Visit UCLA CDA

Winter 2024 Research Roundup

Winter 2024 Research Roundup

Teen and father in front of a Christmas tree loaded on the car

In this issue of our quarterly Research Roundup, we provide an overview of some recent research about adolescent development that examined the importance of parents’ ethnic-racial identity, the benefits of a mindfulness intervention, the link between agency and sense of purpose, the association between brain development and resilience to stress, and the link between heart rate variability and mental health.

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.

In this Roundup

Research

Longitudinal variation in resilient psychosocial functioning is associated with ongoing cortical myelination and functional reorganization during adolescence

(Nature Communications, July 2024)

In this study, Meike Hettwer and colleagues examined whether resilience to adversity during adolescence relates to ongoing development of brain regions that support emotion regulation and cognitive control. In a longitudinal study of 141 adolescents ranging from 14 to 26 years old, the researchers measured mental health and environmental stressors (including dysfunctional family environments, significant adverse life events, and low socioeconomic status) at two timepoints, one to two years apart. The researchers quantified the extent to which each adolescent was susceptible or resilient to stress — that is, whether the youth demonstrated worse-than-expected or better-than-expected mental health given their stressful life experiences. Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at each timepoint, they examined whether resilience to adversity related to myelination, the process by which a protective, insulating layer called myelin develops around neurons, allowing for efficient communication throughout networks in the brain.

The researchers found that adolescents who demonstrated increasing resilience to stress over time also exhibited greater myelination within the anterolateral prefrontal cortex, a region of the brain that supports emotion regulation and cognitive control. Together, these findings suggest that efficient maturation of prefrontal networks helps adolescents effectively regulate their emotions and flexibly adapt to environmental stressors.

Why this matters: These findings suggest that myelination, a critical part of adolescent brain development, may promote resilience in the face of adversity during adolescence by enabling efficient functioning of still-developing emotion regulation networks. Interventions that help build resilience during adolescence, like strong social support, could contribute to these critical connections in the developing adolescent brain.


Early adolescents’ ethnic–racial discrimination and pubertal development: Parents’ ethnic–racial identities promote adolescents’ resilience

(American Psychologist, November 2024)

In this study, Juan del Toro and colleagues explored whether parents reduce the risk of early pubertal development in young adolescents who experience ethnic-racial discrimination. Using data from the ABCD study, the researchers analyzed survey data from 1,651 adolescent siblings (average age = 11.49 years) and their parents. Based on prior work demonstrating that chronic stress, including ethnic–racial discrimination, can accelerate biological aging, they tested whether adolescents who reported greater ethnic-racial discrimination also exhibited advanced pubertal development for their age. They found that adolescents who self-reported greater ethnic-racial discrimination than their siblings showed more advanced pubertal development. However, they also found that parents’ own ethnic-racial identities might play a protective role: The relationship between discrimination and pubertal maturation was weakened in households with parents who reported a greater sense of belonging and commitment to their ethnic-racial group. This suggests that parents’ own ethnic-racial identities can help confer resilience to the negative consequences of discrimination in adolescents.

Why this is important: This study showcases the powerful role that parents can play in promoting resilience in adolescents experiencing ethnic-racial discrimination.


Cognitive control processes and emotion regulation in adolescence: Examining the impact of affective inhibition and heart-rate-variability on emotion regulation dynamics in daily life

(Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, December 2024)

Research has shown that higher heart rate variability is associated with an increased ability to respond adaptively to stress and effectively regulate emotions. To test this idea, Gillian Debra and colleagues examined whether the association between rumination (repetitive thinking about one’s problems) and negative emotions was reduced in adolescents with higher resting heart rate variability. In a sample of 235 adolescents (average age = 13.48 years), researchers measured adolescents’ heart rate variability while they watched a five-minute video depicting natural landscapes. Then, over fourteen days, participants received five smartphone surveys each day. In each survey, they rated their current negative emotions (sad, angry, anxious, uncertain, and stressed) and indicated how much they had been ruminating about their negative emotions. The researchers found that adolescents with higher heart rate variability showed less of a link between rumination and negative emotions.

Why this is important: This research demonstrates that higher heart rate variability may benefit adolescent mental health in everyday life and suggests that interventions focused on increasing heart rate variability could promote adolescent wellbeing.


Interoceptive brain network mechanisms of mindfulness-based training in healthy adolescents

(Frontiers in Psychology, August 2024)

In this study, Olga Tymofiyeva, Benjamin Sipes, and colleagues tested the efficacy of a mindfulness intervention in 14-to 18-year-old adolescents. A group of 100 adolescents were randomly assigned to an intervention group or waitlist-control group. Adolescents assigned to the Training for Awareness, Resilience, and Action (TARA) intervention completed a 12-week training program of remote, weekly sessions and at-home practice. During the training, participants learned about topics including stress responses and strategies to regulate emotions and practiced mindfulness techniques including breathing exercises, yoga sequences, and meditation. The researchers assessed brain connectivity, sleep, and emotional well-being before and after the program. Adolescents who completed the TARA intervention, but not those in the control group, reported significantly improved sleep following the program. The researchers also found that the intervention led to increased connectivity within brain networks that support interoception, or awareness of internal bodily sensations, which has been linked to positive mental health.

