Peer relationships and social belonging are particularly important during adolescence. Using a willingness-to-work paradigm to quantify incentive motivation, we examined whether evaluative information holds unique value for adolescents. Participants ( N = 102; 12–23 years old) rated peers, predicted how peers rated them, and exerted physical effort to view each peer’s rating. We measured grip force, speed, and opt-out behavior to examine the motivational value of peer feedback, relative to money in a control condition, and to assess how peer desirability and participants’ expectations modulated motivated effort across age. Overall, when compared with adolescents, adults were relatively less motivated for feedback than money. Whereas adults exerted less force and speed for feedback when expecting rejection, adolescents exerted greater force and speed when expecting to be more strongly liked or disliked. These findings suggest that the transition into adulthood is accompanied by a self-protective focus, whereas adolescents are motivated to consume highly informative feedback, even if negative.
Collisions between bicycles and motor vehicles are one of the leading risk factors for injury and death in childhood and adolescence. We examined longitudinal and concurrent effortful control (EC) as predictors of risky bicycling behavior in early- to mid-adolescence, with age and gender as moderators. We also examined whether EC was associated with parent-reported real-world bicycling behavior and all lifetime unintentional injuries.
Parent-reported EC measures were collected when children (N = 85) were 4 years old and when they were either 10 years (N = 42) or 15 years (N = 43) old. We assessed risky bicycling behavior by asking the adolescents to bicycle across roads with high-density traffic in an immersive virtual environment. Parents also reported on children’s real-world bicycling behavior and lifetime unintentional injuries at the time of the bicycling session.
We found that both longitudinal and concurrent EC predicted adolescents’ gap choices, though these effects were moderated by age and gender. Lower parent-reported early EC in younger and older girls predicted a greater willingness to take tight gaps (3.5 s). Lower parent-reported concurrent EC in older boys predicted a greater willingness to take gaps of any size. Children lower in early EC started bicycling earlier and were rated as less cautious bicyclists as adolescents. Adolescents lower in concurrent EC were also rated as less cautious bicyclists and had experienced more lifetime unintentional injuries requiring medical attention.
Early measures of child temperament may help to identify at-risk populations who may benefit from parent-based interventions.
- PAR ID:
- 10480833
- Publisher / Repository:
- Oxford University Press
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Pediatric Psychology
- Volume:
- 49
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 0146-8693
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: p. 142-151
- Size(s):
- p. 142-151
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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