The prevailing cultural narrative about middle school is that those years are extremely difficult, and the best students can hope for is to endure them until finding relief in high school. Nancy Deutsch argues that these years are, in fact, a time of great potential if schools can abandon their stereotypes about young adolescents and create school…

Human beings construct narratives about the world and their experiences in it--whether in math class or at the dinner table, people tell themselves stories about who they and others are, how the world works and why. Among teenagers, these meaning-making narratives are related to the activity and changing connectivity of the networks in their…

Adolescence is a period of growing focus on social interactions and relationships. The peer context is one of the most significant developmental contexts in this transitional period and positive peer experiences contribute positively to adolescent well-being. Although negative peer influence on antisocial behaviour has received much attention, we…

Adolescence is a period of profound change, which holds substantial developmental milestones, but also unique challenges to the individual. In this opinion paper, we highlight the potential of combining two recently developed behavioural and neural training techniques (cognitive bias modification and functional magnetic neuroimaging-based…

Both organismic and intentional self-regulation processes must be integrated across childhood and adolescence for adaptive developmental regulations to exist and for the developing person to thrive, both during the first two decades of life and through the adult years. To date, such an integrated, life-span approach to self-regulation during…

In order to provide the best support possible to grieving youth it is important to understand how bereavement impacts adolescent development and how adolescent development impacts bereavement. In this article, prominent youth bereavement author, David Balk, explores these two key components focusing on cognitive, behavioral, and affective…

Whereas non-suicidal self injury (NSSI) is reported in 13-23% of adolescents and is an increasingly studied topic, there has been little investigation into the pathophysiology behind self-injury. This commentary examines recent research into pain and emotional distress to discuss implications for the manner we should understand, research, and…

The American School Counselor Association developed national standards for students to provide a framework for a holistic approach to student academic, career, and personal/social development. While the ASCA Student Standards are comprehensive, little attention is given to stress. Adolescents are experiencing greater stress associated with…

This article offers suggestions for strengthening school-based grief support following an adolescent's death. Such interventions must be considered within the context of: (a) development during adolescence; (b) the role of peers in adolescent development; and (c) the fact that an adolescent peer's death is a non-normative life crisis in developed…

In this article, the author describes the various changes that are experienced by young adolescents. Physically, early adolescents are growing faster than at any other time in their lives except infancy. They experience significant increases in weight, height, heart size, lung capacity, and muscular strength. Intellectually and cognitively, early…

One of the most challenging daily experiences of teaching young adolescents is helping them transition from Piaget's concrete to the formal operational stage of cognitive development during the middle school years. Students who have reached formal operations can design and test hypotheses, engage in deductive reasoning, use flexible thinking,…

Nine articles on the young adolescent consider the ability of middle schools to adapt to the needs of their students, the educational implications of preadolescent development, adolescent brain growth and cognitive ability, and the relevance of Piaget's psychology to the middle school. The authors' conclusions include the necessity to identify and…

Twelve papers on the emergence and maintenance of severe clinical depression and depressive symptoms during adolescence are presented. Topics include parental influences, epidemiological data, depressive and negative affect, hormonal effects, preadolescent symptoms, sex differences, longitudinal studies with rhesus monkeys, suicidal ideation,…

Recent advances in neuroimaging and genetics technologies have enhanced our understanding of neurodevelopmental disorders in adults. The authors in this volume not only discuss such advances as they apply to adults with learning disorders, but also address their translation into clinical practice. One cluster of chapters addresses developmental…

Adolescent struggle is about the forces which shape the self and direct the search for identity. It examines the factors which incline young people toward self-centeredness, irrationality and faulty decision-making. Section 1 of the book deals with the adolescent self and two of the most important determinants of adolescent behavior: egocentrism…