UCLA CDA Co-Executive Director Andrew Fuligni and Policy and Practice Director Elise Brumbach explain how insights from developmental science could help schools promote attendance and engagement for middle and high school students.
Leveraging the Opportunity of Adolescence to Reduce Chronic Absenteeism
Leveraging the Opportunity of Adolescence to Reduce Chronic Absenteeism
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This fact sheet gives an overview of adolescent brain development and explains how access to resources, opportunities, and meaningful relationships during adolescence can build connections within our brains and with the world around us that support us into adulthood.
Brain development during adolescence is fundamentally a story of connections.
Around age 9 or 10, hormonal changes kick off a period of intense learning and development, when brain cells form, strengthen, and streamline connections in response to our experiences more rapidly than in any period of life after early childhood.
Activity increases especially in the brain networks that propel us to explore the world, learn from our mistakes, and connect with others in new ways. In turn, these new experiences prompt our brain cells to connect with other neurons in ways that help us adapt to new events and new information. These neural connections become stronger the more we use them, while unused connections are pruned away, helping the brain become more efficient at acquiring and mastering new skills and new ways of thinking.
This brain-building learning happens through direct experiences in our environments and interactive, responsive relationships—with our families and peers, in our classrooms and neighborhoods, in community activities, and even online. The resources, opportunities, and experiences we as adults provide in and out of school can help young people’s brains build the extensive networks of connections that will manage the complex knowledge and behaviors needed to navigate adulthood.
Learning by Exploring the World Around Us
One of the networks that changes significantly with the increase in hormones and dopamine at the beginning of puberty is the “reward system” in our brain. Heightened activity in this system increases the feeling of reward we get from exploring the world, taking risks, and learning from the results.
Meanwhile, the network of brain regions that make up the “social brain” also changes during adolescence. These changes help us tune into social and emotional cues, like facial expressions or social rejection and approval, and increase our desire to earn respect and contribute to others. It also enables us to learn the nuances of changing social contexts in ways that help prepare us for adult relationships.
The prefrontal cortex (the region of the brain that orchestrates critical thinking and behavioral control) undergoes its most rapid period of development during adolescence. It builds on many other systems within the brain to manage our responses to the flood of new information and intensifying emotions. Engaging with other people and our environment and learning from our successes and our mistakes, known as “action-based learning,” helps shape the prefrontal cortex by strengthening the connections within it and between it and other brain networks. We learn through repeated practice—which includes trying and sometimes failing—what is adaptive and appropriate in different situations and how to guide our behavior accordingly, in ways that equip us to pursue new forward-looking goals.
When adults provide youth with opportunities to try new things, to practice navigating emotions, and to learn from failures along the way, it helps build the brain connections that we all need to grow into healthy, thriving adults.
Policies, Experiences, and Mindsets Shape the Connecting Brain
Although we can continue to learn new skills and behaviors as adults, the adaptability of the brain during adolescence means that these connections are much more likely to form quickly in response to experiences. The extent of these changes make the adolescent years a critical window when investments in the right policies and programs for youth can shape long-term positive development.
Likewise, this makes the adolescent years a time when negative experiences including racism, other forms of discrimination, poverty, or abuse can create steeper hills for young people to climb toward a healthy adulthood. When adults ensure that all young people, especially those who have experienced earlier adversity, have what they need along their journey, they can build the skills and capacities they need to thrive as adults. This includes opportunities to explore and take healthy risks, to connect with and contribute to those around us, to make decisions and learn from the outcomes, to develop a healthy sense of identity, and to rely on support from parents or other caring adults.
Understanding how and why the brain develops during adolescence lets us provide the support young people need to build healthy connections—in their world and within their brains—that will help our youth and our communities thrive.
In this issue of our quarterly Research Roundup, we provide an overview of some recent research showcasing the importance of support for positive identity development, the role of family and peers in mental health and emotion regulation, and the impacts of educational settings.
In this issue of our quarterly Research Roundup, we provide an overview of some recent research showcasing the importance of support for positive identity development, the role of family and peers in mental health and emotion regulation, and the impacts of educational settings.
