Little is known about how emotion recognition and empathy function in youth growing up in contexts defined by persistent adversity and challenge. The present study investigated whether exposure to chronic adversity was associated with reduced empathy in youth, and whether deficits in emotion recognition mediated this association. Foster, rural poor, and comparison youth from Swaziland, Africa (ages 11-22; N = 123) responded to a series of images that depicted characters displaying positive, ambiguous, or negative expressions. Youth identified the emotions conveyed by the main character in each image and rated how concerned they felt for the character. Rural and foster youth perceived greater anger and happiness in the ambiguous and negatively valenced images relative to comparison youth. The former also perceived less sadness. Subsequent path analyses indicated that youth’s perceptions of sadness in the negative and ambiguous expressions mediated the relationship between adversity exposure and empathic concern, but only for the rural youth. Findings contribute to understanding of the processes that may underlie reduced empathy in adversity-exposed youth and highlight directions for new intervention research to increase empathic tendencies.

The purpose of this dissertation was to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the occurrence and identification of child abuse and neglect. The first study concurrently examined changes in identification and medical evaluations of maltreatment allegations from before to during COVID-19. Reports to social services and child maltreatment evaluation center medical evaluations were collected from two counties and compared across the months of March-December 2019 and 2020. Findings showed divergent trends in reporting and evaluation of suspected maltreatment cases from before to during COVID-19. Specifically, while reports of suspected maltreatment were lower in 2020 than in 2019, the proportion of children reported to the county that received medical evaluations was higher in 2020 compared to 2019. Studies 2A and 2B took a different approach, assessing the impact of COVID-19 on laypersons’ ability to identify the most common form of maltreatment, child neglect. To do so, adults read vignettes about a mother’s care of her daughter and responded to questions about the mother’s neglectfulness, their reporting likelihood, and their attributions of blame for the situation. Though most adults were able to distinguish situations with versus without neglect, some conflated poverty and neglect when making identification and reporting decisions. COVID-19 had an indirect, rather than direct, impact on these decisions. Moreover, attributions of blame partially explained laypersons’ perceptions and reporting decisions. Together these studies can help the developing public education efforts or alternative methods of identifying vulnerable children and intervening in situations of harm.

The purpose of this dissertation was to test whether empathic concern and prosociality could be enhanced in children and adolescents, especially those exposed to violence, by increasing their awareness of others’ emotions. The first study (N = 251; 51% male; 58% Latinx) tested whether an emotion labeling manipulation designed to increase children’s and adolescents’ (M = 11.92, SD = 3.27; range: 6-17 years) awareness of sadness in others led to increases in their empathic concern and generosity toward an anonymous peer with whom they were not directly interacting. The second study (N = 148; 47% male; 63% Latinx) employed a social exclusion paradigm to test whether feedback from a peer regarding their sad or angry emotional state increased adolescents’ (M = 13.70, SD = 2.85; range 8-17 years) empathic concern and compensatory prosocial responding when observing that peer being excluded during a presumed social interaction. In both studies, samples included youth varying in their exposure to violence (Study 1 included youth who experienced substantiated maltreatment and non-maltreated comparison youth; Study 2 included youth who had varied exposure to family and community violence) to assess whether such exposure altered the effects of the manipulations on youth empathy and prosociality. Findings across the two studies suggest that by increasing children’s and adolescents’ awareness of sadness in others, including those exposed to violence, it is possible to enhance their prosociality toward others and to some extent their empathic concern for others. More broadly, the findings provide new insight into the potential for positive capacities in violence-exposed children and adolescents and may provide direction for policy and practice aimed at promoting prosocial development in high-risk populations.

The practice of giving youth a voice in their dependency cases and the precise age at which this should be done, is heavily debated upon. However, very little empirical research exists to support the different notions about youth’s rights, responsibilities and burdens that come with giving them such a voice. The present study investigated how youth’s placement within family networks – an important predictor of youth’s well-being in out-of-home care – shape their placement preferences. Specifically, we investigated if youth prefer placements with kin and/or siblings when in out-of-home care. We also investigated if placement preferences vary as a function of youth being younger versus older than the age cut-off for legal competency or age at which youth are asked about their preferences in some states (i.e. 12 years). Data from a national survey (NSCAW) were used in which foster youth were asked a close-ended and an open-ended question (ages 6 to 18 years, N= 1565) about their placement preferences . Binary and Multinomial Logistic Regressions revealed that placement type had robust associations with placement preferences, youth consistently preferred kin over non-kin foster families. Sibling presence had a weaker association with youth’s placement preferences. Finally, the associations of placement type and sibling presence with placement preferences were mostly similar across youth younger than 12 years and those 12 and older (the age cut-off for legal competency). Contributions to the debate surrounding asking youth about their placement preferences in dependency cases and relevant policy implications for child welfare have been discussed.

