Cognitive Vulnerabilities Amplify the Effect of Early Pubertal Timing on Interpersonal Stress Generation During Adolescence

Early pubertal timing has been found to confer risk for the occurrence of interpersonal stressful events during adolescence. However, pre-existing vulnerabilities may exacerbate the effects of early pubertal timing on the occurrence of stressors. Thus, the current study prospectively examined whether cognitive vulnerabilities amplified the effects of early pubertal timing on interpersonal stress generation. In a diverse sample of 310 adolescents (M age = 12.83 years, 55 % female; 53 % African American), early pubertal timing predicted higher levels of interpersonal dependent events among adolescents with more negative cognitive style and rumination, but not among adolescents with lower levels of these cognitive vulnerabilities. These findings suggest that cognitive vulnerabilities may heighten the risk of generating interpersonal stress for adolescents who undergo early pubertal maturation, which may subsequently place adolescents at greater risk for the development of psychopathology.     

Youth Substance Use and Body Composition: Does Risk in One Area Predict Risk in the Other?

Both substance use and obesity are prevalent among youth. As youth age, substance use rates increase and over the past three decades, obesity rates among youth have tripled. While these two factors have both short- and long-term health impacts, little research has explored how substance use and obesity among youth may be related. This study explores the bi-directional longitudinal relationships between substance use and body composition. Participants (N = 704; 50.7% female) were mostly white (86.4%) with a baseline mean age of 14.7 years. Objectively measured body composition was used to calculate body mass index z-scores (BMI z-score) and percent body fat. Cross-lagged structural equation models, accounting for clustering at the school level, were run to determine the longitudinal association between body composition and self-reported substance use (alcohol, cigarette, and marijuana), adjusting for socio-demographic characteristics, pubertal status, and weight satisfaction. Baseline alcohol use predicted decreased BMI z-score at follow-up and a similar association with percent body fat approached significance. Baseline cigarette use predicted increased percent body fat. No longitudinal associations were seen between baseline body composition and future substance use. Our results suggest that substance use contributes to subsequent body composition; however, body composition does not contribute to subsequent substance use. Continued research that explores these relationships longitudinally is greatly needed.     

Coping with youth suicide and overdose: one community's efforts to investigate, intervene, and prevent suicide contagion

From 2000-2005, Somerville, MA, experienced a number of youth overdoses and suicides. The community response followed CDC recommendations for contagion containment. A community coalition, Somerville Cares About Prevention, became a pivotal convener of community partners and a local research organization, the Institute for Community Health, provided needed expertise in surveillance and analysis. Mayoral leadership provided the impetus for action while community activists connected those at risk with mental health resources. Using a variety of data sources (including death certificates, youth risk surveys, 911 call data, and hospital discharges) overdose and suicide activity were monitored. Rates of suicide and overdose for 10-24-year-olds were higher than in previous years. Using case investigation methods, the majority of suicide victims were found to be linked through common peer groups and substance abuse. Subsequent community action steps included: a community-based trauma response team, improved media relationships, focus groups for suicide survivors, and prevention trainings to community stakeholders. Youth suicide and overdose activity subsided in May of 2005. The community partnerships were critical elements for developing a response to this public health crisis. This collaborative approach to suicide contagion used existing resources and provides important lessons learned for other communities facing similar circumstances.     

The innovative personality? Policy making and experimentation in an authoritarian bureaucracy

Why do local officials in an authoritarian bureaucracy experiment with policy, even when directed not to do so by central‐level officials? This study suggests that policy experimentation in this institutional environment can best be understood as an interaction between the structure in which local officials are embedded and individual‐level personality attributes. Leveraging a new data set from a series of original surveys with local policy makers in mainland China, conducted between 2016 and 2018, we discern three baseline personality types: authoritarian, consultative, and entrepreneurial. We thereafter examine the individual‐level characteristics of local officials who will innovate irrespective of a centralization of bureaucratic power and interests, as currently experienced under Chinese President Xi Jinping. We find that local policy makers engage in policy innovation when they are more focused on resolving governance problems and that increased risk reduces but does not eliminate their willingness to innovate. Based on these findings, we contend that future studies of policy innovation should use an evolutionary framework to examine the interaction between preferences and selection pressures.     

Law and Speed: Asylum Appeals and the Techniques and Consequences of Legal Quickening

This article examines how a politics of speed is manifest in a legal context via a detailed ethnography of the French National Court of Asylum (CNDA). It identifies the temporal, spatial, and organizational ordering techniques that characterize asylum appeals in France and discusses the consequences of these techniques for the way in which the appeal process is experienced by legal decision makers and subjects. It reveals adverse impacts of legal quickening on legal quality, in particular through identifying: ‘cracks’ in the performance of legal roles like lawyer and judge that begin to appear when law is executed rapidly and repetitively; dwindling opportunities to demonstrate and experience respect between parties; and the ‘thinning-out’ of legal process, as heuristics rather than deliberation come to dominate legal reasoning. The article contributes to a burgeoning body of socio-legal literature on law and time by establishing the negative impact of excessive legal quickening on role performance, respect, and legal quality.