You can suggest research articles for future roundups by emailing cda@psych.ucla.edu or sign up to receive the quarterly research roundup in your inbox.
Identity Development
- The importance of social identities in adolescence as an opportunity to promote positive adjustment (September 2023)
- Effects of conflict at school and at home on the emotional health of gender nonconforming youth (June 2023)
Family and Peer Relationships
- Strong family cultural values can moderate environmental effects on adolescent mental health (September 2023)
- Parents and friends can both influence emotion regulation abilities in adolescents (September 2023)
Educational Settings
- Exclusionary discipline practices in schools can increase the risk of legal system contact and substance use in adulthood (October 2023)
- School engagement in adolescence predicts positive adult outcomes (March 2023)
Identity Development
The importance of social identities in adolescence as an opportunity to promote positive adjustment
Adolescence is a key period for exploring and developing our sense of who we are. This includes our social identity, such as our ethnic-racial or sexual identity. In this paper, Adam Hoffman and Adriana Umaña-Taylor argue that the importance of social identity during adolescence can be an opportunity to promote positive adjustment—especially for youth with marginalized social identities. The authors highlight two specific interventions that effectively targeted social identity development and improved adolescent adjustment: the Identity project and the PRIDE project.
The Identity project was a weekly, school-based intervention in which mid-adolescent (about 15 years old) youth explored their ethnic-racial identity, with the opportunity to teach each other, reflect, and discuss. The program increased exploration of and clarity in the students’ ethnic-racial identity, which was in turn associated with higher levels of self-esteem, better academic outcomes, and lower symptoms of depression a year later. The PRIDE project was a short intervention aimed at affirming marginalized social identities amongst 9th graders, a transition year for many youth when self-esteem often begins to decline. The intervention–three sessions throughout the year for youth to write about one of their social identities, what they liked about it, and why–buffered against this developmental decline in self-esteem. By the end of the year, youth in the program showed higher self-esteem than their peers once the program was completed. (Child Development Perspectives, September 2023)
Why this is important: This paper draws upon successful real-world interventions to highlight the value of programs that support social identity exploration and affirmation in adolescence, especially for youth with marginalized social identities.
Effects of conflict at home and at school on the emotional health of gender nonconforming youth
Gender nonconformity—gender expression that differs from stereotypes based on sex assigned at birth—has been associated with elevated risk of emotional and behavioral health problems in youth due to higher rates of peer victimization and rejection by parents and peers. In a sample of 10,000+ 10- and 11-year-olds, Hannah Loso and colleagues examined how family conflict and perceptions of the school environment (that is, how safe and/or supported an individual feels at their school) might contribute to the association between gender nonconformity and emotional and behavioral health problems in youth. Youth with gender nonconforming presentations reported higher levels of conflict amongst family members, as well as poorer perceptions of their school environments; even further, family conflict and negative perceptions of the school environment partially explained the associations between gender nonconformity and mental and behavioral health problems amongst these youth. (Journal of Adolescent Health, June 2023)
Why this is important: This study demonstrates how gender nonconforming youth often face family and school conflict at a detriment to their mental and behavioral health, highlighting the potential value of school and family-based interventions such as anti-discrimination policies for schools or education and resources for parents to support their gender nonconforming children.
Family and Peer Relationships
Strong family cultural values can moderate environmental effects on adolescent mental health
Family cultural values—such as those that emphasize family support, attachment, loyalty, respect, and obligation—can shape the home environment and influence emotional development. In this study, Gianna Rea-Sandin and colleagues examined whether family cultural values impact mental health and behavior in adolescence. In 10,000+ children and adolescents and their parents, greater parent- and youth-reported family cultural values at age 11 to 12 predicted fewer internalizing symptoms (such as anxiety and depression) and externalizing symptoms (such as rule-breaking behavior or aggression) at ages 12 to 13. In a subset of the sample that included 1,042 twin pairs, the authors found that shared and unshared environmental influences, but not genetic factors, accounted for the variance in internalizing symptoms over adolescence. Interestingly, higher levels of family cultural values decreased the role of unshared environment influences on internalizing symptoms amongst the twins, indicating the important role that supportive family environments can play in shaping healthy emotional development in adolescence. (Behavior Genetics, September 2023)
Why this is important: This study demonstrates that family cultural values such as respect and loyalty towards family can be a protective factor for mental health problems such as anxiety and depression in adolescence.