The purpose of the present study was to examine the development of temporal localization abilities about salient past events in maltreated children, the population of children most likely to be asked temporal questions in a forensic or legal setting. Of particular interest was how well the children could respond to questions in which the terms near, before and after were used in related to the present and past, verifiable and salient events. Participants included 167 maltreated children (85 female) ages 6 to 10 years waiting for court appearances in the Los Angeles County Dependency Court. Overall, children seem to have an understanding of the temporal terms near, before and after. However, their understanding is not necessarily what would be expected from past studies. Specifically, children's temporal understanding appears to depend on both the timing and type of event in question itself as well as the cyclical nature of landmark events to which the event is being compared. Children struggled with answering questions about one of two past events and older children displayed a prospective bias in their answers. Results suggest that temporal localization questions may not be useful in forensic or legal settings where precision is required.

Adolescents comprise an important population of witnesses. However, little research has examined their disclosure tendencies, especially developmental processes that affect those tendencies, such as their allegiance to peers (whose behaviors may be of interest) and beliefs about their autonomy. It is imperative to ascertain how best to elicit detailed disclosures from them about wrongdoing or harm. Strategies that improve children’s and adults’ disclosures (e.g., rapport building) have not been adequately tested in adolescents. Thus, the present research tested how modified rapport-building tactics that address motivational reasons why adolescents are reluctant enhance their reports of prior experiences. A total of 125 14-19-year-olds (Mage=16.9; 67% female) completed an online pre-questionnaire about significant events (e.g., bullying by a peer) that occurred in past year, as well as questionnaires assessing personality and well-being. Participants then completed an online interview about one of the significant events endorsed, beginning with one of three rapport-building instructions varied during an initial “getting to know you” phase. A standard conditioned consisted of closed-ended (yes/no) questions, while an open-ended condition consisted of open-ended questions. Finally, an enhanced condition paired open-ended question with interviewer self-disclosures. Analyses were conducted to address the effects of type of rapport on the amount and content of information reported. Overall, participants in the enhanced condition produced the longest and most elaborated reports, with more pronounced benefits for younger adolescents. Results suggest that mutual disclosure by an interviewer may be especially beneficial for eliciting detailed accounts from adolescents. The research highlights a potentially effective and easily trainable strategy that may be useful in obtaining reports from adolescents about their prior experiences.

The costs of child maltreatment are staggering with deleterious effects on children emerging in every developmental domain, including cognitive, psychological, and social functioning. The mechanisms underlying these effects are complex and multifaceted, being shaped not only by characteristics within children, but also by their experiences during and after exposure to maltreatment. One mechanism that has the potential to interact with children’s experiences to affect a range of outcomes is emotion regulation. Emotion regulation is associated with psychological well-being, behavioral functioning, delinquency, and physical health in nonmaltreated samples as well as samples of young maltreated children. Given that adolescence is a unique time, cognitively and emotionally, it may be a time when maltreatment experiences play a critical role in shaping emotion regulation. In the present study two samples of children, ages 6-17, one with a substantiated history of maltreatment (N = 262) and one without (N = 133), completed a battery of measures, including those that tap emotion regulation and behavioral functioning. Information about the children’s family, maltreatment, and background were collected via case files. Overall, maltreated children reported using more disengagement and antisocial regulation strategies relative to comparison children who reported more primary control strategies. Moreover, differences between the two groups in emotion regulation increased with age. Finally, the use of disengagement strategies predicted poorer behavioral functioning, particularly during adolescence. Findings have the potential to inform the treatment and intervention of maltreated children by determining the precise ways in which they differ from comparison children in their ability to regulate emotions, and how these emotion processes influence their functioning across age.

