Lu Shuang, Huang Chien-Chung, Cheung Shannon P, Rios Juan A, Chen Yafan
Department of Social Work and Social Administration, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong.
School of Social Work, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ, USA.
Health Soc Care Community. 2021 Jul;29(4):1010-1018. doi: 10.1111/hsc.13135. Epub 2020 Aug 11.
Latino youth are the largest and the fastest growing ethnic minority group in the U.S., and social-emotional skills are critical to their ability to cope with acculturative stress, perceived racial/ethnic discrimination and cultural value conflicts. Despite the significant challenges faced by Latino youth in the U.S., a paucity of research has examined the social-emotional skills of Latino pre-adolescents specifically. Recent research suggests that mindfulness may be closely linked to youth social-emotional skills, and executive function may serve as a mediating mechanism, but such associations have not been examined prior to this study. Using a cross-sectional survey among a sample of Latino youth in fifth-sixth grades in northern New Jersey (N = 97, M = 11, 54% male), this study examines the association between their mindfulness and their social-emotional skills, and tests the role of executive function in this relationship. Among the sampled Latino youth, mindfulness is positively associated with executive function, which is positively associated with social-emotional skills. Additionally, being male and being older both have marginally significant negative effect on social-emotional skills. Our results suggest that mindfulness, the awareness of and intentional focus on one's present thoughts and emotions with self-compassion, may benefit Latino pre-adolescents' executive function, which in turn may exhibit as improved social-emotional skills. This preliminary evidence and the differences based on gender and age therein warrant further investigation with larger samples among Latino youth. Future research and service implications are discussed.
拉丁裔青少年是美国最大且增长最快的少数族裔群体，社会情感技能对于他们应对文化适应压力、感知到的种族/族裔歧视以及文化价值冲突的能力至关重要。尽管美国的拉丁裔青少年面临重大挑战，但专门研究拉丁裔青春期前儿童社会情感技能的研究却很少。最近的研究表明，正念可能与青少年的社会情感技能密切相关，执行功能可能是一种中介机制，但在此项研究之前尚未对这种关联进行过考察。本研究采用横断面调查方法，对新泽西州北部五六年级的拉丁裔青少年样本（N = 97，平均年龄M = 11岁，男性占54%）进行了调查，考察了他们的正念与社会情感技能之间的关联，并检验了执行功能在这种关系中的作用。在抽样的拉丁裔青少年中，正念与执行功能呈正相关，执行功能又与社会情感技能呈正相关。此外，男性和年龄较大对社会情感技能均有微弱的显著负面影响。我们的研究结果表明，正念，即带着自我同情去觉察和有意专注于当下的思想和情绪，可能有益于拉丁裔青春期前儿童的执行功能，而这反过来可能表现为社会情感技能的提升。这一初步证据以及其中基于性别和年龄的差异值得在更大规模的拉丁裔青少年样本中作进一步研究。文中还讨论了未来研究及服务方面的意义。
