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This study assessed the co-development of adversity and effortful control based on a sample of Mexican-origin youth (N = 674) and their parents. We used a four-wave longitudinal design and followed target participants from age 10 to 16. At each time point, we measured adversity experienced by the children and their parents and children’s effortful control (self- and parent-reported). We also assessed children’s shift-and-persist coping strategies at ages 14 and 16. Across time, we found slight decreases in child-adversity and slight increases in parent-adversity. Based on bivariate LGC analyses, we found that the strongest effects surfaced for child- (vs. parent-) adversity. Specifically, we found that greater increases in child-adversity were associated with greater decreases in effortful control from ages 10 to 16. Moreover, we found a positive association between initial levels of child-adversity and the slope of effortful control, as well as a cross-sectional negative association between child- and parent-adversity and effortful control (at age 10). We found no evidence of moderation by shift-and-persist coping strategies. In sum, our results suggest that, on average, Mexican-origin youth exposed to more adversity might experience more maladaptive change with respect to effortful control.

The present research examined: (a) the co-development of chores and effortful control, and (b) the prospective impact of effortful control development (i.e., initial levels and the trajectory of effortful control from late childhood through adolescence) on work outcomes in young adulthood. We used data from a longitudinal study of 674 Mexican-origin youth assessed at ages 10, 12, 14, 16, and 19. We found no evidence of co-developmental associations between chores and effortful control, but we found that higher initial levels of effortful control (age 10) predicted working-student status, less job stress, and better job fit, and steeper increases in effortful control from age 10 to 16 predicted higher job satisfaction and job autonomy in young adulthood (age 19).

Conscious and unconscious thought have been previously found to differentially impact decision-making quality. However, little research has directly measured the processes underlying these modes of thinking. We propose that both thinking modes are characterized by rule-based and intuitive processing. In two experiments, we used the Process Dissociation Procedure to independently measure these cognitive processes. We tested three competing hypotheses: (a) conscious thinking evokes both increased rule-based and decreased intuitive processing compared to unconscious thinking; (b) conscious and unconscious thinking evoke similar levels of intuitive processing but conscious thinking enhances rule-based processing; and (c) conscious and unconscious thinking evoke similar levels of rule-based processing but unconscious thinking enhances intuitive processing. Experiment 1 used base-rate and law-of-large-numbers decision-making problems, whereas Experiment 2 used decision-making problems similar to the "apartment" problem that is often used in unconscious thought studies. In both experiments we found support for hypothesis (b). © 2012 Elsevier Inc.