Adolescents sort their choices, discovering appeals, perils and payoffs.Story by Dawn Klingensmith ; illustrations by Elizabeth Brandt

Klingensmith, Dawn

English

University of Missouri: MOspace

Teen TendencIes S T ORY BY D AW N KLIN GE N SM I T H ILLU ST R AT I O N S BY ELI ZABET H I T ISTHE IlESTO.FTIMES. IT I~THE\VOIt.ST ofti rncs. It IS the age llfwlSdol11, ills t he agc of foot. s llllcss. iListhccpncll of proms and parties, uf peer pressure amI pimpl es. It 's adolcscclH.:c. Am1 while most of us grow out uf it, some orus never quite gel uvcr Ll. ·'Let 'ssec ... Howcl id I get interested in th is work?" muses LynllcCoopcr. a psychology pro fessor and an expert on ad(llcsccncc--onc of several MU researchers exploring the subject. "Uke a lot of other people, I found adole-scenec sumewhat t ruullIutic. It 's a tillle of uncer, tainty. (luri ng wltie h you gel all kinds of mised messages. You're expected LO act like a grown-up- accepting rcspolls ibili-ti c.~, doing well ill .~d1l)o l . Yet you' re pro-hihitell from engaging in orher aduh heh aviors. such as d rinking and having s('x. O n top of all that, you ' re bomharded by med ia n1essa6rcs that glorify dIOse 'bad ' behaviors." Adolcscellce is a lime 'where thc.~e mixed messages arc sorted out, tried 011 for s i.ze, and kept or tossed like so many tcen-ageglad rags. For Cooper. it's a kind of cillreprcneu rship : the development and packaging of a prod uct- a self- in which mUlIY ki{ls assume risk for the sake of eventual profit. "It's part of the task of ADOLESCENTS SORT THE I R an adolescent to experiment and take r isks, to tryon diffe rent i{lcnlities." Cooper says. "Only hy going through that process can they come ont on the other side with a clear sense of who they a rc. " Risk, then, is a necessary and healthy part of development. But r isk_taking is a tool t hat , guided by sudl an inexperi_ enced hand, can shatter the work,in_ progress that is the adolescent. Normal , exploratory behavior differs from behav_ ior that is self-{[cSlructive and dangerous, Coopcr ca utions, "But thut distinction might not be as black and wllile us we tem[ to lhink ." This gray a rea-und, indced , the full .~ pectrllll1 of udolescent risk _tnking---is a the llleeollneetingreseu rch projeCls ucross campus. Cooper ami her colleugues study t:hc .~takcs of adolescent risk_taking- its appeal, its perils and its payoffs. THE Y OUNG AND THE R ECKL ESS You ' re pedaling your Schwinn down a tree-l ined strect. Sunlight and gentle III ZZ 01' hl'eezcs massugc the worry right olil uf you . Suddenly, tires arc s{lllealing. A swerving car is speedi llg straight ut YOll. NcitherofYtJu bl'ukesi n time. For all intents ulHI purposes, you're u goner. But wIlen psychology Profe ssor Lizette Peterson_Homer, un injury-pre-vcnt ion expel'l , put kids on a s im ilar colli_ sion course, thoy lived to te ll the talc--ami w hat they suit! exposes the ways in w h ich tecn_ugers perceive peril. In Peterson_H omer's cxperimcut, 150 students in the second :1Illl e igh th grades watched special films while riding sta_ tionary bicycles. T he four t hree_minute films were shot f rom a cyclist'S poi li t of view. 'I"il c l'eale the sensc 0(' a real hike ride, a daring videographer fmllL MU 's Academic SUppOl·t Center hitched himsclf to the front hum per of a Jeep truveling 7 mph , the averagcspeed at which kids pedal. " T he effect was a mazing," says Peterson-Homer. " When t he kids watched t he films, if there was a low_ hanging hranch, they (lucked." About two-thir(Js of the way through each " ride, " cyclis[sencountere([ all obstacle unlikely to cause much damugc--a pile of leaves, for example. Each fi lm ended wit h a more serious hazard, fol -lowed by a freeze- fram e and hluckout. In SUMMER 1998 one, a man pushing a wheelbarrow filled with jagged wood pokes out from behind a parked car. In another, riders suddenly find themselves in the path of an oncom_ ing vehiele. " 'Ve had paramedics walch the films," says Peterson_Homer, " nnd they all said the same thing: The final scenes would result in severe injury or death ." The kids didn't see it that way. Most could tell the diffef(!nce between hig and small haznrds, but the eighth-gra(len were worse than the second-graders at calculating injury risk. Even when a head-on colli.'lion was inevitnble, most expected to pull through w ith nothing but a skinned knee. Parents who viewed the films afterward also underestimated the danger. Eighth_graders and their parents might belie"e older children are better riders, and as such af(! less likely to get hurt. But statistics don't bear that out. Each year in the Unites States, some 800 cyclists are k illed, and half a million more f(!ceive emergency room treatment for bieycle.relatc<l injuries. Cyclists between the ages of 10 and 14 have the highest death rates. These kids put themselves in riskier situations, says Peterson.Homer, and