ATTACHMENT AND RELATIONSHIPS IN ADOLESCENCE

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The ability to form and maintain good social relationships in adolescence is an important indicator of healthy functioning and an important predictor of healthy psychological and social development later in life (kupersmidt, Cole, & Dodge, 1990; parker & Asher, 1987). Thus, attempts to understand potential contributors to individual differences in social relationships in adolesence are important. Bowlby's attachment theory (1969/82, 1973, 1980) suggests that an individuals' mental representations related to attachment also to feelings, representations, and the processing of information within these relationships. The goalof this study is to increase understanding of how an adolescent's representation of attachment is related to current relationships (with both parents and perrs) as well as to the creation of new relationships. The proposed study is the first to examine the connections between attachment and a variety of social relationships. The questions we propose to ask are listed below. 1. Is attachment related to adolescents' (a) representations of their parents, (b) information processing of parent-relted stimuli, and (c) adolescent-parent behavior? 2. Is attachment related to adolescents' (a) representations of familiar peers, and (b) ongoing peer relationships? 3. Is attachment related to the creation of new relationships in adolescence? Specifically, is attachment related to adolescents' (a) representations of unfamiliar peers, (b) social information-seeking related to unfamiliar peers, and (c) initial behavior with unfamiliar peers? Subjects will be 180 10th-grade students and their mothers and fathers. We will use a multi-method design. Measures will include the Adult Attachment Interview, questionnaire measures, observations of behavioral interaction, peer-, teacher-, and self- reports of social relations and behavior, and experimental information-processing tasks.