Mentalizing--the ability to represent or infer the mental states of others--continues to develop into and throughout adolescence. Increased mentalizing sophistication during adolescence is thought to support the navigation of increasingly complex social relationships and contexts. However, developmental science has yet to aggregate the seemingly…

This study examines the relationship between parenting styles (authoritarian, indulgent, authoritative, and neglectful) and its relations with personal and social adjustment beyond adolescence. Participants were 2131 Spanish children, divided into adolescents (n = 616), young adults (n = 606), middle-aged adults (n = 502) and older adults (n…

Research suggests a link between precocious transitions to adulthood (e.g., high school dropout) and maladaptation, and this association is typically assumed to be uniform. We propose that this monolithic portrayal of precocious transitions as problematic for adult functioning is unwarranted, particularly across identities defined by gender,…

Educational transitions involve a number of changes for adolescents and can be challenging for adolescents and parents alike. The present study was designed to gain a better understanding as to how adolescents' perceptions of parenting evolves across a major educational transition and how the parenting perceived across this transition may…

Adolescence is by definition an "age of risk", irrelevant if you substantiate such a claim experientially or empirically. Mid-adolescence is the period where the processes of both neural and socio-emotional maturation are linked with an increase in both exploratory and health-risk behaviors. The present study, using a cross-sectional…

Within a theoretical framework of cognitive dissonance, this phenomenological study explored Australian intellectually gifted pre-adolescent/early adolescents' experiences of asynchrony. The study focuses on mothers and sons. Eleven boys aged 10 to 14 years, and nine of their mothers, participated in semi-structured interviews. Seven boys reported…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences between identified gifted adolescents and adolescents not identified as gifted in terms of social acceptance and self-concept (peer relations, academic, and general). In addition, we aimed to investigate the differences between two groups of students identified according to different…

Identity formation is one of the key developmental tasks in adolescence. According to Erikson (1968) experiencing identity uncertainty is normative in adolescence. However, empirical studies investigating identity uncertainty on a daily basis are lacking. Hence, studying individual differences in daily certainty (i.e., identity commitment levels)…

The development and adjustment correlates of parent-child social (parent, child, and others present) and dyadic time (only parent and child present) from age 8 to 18 were examined. Mothers, fathers, and firstborns and secondborns from 188 White families participated in both home and nightly phone interviews. Social time declined across…

A growing body of literature has shown that being victimized online is associated with poor mental health. Little is known about the factors that protect youth from the negative outcomes that may result from these victimization experiences, particularly those related to race. Using a risk and resilience framework, this study examined the…

Increasing bodies of evidence suggest that keeping secrets may be detrimental to well-being and adjustment, whereas confiding secrets may alleviate the detriments of secrecy and benefit well-being and adjustment. However, few studies have addressed the consequences of keeping and confiding secrets simultaneously, and even fewer have done so…

A model of the relation between self-concept and internalizing and externalizing problem behaviours in adolescence, with the self-concept influencing problem behaviours (S[right arrow]IE), was assessed using a sample of 277 Swedish adolescents. The model was tested in a path analysis with data from Youth Self Report (YSR) and Structural Analysis…

In a dual-factor model of mental health (cf. Greenspoon & Saklofske, 2001), assessments of positive indicators of wellness (i.e., subjective well-being--SWB) are coupled with traditional negative indicators of illness (i.e., psychopathology) to comprehensively measure mental health. The current study examined the existence and utility of a…

This study distinguishes different patterns of friendship quality in terms of support from and conflict with friends, and reciprocity. Associations between friendship patterns and adolescents' adjustment (self-perception, expectations for the future, depressive feelings, sense of alienation, lying, disobedience, and aggression) were hypothesized…

Ego identity was assessed for 30 mildly retarded adolescents, 30 nonretarded peers, and 30 nonretarded preadolescents. Results suggest that subjects' identity did not reflect a simple developmental lag but rather a unique profile. Subjects' ego identity was related to social adjustment and level of functioning, even after controlling for…