Anxious Solitude, Reciprocated Friendships with Peers, and Maternal Overcontrol from Third through Seventh Grade: A Transactional Model

Guided by a Transactional Model of anxious solitude development, we tested friend and maternal influences on continuity and change in youth anxious solitude from 3rd through 7th grade, as well as the influence of youth anxious solitude on decreased friendship participation and increased maternal overcontrol over time. Participants were 230 American youth (57% girls) selected for longitudinal study from a public-school screening sample (n = 688). Peers reported on anxious solitude, both peers and youth reported on reciprocated friendship, and youth reported on their mother’s overcontrol annually. Stability and incremental change in youth, friend, and maternal factors were tested in an autoregressive cross-lagged panel analytic model. Having few mutual friendships predicted incremental increase in youth anxious solitude in mid-elementary school, then youth anxious solitude predicted the loss of friendships after the middle school transition. Additionally, youth anxious solitude in third grade evoked increased maternal overcontrol in fourth grade, but the reverse direction of effect was not supported. Youth’s participation in few friendships also evoked mothers’ overcontrol, which exacerbated their child’s loss of friendships in elementary school. Taken together, having few mutual friends contributed to youth anxious solitude and maternal overcontrol, and subsequently these factors further exacerbated youth’s loss of friendships.

Maladaptive Social Consequences of Emotional Clarity Deficits in Early Adolescence

This study examined whether compromised emotional clarity prospectively contributes to maladaptive social behavior (aggression, anxious solitude) and adverse social experiences (low social status, victimization) in early adolescence; gender differences in these effects also were explored. Youth ( N = 636, [Formula: see text] age = 10.94, SD = 0.37) completed a self-report measure of emotional clarity in fifth grade, and their teachers completed measures of youth aggression, anxious solitude, social status, and victimization in fifth and sixth grades. Prospective path analyses revealed that emotional clarity deficits predicted anxious solitude and low social status in both girls and boys, and predicted aggression and victimization in girls but not boys. These findings provide support for theoretical models of emotional and affective social competence, and indicate some gender differences in the social consequences of emotional clarity deficits. More broadly, this research implicates emotional clarity as a target for socioemotional learning programs in early adolescence.