Life storytelling is a key method for developing the self, and family storytelling is an important setting for parents and adolescents to jointly make sense of adolescent experiences. Early adolescence is a key time for building a clearer sense of self. We studied mother scaffolding and adolescent meaning-making as adolescents recounted turning…

This study examined early adolescent romantic "churning," defined here as having a large number of boyfriends/girlfriends by age 13, as a problematic marker likely to predict hostility, abuse, and avoidance during conflict in later relationships. A sample of 184 adolescents was followed through age 24 to assess predictions of hostility,…

Although Bowlby proposed that adolescence is a major developmental period to transfer their attachment figures from parents to other people, no comprehensive longitudinal study on attachment transfer from early to late adolescence exists. This study employed 215 early to late adolescents between ages 11 and 18 years (X-bar[subscript age] = 14.02,…

Youth's free time is an opportunity for profound development of skills, attitudes and behaviors. Research on this topic has focused on middle class or White communities. The current study, conducted with an urban, low-income sample of 138 African American adolescents, examined associations between parental monitoring, support of autonomy and…

Examined association between adolescents' perception of parent-adolescent attachment quality and adolescent aggression, as mediated by social cognition and self-esteem. Found that higher social cognition was associated with lower self-reported aggression when parent-adolescent attachments and adolescent self-esteem were controlled. When…