Jim Liebelt's Youth Culture Watch

How Long Will Your Teen Live? Personality Might Tell

*The following is excerpted from an online article posted on HealthDay.

Does your teenager's personality actually predict how long he or she will live?

Yes, claims new research that finds high school students who tend to be calm, empathetic and intellectually curious are more likely to still be alive 50 years later than their peers who are less so.

The finding does not prove that certain traits in adolescence actually cause people to live longer; it only reveals an association between the two.

But the conclusion stems from an in-depth analysis of personality surveys conducted in 1960, involving nearly 27,000 high school students across the United States. Those results were then stacked up against participant deaths due to all causes over nearly 50 years.

"Essentially, we find that high school students who report adaptive personality characteristics -- things like high levels of calmness and low levels of impulsivity -- have a lower risk of death over the ensuing half century," said study author Benjamin Chapman. He is an associate professor in the departments of psychiatry and public health sciences at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York.

In addition to calmness and impulsivity, the initial survey gauged teenage levels of social sensitivity; leadership; energetic disposition; self-confidence; tidiness; sociability; intellectual curiosity; and maturity.

Chapman said his team "looked initially at each trait one by one." That meant that calmness was linked to a reduced risk of early death, whether or not the same teen also possessed other protective or risky traits.

Still, "adolescents who are more sociable tended also to be more self-confident, and so forth," he observed, suggesting that some traits tend to group together in the same person.

Chapman also noted that personality traits were assessed on a spectrum, so that each teen was characterized as having relatively high or low levels of a particular trait. And that meant that the degree to which a teenage trait was associated with a lower premature death risk also fell across a continuum.

For example, highly mature teens saw their long-term risk for an early death fall by about 6 percent for every statistically significant move up along the maturity spectrum; it fell by 8 percent for every notable bump in calmness and energetic disposition.

Bigger trait differences would likely produce even more dramatic protective benefits, the study authors suggested.

The findings were published online in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.

The initial personality survey asked more than 377,000 high schoolers to complete a battery of psychological tests back in 1960.

Death records dating up to 2009 were obtained for nearly 27,000 of them. By that point, 13 percent had died. The team did not assess specific causes of death.

And regardless of a teen's ethnic or family background, those who scored higher in terms of energy, empathy, calmness, tidiness, intellectual curiosity and maturity -- as well as lower for impulsivity -- faced a lower risk of death over the 48-year period.

"The insight of this work is that characteristics that we think are not particularly helpful in teens for immediate outcomes -- like getting good grades, getting into college, adjusting socially and emotionally to everyday life -- actually can have very long-term health consequences," said Chapman.

"The good news is that people can and often do change," he added. "There are many points in life between high school and a half-century later where chains of negative events can be halted or reversed in a sense."

Source: HealthDay
https://consumer.healthday.com/kids-health-information-23/adolescents-and-teen-health-news-719/how-long-will-your-teen-live-personality-might-tell-739866.html

Most Teens Do Have, and Use, Behavioral Brakes

*The following is excerpted from an online article posted on ScienceDaily.

Children who struggle with weak cognitive control at an early age are at most risk for trouble in adulthood following their engagement in risk-taking activities in adolescence, according to new research.

The study, published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, found that only a subset of children who engage in excessive levels of impulsiveness, such as acting without thinking during their teen years, later struggle with addictions or other problem behaviors as young adults.

"People have heard so much about the teenage brain being all gas and no brakes, stemming from an imbalance between the reward and control regions of the brain," said lead author Atika Khurana of the University of Oregon. "This study shows that this is not true. There is an imbalance for some youth, but it is not universal."

The findings challenge the traditional thinking that adolescence is a time of universal imbalance, with kids lacking cognitive control and taking risks to reap instant rewards, said Khurana, associate professor and director of prevention science graduate programs and member of the UO's Prevention Science Institute.

"Previous studies modeling changes in impulsivity and sensation seeking during adolescence drew conclusions based on age differences without looking at the same adolescents over time as they developed," she said. "This study looked at individual trajectories and captured distinct patterns of change that were not otherwise observable when looking at youth at different ages."