are less likely than younger children to wear helmets. Wearing a helmet can reduce a cyclist's rid.: of head injuries by 85 percent . But in the study, only 25 percent of the eighth. graders owned helmets, compared w ith 55 percent of the second.graders. " Have you henrd of the Cassandra Syndrome?" asks Peterson· Homer, evoking the cursed sC<!r of Greek mythology. "She could fore-tell the future, but no one would believe her. \Ve know that helmets prevent seri_ OUll head injuries. Why must people learn the hard way?" Similar challenges underscore the research of psychology Professor Charles Borduin , who works w ith ju,'enile delin· quents. For 20 years, he's cowlscled repeat offenders so caught up in risk behaviors that parents, policy makers and the general public have all but given up on 24 them . "For a long time, the consensus among those who worked in juvenile jw_ tice was that nothing worked," he says. In trying to figure out why, Bor<Iuin saw t hat the most widely used interventions weren't research _based. " No one ,vas making usc of a huge body of research that hnd shed light on adolescent behav_ ior problems." Borduin says. " Uased on that research , a lot of treatment models are too narrowly focused , and doomed to failure ." HITTING HOM E To get the picture, let 's cut to another film- this time, a figurativc one. Our first close-up: A young tough with greased_back hair, a pierced nose and an air of rebellion as palpable as cigarette smoke. The selling is juvenile detention. Now zoom out~y out- and pnn the surroundings. Scan the set , and take note of the different backdrops. This is where thc exposition unfolds, tracing plot points that led our adolescem offender to a life of delinquency. These scenes, Borduin says, are where we need to focus our attention. Research shows that a variety of "sys_ terns," especially family, peers and school, influence teen misbehavior. Yet the juvenile.justieesystem tries to treat underage offenders in group homes or wilderness "boot camps"- places far removed from those influential systems. Even the les.5-restrictive outpatient ther_ apy that many offenders engage in tends to look at criminal risk behaviors out of context . In one·on-one talk therapy, for example, " kids go to a clinical setting, as if they' re being treated for a sinUll infec_ tion ," Borduin says. Recidivism rates indicate that such an approach isn' t effective in modify ing risk behavior, ~ll!OII probably because it fails to consider the environments that fostered those behav_ iors in the first place. \Vhile studying at the University of Memphis in 1978, Borduin helped devel-op a " multisystemic " approach to thera. py, an intensive at_the-scene treatment that focuses not just on the offender, but also on the youth's family, peers, school and neighborhood. Since then, more tban two dozen states ha .... e adopted multisys. temie therapy (MST) programs, and Borduin can hardly keep up with other states' requests to kick_start MST pro-grams. In the Missouri Delinquency Project, an MU study, Borduin compared tradi· tional individual therapy with MST. The 200 subjects had had at least two fclony arrests and were at high risk for commit-ting further serious crimes. The offenders assigned to individual therapy went to one-on-one counseling sessions that focusc<1 on personal. family and academic issues. The rest underwent MST, in which therapists meet adoles-cent offenders on their own " turf." Meetings take place in the adolescent 's home and include the entire family. " Pamily relations playa tremendous role in children's development in general ," Borduin says, "and, more speCifically, when things go wrong." Therapists also hit the pavement to tllckle t heir charges' social and academic problems. They might visit the school to talk with teachers or grab a burger with the youth and his or her pals. If the friends are a bad influence, the therapist helps the parenu steer the adolescent to a different peer group-one that promotes positive ri.sk.taking, like a sports team or church youth group. Borduin 's approach hit home. When researchers followed up with cach group of adolescent offenders, they found that 75 percent of the youths who underwent one_on_one therapy were rearrested at least once in four years' time, compared with just 20 percent who underwent MST. Subse(luent studies have shown SUMMER 1998 that MST effectively reduces specific types of adolescent risk behavior, such as substance abuse, violence or sexual abuse. " These kids and their families may never have the kind of household where it's 'lights out' at 10 o'clock ," Borduin says, but MST - far bener than any other intervention-gives them the tools to build bener lives. For our "young tough," it sets the stage for a new story---one, perhaps, with a happy ending. HOPE AND HEALING Before we ride off into the sunset, let 's rewind the projec-tor. Was there some specific plot