Sociocultural and environmental influence on self and social processing and mental health in adolescence in the UK and Spain

青春期被认为是一个社会重新定位的时期，在这个时期，人们开始探索新的社会环境，扩大与同龄人的关系，减少与父母在一起的时间(Larson等人，1996)。随着青少年更好地理解他人的心理状态(Dumontheil等人，2010年)，他们变得更关心别人对他们的看法，并更有可能利用这些判断来了解他们对自己的看法(van der Aar，2018)。同时，许多心理健康问题都出现在青春期(Viner等人，2012年)，这可能部分与在此期间发生的自我和社会认知过程的变化有关(Choudhury，2010)。有人提出，青春期是社会文化加工的敏感期(Mills&Blakemore，2014)，因此，社会、文化和环境背景因素可能在自我和社会认知加工的成熟过程中发挥重要作用，这反过来可能成为青春期起病的精神疾病的风险或韧性的来源。这个多学科的博士学位将在英国的一个新的青少年样本和英国和西班牙队列的现有纵向队列数据中整合实验任务、问卷和方法来表征环境特定因素，以调查以下问题：社会文化和环境因素如何影响英国和西班牙青少年的核心自我评估，以及这些来源是如何在青春期对心理健康结果的风险和弹性？英国行为研究？这项研究将调查社会凝聚力(例如，社会联系和邻里劣势指标)如何与自我和社会过程中的变化相关，以及这些如何可能成为心理健康结果的复原力来源。我们将在英国招募约300名年龄在11岁至18岁之间的参与者，并将使用有效的问卷和任务来衡量：同伴关系和与家庭的联系、各种心理健康结果、核心自我评估、自我描述、自我概念和视角采取能力。我们还将包括客观的社会人口学指标(例如多重剥夺指数；IMD)以及主观指标(例如感知的相对社会经济地位)，并通过将参与者的邮政编码与政府地区层面的数据相关联来获得绿地、空气和噪音污染的衡量标准。我们将调查环境和社会人口因素与青春期心理健康相关结果的发展之间的关系，以及这些因素是如何被心理社会因素调节的。我们将利用西班牙INMA和英国理解协会的队列研究，探索贫困的人口统计指标，包括父母教育和地区层面的剥夺措施，以及特定的环境因素，如绿地的可用性和使用，如何预测心理健康结果。我们还将调查社会支持和人际关系的影响，并将它们在两种文化中进行比较。混合影响模型将调查社会文化和环境因素如何预测心理健康困难，以及这种关系如何被社会认知加工的差异所调节。我们预测，客观和主观的不利指标将对心理健康产生不利影响，社会关系将在这种影响中发挥保护作用。这可能是因为与更具可塑性和积极的核心自我概念有关的韧性，这些概念可能由强大的社会关系诱导，以及更好的视角选择能力。我们还预测，同伴和家庭支持可能在这种关系中发挥保护作用，特别是在强调青少年在家庭结构中的发展的文化中(例如西班牙)。

Adolescence is considered a period of social reorientation in which people start to explore novel social surroundings, expanding their relationships with peers and spending less time with parents (Larson et al., 1996). As adolescents become better able to understand the mental states of other people (Dumontheil et al., 2010), they become more concerned with what others think of them and are more likely to use these judgments to inform what they think of themselves (van der Aar, 2018). In parallel, many mental health issues have their onset in adolescence (Viner et al., 2012), which may in part be related to the changes in self and social cognitive processing that occur during this period (Choudhury, 2010). It has been proposed that adolescence is a sensitive period for sociocultural processing (Mills & Blakemore, 2014), and therefore social, cultural and environmental contextual factors may play an important role in the maturation of self and social cognitive processing, which may in turn become sources of risk or resilience to mental illnesses that have their onset during adolescence. This multidisciplinary PhD will integrate experimental tasks, questionnaires and methods to characterize environment-specific factors, in a new adolescent sample in the UK and existing longitudinal cohort data from cohorts in the UK and Spain to investigate the questions: How do sociocultural and environmental factors affect core self-evaluations of adolescents in the UK and Spain, and how are these sources of risk and resilience to mental health outcomes during adolescence?UK behavioural study. This study will investigate how social cohesion (e.g. social contacts and neighbourhood indicators of disadvantage) is related to changes in self and social processing, and how these might be sources of resilience to mental health outcomes. We will recruit around 300 participants ages 11 to 18 years in the UK and will use validated questionnaires and tasks to measure: peer relationships and connectedness to family, various mental health outcomes, core self-evaluations, self-descriptiveness and self-concept and perspective taking ability. We will also include objective sociodemographic measures (e.g. Index of Multiple Deprivation; IMD) as well as subjective measures (e.g. perceived relative socioeconomic status) and obtain measures of greenspace and air and noise pollution by relating participant postcodes to governmental area-level data.Cohort studies. We will investigate the relationship between environmental and sociodemographic factors and the development of mental health-related outcomes throughout adolescence, and how these are moderated by psychosocial factors. We will employ the Spanish INMA and the UK Understanding Society cohort studies, to explore how demographic measures of poverty, including parental education and area-level deprivation measures, and specific environmental factors, such as availability and use of greenspace, predict mental health outcomes. We will also investigate influences of social support and relationships and compare these across both cultures.Mixed effects models will investigate how sociocultural and environmental factors predict mental health difficulties, and how this relationship can be modulated by differences in socio-cognitive processing. We predict that objective and subjective indicators of disadvantage will have a detrimental effect on mental health, and that there will be a protective role of social relationships in this effect. This might be due to resilience related to more malleable and positive core self-concepts that might be induced by strong social relationships, as well as better perspective taking abilities. We also predict that there might be a protective role of peer and family support in this relationship, especially in cultures that emphasize the development of adolescents within the family structure (e.g. Spain).