Phd in PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIAL NEUROSCIENCE

Thesis title: Individual and contextual determinants in internalizing problems during the transition to adolescence

Internalizing problems, such as depressive and anxiety symptoms, hit a large number of individuals especially during adolescence (e.g.,Allen et al., 2014) and negatively impact youths’ mental health and life (e.g., Schulte-Körne, 2016). Word Health Organization (2021) attested that anxiety disordered is experienced by 3.6% of 10–14-year-olds and 4.6% of 15–19-year-olds while among 1.1% of adolescents aged 10–14 years, and 2.8% of 15–19-year-olds show depressive symptoms. This thesis aimed to further investigate the individual and contextual factor that might impact the development of internalizing problems during adolescence. The first study examines the association between parental psychological control, adolescents’ anger, sadness, anger dysregulation, sadness dysregulation and internalizing symptoms in a longitudinal Italian sample of 99 adolescents, considering both the between-and within-person variability. The second study aimed to: 1) contribute to the cross-cultural validity of a measure of parental psychological control and 2) to examine the cultural normativeness of both parental psychological control and parental warmth. In this study we considered a sample of 932 pre-adolescents that participated in a large ongoing longitudinal and international study named Parenting Across Culture (PAC) project, from 11 cultural groups among 8 countries (China, Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Philippines, Thailand, United States). The third study aimed to investigate the interaction between, on the one hand, parental psychological control, and warmth and, on the other hand, children’ executive functions on youths’ internalizing problems and prosocial behaviors. This study relies on the same longitudinal and cross-cultural sample considered in study 2. We implemented a multigroup path analysis, considering the groups identify via the different levels of cultural normativeness of both parental psychological control and warmth that emerged in Study 2.