1.
SLIDE #1) Thanks for that introduction. Before getting
start, I’d like to thank my collaborators on the project,
first my advisor, Joe Allen, and also my fellow graduate
students Dave Szwedo and Megan Schad. Also, if you are
interested, feel free to check out additional research from
our lab at www.teenresearch.org.
a. So today, as mentioned, I am going to be focusing on
peer foundations of important psychosocial
outcomes in late adolescence and young adulthood
2. SLIDE #2) To begin, I’d like to review the broad
theoretical framework from which this study operates.
Self-Determination Theory suggests three basic human
psychological needs that provide the foundation for
positive self-motivation and personality development—
relatedness, autonomy, and competence (e.g., Deci &
Ryan, 1985, Ryan, 2000). According to this theory, social
contexts that inhibit satisfaction of relatedness,
autonomy, and competence needs tend to discourage
individuals’ inherent motivations and produce negative
developmental and psychological outcomes (Deci & Ryan,
2000; Ryan & Deci, 2000)
3. SLIDE #3) We are going to be focusing on the
establishment of autonomy and relatedness during
disagreements with close others, which has been shown in
previous research to be an important developmental task.
a. In the way that we conceptualize the constructs,
adolescent autonomy may be established by
asserting one’s opinions in a confident, reasoned
manner, while relatedness is maintained by
expressing warmth, validation, and a collaborative
approach to handling disagreements.
4. SLIDE #4) Establishing autonomy during disagreements
while also maintaining a sense of relatedness predicts a
range of positive adolescent psychosocial outcomes
including higher self esteem, ego development,
attachment security, and lack of depressive symptoms
(Allen & Hauser, 1996; Allen, Hauser, Bell, & O’Conner,
1994; Allen et al., 2006), and at least in some contexts,
adolescents who display high levels of autonomy in family
disagreements also tend to have closer friendships and
higher levels of social acceptance.
a. Additionally, studies typically find that autonomy
and relatedness are highly positively correlated and
that it is the combination of the capacity to establish
autonomy while maintaining relatedness that has
shown the strongest relation to psychosocial
functioning in adolescence
5. SLIDE #5) A lot of this previous research has focused on
the establishment of autonomy and relatedness within the
family, and in fact at least one study has found that an
inability to establish autonomy with parents predicts
future depressed affect. However, this area of research
has concentrated less on this important developmental
task within adolescent friendships. During adolescence,
teens increasingly rely on their friends for support, they
spend more and more time with their friends as
adolescence progresses, and some roles that parents used
to take on, friends begin to fill during adolescence.
6. SLIDE #6) So the next step then becomes trying to find
figure out how a lack of autonomy and connection within
adolescent close friendships predicts important
psychosocial outcomes, such as interpersonal competence,
depression, and social withdrawal.
7. SLIDE #7) Adolescent depression has been repeatedly
linked to broad markers of problematic peer
relationships, whether problems are assessed as rejection,
lack of popularity, or lack of interpersonal support.
Relatively little is known, however, about what exactly is
going wrong within adolescent close friendships that
portends a risk for future difficulties. As mentioned, very
little research has explored the specific link between a
lack of autonomy and connection with close friends in
adolescence and later depression. One exception is the
finding that teen behaviors undermining relatedness with
peers during conflict were found to predict short-term
increases in depressive symptoms from age 13 to age 14
a. Additionally, little research has studied this
phenomenon in terms of long-term adjustment,
particularly in the context of the critical transition
to young adulthood. Given that the greatest
increases in depressive symptoms occur from early
adolescence into young adulthood, understanding
the processes that may create risk of such
developing symptoms during this period is essential
8. SLIDE #8) There is also research, albeit somewhat
indirect, to suggest that a lack of autonomy and
connection with friends would relate to social withdrawal
as well. Child and adolescent social withdrawal has also
been concurrently and prospectively associated with peer
difficulties, including peer neglect and rejection,
friendlessness, peer victimization, and low friendship
quality.
a. Given that socially withdrawn children and
adolescents tend to fear negative evaluation from
others already, problematic social interactions with
friends may serve to reinforce this fear and leave
these teens wanting to withdraw completely from
peers
b. Social withdrawal, which at its worst, may become
complete social isolation, which has now been shown
to have uniquely powerful associations with later
psychosocial difficulties and long-term health
outcomes into adulthood, ranging from increased
risk of loneliness to cardiovascular disease to an
increased risk of early mortality. Understanding the
risks for the development of withdrawal tendencies
into adulthood is necessary.
