Daily life mechanisms of stress spillover among early adolescents experiencing academic difficulty

Research has suggested that academic stress may “spillover” into other life domains and have negative psychological or social consequences for children and adolescents outside of school settings, but relatively few investigations have examined mediators and moderators of spillover. The current study explored the mediating role of state affect and the moderating roles of prior academic performance and mood disturbances on spillover in a sample of 131 French adolescents. Participants completed clinical measures of anxiety and depression and participated in a 7-day ambulatory monitoring phase that involved multiple daily assessments of mood, behaviors, and activities. Spillover was observed for family events and subsequent school-related events, as well as between family and leisure events. These associations remained significant when controlling for immediate mood responses, suggesting that state affect does not play a salient mediating role. There was no evidence that spillover was moderated by academic difficulty, anxiety, depression, or gender. Results are discussed in terms of the role that emotional processes may play in spillover phenomena as well as the reciprocal influence that academic and non-academic events may exert each other.