Khurana and colleagues analyzed six waves of data collected from 387 adolescents, ages 11 to 18, in the Philadelphia area. They looked at changes in sensation-seeking and impulsivity during in their teen years in relation to working memory, a measure of cognitive control, and as predictors of substance use disorders in late adolescence.

Cognitive control is the ability to exert top-down control over behavior, thoughts and emotions. This ability, tied to executive functions, rests in the brain's prefrontal cortex.

Only adolescents identified at the beginning of the study with weaknesses in cognitive control were at risk for impulsive action that put them at higher risk for substance abuse, the researchers concluded. While sensation-seeking rose in adolescence, it was not associated with weakness in cognitive control or later substance abuse.

The research speaks to the need for greater emphasis on early interventions that can strengthen cognitive control, Khurana said.

Source: ScienceDaily
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180809125549.htm

New UK Guidelines: Adolesescence Now Ends at 25

Adolescence no longer ends when people hit 18, according to updated guidelines being given to UK child psychologists.

The new directive is designed to extend the age range that child psychologists can work with from 18 years old up to 25.

It is hoped the initiative will stop children being 'rushed' through their childhood and feeling pressured to achieve key milestones quickly, reports the BBC.

There are now three stages of adolescence, according to the BBC report: early adolescence that ranges from 12 to 14 years, middle adolescence from 15 to 17 years and 18 and over is classed as late adolescence.

It has been introduced because research now suggests the brain continues developing through and passed teenage years, well into a person's mid-twenties and thirties.

The new guidance is also to make ensure that over 18s don't miss out on opportunities, or are forgotten about, in terms of health and education.

Source: Daily Mail
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2430573/An-adult-18-Not-Adolescence-ends-25-prevent-young-people-getting-inferiority-complex.html

Study: Teen Athletes May Not Report Concussion Symptoms

Despite knowing the risk of serious injury from playing football with a concussion, half of high school football players would continue to play if they had a headache stemming from an injury sustained on the field.

In a new study, physicians from Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center also report that approximately half of athletes wouldn't report concussion symptoms to a coach.

"We aren't yet at the point where we can make specific policy recommendations for sports teams, but this study raises concerns that young athletes may not report symptoms of concussions," says Brit Anderson, MD, an emergency medicine fellow at Cincinnati Children's and the study's lead author. "Other approaches, such as an increased use of sideline screening by coaches or athletic trainers, might be needed to identify injured athletes."

Of athletes surveyed, the vast majority recognized headaches, dizziness, difficulty with memory, difficulty concentrating, and sensitivity to light and sound as concussion symptoms. More than 90 percent recognized the risk of serious injury if they returned to play too quickly.

Despite these high levels of awareness, 53 percent responded that they would "always or sometimes continue to play with a headache sustained from an injury," and only 54 percent indicated they would "always or sometimes report symptoms of a concussion to their coach."

"Further study on concussion education in adolescent athletes and on ways to identify high school athletes who have sustained a concussion would be useful," says Dr. Anderson.

Source: Science Codex
http://www.sciencecodex.com/study_raises_concerns_that_teen_athletes_continue_to_play_with_concussion_symptoms-111652

Blood Test for Teen Depression Under Study

Scientists have developed a blood test that one day may help diagnose major depression in teens and young adults.

The test is in very early stages. However, scientists hope it will someday make diagnosing depression more objective for teens.

"The bottom line is that a test is possible from blood that can differentiate teens with major depression from those who do not have it," says scientist Eva Redei, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

Major depression affects about 1% of children under age 12, Redei says. By late teens and young adulthood, that figure rises to about 25%.

Currently, doctors diagnose depression by asking about symptoms. In developing the blood test, Redei's team focused on blood biomarkers, or indicators, for depression and anxiety. These indicators reflect the activity of genes related to depression. The blood test is very preliminary and not ready for clinical use.

The findings are published in Transitional Psychiatry.