Why this is important: This research provides evidence that a remote mindfulness intervention may benefit adolescent wellbeing by improving sleep and modifying “interoceptive networks,” the brain circuitry that enables adolescents to tune in to the physical sensations within their own bodies and is related to emotional well-being.


Trajectories and predictors of adolescent purpose development in self‐driven learning

(Child Development, November 2024)

In this study, Kaylin Ratner and colleagues assessed whether adolescents who participated in a self-driven learning program experienced increases in their daily sense of purpose. During the program, 321 under-resourced adolescents between 14- and 19-year-olds explored a self-identified passion (e.g., software development, animal therapy, criminal justice) for about 10 weeks. Participants were provided with a stipend and were matched with a supportive adult to check in with during the program. For each day of the program, adolescents reported their daily sense of purpose (“How purposeful do you feel today?”), and researchers analyzed how each adolescent’s answer to this question changed over the course of the program. On average, adolescents in the program reported high and relatively stable senses of purpose over time. Adolescents who reported a greater sense of agency — measured by their self-reported motivation and ability to pursue and achieve personal goals — at baseline were more likely to experience increases in their sense of purpose. The authors suggest that interventions that increase one’s sense of agency could help adolescents benefit more from out-of-school opportunities.

Why this is important: These results suggest that increasing young people’s sense of agency during adolescence could provide youth with a greater sense of purpose and make out-of-school learning opportunities even more rewarding.

Additional Resources

The Connecting Adolescent Brain

Fact Sheet

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.

Providing Positive Pathways for Adolescents to Gain Respect

Fact sheet | Education | Community Engagement | Out-of-School Time | Foster Care | Juvenile Justice

This fact sheet provides insights from developmental science about our need to feel respected in adolescence, and how programs and interventions that meet this need can help support positive development.

Adolescence is a time of remarkable opportunity and growth. From about age 10 to age 25, our maturing brains and changing hormones increase our attention to social status and make positive attention feel more rewarding. These changes motivate us to tune into the social world in ways that help us learn skills to navigate adulthood.

Physical, cognitive, and social changes in adolescence combine to make us more sensitive to feelings of status and respect and to where we belong in our social worlds. This sensitivity is developmentally important. It motivates us to pay attention to our social environments in ways that help us learn to adapt to the more complex social demands of adulthood.

It also amplifies the impact of feeling disrespected, excluded, or given messages that we don’t belong—including through experiences of racism, bias, and other forms of discrimination or harassment.

As adolescents, we’re motivated to find a respected place and role among our peers. To ensure youth can channel this motivation in healthy directions, adults need to give young people ample positive pathways to gain respect and approval from the adults and peers around them.

At the beginning of puberty, around 10 to 13 years old, levels of testosterone increase in both boys and girls and heighten our attention to social status. Around the same time, maturational processes in the brain help us understand the perspectives of others in ways that build empathy, but also increase self-consciousness when we think we’re being socially evaluated. Feeling rewarded from positive attention appears to peak in adolescence, motivating us to find ways to earn approval from those around us.

Youth-serving programs that incorporate opportunities to earn respect and status appear to be more effective than others during our adolescent years. Relationships and environments that provide empathy, support, and positive pathways to earn status can improve academic motivation and increase the effectiveness of health interventions aimed at young people.

The flip side of our increased sensitivity to social reward is the pain of being disrespected or socially rejected. Research indicates that when we feel as though we are being excluded by peers, we report greater distress and show greater activity in a brain region associated with higher levels of depression in general.

Experiences that make us feel disrespected or treated as though we don’t belong thus become powerful social threats. The negative effects of racism, discrimination, and other forms of exclusion are amplified when we’re adolescents,—making efforts to eliminate or at least mitigate exposure to racism and bias for youth especially important.

➢ Preliminary evidence suggests that programs that support adolescents’ desire for autonomy and respect are more effective in delivering their messages. For example, one program found that when middle school students felt program facilitators listened to what they had to say and treated them like competent, independent individuals, they showed greater benefits from the program, including reduced number of suspensions and lower pregnancy rates.

➢ Incorporating respect for adolescents’ values and desire for social status into program messaging can be a way to boost program effectiveness. As one example, a healthy eating intervention for eighth graders that respected young people’s agency by replacing lectures with articles exposing deceptive marketing practices of food organizations and conveyed that higher-status (that is, older) students were choosing to eat healthier was effective in reducing unhealthy snacking—and the results persisted for boys even three months after the intervention.

