Guided by a risk and resilience framework, the current study examined the associations between Latino adolescents' ("n" = 219; "M" [subscript age] = 14.35; "SD" = 1.75) perceptions of ethnic discrimination in multiple settings (e.g., online, school) and several domains of adjustment (e.g., mental health,…

A large body of research has documented changes in self-esteem across adulthood and individual-difference correlates thereof. However, little is known about whether people maintain their self-esteem until the end of life and what role key risk factors in the health, cognitive, self-regulatory, and social domains play. To examine these questions,…

This study examined trajectories of perceived control and their association with parents' education and personal educational experience (educational attainment and years of full-time postsecondary education) in 971 Canadian high school seniors tracked 7 times across 25 years. Latent growth models showed that, on average, perceived control…

The authors examined the development of self-esteem across the life span. Data came from a German longitudinal study with 3 assessments across 4 years of a sample of 2,509 individuals ages 14 to 89 years. The self-esteem measure used showed strong measurement invariance across assessments and birth cohorts. Latent growth curve analyses indicated…

The ability to narrate stories and a synchronic self-concept develop in the pre- and primary school years. Life story theory proposes that both developments extend to an even later developmental stage, that is, to adolescents' acquisition of a coherent life story. Cross-sectional evidence supports the emergence of a life story in adolescence,…

The vulnerability model states that low self-esteem functions as a predictor for the development of depressive symptoms whereas the scar model assumes that these symptoms leave scars in individuals resulting in lower self-esteem. Both models have received empirical support, however, they have only been tested within individuals and not across…

Developmental differences in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and superior parietal cortex (SPC) activation are associated with differences in how children, adolescents, and adults learn from performance feedback in rule-learning tasks (Crone, Zanolie, Leijenhorst, Westenberg, & Rombouts, 2008). Both…

We conducted 3 studies to explore cultural differences in global versus local processing and their developmental trajectories. In Study 1 ("N" = 363), we found that Japanese college students were less globally oriented in their processing than American or Argentine participants. We replicated this effect in Study 2 ("N" =…

Four experiments investigated whether infants and adults infer that a novel entity that interacts in a contingent, communicative fashion with an experimenter is itself an intentional agent. The experiments contrasted the hypothesis that such an inference follows from amodal representations of the contingent interaction alone with the hypothesis…

Aging-related declines occur in many different domains of cognitive function during middle and late adulthood. However, whether a global dimension underlies individual differences in changes in different domains of cognition and whether global genetic influences on cognitive changes exist is less clear. We addressed these issues by applying…

We introduce a new method, "differential language analysis" (DLA), for studying human development in which computational linguistics are used to analyze the big data available through online social media in light of psychological theory. Our open vocabulary DLA approach finds words, phrases, and topics that distinguish groups of people…

How to best characterize cognitive development? The claim put forward in this article is that development is the improvement of a kind of coordination among a variety of factors. To determine the development of coordination in a cognitive task, children between 4 and 12 years of age and adults participated in a time estimation task: They had to…

This study examined longitudinal changes in coping and defense mechanisms in an age- and gender-stratified sample of 392 European American adults. Nonlinear age-related changes were found for the coping mechanisms of sublimation and suppression and the defense mechanisms of intellectualization, doubt, displacement, and regression. The change…

The transition from adolescence to adulthood has been shown to be a time of amplified risk for individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). It is unknown, however, whether problems in educational attainment and employment in the years after high school exit represent momentary perturbations in development or a turning point with long-lasting…

In this study, we used a life span model to study the subjective perception of creative personality (CP) in emerging, young, middle-aged, and older Hong Kong Chinese adults. We also asked participants to estimate the approximate age by which people develop and lose CP across adulthood. We expected an interesting interplay between internalized age…