Section of Clinical Developmental Psychology, Faculty of Behavioural and Movement Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Research Institute LEARN!, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
J Youth Adolesc. 2023 Nov;52(11):2384-2403. doi: 10.1007/s10964-023-01836-0. Epub 2023 Aug 17.
Research has shown that adolescents - particularly girls - who mature relatively early often experience more internalizing problems. This effect is thought to be partially driven by psychosocial mechanisms, but previous research based relative pubertal maturation on complete samples or population standards, instead of considering the adolescents' direct peer environment. In the current study the level of adolescents' pubertal development was assessed relative to their classmates in order to examine relative pubertal maturation. The effects of adolescents' relative pubertal status, and their perceived popularity, on symptoms of social anxiety and depression in adolescents were studied. All analyses were also performed for absolute pubertal maturation. Participants were 397 young adolescents (M = 13.06, SD = 0.36, 49.9% girls) at timepoint 1, and 307 (M = 14.08, SD = 0.36, 50.5% girls) at timepoint 2. A significant positive relationship was found between relative pubertal timing and symptoms of depression for girls but not boys. Social anxiety symptoms were not significantly related to relative pubertal timing in either sex. Relative pubertal maturation had no effect on change in or persistence of depressive and social anxiety symptoms one year later. The effects of the comparison with the immediate peer environment, did not seem to explain more variance in internalizing symptoms than the effects of early maturation.
研究表明，青少年——尤其是女孩——如果性成熟相对较早，往往会经历更多的内化问题。这种影响部分归因于心理社会机制，但以前的研究基于完全样本或人口标准来衡量青春期的成熟度，而没有考虑到青少年的直接同伴环境。在当前的研究中，青少年的青春期发育水平是相对于他们的同学来评估的，以考察相对青春期成熟度。研究了青少年相对青春期成熟度和他们感知的受欢迎程度对青少年社交焦虑和抑郁症状的影响。所有分析也针对绝对青春期成熟度进行了研究。参与者是 397 名年轻青少年（M=13.06，SD=0.36，49.9%是女孩），在第 1 时间点，307 名（M=14.08，SD=0.36，50.5%是女孩）在第 2 时间点。研究发现，对于女孩，相对青春期发育时间与抑郁症状呈正相关，但对于男孩则没有。社交焦虑症状与相对青春期发育时间在两性中均无显著相关性。相对青春期成熟度对一年后抑郁和社交焦虑症状的变化或持续没有影响。与直接同伴环境的比较的影响似乎并没有比早期成熟的影响解释更多的内化症状的方差。
