direct healthcare costs to treat kids.

"This is an all-American crisis," says Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, M.D., M.B.A., president and CEO of RWJF. "It affects all Americans, and it will require all of America working together to turn it around. Our commitment is a call to action for families, schools, government, industry, healthcare and philanthropy. To reverse the obesity epidemic and create a culture of health, we must provide families with better access to healthy choices."

The foundation says it will focus on improving access to affordable healthy foods and opportunities for safe physical activity in schools and communities. It will place special emphasis on reaching children at greatest risk for obesity and related health problems: African-American, Latino, Native American, Asian American and Pacific Islander children living in low-income communities.

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