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This chapter outlines the various uses of the interview, and focuses on the interview as an educational tool in teaching adolescence. In psychology, interviews are used in clinical diagnosis, psychotherapy, research, and teaching. A standardized interview is one which is presented to each interviewee in exactly the same fashion. One of the most important goals of interviewing is to ensure that the information received is as honest and accurate as possible. Any small group of interviewees is a highly selected sample, by default. If they are self-selected volunteers, they may be the more enthusiastic, or cooperative, or narcissistic members of their cohort. The interview gives students in the adolescence course the opportunity to talk to and interact with adolescents and to inquire about issues which were raised throughout the course. Watching or participating in an interview with adolescents while taking the adolescence course sometimes allows the students to view their own adolescence in a new perspective.

This study is an exploration of the "sense of community" in a college classroom. The construct was successfully developed by incorporating six variables borrowed from neighborhood community research. Sense of community scores significantly predicted students' classroom attitudes, perception of learning, and actual performance on course exams.

The purpose of this study was to examine the goodness of ”t of autonomy timetable expectations between Asian-American late adolescents and their parents. The “goodness of ”t” model (Lerner & Lerner, 1983; Thomas & Chess, 1977) was used as a framework to guide this study. All 99 Asian-American late adolescents completed self-report questionnaires. Results indicate that, overall, late adolescents would have liked to experience an earlier timetable of autonomy than their parents had allowed. However, there was variation in the sample, that is, there were some adolescents who did not want a different timetable than they were allowed. Also, it was found that the goodness of ”t between the autonomy timetable that adolescents would have liked and what their parents had allowed was a better predictor of adolescent adjustment than simply knowing the timetable of autonomy that adolescents had actually experienced. Late adolescents who experienced a good ”t with perceived parental expectations of autonomy reported higher levels of self-esteem and emotional closeness to their parents, and lower levels of depression, behaviour misconduct, and insecurity with parents, compared to their poor ”tting counterparts. It is proposed that the concept of “goodness of ”t” is a useful framework for the investigation of autonomy development, and subsequent adjustment in Asian-American late adolescents.

The relationship between self-esteem and the practice of going steady among high school students was investigated. Information was gathered about both current and past dating practices of 121 sophomores and the respondents' self-esteem was assessed with the Rosenberg scale. Results indicated that going steady among high school sophomores was associated with lower self-esteem. For girls, the difference in self-esteem between those who were going steady and those who were not was greatest among those who had gone steady in the past. Girls with the highest self-esteem were those who had gone steady in the past and were no longer doing so, while the lowest self-esteem scores were held by girls who had gone steady in the past and were still going steady. For boys, however, the difference in self-esteem between those who were going steady and those who were not was unrelated to their past dating practices. Possible interpretations of this unexpected, but highly significant, interaction were suggested.

Prayer is a behavior that is performed by most people at least at some time, and yet social scientists appear to have neglected this topic. College students were interviewed, given the Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status, and asked to keep 7-day diaries about their prayer activities, whether spontaneous or formal. Correlational analyses revealed a relationship between identity status and frequency of praying, as well as between identity status and commitment to religion. A qualitative analysis of the diary data suggested that prayer may be a revealing approach to the psychosocial lives of late adolescents, including their central concerns, temporal orientation, and the social bounds of their definition of self.

Human sexual intercourse, or coitus, is one of the most common sexual outlets among adults. Sexual intercourse generally refers to penile penetration of the vagina, the most common sexual expression between opposite-sexed partners practiced in the United States. In a large national survey study of more than 3,000 participants, Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, and Michaels (1994) found that 95% of men and 97% of women report that they have experienced vaginal intercourse. Other sexual techniques with opposite-sex partners include mutual masturbation, anal intercourse, and oral sex (both cunnilingus, i.e., male mouth on female genitalia, and fellatio, i.e., female mouth on male genitalia). Although less common than vaginal intercourse both in terms of life incidence and most recent experience, these sexual expressions are more openly discussed in the media and more frequently practiced than in the past, especially among adolescents (Weiss & Bullough, 2004). Keywords: coitus; intimacy; sexual standards

An understanding of the health beliefs and values of young adolescents is important both theoretically and practically. Besides adding to the body of information about cognitive development in general, such information can be of practical value to the health care professional. In the current study three questions were addressed: the accuracy of children's ratings of their own health, the ascriptive quality of their health values, and the content of their health concerns. Twenty-three seventh-grade students were found to agree closely with their parents' ratings of their health and recall of their illnesses. The subjects' health values were significantly different from their parents' values both in content and ascriptive quality.

