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This chapter discusses the flow of religiousness across the life of a person. In a person's life, the three phases of adulthood (early, middle, and late adulthood) are examined to study how religiousness changes during the transition from middle to late adulthood, and this requires special attention. Americans turn to religion increasingly as they age in order to deal with the challenges associated with old age: health problems, spousal bereavement, death anxiety, and the lack of purposefulness that may characterize the postretirement period. The findings of the study presented in this chapter indicate that religiousness increases from late middle to late adulthood. The study participants increased in religiousness from their fifties to their seventies and did so irrespective of whether they were men or women, or whether they came from a mainline Protestant, nonmainline Protestant, or Catholic family background. However, the gradient of increase in religiousness among the aging participants was not very steep.

This chapter focuses on the start of Dorothy's career. The 1920s saw women in the United States going where they had not gone before — into voting booths, for example. The world of Dorothy's early adulthood was very different from the coming-of-age time of her mother or even that of her older sister; American women had new freedoms and were exercising them. To establish herself in songwriting, Dorothy needed not only talent, but also nerve and daring, and the Roaring Twenties fostered those qualities in women far more than previous decades had. Dorothy could look around for encouragement and see flappers of her day trying all sorts of things their mothers had not dared to do. The timing was of great importance, given what lay ahead. Getting a secure foothold in songwriting before the Great Depression hit would be crucial to Dorothy's career.

Evidence shows that well-being increases during the period between late adolescence and early adulthood, but questions remain about how widespread this increase may be and why it occurs and, more generally, how the course of well-being relates to the various diverse pathways out of high school. Substance use also tends to increase during this period, reaching its lifetime peak during the early twenties, depending on the given cohort and substance. Well-being and substance use, while not necessarily sharing a common etiology or developmental course across the life span, may increase among young adults during transition in part because of the new roles and contexts that provide more freedom and selection of opportunities. Using data from four waves of nationally representative U.S. panel data spanning ages eighteen to twenty-four, this chapter investigates early adult transitions and their relation to well-being and substance use. It analyzes the timing, sequencing, and covariation of social role transitions related to school and work, romantic involvement (specifically marriage), parenthood, and independence in the form of leaving the parental home.

Chapter 1 includes a description of the challenges faced by street-involved youth and the context in which they live, and it introduces the idea that street-involved youth experience a unique type of emerging adulthood. These youth are adult-like at an age when education, work, and services assume that they should be dependent and so adult services are denied them because they are too young. Teenagers who successfully live independently and who do not or cannot return to families are a challenge for current social policy and practices. The consequence is that these emerging adults who are street-involved struggle longer than necessary, and this struggle exemplifies the instability and precariousness of late-modern emerging adulthood.

This chapter utilises longitudinal Swedish register data to examine youths' labour market trajectories, with a focus on the complexity, timing, and duration of labour market disadvantage for individuals with and without experience of early adulthood economic hardship, as indicated by different degrees of social assistance receipt. Findings from multinomial regression suggest that when early adulthood economic hardship is extensive, this is associated with elevated risks of disadvantaged labour market trajectories, such as having an insecure labour market position through large parts of the twenties or following a track of long-term labour market exclusion. On the other hand, experience of low degrees of hardship only had a weak association with disadvantaged labour market trajectories. These findings imply that social-democratic welfare states such as the Swedish one are effective in addressing low levels of financial hardship without incurring long-term disadvantages through a relatively generous benefits and social services system. However, similar to liberal welfare states, the Swedish welfare state also struggles when hardship is prolonged and the family is not available as a safety net.

This book presents the history, results, and latest data from the Seattle Longitudinal Study (SLS), first launched in 1956 to investigate various aspects of intellectual development from early adulthood to old age in a random sample of 500 individuals aged 25–95 years. The SLS examined whether intelligence changes uniformly throughout adulthood, or whether there are different life-course-ability patterns; the patterns and magnitude of generational differences; the factors that account for individual differences in age-related change in adulthood; and whether the intellectual decline that increases with age can be reversed by educational intervention. This book updates and integrates data collected through 2005 and expands work on biomarkers of cognitive aging, along with the link between changes in cognition and brain structure. It includes three new chapters dealing with health behaviors and intellectual functioning, biological influences on cognitive change, and prediction of individual cognitive decline. This introductory chapter discusses the origin, history, and objectives of the SLS and explains the rationale for studying intelligence in adulthood. It also describes the theoretical framework for understanding intellectual development in adulthood.

This chapter summarizes the findings of family studies of intellectual abilities in adulthood as part of the Seattle Longitudinal Study (SLS), first launched in 1956 to investigate various aspects of intellectual development from early adulthood to old age in a random sample of 500 individuals aged 25–95 years. The study examined the degree to which couples' scores are similar on cognitive and cognitive style measures and whether spousal similarity varies across abilities; whether further convergence occurs as couples remain married for long periods of time; whether the observed level of similarity can be explained by spousal similarity on background variables such as age and education; whether changes in both spouses account for the convergence or whether one spouse is more likely to move closer to the other's level of functioning over time; and whether the observed cognitive similarity also generalized to other variables that play important roles in long-time relationships, including congruence of the perception of life satisfaction.