Parents and friends can influence emotion regulation abilities in adolescents
During adolescence, we are especially sensitive to our social environment. Feedback from those around us shapes how we process and regulate our emotions. Although friends become increasingly important in adolescence, parents are still key to emotional development during this time. In this study, Juan Wang and colleagues explored how feedback from friends, mothers, and fathers can facilitate or impede emotion regulation abilities in a group of 438 young adolescents (around 11 to 12 years old).
More supportive responses from friends were associated with better emotion regulation abilities a year later for both boys and girls, while parents’ responses showed uniquely strong effects in girls. Mothers’ supportive responses (such as asking why the child is unhappy or assuring them they don’t have to worry) explained additional emotion regulation abilities beyond friends’ responses, and fathers’ unsupportive responses (such as ignoring the child’s unhappiness or punishing the child) moderated the predictive power of friends’ responses on emotion regulation abilities a year later. This suggests that both parents and peers are important for regulating emotions in adolescence; further, parental support may enhance or decrease the positive effects of peer support, suggesting that even if adolescents rely on peers over parents for emotion regulation, parents can shape the influence of peer support on their child’s emotional development. (Journal of Youth and Adolescence, September 2023)
Why this is important: This study demonstrates that social relationships with both parents and peers are important for emotion processing and regulation in adolescence and underscores the value of both forms of social support for adolescent emotional development.
Educational Settings
Exclusionary discipline practices in schools can increase the risk of legal system contact and substance use in adulthood
Exclusionary school discipline (suspension and expulsion) can break down social bonds, decrease school connectedness, and disrupt academic progress, which can increase the risk of problematic substance use and exposure to the criminal legal system. In this study, Seth Prins and colleagues examined associations between substance use and exclusionary school discipline in a group of 20,000+ high school students who were interviewed in the 1990s and early 2000s, when exclusionary discipline practices and school-based arrests increased sharply in the United States. The authors also tested how adolescent substance use and exclusionary school discipline predicted likelihood of being arrested in adulthood (ages 24 to 32 years old).
Students who reported substance use were more likely to experience school discipline over the following years, and students who reported exclusionary school discipline were more likely to report substance use in the following years. Youth who reported substance use and exclusionary school discipline in adolescence were also more likely to use substances and to be arrested as adults. (Drug and Alcohol Dependence, October 2023)
Why this is important: This study demonstrates that exclusionary school discipline practices can contribute to substance use and future entrance into the criminal legal system, highlighting schools as crucial contexts for investment in interventions to support healthy outcomes instead of exclusionary punishments.
School engagement in adolescence predicts positive adult outcomes
In this study, Jennifer Symonds and colleagues used data from 13,135 individuals studied over 40 years of life to investigate how school engagement in adolescence relates to educational and employment outcomes in adulthood. Students were interviewed at age 16 regarding their level of school engagement—measured by how much they enjoyed school, felt school was a good use of time, and were willing to help and participate at school. Over a decade later, at ages 34 and 46, these same individuals were interviewed regarding their employment outcomes. Higher levels of school engagement at age 16 predicted higher educational achievement and income levels in adulthood, even when controlling for relevant demographics such as childhood socioeconomic status and cognitive ability. (Developmental Psychology, March 2023)
Why this is important: This study shows that engagement in school and school activities in adolescence can have a persistent, positive impact on adult outcomes, highlighting the importance of fostering engagement in schools for healthy adolescent development.
Young People Who Have Experienced Earlier Adversity Can Thrive with the Right Supports in Place During Adolescence
Science Spotlight | Education | Mental Health | Out-of-School Time | Foster Care | Adversity, Bias, & Discrimination | Juvenile Justice
This spotlight summarizes the impacts of early adversity on development and the interventions during adolescence that can help youth thrive.
