2495 - CAUSE, CONSEQUENCE, OR RECIPROCAL RELATION? LONGITUDINAL ASSOCIATION BETWEEN BULLYING VICTIMIZATION AND EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONS AMONG EARLY ADOLESCENTS

Session: P_D05S006 - Poster Session 6 - Division 5
AUTHORS:
Lyu Muhua (Collaborative Innovation Center of Assessment toward Basic Education Quality, Beijing Normal University ~ Beijing ~ China) , Xiong Yuke (Department of Psychology, School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Nanjing University ~ Nanjing ~ China) , Ren Ping (Collaborative Innovation Center of Assessment toward Basic Education Quality, Beijing Normal University ~ Beijing ~ China)
Abstract text:
Background: Bullying victimization is a long-standing global issue that leads to range of cognitive, psychological, and social adjustment problems among adolescents. Executive functions, involving top-down cognitive processes, are crucial for regulating adolescents' social interactions and behavior. However, the directionality of the relation between bullying victimization and executive functions remains unclear, with debates surrounding cause, consequence, and reciprocal relations. Guided by the developmental cascades model, this study investigated the longitudinal association between bullying victimization and executive functions among early adolescents.
Methods: A four-wave longitudinal design was employed, with data collected at six-month intervals from 2,045 Chinese adolescents (51.0% boys; Mage = 12.92; SD = 0.62) across eight secondary schools. Students completed a self-report measure of bullying victimization, and their parents completed a parent-report measure of executive functions at each wave. A random intercept cross-lagged panel model was used to analyze the within- and between-person associations.
Results: At the between-person level, there were positive relations between bullying victimization and the two main dimensions of executive functions (behavioral regulation and metacognition). At the within-person level, significant autoregressive paths from T1 to T4 were observed for bullying victimization, behavioral regulation, and metacognition. This suggests that adolescents who reported higher-than-expected levels of bullying victimization, behavioral regulation difficulties, or metacognitive deficits tended to maintain these elevated levels at subsequent time points. The bidirectional, time-lagged paths consistently emerged across the waves from T1 to T4, indicating that increased bullying victimization was associated with worsening behavioral regulation over time, and vice versa. Additionally, the model revealed a significant within-person time-lagged path from behavioral regulation to subsequent metacognition.
Conclusions: The findings support the developmental cascades model, demonstrating the reciprocal relation between bullying victimization and behavioral regulation during adolescent development. These results highlight the importance of developing targeted prevention and intervention strategies to disrupt the negative interaction between bullying victimization and executive functions.