The Psychosocial Foundations of Early Adolescents' High-Risk Behavior: Implications for Research and Practice

Recent research indicates that adolescents' own risk-taking behavior is one of the greatest threats to their social, physical, and emotional development. A conceptual developmental model is proposed to help explain why factual knowledge of health and educational risks alone, or even in conjunction with social skills competence, does not appear to protect adequately adolescents from certain high-risk behavior. The goal of the proposed model is to help us to understand better the role temperament/ biological, socio-cultural, and psychosocial factors play over time in the developmental process by which some early adolescents become habituated to certain health/educational risks, and others do not. A specific emphasis is placed on the need for research incorporating in-depth analyses of basic developmental capacities and culturally embedded personal meaning systems that early adolescents construct as they attempt to integrate their experiences of exposure to high-risk behavior. The model provides a framework ...