Individual interviews with 21 high-functioning adolescents diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder and their parents were used to assess postsecondary educational aspirations and thoughts concerning obstacles and resources that shape educational achievement of this group. The results from these semistructured interviews revealed that both the adolescents and their parents have clear postsecondary educational goals but have significant concerns about the readiness of postsecondary institutions to meet the adolescents' needs. The special significance of social challenges and the ways that families frame educational aspirations are noted. Results from this analysis have direct application to both educational and family settings.

As part of a larger longitudinal study of psychosocial development, 148 girls and 130 boys were administered a series of questions regarding a close friend during their eighth-grade school year. Scales corresponding to shared experience, self-disclosure, and intimacy (defined as emotional closeness) were developed from these items. Path-analytic models tested the relative strength of the self-disclosure and shared experience paths to emotional closeness for boys and girls separately. The results indicated that the self-disclosure path to emotional closeness is significant for both boys and girls. No relationship was found between shared experience and emotional closeness in girls when controlling for self-disclosure. The relationship between shared experience and feelings of closeness was, however, significant for boys even while controlling for the effects of self-disclosure. Covariance structure analysis (LISREL) indicated that the covariance matrices for the three scales were significantly different for boys and girls. The results are considered in relation to the gender socialization and friendship literature. The potential importance of defining intimacy as emotional closeness is also discussed.

No abstract

In this 3-year longitudinal study, the depressed affect of early adolescent boys and girls was studied with the purpose of distinguishing among those adolescents with chronic, as compared to episodic, depressed affect and those without elevated levels of depressed mood during that developmental stage. Variable-centered analyses indicated a general pattern of stability in depressed affect across early adolescence both for boys and for girls. Person-centered analyses, however, revealed five separate patterns of depressed affect across early adolescence. The depressed affect categories showed patterns of stability for most early adolescents, patterns of change for fewer early adolescents, and gender differences only in the smaller subgroups of early adolescents who showed patterns of change in depressed affect. Case-level analyses focused on adolescents with elevated depressed affect to distinguish ways in which the daily lives of adolescents with episodic depressed affect differed from the daily lives of adolescents with chronically depressed affect.

Drawing from a larger longitudinal investigation, the links between young adolescents' everyday experiences and parental depressed mood were examined in 201 primarilyCaucasian family groups. The current study used data collected when the adolescents were in seventh and eighth grade. Families in which at least one parent reported recurrent depressed mood (n = 36) were compared with a contrast group of families (n = 165). Adolescents in the recurrent parent depression group reported higher levels of depressed mood and greater family conflict. Experience Sampling Method data revealed that boys in the recurrent parent depression group spent more time with their families compared with girls in that group. Adolescents with depressed parents, especially girls, reported less positive mood when with their families. Analyses identified characteristics that distinguished between adolescents with depressed parents who themselves were experiencing elevated depressed mood and adolescents who did not show elevated depressed mood.