During emerging adulthood, family relationships remain salient. This study examined, from a gender perspective, continuity/discontinuity and stability/instability in family relationships, in a two-time repeated-measures study with Spanish emerging adult college students. It also analyzed the implications of the quality of parent--child…

The present studies focused on the role and socialization of biographical master narratives -- cultural narratives that prescribe the types and ordering of events that should occur in one's personal life identity narrative -- by focusing on adolescent and emerging adult gender identity development. We employed a combined explanatory and…

The present study examined patterns of romantic pathways in 100 Israeli emerging adults (54 males) who were followed from age 22 to 29 years. Analyses of interviews at age 29 yielded four distinctive romantic pathways differing in stability and ability to learn from romantic experiences: "Sporadic," "Lengthy Relationships but…

Older adults tend to have lower emotion-perception accuracy compared to younger adults. Previous studies have centered on individual characteristics, including cognitive decline and positive attentional preferences, as possible mechanisms underlying these age differences in emotion perception; however, thus far, no perceiver-focused factor has…

We examined support and conflict with parents and close friends in a sample of ethnically diverse young adults (European-, Asian-, Cuban-, Latin-, and Mexican Americans). College students (N = 495) completed six subscales from the Network of Relationships Inventory (NRI; Furman & Buhrmester, 1985). Friends were rated higher than parents on…

Previous research on sensation seeking (SS) was dominated by a variable-oriented approach indicating that SS level has a linear relation with a host of problem behaviors. Our aim was to provide a person-oriented methodology--a probabilistic clustering--that enables examination of both inter- and intra-individual differences in not only the level,…

In Experiment 1, Japanese children (4-, 5-, 7-, and 10-year-olds (n = 78)) and adults (n = 36), answered questions about the possibility of psychogenic bodily reactions, i.e., bodily outcomes with origins in the mind. The 4- and 5-year-old preschoolers typically denied that bodily conditions could originate in mental states. Developmentally,…

Although religious participation declines during emerging adulthood (18 years through middle 20s), most emerging adults still claim that their religious beliefs are important to them. However, little research has been conducted to examine the role that religious beliefs and practices may play in the development of self-perceptions during emerging…

This study explored cultural differences in the criteria young people have for becoming an adult. Specifically, the study sought (a) to compare Chinese and American responses concerning whether they believe they have reached adulthood; (b) to examine whether adulthood criteria could fit a common statistical model for both cultures; and (c) after…

Oculomotor activity during a 10-second inspection of stimuli (to be subsequently recalled) was recorded in twenty 5- and 7-year-old children and 20 adults. Results are discussed in terms of visual exploratory strategies from a developmental perspective. (CM)

Personality and gender differences in close same-sex friendship needs and experiences were investigated in two samples. Participants were 312 university students (217 women, M age = 19.5) and 491 preadolescents (269 girls, M age = 11.87). Participants completed several questionnaires yielding scores for communion and agency (personality), communal…

Emerging adulthood refers to a time period (18-25 years of age) between adolescence and adulthood. Recent research suggests that it may be a cultural construction. More traditional, non-Western cultures may have a shortened period of emerging adulthood, or no emerging adulthood at all, because these cultures tend to place greater emphasis on…

Within Triandis's (1994) theoretical framework, two studies are reported that deal with the developmental course for subjective perceptions of cultural dimensions in Dutch society (i.e., vertical and horizontal individualism and collectivism). While perceptions of society are always subjectively determined, the perceived dimensions that are…

Issues in the study of friendship across cultures were explored by reviewing a set of studies focusing on the friendships of Indonesian and United States youth. Four topics are considered: similarity of friendships across cultures, dimensions of friendships that vary across cultures, the utility of the individualism/collectivism dimension for…