9. SLIDE #9) Taking a developmental perspective would
also warrant some consideration of likely intervening
experiences that might mediate the effects of autonomy
and relatedness struggles with peers. The link between
stress and depressive affect, for example, has previously
been found to be mediated by perceived social support in
a sample of college freshmen. In middle childhood,
friendship quality and quantity has been found to
mediate the link between peer acceptance and loneliness
and depression.
a. But more research is needed on intervening
interpersonal experiences in adolescence that could
help explain long-terms links between early peer
difficulties and later internalizing symptoms.
10.
SLIDE #10) So with that, let me turn to our three
main research questions
a. First we were interested in understanding how a
lack of adolescent autonomy and relatedness with
their closest peer relates to friendship abilities in late
adolescence?
b. Secondly, we sought to understand the way in which
an inability to establish autonomy and connection
within peer relationships relates to two important
psychosocial outcomes into young adulthood:
depression and social withdrawal.
c. And finally, our third goal was to examine potential
mechanisms underlying the expected long-term links
between lack of autonomy and connection and
depression and social withdrawal.
I.
SLIDE #11) We’ll be examining these questions in a
sample of 184 adolescents, drawn from the public
school system of Charlottesville, Virginia, who were
interviewed and observed in interactions with their
closest peers. This larger longitudinal study began
assessing teens when they were 13 years old.
a. We’ll be reporting results of annual assessments
beginning at this first time point at 13, again when
teens were 18 years old, and then finally again at age
21 (at which point they are no longer teens, but that
term seems to stick in our lab even when they clearly
are adults!)
b. The sample was evenly divided between males and
females
c. And is a normative one, so it was representative of
the population of the surrounding area in terms of
socioeconomics and race.
d. The study overall has maintained very low attrition
over the course of the now 11 years that it has been
running, and generally has over 90% participation
at any given time point.
11.
SLIDE #12) So to start off, we looked into the
relationship between teens’ inability to establish
autonomy and connection with peers and friendship
competence in late adolescence.
12.
SLIDE #13) At age 13, autonomy and relatedness
behaviors towards peers were observed during an 8minute videotaped interaction at age 13 in which teens
and their freinds were presented with a revealed
differences task. This task involved a hypothetical
dilemma requiring them each to decide which 7 out of
possible 12 fictional characters who are stuck on the
planet Mars should be eligible for a place in the one
spaceship returning to Earth. After making their
decisions separately, they were then brought together to
compare their answers, and were asked to come up with a
consensus list of seven characters to take back to Earth.
The Autonomy-Relatedness Coding System for Peer
Interactions was used to code these interactions.
a. This scale captures the combination of behaviors
that undermine the ability to express autonomy
during the disagreement task—for example,
avoiding conflict entirely by backing down easily,
appearing hesitant to disagree and/or bartering,
overpersonalizing the disagreement by blurring the
boundary between the person and their position, or
pressuring the other person to agree—and behaviors
that undermine relatedness with the other person by
interrupting or ignoring them, or expressing
hostility towards the other person.
b. Each 8-minute interaction was reliably coded as the
average of scores obtained by two trained graduate
student coders blind to other data from the study,
and interrater reliability was excellent at .82.
13.
SLIDE #14) We then measured close peer reports of
the target teens close friendship competence at age 13 and
18 using a scale on the Harter Self Perception Profile for
Adolescents, which we modified to be used as a peer
report instrument.
a. This measure asks the teen’s closest friend to choose
between two contrasting descriptors and then rate
the extent to which their choice is sort of true or
really true about the target teen.
b. A sample item includes “Some people don’t have a
friend that is close enough to share really personal
thoughts and feelings with/some people do have a
friend that is close enough to share personal
thoughts and feelings with.”
14.
