Executive functioning (EF) is a strong predictor of children's and adolescents' academic performance. Although research indicates that EF can increase during childhood and adolescence, few studies have tracked the effect of EF on academic performance throughout the middle school grades. EF was measured at the end of Grades 6-9 through 21 teachers'…

This article examines arts participation as a context for youth to develop purpose. Two analyses were conducted of interviews with arts-involved youth to explore the relationship between their arts participation and purpose, which was defined as an "intention to accomplish something that is both meaningful to the self and contributes to the…

Coupling Royster's (2000) conceptual framework of "zamani" with Rosenblatt's (1978) reader response theory, the researcher explores the ways African American women's writings supported, nurtured, and "mentored" the writings of adolescent girls. Findings show that the mentor texts helped in generating ideas for writing, thinking…

Studies dedicated to examination of self-regulation posit a bi-directional association between self-regulation and other variables including social connectedness, self-efficacy and self-control. However, to date, studies of this caliber have only evidenced that self-regulation is a predictor of other variables. In the present study, the factors…

This study prospectively examined pubertal timing and peer victimization as interactive predictors of depressive symptoms in a racially diverse community sample of adolescents. We also expanded on past research by assessing body esteem as a mechanism by which pubertal timing and peer victimization confer risk for depression. In all, 218…

The Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative has spent 14 years working with young people with foster care experience, engaging them to help identify what they need to transition successfully to adulthood. Consistently, young people have emphasized that their foster care experiences are far from normal. What they need--but too often do not…

Mentoring programs that provide guidance and support for disadvantaged youth have expanded rapidly during the past decade in the United States. Research suggests that students with teenage mentors exhibit positive youth development, including enhanced academic self-esteem and connectedness. By contrast, some studies showed that programs that offer…

It is important to account for timing of puberty when studying the adolescent brain and cognition. The use of classical methods for assessing pubertal status may not be feasible in some studies, especially in male adolescents. Using data from a sample of 478 males from a longitudinal birth cohort, we describe the calculations of three independent…

In light of the concepts of appropriation and essentialism, othering, and binary oppositions, the author will examine the interrelation between various feminist theories and gender representation in multicultural children and young-adult literature. Additionally, the author will address the practical implications of those theories and concepts for…

This study examined the developmental trajectories of maladaptive perfectionism over a 7-year period among African American youth living in an urban setting (N = 547). In particular, the study attempted to determine whether two maladaptive aspects of perfectionism (socially prescribed and self-critical) changed over time and could be distinguished…

This article examines the kinds of relationships that nonteacher educators, especially youth development practitioners working in after-school settings, have with students. It addresses the fact that these adults in schools have an explicit youth-oriented and relational approach, find out many productive and anxiety-provoking facts about their…

Adolescent development involves a complex interplay between genetics, biology, and social and emotional relationships within multiple contexts of home, school and the broader community. The transition from primary to secondary school, coupled with the onset of puberty, can therefore be a difficult period for young people to negotiate at a critical…

Far from being unthinking energies or irrational impulses that control or push people around, emotions are intricately connected to the way people perceive, understand, and think about the world. As such, emotions are also an inextricable part of people's moral lives. As people go about making moral judgments and decisions, they do not merely…

This longitudinal study compared immigrant and native adolescents' expectations concerning the timing of conventional socially acceptable and oppositional less socially acceptable forms of autonomy. Based on normative development and a collectivist background among immigrants, both developmental and acculturative change was expected. The sample…

Background: Anxiety disorders are highly prevalent in children and adolescents, and are associated with aberrant emotion-related attention orienting and inhibitory control. While recent studies conducted with high-trait anxious adults have employed novel emotion-modified antisaccade tasks to examine the influence of emotional information on…