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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. [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]

Everyone knows that going through puberty is associated with a multitude of changes: physical, mental, hormonal, etc. Fewer people know that when and how fast one goes through puberty can also be associated with changes to one’s legal rights. The Supreme Court of the United States held, in the landmark case of J.D.B. v. North Carolina, that there were many “commonsense conclusions” that could be drawn from how a child’s age would affect their interactions with law enforcement. In that case, the Court was deciding whether age should affect whether a child was considered “in custody” of the police, granting them the legal rights associated with custodial interrogation (also known as Miranda rights). Surprisingly, however, despite the majority opinion discussing the objective nature of age, and “commonsense conclusions” derived therefrom, the Court did not fully incorporate age into the custody analysis. The Court held that the age only matters in a legal sense either if the officer(s) interacting with that person knows that the person is a child or if the age of the child would be objectively apparent to a reasonable officer. In other words, unless the officer(s) knows that a suspect is a child, the influence of this objective fact about a person depends solely on if that person looks like a child to a “reasonable officer.” Although some people find this shortcoming harmless, the Court has inadvertently opened the door for discrimination, both intentional and unintentional. The vast amount of biological and psychological research on puberty has found that when one starts puberty and how fast one goes through puberty depends on multiple factors, including socioeconomic status, race, and sex. Further, additional research on how children are perceived by others shows that children of color are perceived as more mature and more responsible for their actions. In this Article, we provide a brief history of custody and custodial interrogation, including the case of J.D.B., and we summarize existing puberty research to emphasize the seriousness of limiting the legal importance of age based on subjective perceptions. Further, we provide a solution to this problem in the hope of preventing this shortcoming from producing similar gray areas in other legal realms—a process that has already begun. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study pairs narrative meaning-making with topic modeling to richly capture how girls choose to describe their experiences of change during puberty and to establish how these narratives map onto depressive symptoms. Participants (N = 125 girls; Mage  = 11.61 years; 90.40% White) wrote about changes during puberty and reported their level of pubertal development, relationships, and mood. The relationship between meaning-making and depressive symptoms was negatively moderated by early pubertal timing (d = .31) and positively moderated by more advanced pubertal status (d = .36). Exploratory analyses indicated that writing proportionally more about menstruation-related changes had a small effect on subsequent depressive symptoms (f2  = .12). Results provide a conceptual and methodological update to decades-old, landmark qualitative findings on girls' perceptions and assessments of experiences at puberty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A substantial body of research supports what many nurses know from experience: empathy is at the heart of providing quality care. The major objective of this study was to identify unique mechanisms through which higher empathy translates into greater intentions to treat patients in pain employing novel methodology. Using an ecologically-valid scenario methodology, student nurses (N = 156) reviewed the narrative of a patient in chronic pain. They completed standard, valid measures of empathy toward the patient, perception of the patient's pain, and intention to provide pain-relieving treatment. Nursing student's personality traits were assessed and perception of patients' age and sex were experimentally manipulated. Empathy was associated with higher intention to treat the patient in chronic pain irrespective of patients' age or sex. A moderated-mediation analysis confirmed that nursing students with higher empathy perceived the patient in the scenario as being in greater pain. This was correspondingly associated with higher intention to provide treatment. Nursing students' trait Extraversion was a moderator. Empathy not only improves rapport between patients and providers but is related to intentions to provide pain-relieving treatment. The clinical and educational importance of empathy in patient-provider relationships are discussed. • Empathy positively influences intention to provide treatment for chronic pain, irrespective of patients' age and gender. • Empathy was associated with intention to treat the patient but mediated by perceived pain and moderated by extraversion. • Focus on empathy in nursing education is important for patient-provider rapport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigates the underlying cognitive, social, and behavioral tendencies that may explain why some girls are more likely to perceive the adolescent transition as disrupting and difficult, otherwise characterized as role disruption. It was hypothesized that individual differences in rumination, rejection sensitivity, peer problems, and pubertal status would contribute to why some girls perceived more role disruption during the transition from childhood to adolescence, and that girls who reported more role disruption would be at increased risk for subsequent depression. N = 188 girls (Mage = 11.70 years) reported on their level of pubertal development, rumination, rejection sensitivity, peer problems, and depressive symptoms at three time points approximately 4 months apart. Structural equation modeling results suggested that baseline levels of rumination and angry rejection sensitivity explained perceptions of role disruption at Time 2 more than overall levels of pubertal development, and that greater role disruption predicted subsequent depressive symptoms at Time 3. These findings highlight the importance of individual tendencies in understanding who will find early adolescence challenging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past half‐century, developmentalists have produced a rich, diverse, and substantial literature on the psychology of puberty, establishing the transition from childhood to adolescence as one of the most pivotal phases of life. In this article, we identify three domains of research on puberty that are prime for new scientific inquiry: (a) hormones, (b) cohort trends, and (c) alternative measures and methods. Although these areas differ from each other in concept, scientific implementation, and ramifications for research, they are alike in their potential to advance developmental science and to strengthen theories, concepts, and understanding of this period of psychological change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though commonly discussed in regard to risky behavior and psychopathology, negative urgency should also play a role in common behaviors and problems. The present study explored negative urgency in relation to a common problem among adolescents: difficulty in interpersonal relationships. Since negative emotions precede action among individuals high in negative urgency, we investigated the role of depressive symptoms in this association. A sample of 272 youth (M = 11.75 years, SD = 0.93, 79.78% female) completed self-report measures of negative urgency, depressive symptoms, and interpersonal problems with peers, mothers, and fathers at two time points. Negative urgency cross-sectionally predicted interpersonal problems with peers and mothers, but not fathers. A heightened level of depressive symptoms among negatively urgent youth explained this effect and continued to show significant indirect associations with urgency and peer relationships four months later. Negative urgency appears to represent a global disposition, linked with interpersonal problems across multiple relationships. • Negative urgency is associated with interpersonal problems among youth. • Depressive symptoms partially explain this association. • These associations are present both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. • Negative urgency matters for not only psychopathology, but also daily problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Puberty in girls represents a notable period of vulnerability for different psychological disorders. The research literature has primarily considered external and contextual factors that might explain these rises in symptomatology. In the present study, we investigate relations of pubertal status and timing with individual cognitive, emotional, and behavioral tendencies, commonly identified as transdiagnostic processes, in a sample of N = 228 girls (Mage = 11.75 years). We also test whether these transdiagnostic processes mediate associations of pubertal status and pubertal timing with depressive symptoms. Results support greater endorsement of rumination, co‐rumination, negative urgency, and both anxious and angry rejection sensitivity in girls with more advanced pubertal status, as well as in girls with early pubertal timing. Higher levels of transdiagnostic processes fully mediated associations of pubertal status and timing with depressive symptoms at significant and marginally significant levels, respectively. Although the data are cross‐sectional, these findings offer promising preliminary evidence that transdiagnostic processes represent an important mental health risk in early adolescent girls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]