Social gaming--online gameplay involving digital interactions with others--is a common form of social media use among adolescents. Research on this topic has neglected the social aspect of gaming and the potential role of social gaming in adolescent development. In this article, we define social gaming, drawing on interdisciplinary theories to…

Many young people are inclined toward risk taking and also toward helping other people. "Prosocial risk taking" is a term that can describe different ways that youth provide significant instrumental and emotional support to family members, friends, and strangers, even when it involves a personal risk. In this article, we review research…

Adolescents navigate the transition into young adulthood through their pursuit of developmental goals. While societal expectations and institutions provide normed paths to adulthood by shaping decisions on goal identification, individuals take various routes to attain adult-status through different goal prioritization. Using longitudinal data from…

Current theories of loneliness posit that biases in social information processing play a key role in the development and maintenance of loneliness. However, this assumption has rarely been tested in longitudinal research in adolescence. The current study concentrated on two constructs associated with such biases, that is, fear of negative…

The brain undergoes profound development across childhood and adolescence, including continuous changes in brain morphology, connectivity, and functioning that are, in part, dependent on one's experiences. These neurobiological changes are accompanied by significant changes in children's and adolescents' cognitive learning. By drawing from studies…

Empathy and executive functions (EFs) are multimodal constructs that enable individuals to cope with their environment. Both abilities develop throughout childhood and are known to contribute to social behavior and academic performance in young adolescents. Notably, mentalizing and EF activate shared frontotemporal brain areas, which in previous…

Some researchers indicate that the transition to high school deflects adolescent developmental trajectories. Others assert that it provides a new possibility for the promotion of adolescents' socioemotional well-being. One critical view missing in such claims is that individual variabilities interact with environmental influences. We employed the…

The main purpose of this study is to broaden our understanding of the predictors of self-control. We test how two types of strain variables (bullying victimization and grade dissatisfaction) influence the level of self-control during adolescence using three-wave panel data collected from Korean adolescents ranging in age from 14 to 16. We…

This article reviews developmental studies of creativity in children and adolescents with a focus on "peaks" and "slumps" that have often been described in the literature. The irregularity of the development of creativity is interpreted in light of conceptual and measurement issues and with regard to the interaction between…

Research shows greater mindfulness is associated with less negative affect and more positive affect. Fewer studies have examined the mediating psychological processes linking mindfulness to these outcomes in adolescents. This three-wave, prospective longitudinal study examines rumination--the tendency to engage in repetitive and negative…

Identity formation is a key developmental task in adolescence. Although many adolescents in modern societies face issues of identity, there are substantial individual differences in identity exploration and commitment. Little is known about the origins of these individual differences. The current study investigated the genetic and environmental…

We investigated adolescent responsibility across 2 developmental contexts, home and an afterschool program. Longitudinal data were collected from 355 ethnically diverse 11-20-year-old adolescents (M = 15.49; 55.9% female) in 14 project-based programs. Youth rated their responsibility in the program and at home at 4 time points; parents and leaders…

This longitudinal study aimed to differentiate between acculturative and developmental processes by (a) comparing levels and change rates in victimization among ethnic German immigrants and native German adolescents in Germany and Russian Jewish immigrants in Israel, and (b) testing whether interindividual differences in victimization among…

The stability of callous-unemotional (CU) traits and both individual and contextual factors that influence this stability have been studied in community adolescent samples but not to great extent in adolescents who have been arrested. We estimated the developmental changes in CU traits measured over the course of 36 months (6-month intervals)…

The current study investigated the development of global and domain (academic, physical, same-sex peer relationship, opposite-sex peer relationship) self-esteem from age 10 to 16 in a sample of Mexican-origin adolescents. Participants' (N = 674) responses on the Self-Description Questionnaire (SDQ; Marsh, 2005) II-S showed moderate rank-order…