Relational Beliefs and Expectations in Early Adolescence as Predictors of School and Social Competence

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Children's beliefs and expectations about their relationships with their parents are related to their ability to adapt to new situations, experiences, and relationships, including those with peers and teachers. The goal of this project is to investigate the link between children's understanding of their relationships with their parents and their ability to adapt to the challenges of early adolescence. Early adolescence is a period of significant change in children's family dynamics as they begin to pursue autonomy and an independent identity. Young adolescents also encounter new social and academic challenges as they navigate the transition to middle school. This project will evaluate how youths' thoughts and feelings about their relationships with their mothers relate to their own self-concept, self-regulation, school adjustment, and social competence. The outcomes will be compared to these children's same measures at earlier points in their development.This project will extend an ongoing NSF-supported study of 250 mother-child dyads (50% female children; 95.2% longitudinal retention) from multiple ethnoracial groups (88.8% non-White) and variable risk backgrounds (e.g., 36.7% poverty, 28% maltreated) who completed laboratory and school assessments of representation, adjustment, and parent-child relationship quality at ages 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 10. The current funds will support an early adolescent data wave at age 12 to assess multiple facets of youths' representations in terms of what they think and feel (i.e., the content of their representation) and how they organize their thoughts and feelings (i.e., the coherence of representation) to understand how representational processes may carry experience from the family setting to broader educational and social contexts. In addition to evaluating core developmental assumptions, expected scientific tools and findings will refine contemporary risk identification and screening approaches by providing efficient and culturally valid assessment tools that can be readily transported to clinical and field (e.g., school) settings.