Source: WebMD
http://teens.webmd.com/news/20120417/blood-test-for-teen-depression

In Teen Music Choices, Anxiety Rules

Bottom line to this study... teens conform (at least in music choices) to their peers not to be popular, but to avoid the emotional anxiety and pain of being a "contrarian."

According to the findings of a study recently published in Neuroimage, when it comes to the music teens buy, a lot of those purchases are made out of fear -- a fear well known to adolescents all over America: terror of social rejection.

The fear of social rejection is so strong in adolescents because their relationships are essential for passing on the lessons that will enable them to join adult society. In order to do this properly and efficiently, teenagers come equipped with the ability to learn fast and furiously from their peers, especially those who wield more social power  -- who are older or more popular. Although this system developed because it helps  the teen transition to adulthood, it has proven an excellent principle upon which to base economic decisions. The popular kids dictate teen culture, and if they endorse it (Twilight, anyone?) it will sell.

The researchers chose to study adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17, a cohort thought to be highly susceptible to social influence, and known to buy at least one third of albums in the United States. Each participant heard a short clip of a song downloaded from the social-networking website Myspace. Following the clip they were asked to make two ratings, one indicating how familiar they were with the clip (which was always the hook or chorus of the chosen song) and one indicating how much they liked the clip on a five point scale. The clip was then played a second time, and they were again asked to rate how much they liked the song. However, in two thirds of these second trials the teens were shown a popularity rating that was estimated based on the number of times the song was downloaded.

When no information about the popularity of a song was displayed, teens changed their likability rating of the song 12 percent of the time. Not surprisingly, after being shown the popularity of a song, teens changed their ratings more frequently, on average 22 percent of the time. This difference was highly significant, and it is worth noting that among those who changed their likability ratings, 79 percent of the time teens changed their ratings in the direction of the popularity rating -- they followed the crowd.

These behavioral findings validate a great deal of previous research on conformity, and demonstrate that it is alive and well in the average American adolescent.

But, did teens actually “follow the crowd” or, upon further reflection and information from their peers, changed their intrinsic preference for a particular piece of music? The researchers investigated the question by looking at brain activity, and found it had nothing to do with increased liking of the music. Further, the research indicated that when teens became aware they held a unpopular likability rating for a song, brain activity registered in an area associated with anxiety and pain.

So, the researchers argue, conforming seems to be motivated not by the positive utility of behaving like your peers, but instead out of anxiety and pain at the prospect of being a “contrarian.” 

Source: Scientific American
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=in-teen-music-choices-fear-rules

Teen Brain: Adult Reasoning Capacity, Emotional Maturity Not So Much

If you have or have had teens at home or work with them, there is absolutely no surprise in this new study's finding that their emotional maturity development lags behind their reasoning capacity.

From a physiological standpoint, this study seeks to provide more understanding into the developing teen brain. From a practical standpoint, quite simply teens are "rookie" adults. They need time, guidance, and experiences to help them move toward maturity. It's worthwhile to note that teens are prone to experimentation and making some poor choices along the way.

Parents can mitigate some of the negative consequences by equipping teens with decision making skills including helping them learn to evaluate outcomes of different choices, and by providing loving support, appropriate discipline, along with lots of patience and grace.

A 16-year-old might be quite capable of making an informed decision about whether to end a pregnancy – a decision likely to be made after due consideration and consultation with an adult – but this same adolescent may not possess the maturity to be held to adult levels of responsibility if she commits a violent crime, according to new research into adolescent psychological development.

"Adolescents likely possess the necessary intellectual skills to make informed choices about terminating a pregnancy but may lack the social and emotional maturity to control impulses, resist peer pressure and fully appreciate the riskiness of dangerous decisions," said Laurence Steinberg, PhD, a professor of developmental psychology at Temple University and lead author of the study. "This immaturity mitigates their criminal responsibility."

Steinberg and his co-authors address this seeming contradiction in a study showing that cognitive and emotional abilities mature at different rates.

The findings appear in the October issue of American Psychologist, published by the American Psychological Association.

Source: ScienceDaily
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091007153745.htm