The unfolding of individual interests is reconstructed as part of a person's everyday experience in dealing with multiple goals. This is exemplified by referring to how adolescents cope with developmental tasks while striving for their ideal selves. Exploratory interaction with objects of potential interest is regarded as a central element that…

This approach to the subject of adolescence is comprehensive, embracing three determinants which are universal for any stage of individual human development: (a) biology, (b) culture, and (c) psychology. The chapter on biology presents a brief review of the physical and physiologic changes of puberty, taking note of the impact of puberty on the…

As an outgrowth of the theory of flow, looks at some fine distinctions regarding the adolescent's optimal conditions for growth. Points to the importance of the adolescent's ability to reinterpret conflicts which crop up in raw experience, to overcome psychic entropy with long-term challenges or "life themes," and to find new meaning and…

Behaviors characterizing the adolescent period are examined, followed by the identification and explanation of the developmental tasks of adolescence; finally, the specific contributions of occupational therapy to adolescent development and to task mastery are presented. (Author)

Perceptions of parents and their adolescent children about a number of developmental tasks were compared for 508 Dutch families. Parents consistently indicated later ages for the achievement of developmental tasks than did adolescents, but they had similar views of the sequence in which achievement of developmental tasks should occur. (SLD)

This document discusses whether young people with difficulty entering adulthood can be helped, or if accumulated effects of various adversitites have caused irremediable damage. First the developmental tasks that adolescents need to accomplish before they can take on adult roles are described. Next, two well-known explanations for youths' failure…

Examined relationship between coping styles and psychological distress in nonclinical sample of 832 Hong Kong Chinese adolescents. Factor analyses suggest adolescents used relatively similar coping strategies. Four broad coping styles were identified. Avoidance/blaming was found to be a significant and moderately strong predictor of psychological…

Three samples of 8- to 16-year olds were assessed three times at yearly intervals on eight water-level items. Within-child change over age was viewed as stochastic process of the child changing or remaining in one of three latent strategy states. Although there was improvement in task performance over age, the general finding was that strategy…

It is the misfortune of young adolescents that just at the point in their lives when they are seeking definition, two areas of confusion and ignorance converge: confusion about the purposes of schooling for young adolescents and ignorance about early adolescence as a critical developmental stage in the life span. Some myths which prohibit better…

Based on the papers presented at the 1996 Symposium of the Jean Piaget Society and highlighting the extent to which Piaget's ideas have served to scaffold contemporary thinking about every aspect of conceptual development, this volume examines the nature of conceptual development, its foundations, and the sources of its novelties. The chapters…