Individual Differences and Adolescent Psychosocial Development
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Date
2002-08
Authors
Ellis, Lesa K.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
Individual differences in temperament, executive functioning, and pubertal maturation play an important role in adolescent psychosocial outcomes, as do parenting and risk variables. These studies examined relations between temperament, pubertal maturation, and psychosocial outcomes in early adolescence. In addition, relations between temperament, executive functioning, parenting and risk variables, and psychosocial outcomes were examined in later adolescence.
Pubertal maturation in early adolescence was associated with increased depressive mood in both males and females and, after controlling for the effects of age, increased aggression, frustration, and affiliativeness in females. Self-regulation and fear also decreased with pubertal maturation in females. Individual differences in pubertal maturation, self-regulation, frustration, affiliativeness, and approach tendencies all contributed unique, significant variance to prediction of depressive mood scores. Self-regulation and gender contributed significant variance to prediction of aggression scores.
In older adolescents, performance on computerized measures of executive attention was related to mother-reported adolescents' self-regulation and negative affectivity. In addition, performance was related to teacher assessment of risk for developing antisocial behaviors. Executive attention scores, mother- and self-report self-regulation, and parental monitoring all contributed unique variance to the prediction of problem behavior scores, with individual difference variables accounting for relatively more variance than parenting variables. Mother- and self-report self-regulation, and self-report affiliativeness and approach tendencies, along with gender, contributed to prediction of depressive mood scores. Parenting variables did not add significant variance. Aggression was best predicted by risk group and self- and mother-report self-regulation, while parenting and family variables significantly predicted scores on prosocial behavior.
Individual differences in temperament, executive attention, and pubertal maturation proved to be important predictors of psychosocial outcomes. Further, executive attention and temperament were related to problem behaviors, even when controlling for the effects of parenting and risk variables. These findings argue for the importance of including individual difference variables in studies examining adolescent psychosocial development.
Description
206 pages
Keywords
Puberty, Individual differences in adolescence, Attention, Adolescence, Behavioral assessment, Development psychology, Cognitive therapy