Background: Personal construct theory (PCT) is a constructivist approach to understanding human thought and action. Preliminary research focusing on applying PCT concepts and methodologies to understanding individuals with high-functioning autism (HFA) has suggested its utility for both research and clinical interventions. The developmental period…

Adolescence is a developmental period often characterized as a time of impulsive and risky choices leading to increased incidence of unintentional injuries and violence, alcohol and drug abuse, unintended pregnancy, and sexually transmitted diseases. Traditional neurobiological and cognitive explanations for such suboptimal choices and actions…

Adolescents need to develop competencies to navigate an adult world that is complex and disorderly: a world of heterogeneous macro- to microecological systems containing contradictions and catch-22s. This exploratory essay examines adolescents' conscious processes of developing pertinent competencies for pursuing goals (agency) in these kinds of…

Self-regulation represents a core aspect of human functioning that influences positive development across the life span. This chapter focuses on the action-control model, a key facet of self-regulation during childhood and early adolescence. The authors discuss the development of action-control beliefs, paying particular attention to their…

The authors have integrated the major findings on the sleep-wake cycle and its performance correlates in adolescents. Basic research shows that lack of synchronicity between early school start times and the circadian rhythm of adolescents (and the sleep debt accumulated as a result) involves several cognitive correlates that may harm the academic…

Adolescents frequently engage in risky behaviors that endanger both themselves and others. Critical to the development of effective interventions is an understanding of the processes adolescents go through when deciding to take risks. This article explores two information processing systems; a slow, deliberative, analytic system and a quick,…

Adolescence is an evolutionarily conserved developmental phase characterized by hormonal, physiological, neural and behavioral alterations evident widely across mammalian species. For instance, adolescent rats, like their human counterparts, exhibit elevations in peer-directed social interactions, risk-taking/novelty seeking and drug and alcohol…

Progressive developments in scanning technologies over the last decade have led to a surge of new research into the structure and function of the brain and into differences between the brains of teenagers and other adults. This work has not been free of controversy, notably around the question of deficits in the capacity of young people concerning…

While psychological research has long shown that adolescence is a period of major cognitive and affective transition, recent neurophysiological research has shown that adolescence is also accompanied by observable maturational changes in the brain, both in terms of structure and neurotransmitter function. Given this situation, we would expect that…

Recognition of the interplay between nature and nurture is decades old in fields such as psychiatry, but other fields in the social sciences continue to be hampered by the idea that social and biological variables compete for explanatory relevance. In a recent study of the adolescent brain and risk taking, Males critiqued biologically oriented…

Adolescence is a developmental period that entails substantial changes in affective and incentive-seeking behavior relative to both childhood and adulthood, including a heightened propensity to engage in risky behaviors and experience persistent negative and labile mood states. This review discusses the emotional and incentive-driven behavioral…

This chapter identifies four challenges to the study of the development of coping and regulation and outlines specific theoretical and empirical strategies for addressing them. The challenges are (1) to integrate work on coping and processes of emotion regulation, (2) to use the integration of research on neuro-biology and context to inform the…

Although dual-process models in cognitive, personality, and social psychology have stimulated a large body of research about analytic and heuristic modes of decision making, these models have seldom been applied to the study of adolescent risk behaviors. In addition, the developmental course of these two kinds of information processing, and their…

This paper argues that the adolescent process needs to be accorded its own particularity of reference, especially where narcissism is concerned. The paper draws on literary and clinical examples to describe what is termed the "adolescent organisation". In many ways, this organisation reflects post-Kleinian theory of what constitutes narcissistic…

To characterize cognitive maturation through adolescence, processing speed, voluntary response suppression, and spatial working memory were measured in 8- to 30-year-old (N=245) healthy participants using oculomotor tasks. Development progressed with a steep initial improvement in performance followed by stabilization in adolescence. Adult-level…