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

孩子对他们与父母关系的信念和期望与他们适应新情况、经历和关系的能力有关，包括与同伴和老师的关系。该项目的目标是调查儿童对他们与父母关系的理解与他们适应青春期早期挑战的能力之间的联系。青少年早期是儿童家庭动态发生重大变化的时期，因为他们开始追求自主和独立的身份。年轻的青少年在过渡到中学的过程中也会遇到新的社会和学业挑战。这个项目将评估青少年对他们与母亲的关系的想法和感受与他们自己的自我概念、自我调节、学校适应和社会能力的关系。这些结果将与这些儿童在发育早期的相同测量结果进行比较。该项目将扩展一项正在进行的由美国国家科学基金会支持的研究，研究对象为250对母子（50%为女性，95.2%为纵向保留），他们来自多个种族群体（88.8%为非白人）和可变风险背景（例如，36.7%为贫困，28%为受虐待），他们在4、5、6、7、8和10岁时完成了表征、适应和亲子关系质量的实验室和学校评估。目前的资金将支持12岁的早期青少年数据浪潮，以评估青少年表征的多个方面，包括他们的想法和感受（即，他们表征的内容）以及他们如何组织他们的想法和感受（即，表征的连贯性），以了解表征过程如何将家庭环境中的经验带到更广泛的教育和社会环境中。除了评估核心发展假设外，预期的科学工具和发现将通过提供有效和文化上有效的评估工具来完善当代风险识别和筛查方法，这些评估工具可以很容易地转移到临床和现场（例如学校）环境中。

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.