➢ Youth-led participatory action research (YPAR) programs can directly promote adolescents’ sense of agency and their feeling of being respected within their communities. In these programs, youth identify an issue within their school or community, collaborate with researchers to collect data, and use their findings to suggest potential solutions and advocate for change.

➢ Engaging youth as partners, rather than subjects, in policy and program development and evaluation must be undertaken thoughtfully to maximize the benefits that accrue to youth and to the resultant policy or program. Engaging youth as partners helps young people feel like they are being taken seriously and gives them a sense of ownership over developing, evaluating, or improving a policy or program. However, adolescents are keenly aware when their input is not being taken seriously. Therefore, it is essential that offices and organizations that wish to partner with youth prepare in advance to maximize the potential for effective youth engagement while minimizing the potential for tokenism and the reinforcement of youth-adult power imbalances.

  • Learn more about how the science of adolescent development can inform practices when partnering with youth.

Adolescents Learn Essential Skills for Adulthood through Exploration, Discovery, and Taking Healthy Risks

Fact sheet | Education | Community Engagement | Out-of-School Time | Digital Tech | Adversity, Bias, & Discrimination

This fact sheet reviews research that explains why adolescents are more motivated to take risks, why that’s important to learning and development, and how policies and practices could support healthy risk taking to promote positive development.

When policies and programs support adolescents to explore their world and take positive risks, it leads to healthier, more connected communities.

Being able and willing to take risks and try new things is a part of our natural tendency to explore the world during adolescence. It’s a fundamental aspect of learning that helps us develop our skills, discover who we are, and ultimately expand our worlds beyond the familiarity of home.

Research on adolescent brain development helps explain why we’re more motivated to approach things that feel uncertain or scary during these years, and why these risks are so important to learning and development. It also provides insights into how policies and practices could recognize this drive for new and exciting experiences and provide opportunities for healthy versions of risk taking that can support positive development.

Brain development during adolescence encourages exploration. The increase in hormones at the beginning of puberty launches changes in the “reward center” of our brain. Heightened activity in this area of our brain during adolescence, compared to early in childhood or adulthood, makes us more sensitive to the rewards and good feelings that come from surprises and new experiences. This increases our motivation to explore the world, take risks, and learn from the results.

This enthusiasm to try new things is important: new experiences cause new neural connections to form and, with repeated use, strengthen within our brain. When we have opportunities to safely try new things and to learn from mistakes along the way, we build connections that support learning.

Exploration and risk taking are an important part of healthy development during adolescence. Research has shown that adolescents are more willing than adults to lean into uncertainty and explore situations in which there is a potential for a reward (in whatever form) but the outcome is not assured, and this exploration can lead to a more positive mood.

This tolerance for ambiguous outcomes is essential to learning and development during adolescence. Anything that runs the risk of failure or rejection—like attempting to learn a new skill, running for student government, trying out for a team or school play, asking someone out, or standing up for a friend—can feel uncertain or even scary, especially during adolescence when most of us are trying these things in new ways or for the first time. Adult support can help young people to take on new challenges, even those that seem intimidating.

Racism and other forms of discrimination curtail opportunities for healthy risk taking. Unfortunately, opportunities to learn from exploration and risk taking are not equally available to all of us during adolescence. A history of racial and economic inequities has led to fewer resources for organized activities in schools and neighborhoods with higher populations of youth of color.

Racism and bias, such as Black and other ethnic minority youth sometimes being perceived as more adult-like than their same-aged White peers, often result in harsher consequences (such as suspension, expulsion, arrest, or incarceration) for mistakes that might be labeled “learning experiences” when made by White adolescents.

Adolescents need healthy outlets to channel their motivation to take risks. Although not all adolescents are comfortable with risks, our reward system during these years is generally more excited by risks than at other times in our lives. Without healthy outlets, the attraction of risk and novelty can make us more vulnerable to unhealthy behaviors, such as reckless driving or drug and alcohol misuse.

Avenues to channel this motivation for new experiences into positive exploration include:

Policies and programs can provide outlets for healthy risk-taking to support the developmental need to explore during these years and direct the desire for new experiences toward positive activities such as trying a new sport, engaging in activism, or making new friends.

➢ Secondary schools and college admissions processes should encourage adolescents to take academic risks. For example, high schools could provide broad access to advanced classes and new subjects for all interested students—and college admissions offices could value attempts at challenging coursework that may result in lower letter grades.

➢ Identify and counter racism and other forms of discrimination that ultimately result in young people from different backgrounds facing disparate consequences for taking risks. Recognize that racism and bias can cause adults to perceive Black and other minority youth as more adult-like than their same-aged White peers.

➢ Fund and support an array of opportunities for youth to try new activities at school, at home, in the community, and in the digital world.

Contact Us

Fill in the box below to ask a question or get more information about STEPS for Youth.