When processed through the juvenile justice system, the majority of youth must attend a plea hearing in which they admit guilt and accept consequences for their actions in exchange for a formerly negotiated, agreed upon outcome. Plea decisions must be made knowingly, voluntarily, and intelligently in order for a plea to be considered legally valid. Yet, little is known about juvenile’s engagement during their plea hearings, and whether it facilitates their ability to make a valid plea decision. To investigate this, youth (N = 82) who had recently pled guilty were interviewed about their engagement during the plea hearing, their perceived and actual plea knowledge, attitudes surrounding their legal experiences, and a series of other relevant legal-system and demographic variables. Results revealed that youths' perceptions of their attorneys were positively associated both with youths’ psychological and behavioral engagement during the plea hearing. Procedural justice attitudes also emerged as a positive predictor of behavioral engagement. Turning to youths' understanding of the plea, findings surprisingly revealed that measures of youths reported plea knowledge, and actual plea knowledge were not correlated. While most youth reported a decent understanding of the plea, performance on two separate measures of plea understanding were generally poor. Predictors of perceived and actual knowledge also diverged. Youth’s psychological engagement, and perceptions of their attorney were both positively correlated with youth’s perceived understanding while age, and behavioral engagement emerged as predictors of youth’s actual plea knowledge. Taken together, results suggest that youth’s reports surrounding their plea knowledge may not always reflect their actual plea knowledge, and that behavioral engagement during the plea hearing as well as advances in age may help to facilitate the understanding necessary for youth to make a valid plea decision.

A wealth of past research has documented the experiences and outcomes following social service and dependency case involvement in maltreated children. However, the experiences of parents and caregivers, two key contributors to dependency cases, are equally important. The current study systematically examines how parent and caregiver factors predict the placement outcomes (family reunification, termination of parents’ legal rights to their children, “pending/ongoing” cases), and duration of dependency cases for children removed from their parents’ custody due to substantiated abuse or neglect. Potential predictors were identified according to theory, multidisciplinary work, and legal guidelines concerning social service interventions for maltreated children. Secondary data analyses were conducted on a sample from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being II (NSCAW II), which evaluated the functioning, characteristics, outcomes, services, and case details of families involved in dependency cases. One thousand six hundred eighty-four maltreated children removed from their parents’ custody comprised the final sample. The children’s cases were coded for parent predictors (type of substantiated abuse involved in the case, financial hardship, substance abuse history), caregiver predictors (kinship to child, desire to raise child, perceived support from the caseworker), and other important contributors of interest (e.g., caseworkers’ years of experience, child age). Findings revealed the importance of maltreatment type, parent compliance, caregivers’ kinship to child, and caregivers’ desire to raise the child in their care as important and robust predictors of case placement outcome. Significant age effects contributed to additional analyses examining predictors of case placement outcome for younger and older children separately. Neglect predicted a decreased likelihood of family reunification and, for younger children, an increased likelihood of termination of parental rights. Parent compliance predicted an increased likelihood of family reunification and a decreased likelihood of both termination of parental rights and having a “pending/ongoing” case. Children being cared for by kin had an increased likelihood of family reunification (only if they were younger children) and a decreased likelihood of termination of parental rights. Caregivers desire to raise the child in their care predicted a decreased likelihood of family reunification and an increased likelihood of termination of parental rights. Case duration was not predicted by parent and caregiver factors. Implications for child welfare focus on encouraging parental compliance through continued caseworker support, when possible, and emphasizing the importance of caregiver characteristics on dependency case outcomes.

Researchers interested in youth’s abilities to report on stressful and traumatic memories have conducted correlational and experimental studies to investigate the relation between stress and memory throughout childhood and adolescence. This meta-analysis was conducted to integrate findings from these studies and assess the relation between acute stress during an event and subsequent memory of that event in youth ages 3-17. After a comprehensive literature search, 177 correlations were retrieved from 28 independent studies. On average, across studies, stress was not significantly related to memory in youth [rz= -0.01, 95% PI (-.32, .30), p =0.66]. However, the ways in which stress was measured emerged as a significant moderator of the relation. Pairwise comparisons revealed marginally significant differences between physiological (rz= 0.06) and self-report (rz = -0.06) stress categories. Other moderators of stress and memory were also examined, however none of them achieved significance. Residual heterogeneity in the full model and limitations of the meta-analysis are discussed along with key takeaways.