The active vs. reactive dimension of development was investigated as a personality variable called engagement style. The dimension refers to the perception one has of oneself either as doing (agent) or being done to (patient). The dimension is distinguished from similar constructs, such as locus of control and locus of causality. A semi-projective measure of engagement style was developed and was demonstrated to yield high reliability coefficients. In a number of studies in which the Test of Engagement Style was used, the following hypotheses were confirmed. Boys from large families had more extreme scores, i.e., more agent or more patient, than those from small families. Agency scores declined significantly with age from childhood to adolescence. Boys from entrepreneurial family settings had higher agency scores than those from bureaucratic settings, while girls whose mothers work outside the home were more agent than those whose mothers are not so employed. Just as the active-reactive dimension is currently a focal point in developmental theorizing, engagement style is an important analogous personal construct, which should be further explored.

The perceptual stability of visual targets in the left vs. right visual fields was investigated by having Ss report the perceptual fragmentation of dim stimuli. The right visual field was found more stable than the left. This difference was not related to handedness but was significantly related to ocular dominance. Monocular results yielded significant laterality differences for the left eye, but not the right eye. An interpretation based on sensory cerebral dominance and retinal sensitivity was advanced to account for the results.

One dimension in the development of the valuing process is the direction of moral emphasis; that is, whether one stresses behaviors which have been stated prescriptively or proscriptively. Prescriptiv

A factor analysis of 744 students' social desirability ratings for 95 questionnaire items yielded nine factors of behavioral values, eight of which were considered reliable. The questionnaire was comprised of the universe of responses given by an earlier sample of subjects to the incomplete sentence stems, “I would be ashamed of myself if …” and “I am proud of myself when ….” Thus, the items were not preselected on any theoretical basis, but were established empirically as the stated behavioral values of a group of college students. The resulting factors suggested an organization of values that distinguishes between competence and moral values, between personal and interpersonal values, and between subject and object values.

Depression, a clinical diagnosis of long standing in adult psychopathology, has recently emerged as a major diagnostic consideration in the treatment of children. However, disagreement is still widespread among researchers as to the existence of depression in children. As recently as 1978, Lefkowitz and Burton argued that there was no evidence of a syndrome of childhood depression because (a) “these same symptoms of depression prevail at a rate too high to be considered statistically deviant” (p. 724), (b) there is no reliable and valid psychometric assessment tool available for use with children, and (c) the symptoms themselves show marked variation with age and many of them dissipate over time without treatment. The authors warned against precipitous diagnosis of a condition which may not be pathological.

In most cultures, childhood is a stage of the life cycle that is loved and revered, at least in words, if not always in actions. Children and childhood may be admired because it is in them that adult hopes for the future and the world are high. It is almost as if when everything else in life suggests despair, we look at our children and find our hope for the future once again resurrected. Therefore, it is in many ways difficult to give up children or their childhood for adulthood and maturity. It is for example, one of the most agonizingly painful and difficult tasks for a parent to lose a child to death, whether suddenly or slowly, in infancy or at any childhood age. It is also difficult for parents who are unable economically, psychologically or physically to care for their child to relinquish and commit that child to the care of somebody else. It is difficult for parents who are abusive or otherwise found incapable to give up their children. Finally, it is difficult for all of us at different times and in different ways to say good-bye to our own childhood or to our children and their childhood. In loving our children we tend to hold up their stage of life as an ideal to us all. “Unless you become as little children you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Male and female college students stated how proud or ashamed they would be of 96 behaviors. The ratings by each sex were then factor analyzed. While personal accomplishments was found to be the primary factor for males, academic failure was the primary factor for females. An interpretation of these differences in terms of the operation of fear-of-failure dynamics among college women was suggested. Further examination of the factor structures revealed a larger number of morality-related factors for females than for males, suggesting that morality is more differentiated for females. The compatibility of this finding with previous research in the area of moral development was noted.

When a subject fixates on a luminous design under conditions of low illumination, he experiences a fragmenting disappearance of the figure. This fragmentation occurs in meaningful units and is comparable to the disappearance of images stabilized on the retina. The luminous paint technique offers a new and simple approach to the study of visual perception.

(1968). The Development of Choice Stability in Children and Adolescents. The Journal of Genetic Psychology: Vol. 113, No. 1, pp. 79-83.

Summary Between 1929 and 1958 American college students showed an increase in the severity of their moral judgments (7). An analysis of the change scores (1958–1929) in terms of “prescriptive” (“ought to”) and “proscriptive” (“ought not to”) items indicated a significantly greater increase (p < .01) in severity of judgments to prescriptive items than to proscriptive items. The changes are considered in terms of the increased use of love-oriented socialization techniques over the years studied and students' perceptions of their parents' child rearing practices. Some limitations of methodology are discussed.

When a young child, eyes closed, localizes a finger which has been tactually stimulated, he uses a visual schema of the hand. When this image conflicts with the then inverted posture of the hand, localization worsens. It improves again, except for the congenitally blind, on trials when the hand is returned to its original position.

Visual targets of low intensity fragment and disappear when fixated in the dark. The present study uses this phenomenon to study the relative perceptual stability of the left and right visual fields. Results indicate a right field superiority.