SLIDE #15) So what did we find? Not surprisingly,
we see that an inability to establish autonomy and
connection with close peers predicts relative decreases in
close friendship competence in late adolescence. Note
that we control for gender and income in this analysis and
we used Full Information Maximum Likelihood anaysis,
which is true for all subsequent analysis that I will
present today. Additionally, the prediction to close
friendship competence at 18 from autonomy and
relatedness at 13 is significant above and beyond initial
levels of close friendship competence at 13. So adolescents
who exhibit high levels of behaviors that undermine
autonomy and relatedness with friends in early
adolescence show relative decreases in their abilities to
have solid close friendships at age 18.
15.
SLIDE #16) Moving onto our second question, we
will examine how an inability to meet the important
developmental task of establishing autonomy and
connection with friends contributes to depressive
symptoms and social withdrawal in young adulthood?
16.
SLIDE #17) We use the same measure of autonomy
and relatedness in this next set of analyses, and to assess
depressive symptoms we first used teens self reports on
the Childhood Depression Inventory at 13, and as they
moved into young adulthood, we measured depressive
symptoms on the Beck Depression Inventory.
17.
SLIDE #18) To assess social withdrawal at age 13,
we used closest peers ratings of teens socially withdrawn
behavior on the Pupil Evaluation Inventory. And then
again, as adolescents moved into young adulthood, we
measured social withdrawal Adult Behavior Checklist.
You can see example items on each on the slide here.
18.
SLIDE #19) Before moving onto the regression
models, I wanted to point out that depressive symptoms
and social withdrawal at age 21 are not significantly
correlated, demonstrating that these two constructs are
quite distinct, and worth pursuing independently of
eachother.
19.
SLIDE #20) So, onto our findings for depressive
symptoms. This first slide is showing you visually what
we controlled for. You’ll see we entered gender and
income, as well as baseline depressive symptoms at 13,
and also baseline levels of social withdrawal at 13 just to
make sure that social withdrawal was not perhaps driving
this model in any way.
20.
SLIDE #21) Our final regression model reveals that
an inability to establish autonomy and relatedness with
peers during an observed disagreement task at age 13
predicts relative increases in depressive symptoms at age
21.
21.
SLIDE #22) Next we tested as similar model for
social withdrawal controlling for gender, income, baseline
depression levels, and baseline social withdrawal,
22.
SLIDE #23) and found that an inability to establish
autonomy and relatedness with friends in early
adolescence predicts relative increases in social
withdrawal at age 21.
23.
SLIDE #24) So to quickly recap what we know so
far…A failure to meet the developmental challenge of
establishing autonomy and connection with peers in early
adolescence contributes to increased difficulties
maintaining close friendships at age 18, and increased
depressive symptoms and socially withdrawn behavior at
age 21.
24.
SLIDE 25) Now that we have established that there
are significant long-term links between a lack of
autonomy and connection and later internalizing
symptoms and because we already know that a lack of
autonomy and connection with peers predicts close
friendship competence in late adolescence, we wanted to
test whether close friendship competence might mediate
the demonstrated long term associations.
25.
SLIDE #26) To orient you first to the model, all of
these measures have been presented so you should now be
familiar with how we assessed these constructs. So we
have close friendship competence, lack of autonomy and
connection in the observed disagreement task with peers,
and depressive symptoms all measured at age 13. We
then have close friendship competence and depressive
symptoms in the middle boxes measured at age 18, and
then again at age 21 situated on the far right of the
screen. I’m not going to go through all of the lines in
detail, but just know that dotted lines indicate nonsignificant associations, the solid thin grey lines indicate
significant predictions that were not part of our main
hypotheses, and the bold yellow line in this case is
demonstrating the long term link between lack of
autonomy and connection and depressive symptoms that
was presented previously.
26.
SLIDE #27) So we tested the mediation model using
the indirect effect option in MPlus, and found that close
friendship competence at 18 partially mediated the
relationship between lack of autonomy and connection
with peers at 13 and depressive symptoms at 21.
Although the long-term link remains significant, the total
indirect effect from autonomy and connection to
depressive symptoms through close friendship
competence was significant indicating partial mediation.
a. So in other words, a lack of autonomy and
connection with peers predicted decreases in close
friendship competence at 18 which in turn predicted
higher levels of depressive symptoms at age 21.
27.
