Published in Developmental psychology
Empathy plays a key role in maintaining close relationships and promoting prosocial conflict resolution. However, research has not addressed the potential emotional cost of adolescents' high empathy, particularly when relationships are characterized by more frequent conflict. The present 6-year longitudinal study (N = 467) investigated whether conf...
Published in Developmental psychology
Working memory is a basic cognitive process that predicts higher-level skills. A central question in theories of working memory development is the generality of the mechanisms proposed to explain improvements in performance. Prior theories have been closely tied to particular tasks and/or age groups, limiting their generalizability. The cognitive d...
Published in Developmental psychology
We investigate how the mental lexicon changes over the life span using free association data from over 8,000 individuals, ranging from 10 to 84 years of age, with more than 400 cue words per age group. Using network analysis, with words as nodes and edges defined by the strength of shared associations, we find that associative networks evolve in a ...
Published in Developmental psychology
We examined children's sleep at age 9 as a predictor of developmental trajectories of cognitive performance from ages 9 to 11 years. The effects of sleep on cognition are not uniform and thus we tested race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status (SES), and sex as moderators of these associations. At the first assessment, 282 children aged 9.44 years (52% ...
Published in Developmental psychology
In view of the theory that the attachment relationship provides a foundation for the development of emotion regulation, here, we evaluated (a) whether change in attachment security from 4 to 6 years predicts change in emotion regulation from 6 to 8 years and (b) whether 5-HTTLPR moderates this relation in a Norwegian community sample (n = 678, 99.7...
Published in Developmental psychology
This study investigated the effects of internal and demographic variables on civic development in late adolescence using the construct civic purpose. We conducted surveys on civic engagement with 480 high school seniors, and surveyed them again 2 years later. Using multivariate regression and linear mixed models, we tested the main effects of civic...
Published in Developmental psychology
For many African Americans, racial identity is an important aspect of their individual identity. We explored developmental change and stability of individual differences in the racial centrality of African American youths and their mothers as well as the relation between maternal and child racial centrality across time. African American youths (N =...
Published in Developmental psychology
Individuals' implicit theories of intelligence exist on a spectrum, from believing intelligence is fixed and unchangeable, to believing it is malleable and can be improved with effort. A belief in malleable intelligence leads to adaptive responses to challenge and higher achievement. However, surprisingly little is known about the development of ac...
Published in Developmental psychology
Past research suggests that perceived social support from parents, teachers, and peers are all positively associated with wellbeing during adolescence. However, little longitudinal research has examined the implications of distinctive combinations of social support for developing adolescents. To address this limitation, we measured multiple dimensi...
Published in Developmental psychology
Adolescents' intergenerational narratives-the stories they tell about their mothers' and fathers' early experiences-are an important component of their identities (Fivush & Merrill, 2016; Merrill & Fivush, 2016). This study explored adolescents' intergenerational narratives across cultures. Adolescents aged 12 to 21 from 3 cultural groups in New Ze...