Adolescence is a time of remarkable opportunity and growth. Throughout our lives, our brain changes and adapts to new experiences, but there are periods of development when our brain is especially responsive to input from our experiences and our environment. Adolescence—from about age 10 to age 25—is one of these windows.
During our adolescent years, connections between regions in our brains are strengthened and streamlined in response to our experiences, becoming more efficient and effective to support the skills we need for adulthood. Research has shown that crucial brain systems such as the prefrontal cortex develop rapidly during adolescence, and effects of environmental factors on this development are amplified. This makes adolescence a critical period for cognitive and social development. It also makes the adolescent years an important period of opportunity when research-informed interventions can address the impact of earlier adversity.
The Impacts of Early Adversity
When we experience adversity—such as toxic stress, trauma, and neglect—early in life, the ways our brain and body adapt to these traumas can create steeper hills for us to climb toward positive behavioral development and healthy functioning in adolescence and adulthood.
Following are research-based insights about the impact of early adversity on adolescent development.
Altered development is an adaptive response to stressful environments
When we experience stress, our brain and body respond to prepare us to handle the stressor and its consequences. For example, if we lived in an unsafe environment as a child in which we were often exposed to significant threats, we might have a heightened attention and vigilance about potential threats, which could accelerate the maturing of neural emotion circuits in our brain. This vigilance could serve an adaptive purpose, by helping us protect ourselves and avoid danger. However, once we were no longer exposed to the stressful environment, these once adaptive changes could negatively impact our social, emotional, and cognitive functioning. Support through positive relationships and research-informed interventions can help us learn behaviors that would better serve our health and wellbeing.
As adults who want to support young people, we need to understand how early adversity affects development and apply evidence-based interventions and developmentally appropriate support to address these negative impacts and help these young people thrive.
Early adversity can impact behavioral development
- Young people who have experienced early adversity may struggle with regulating their emotions, which can manifest as heightened emotional reactivity and difficulties managing stress.
- Early adversity can also impact social relationships: the disruption of secure attachments in childhood may lead to difficulties maintaining positive relationships with peers and caregivers in adolescence.
- Early adversity can impact academic success by impacting young people’s ability to pay attention, remember information, plan ahead and meet goals, display self-control, or follow multiple-step directions.
- Experiencing early adversity also increases the risk of behavioral issues such as aggression, impulsivity, and conduct disorders.
- Young people who have experienced adversity may face a higher risk of physical health problems such as heart disease and diabetes and may engage in more health risk behaviors such as violence and substance use.
- Early adversity is one of the strongest risk factors for developing mental health disorders in adolescence, including anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Early adversity has an impact on brain development
- The negative behavioral and health-related outcomes associated with early adversity appear to result from a cascade of intertwined changes in processes within the brain that regulate an individual’s response to threat and reward.
- Early adversity can affect the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis—which helps control an individual’s physiological stress response and the release of the stress hormone cortisol.
- Early adversity has been linked to differences in the size and functioning of brain regions such as the hippocampus, amygdala, and striatum that are important for memory, emotion processing, and learning, as well as neural regulatory systems that are important for executive functioning (including the capacity to plan ahead and meet goals, display self-control, follow multiple-step directions even when interrupted, and stay focused despite distractions) and inhibitory control (the ability to suppress or redirect a thought, action, or feeling).
- Adversity may also affect the development of amygdala-prefrontal communication which can contribute to the behavioral and emotional problems often associated with experiencing trauma early in life.
These impacts on development can create steeper paths for youth who have faced earlier adversity. Adolescence offers a window when targeted support from adults could help these youth to navigate their way to a thriving adulthood.
Adolescence Presents a Critical Opportunity for Intervention
The adaptability of our brain to our experiences and relationships during adolescence make these years a time when targeted interventions may have significant impacts on brain and behavioral development, leading to long-term positive effects on development and life outcomes.
The effectiveness of an intervention can vary based on individual differences in trauma response, the nature of the adversity, and the quality of support and resources available to an individual. There are many forms of early adversity, so it is important to focus closely on the nature of the adversity a young person has experienced as well as the unique needs of a specific youth to design the most effective and targeted intervention strategy.
