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This study attempted to validate distinctions between popularity and social acceptance in the cultural context of Hong Kong. We recruited 280 Chinese children (132 girls, 148 boys, mean age = 9.5) from Hong Kong primary schools. These children completed a peer nomination inventory assessing popularity, social acceptance, social rejection, aggression, peer victimization, and social behavior. Consistent with research conducted in western samples, we found that social acceptance was correlated primarily with positive behavioral characteristics (i.e., assertiveness-leadership and low levels of submissiveness-withdrawal). In contrast, popularity was associated with a more mixed pattern of features including high levels of aggression. The overall pattern of findings closely replicates past research conducted in North American and European settings.

The education sector offers compelling opportunities to address the shortcomings of traditional mental health delivery systems and to prevent and treat youth mental, emotional, and behavioral (MEB) problems. Recognizing that social and emotional wellness is intrinsically related to academic success, schools are moving to adopt multi-tier frameworks based on the public health model that provide a continuum of services to all children, including services to address both academic and MEB problems. In this paper, we review the potential value of multi-tier frameworks in facilitating access to, and increasing the effectiveness of, mental health services in schools and review the empirical support for school-based mental health interventions by tier. We go on to describe a community-academic partnership between the Seattle Public Schools and the University of Washington School Mental Health Assessment, Research, and Training (SMART) Center that exemplifies how multi-tier educational frameworks, research and evidence, and purposeful collaboration can combine to improve development and implementation of a range of school-based strategies focused on MEB needs of students. Finally, we present a set of 10 recommendations that may help guide other research and practice improvement efforts to address MEB problems in youth through effective school mental health programming.

Research on generational differences in immigrant youths' academic achievement has yielded conflicting findings. This meta-analysis reconciles discrepant findings by testing meta-analytic moderators. Fifty-three studies provided 74 comparisons on academic outcomes. First-and second-generation youths did not significantly differ on academic achievement (Hedges's g = .01), and second-generation students performed slightly better than third-or-latergeneration peers (g = .12). Moderation tests indicated that second-generation immigrants outperformed first-generation students on standardized tests (g = .20) and earned better grades than third-or-later-generation peers (g = .20). Immigrant advantage was stronger for Asian, low-socioeconomic, and community samples. Immigrant advantage may be overestimated in studies that use self-reported rather than school-reported achievement. Together, our results suggest a small, heterogeneous second-generation immigrant advantage that varies by immigrant population and study characteristics.

Despite research demonstrating the importance of student–teacher relationships for student functioning, little is known about strategies to enhance such relationships, particularly in secondary school. The current study examined effects of a professional development for middle school teachers on the Establish-Maintain-Restore (EMR) approach. EMR aims to enhance teachers’ skills in cultivating relationships with students and involves brief training (3 hr) and ongoing implementation supports. In a randomized controlled trial, 20 teachers and 190 students were assigned to EMR or control. Observers rated academically engaged time and disruptive behavior, and teachers reported on relationship quality. Multilevel models showed that EMR resulted in significant improvements in student–teacher relationships (Hedge’s g = .61, 95% CI [0.21, 1.02]), academically engaged time (g = .81, 95% CI [0.01, 1.63]), and disruptive behavior (g = 1.07, 95% CI [0.01, 2.16]). Results indicate potential promise for EMR.

This article reports a longitudinal investigation that examines academic and social difficulties as predictors of depressive symptoms during middle childhood. Participants were 199 elementary school children (M=9.1 years) who were followed for 2 consecutive school years. In both years of the project, children completed a questionnaire assessing depressive symptoms and a peer nomination inventory assessing friendships and social standing. Grade point averages (GPAs) were obtained from a review of school records. Low GPAs were predictive of depressive symptoms, but this effect did not hold for children who had numerous friends. Similarly, children who had relatively few friends tended to experience depressive symptoms. However, the effect was attenuated for children with high GPAs. Taken together, the findings suggest that competencies in 1 domain can moderate the risks associated with difficulties in the other domain.

Speech stimuli played in reverse are perceived as unfamiliar and alien-sounding, even though phoneme duration and fundamental voicing frequency are preserved. Although language perception ultimately resides in the neocortex, the brain stem plays a vital role in processing auditory information, including speech. The present study measured brain stem frequency-following responses (FFR) evoked by forward and reverse speech stimuli recorded from electrodes oriented horizontally and vertically to measure signals with putative origins in auditory nerve and rostral brain stem, respectively. The vertical FFR showed increased amplitude due to forward speech. It is concluded that familiar phonological and prosodic properties of forward speech selectively activate central brain stem neurons.