SLIDE #28) We then tested the social withdrawal
mediation model in the same way, so you can see from
this slide that we’ve now have social withdrawal
measured at age 13 indicated on the left and social
withdrawal at age 21 indicated on the right hand side. All
other constructs in the model are the same as the previous
slide, and the yellow line here represents the significant
long-term link between lack of autonomy and connection
and social withdrawal that we’ve already presented.
28.
SLIDE #29) Again using the indirect effect option in
Mplus reveals that the indirect effect from a lack of
autonomy and connection to social withdrawal through
close friendship competence shows a trend towards
significance, and you can see that the long term link
drops below significance when close friendship is entered
into the model. However, given that the indirect effect is
not significant, close friendship competence as a
mechanism to explain the long term link is less clear.
29.
SLIDE #30) Before moving on to our overall
conclusions, let me first point out a few limitations.
a. First, these data are not experimental so we cannot
infer any causal associations with the data presented
today.
b. Also, It is important to also emphasize that the
present study highlighted relational patterns
relevant to those teens who struggle with depressive
symptoms, but not necessarily with Major
Depressive Disorder. Although 48% of the
participants showed depressive symptoms in the
mild to moderate range at some point during the
study, the current sample of adolescents is a
community-based sample and was not selected to be
particularly at-risk for psychopathology. Therefore,
the current results cannot be generalized to major
depression as a clinical phenomenon, nor can they
be generalized to populations with higher rates of
clinically diagnosed difficulties.
c. Additionally, while the current study is longitudinal
in nature, data were only collected through age 21
and may fail to capture those who develop
depressive symptoms and/or social withdrawal later
in adulthood. Further research is needed in order to
examine if and how early conflict negotiation
patterns and later adolescent social functioning
difficulties relate to adult depressive symptoms and
social withdrawal.
30.
SLIDE #31) In conclusion, it should be emphasized
that the long-term predictions to young adult depressive
symptoms and social withdrawal were made from one,
relatively brief observation of teen-peer interactions eight
years earlier, highlighting just how relevant critical
developmental processes may be for later functioning.
a. Additionally, findings suggests the importance of
developing autonomy and relatedness skills, even
during very minor conflicts, as critical markers of
progress toward the development of friendship
competence in adolescence. It also suggests there
may be some continuity in teens’ early interactions
with closest friends that may subsequently prevent
them from forming positive, strong relationships
with peers in late adolescence.
b. Consistent with a stress-generation perspective on
depression, Teens who learn maladaptive ways of
handling early conflict negotiations may be
continually aggravated and stressed within
interpersonal relationships, making them prone to
later psychosocial difficulties, especially depressive
symptoms. Because the observation task used in this
study is hypothetical and likely to be of low-stress,
the occurrence of negative behaviors toward peers
even in such a task suggests that, at least for some
adolescents, managing conflict with peers is likely
quite challenging and quite meaningful at this stage
of development.
c. Furthermore, problematic interaction strategies
seem to be of primary importance in predicting
young adult social withdrawal because they
represent an immature and ineffective way of
negotiating disagreements within complex
relationships—a skill that seems necessary to
maintain social connections over time. When these
skills are lacking, peers may potentially become
frustrated and avoid further social interaction with
teens both in late adolescence and early adulthood.
31.
SLIDE #32) A partial mediation model for
depressive symptoms was supported, though was less
clear for social withdrawal. One possible implication of
these findings is that if teens who display early conflict
negotiation difficulties with friends in the form of failing
to assert their autonomy while keeping the relationship
intact can learn to be more socially adept in forming close
and supportive relationships with peers, they may be able
to potentially counteract their risk of developing later
psychosocial difficulties.
a. Finally, If future research supports the existence of
causal links between the constructs examined, then
psychological interventions might profitably target
dysfunctional conflict negotiation skills and
behavioral patterns in early adolescence, as well as
social competencies in late adolescence as an
approach toward preventing young adult
psychosocial difficulties. Helping teens acquire
more effective and mature ways of interacting with
peers in early and late adolescence, especially during
disagreements, and/or teaching teens helpful skills in
developing close, social connections may reduce the
possibility of these individuals becoming more
depressed and socially withdrawn in young
adulthood.
b. I’d like to acknowledge my co-authors of the study,
Joe Allen, Dave Szwedo, and Megan Schad, and to
also thank all of my lab member for their help, and
the NICHD for the funding to conduct this research.
Thank you.