Successful interventions also require adequate resources and support to ensure that youth can access these resources. Programs that increase access to resources and build supportive environments for young people who have experienced adversity are crucial for reducing inequalities and supporting healthy brain and behavioral development for all young people. For example, state-level programs such as cash benefits for low-income families have been shown to mitigate the negative effects of low income on brain development and mental health.
Following are examples of interventions that may be effective for adolescents who experienced early life adversity.
➢ Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a therapeutic approach that focuses on identifying and changing negative thought patterns and behaviors. CBT can help youth who were exposed to trauma regulate their emotions and respond to stress. Trauma-focused CBT that is specifically tailored to address negative responses to childhood trauma and adversity have been shown to be especially effective for treating PTSD in youth who have experienced adversity.
➢ Mindfulness and meditation can be effective in adolescents who have experienced various forms of early adversity and have been shown to support cognitive abilities, mental and physical health, and academic performance. Meditation treatment can help improve attention and academic performance by strengthened communication between frontal brain systems in adolescents who experienced early childhood neglect. Such findings suggest that mindfulness-based interventions may impact adolescents’ regulatory neural systems.
➢ Reward-based therapies can be effective, because adolescents tend to show heightened sensitivity to rewards (including social, monetary, or even sweet-tasting rewards) that provide incentives for engaging in positive behaviors. Research shows that rewards—which can range from delicious food to fun or relaxing activities with friends—may help encourage adolescents to participate in treatment and seek out enjoyable and rewarding activities. Therapies focused on positive reinforcement may be especially effective for improving mood and reducing stress reactivity in vulnerable individuals.
➢ Safety signal learning helps adolescents learn to identify cues that a situation is safe and reduce the perception of threat, which counteracts the hyperarousal and hypervigilance that can develop following trauma exposure. Identifying safety signals can help youth regulate their emotions and decrease their physical and cognitive reactivity to stress when faced with stressors or trauma-related triggers. Safety signal learning may be effective even if other approaches, such as standard exposure therapy, are unsuccessful.
➢ Positive relationships with supportive adults and peers during adolescence are critical for promoting healthy emotional development after a young person has faced earlier adversity. These kinds of developmental relationships can occur through connections with peers, parents, or other caring adults such as teachers or coaches, and can nourish young people and support their healthy development and growth, like a root system supporting a tree.
Research suggests that adolescents who live in high-quality caregiving environments in which their emotional and physical needs are met experience lower levels of anxiety and depression and are better able to plan ahead and meet goals, display self-control, follow multiple-step directions even when interrupted, and stay focused despite distractions—even if they were originally raised in caregiving environments that did not meet their emotional or physical needs, such as institutions. Given the benefits of high-quality caregiving for adolescent resilience, therapies focusing on improving caregiver-adolescent relationships can be useful for promoting positive mental health outcomes in adolescence.
Peer relationships and friendships also play an important role in helping young people process and regulate their emotions. Group therapy sessions and peer support groups can be especially effective and help adolescents connect with other young people with similar lived experiences. Connecting with peers also helps foster a sense of belonging by providing social support and strengthening social networks.
➢ Psychoeducation can help adolescents feel a sense of agency over their situation by providing information about how their experiences may have impacted their brain and behavior. Learning about the effects of early experiences can help empower youth to understand more about themselves and seek appropriate support. Combining psychoeducation with interventions that promote self-awareness, self-esteem, and a positive self-concept can counteract effects of early adversity and promote a positive sense of identity. Interventions that target growth mindset—or the belief that personal characteristics are changeable—may be especially impactful for successfully improving academic performance and mental health.
Similarly, recognizing and uplifting an adolescent’s cultural background can help build a positive
➢ Academic support such as tutoring and educational programs can help young people exposed to adversity catch up academically and develop a sense of self-efficacy if they have experienced negative impacts on academic and cognitive functioning.
➢ Extracurricular activities, hobbies, and/or volunteering are also promising avenues for helping adolescents develop a