twist that set our offender on the path to ruin? Can we freeze-frame one catalyzing event? Probably not. "Every individual has a unique personality, and confronts a unique set of circumstances," Cooper says. So, in a sense. people live a million different movies that don't adhere to any Hollywood formu1a. But scientists know that certain conditions are associated with pathological risk behaviors. One is hopelessness. Jyotsna Nair, an assistant professor in clinical psychiatry, has a <Iuick way of fathoming kids ' hopes: Ask them what they want to be when they grow up. "The little ones might say a firefighter, a police officer, a ballerina," she says. "For teen· agers, you might ask where they're going to be five years from now. Usually they will talk about college and careers. But what if they are hopeless? They can't envision any sort of future." Hopelessness is a clinical term describ-ing a persistent sense of despair that affects kids as young as 8. " It·s feeling as though any effort you make is going to amount to nothing," she says. This noth. ing.to.lose milldset is linked to risk behaviors and suicide. SUMMER 1998 To learn more about adolescelll hope-lessness, Jyotsna joined forces with her husband, Satish Nair. an associate profes-sor of mechanical and aerospace engineer-ing; Javad Kashani, a professor of child psychiatry and pediatrics; and John Reid, professor of educational leadership and policy analysis. Satish's specially deSigned neural network-a computer· based model of artificial intelligence--formed the "brains" of this operation. The system was able to transcend the capacities of its hunlan colleagues in iden· tifying correlates of adolescent hopeless. Neural networks are made up of artifi. cial neurons that transmit information just as real ones do. \Vhen we learn some. thing new, an adjustment is made to the connections, or synapses, between neu. rons in our braius. The same is true of artificial neurailletworks. Like people, they learn by example. nut the human brain contains about 100 billion neurons; Satish 's network had a more mallagcable 24. Kashani surveyed about 150 high . school students aged 14 to 16 to deter-mine their personality traits, levels of family and social support, and certain psychio.tric dingnoses, such as conduct disorder and anxiety. The subjects also filled out questionnaires that gauged their level of hopelessness. By enteriug the teens' survey responses and their corresponding hopelessness scores into the computer's data bo.se, researchers " trained" the neural network to become an "expert" on the causes and correlates of hopelessness----picking out patterns, (Ietectiug trends. Now, given any case study, the network can predict hopelessness. It can also describe the rela. tive importance of each " input" (the ado. lescenu' personality traits, the nature of their relationships) to the likelihood and severity of hopelessness. In the end, though , a billion or so extra neurons give the researchers a leg up on the network; the real-lifecxperts work to restore hope. Prom the computer analysis, HlllOI they learned that "forceful " adoles-cents--characterizcd by more dominant and aggressive hchavior--are less likely to be hopeless, as are those who report high levels of family and peer support. " This led us to believe that assertion training and group therapy might be worked in as part of a treatmellt plan for an adolescent with hopelessness," says Jyotsna. "Sensitive" adolescents. characterized by feelings of discontent, guilt and pes-simism, were more likely to be hopeless. For them , a treatment plan fOCUSing on self.satisfaction might lend a brighter outlook for the future. BACK IN BUSINESS Those bike.riding teens give us inSight into the skewed perception of risk adoles· cents innately share. Mix that with the nced to experiment ill order to establish identity, alld it's clear that adolescence presents a tricky blend of jeopardy and reward. " The most well.adjusted adoles-cents are not the ones who refrain alto. gether from risk-taking," says Cooper, who herself has studied adolescenu' attachment styles and their influellce on risk.taking. "Teens grow by testing them. selves and their abilities, trying new things and engaging in different behaviors to find a good fit for their emergillg iden· tities." The key to success, she says, is differ-entiating between risk that offers some sort of payoff and risk that brings pre-dominantly negative resu1 ts. "Sometimes it's tricky for adults to draw this line, let alone adolescents," Cooper admits. But with the help of MU researchers, parents and teens may one day come closer to understanding how to chart the perilous course toward independence . • 25 

Teen tendencies

https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/bitstream/10355/68540/1/MizzouAlumniMagSummer1998p22-25.pdf

Teen tendencies

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