Ever wonder why teenagers are so quick to adopt Instagram, Snapchat, and other forms of social media? Or take up X Games sports such as skateboarding and snowboarding? This Alliance for Excellent Education report explains how changes in the brain make adolescents more likely to be influenced by their peers, take risks, and even become disengaged…

The social neuroscience of child and adolescent depression is inherently multidisciplinary. Depressive disorders beginning early in life can have serious developmental and functional consequences. Psychopathology research has described depression's defining clinical and contextual features, and intervention research has characterized its response…

This article will briefly review resources in youth ministry--two groundbreaking classics and a recent surge of good work--that can guide the footsteps of those who work with teens within faith communities. The best resources for ministry with teens engage mind, body, and spirit--always moving toward the practical step of inviting new action in…

Reports on a study of a small group of girls in Australia that investigated how older adolescents cognitively utilize information on heroin. The study sought to establish the perceived effects of exposures to information and to establish how the perceived effects are associated with changes to the girls' knowledge structures. (Author/LRW)

Psychologists and educators have struggled to understand the devastating influence of racial intolerance on children, on their personality development, and on their academic growth. The emotional and cognitive elements that underlie racial intolerance, along with its theoretical underpinnings, are examined in this paper. It is believed that five…

This article presents a theoretical and testable model of psychological processes in child and adolescent victims of sexual abuse. It proposes that sexual abuse leads to shame through mediation of cognitive attributions which leads to poor adjustment. Three factors--social support, gender, and developmental period--are hypothesized to moderate the…