2-049 - Early Life Stress and Positive Youth Development in a Global Context

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Youth exposed to early life stress are at significant health and developmental risk. Yet, many at-risk youth pursue positive developmental outcomes despite their exposure to significant adversity, a process that is referred to as resilience (Masten, 2014). The proposed cluster of research papers utilizes a positive youth development perspective to present and discuss diverse child development outcomes among youth exposed to early life stress (racial-ethnic minority, impoverished and maltreated youth), and its link to risk versus resilience process in global context. The first paper presents preliminary longitudinal findings from a sample of Greek youth (1,118 followed over three years) exposed to a severe financial crisis in Greece. Informed by a PYD perspective, findings suggest that parenting is an important risk and protective factor that can either exacerbate or buffer the impact of financial hardship on youth wellbeing outcomes. The second paper presents an experimental design in which they had tested the efficacy of the Changing Lives Program (CLP), a preventive intervention that is tailored to promote PYD among at-risk minority adolescents (209 African-American and Hispanic adolescents). Results indicated that the CLP promoted life goal development through specific effects on self-discovery and self-construction. Lastly, the third paper presents findings from a longitudinal analysis on the development of social competence and its underlying role in resilience pathways among 716 maltreated youth (from age 6 to 16; using five time-points). Using core concepts from a PYD perspective, findings support multiple trajectories to various measures of positive youth outcomes in late adolescence.

Sub Unit

• Health, Growth, Injury

Chair

• Assaf Oshri, University of Georgia

Discussant

• Anne C Petersen, University of Michigan

Individual Presentations

• Economic Problems, Parenting, and Youth Adaptation during the Great Recession: A Longitudinal Study of Immigrant and Greek Youth - Presenting Author: Frosso Motti-Stefanidi, University of Athens; Vassilis Pavlopoulos, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece; Jens B. Asendorpf, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany

• Empowering Marginalized Youth: A Self-Transformative Intervention for Promoting Positive Youth Development - Presenting Author: Kyle Eichas, Tarleton State University, United States; Marilyn J. Montgomery, Northwest Christian University; Alan Meca, University of Miami; William M. Kurtines, Florida International University

• Trajectories of Peer Competence in Maltreated Youth: Pathways Towards Resilience - Presenting Author: Erinn B. Duprey, University of Georgia; Assaf Oshri, University of Georgia; Sihong Liu, University of Georgia; Margaret O'Brien Caughy, University of Georgia; Matthew Carlson, University of Georgia