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Background: Incorporating professional development into undergraduate psychology coursework is an ongoing area of improvement for educators. Objective: We present a novel activity encouraging students to explore various professional skills and roles for which their psychology major prepares them through application to real-world issues. Method: Students participated in one of two virtual mental health summits and formed working groups to present from different perspectives (e.g., public health, epidemiology, etc.). Students collectively voted on resolutions at the end of each summit (e.g., budgetary recommendations for a county health department). Results: We examined student perceptions of confidence in their professional skills and content knowledge before and after summits. Students indicated that they wanted more applied assignments like the mental health summit in other psychology classes and preferred the activity to exams or papers in a virtual course. Teaching Implications: The mental health summit represented a real-world application activity that students indicated wanting in their courses. Recommendations for how to adapt the presented activity for non-clinical psychology courses are discussed. Conclusion: The mental health summit activity supported the real-world application that students desire. Future iterations of the activity can build on the model we describe to support greater skill improvement.

Background: Incorporating professional development into undergraduate psychology coursework is an ongoing area of improvement for educators. Objective: We present a novel activity encouraging students to explore various professional skills and roles for which their psychology major prepares them through application to real-world issues. Method: Students participated in one of two virtual mental health summits and formed working groups to present from different perspectives (e.g., public health, epidemiology, etc.). Students collectively voted on resolutions at the end of each summit (e.g., budgetary recommendations for a county health department). Results: We examined student perceptions of confidence in their professional skills and content knowledge before and after summits. Students indicated that they wanted more applied assignments like the mental health summit in other psychology classes and preferred the activity to exams or papers in a virtual course. Teaching Implications: The mental health summit represented a real-world application activity that students indicated wanting in their courses. Recommendations for how to adapt the presented activity for non-clinical psychology courses are discussed. Conclusion: The mental health summit activity supported the real-world application that students desire. Future iterations of the activity can build on the model we describe to support greater skill improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early pubertal maturation is associated with earlier contact with the juvenile justice system. In two studies (Total N = 782), we examined whether youth presumed to have committed a crime and who appear physically older than their chronological age were held to different standards of legal responsibility while accounting for race and sex. Participants read a vignette detailing situations in which a crime was committed and decided whether to call the police (Study 1) or make sentencing recommendations (Study 2). Participants were more likely to call the police on youth who appeared more physically developed and on boys. Less visibly mature youth and girls were assigned behavioral explanations that deemphasized agency. White youth were sentenced to more hours of community service than Black youth. We discuss potential implications of these findings in real‐world contexts such as police decision‐making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional longitudinal behavioral genetic models estimate the relative contribution of genetic and environmental factors to stability and change of traits and behaviors. Longitudinal models rarely explain the processes that generate observed differences between genetically and socially related individuals. We propose that exchanges between individuals and their environments (i.e., phenotype–environment effects) can explain the emergence of observed differences over time. Phenotype–environment models, however, would require violation of the independence assumption of standard behavioral genetic models; that is, uncorrelated genetic and environmental factors. We review how specification of phenotype–environment effects contributes to understanding observed changes in genetic variability over time and longitudinal correlations among nonshared environmental factors. We then provide an example using 30 days of positive and negative affect scores from an all-female sample of twins. Results demonstrate that the phenotype–environment effects explain how heritability estimates fluctuate as well as how nonshared environmental factors persist over time. We discuss possible mechanisms underlying change in gene–environment correlation over time, the advantages and challenges of including gene–environment correlation in longitudinal twin models, and recommendations for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While rich with opportunities for self-exploration, the transition to and through college is stressful, often associated with the onset or exacerbation of mental illness. Attending to these characteristics, this preregistered study asked whether derailment—or difficulties reconciling perceived identity change—in freshman year predicts senior depressive symptoms, and how individual risks for depression relate to this association. Derailment and depressive symptoms evidenced significant 3-year stability, and these constructs had positive cross-sectional associations in both freshman and senior year. Freshman derailment failed to predict senior depressive symptoms for the average student, but individual differences in self-reflection moderated the association: freshman derailment positively predicted senior depression among those lowest in self-reflection. Together, this study suggests derailment and depressive symptoms are consistently related at critical points of transition, and some individual differences in cognition may help predict their long-term association. While useful for understanding nuances between derailment and depression, these findings also inform ways of attending to and supporting college students through periods of transition. Public Significance Statement: Derailment, or feeling "off-course" in life, may be a salient experience for those in the process of self-discovery, like college students. Derailment and depression are positively linked at key points of transition (i.e., when entering/leaving college), and freshman derailment appears to forecast greater senior depressive symptoms among those least prone to self-reflection. As college mental health service demands are at an all-time high, this study may inform developmentally appropriate care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Derailment, a newly mapped construct describing difficulty reconciling perceived changes in identity and self-direction, offers researchers a unique lens for understanding adjustment. As identity development is a lifelong process, establishing the impartiality of the primary measure for derailment across a broad age range is necessary. Across a cross-sectional sample of emerging, young, and midlife adults (N = 1,420), we tested preregistered hypotheses concerning whether the Derailment Scale-6 (DS-6) demonstrates measurement invariance, and the extent to which levels and correlates of derailment differ with age. The DS-6 exhibited configural, metric, and partial scalar invariance across the three age groups. In terms of effect size, statistical differences detected at the scalar level were hardly larger than negligible noninvariance effects, suggesting in sum that the DS-6 is adequate for assessing and comparing derailment among those roughly 18–70 years. In general, derailment was related to greater distress and identity exploration, and lower identity commitment, sense of purpose in life, and future time perspective (FTP). We further found that derailment shares a modest negative association with age; it is more positively associated with identity exploration among younger individuals; and it is more negatively associated with identity commitment, sense of purpose in life, and FTP among older individuals. With the broadest age range and most highly powered set of tests studying derailment to date, this investigation bolsters confidence in our tools for assessing derailment and has taken the initial steps toward sketching the form and function of perceived identity change over the lifespan. Public Significance Statement: Feeling "off-course" in life (i.e., derailment) is associated with greater concurrent psychological distress, lower identity commitment and purpose in life, and the sense that one is running out of time in their life. This study demonstrates that the tool for assessing derailment is appropriate for use among, and the comparison of, those roughly 18 to 70-years-old. Importantly, some adjustment correlates of derailment may strengthen or weaken depending upon age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]