This chapter summarizes the results and conclusions of the Seattle Longitudinal Study (SLS), first launched in 1956 to investigate various aspects of intellectual development from early adulthood to old age in a random sample of 500 individuals aged 25–95 years. It first reviews what have been learned in the context of the five questions regarding the life course of intellectual competence, one of which is whether intelligence changes uniformly throughout adulthood. The chapter then presents the conclusions with regards to intervening in the normal course of adult cognitive development, as well as the findings from inquiries into adult cognition in a developmental behavior, genetic, and/or family context. It also reviews evidence regarding the genetic and environmental factors that influence intellectual development in adults before concluding by providing information on how qualified researchers and college teachers can access certain limited data sets from the SLS for use in secondary analyses or instructional purposes.

This book is designed to help both readers and professionals understand adolescents better and to be better equipped to work with them. Drawing on a theoretical model called Dynamic Functional Interaction (DFI), it examines which adolescent behaviors are deviant and which are not or what the therapeutic task is. DFI is a theory of adolescent psychosocial development that sets the adolescent task as individuation and the core of adolescent behavior as flowing from responses to psychological interactions with peers. This book fills a gap in the professional literature on adolescents by offering insights into the adolescent's journey from puberty to psychological maturity: attaining psychological identity and reaching early adulthood. It also provides an adolescent group therapy model that professionals can use to deal with issues affecting adolescents. This introduction presents six relevant terms and concepts with revised definitions: conformity, importance, competition, separation, supports, and rebellion.

This chapter summarizes the findings of the Seattle Longitudinal Study (SLS) regarding the influence of family environment on cognition. First launched in 1956, the SLS was designed to investigate various aspects of intellectual development from early adulthood to old age in a random sample of 500 individuals aged 25–95 years. The chapter presents data on family similarity in the perception of individuals' family environments as well as differences in perceptions within parent-offspring pairs (across generations) in contrast to differences within sibling pairs (within generations). It also considers how family environments affect current levels of cognitive performance.

This chapter summarizes the methodological issues that have informed the Seattle Longitudinal Study (SLS), first launched in 1956 to investigate various aspects of intellectual development from early adulthood to old age in a random sample of 500 individuals aged 25–95 years. It first considers the relationship among cross-sectional, longitudinal, and sequential data collections within the context of the general developmental model, along with the associated internal validity threats and the manner in which they have been addressed. It then discusses the problem of structural equivalence of observed measures across comparison groups and time, as well as the approaches taken to deal with these thorny issues. It also examines the concept of dedifferentiation in cognitive abilities from young adulthood to old age before concluding with an assessment of the role of postdiction in longitudinal studies.

This chapter describes the pilot studies that led to the selection and validation of the measures used in the Seattle Longitudinal Study (SLS), first launched in 1956 to investigate various aspects of intellectual development from early adulthood to old age in a random sample of 500 individuals aged 25–95 years. It also presents the findings of the 1956 baseline study and compares them with six cross-sectional replications. The basic cognitive battery common to all study cycles is considered, along with data for the fifth, sixth, and seventh cycles for the extended cognitive battery and the practical intelligence measures. Finally, the chapter summarizes the cross-sectional findings for the measures of cognitive style for the latent constructs of motor-cognitive flexibility, attitudinal flexibility, and psychomotor speed.

This chapter summarizes the results of the Seattle Longitudinal Study (SLS), first launched in 1956 to investigate various aspects of intellectual development from early adulthood to old age in a random sample of 500 individuals aged 25–95 years. Drawing on the entire longitudinal database, it provides estimates of age changes based on the largest available number of study participants for each age interval. To obtain the requisite longitudinal estimates, data are aggregated, whenever possible, across two or more samples observed at the same age. The chapter also reports intraindividual change estimates for measures of practical intelligence, as well as longitudinal estimates for the cognitive style data. The measures of cognitive style include motor-cognitive flexibility, attitudinal flexibility, and psychomotor speed.

This chapter summarizes the findings regarding cohort and period differences in cognitive abilities, along with other variables included in the Seattle Longitudinal Study (SLS), first launched in 1956 to investigate various aspects of intellectual development from early adulthood to old age in a random sample of 500 individuals aged 25–95 years. It presents expanded operational definitions for the computation of cohort and period effects and discusses cumulative findings, expanded and updated where appropriate, through the eighth study cycle. It also reports cohort differences on measures of practical intelligence as well as cohort gradients for measures of cognitive style.

This chapter summarizes the results of longitudinal studies that investigated the risk for the eventual development of dementia as part of the Seattle Longitudinal Study (SLS), first launched in 1956 to determine various aspects of intellectual development from early adulthood to old age in a random sample of 500 individuals aged 25–95 years. The studies involve the neuropsychological assessment of a community-dwelling sample of older adults who have not previously been identified as suffering from cognitive impairment. The chapter also presents data for a series of four three-year follow-up assessments and discusses the findings of extension analyses that link the clinical measures with the longitudinal studies' psychometric battery for the study of normal aging. Finally, it reports evidence from studies that assessed earlier performance on the neuropsychological measures and raises the possibility of early detection of risk for cognitive impairment.

This chapter summarizes the findings of the Seattle Longitudinal Study (SLS) regarding the relationship between health and intellectual functioning. First launched in 1956, the SLS was designed to investigate various aspects of intellectual development from early adulthood to old age in a random sample of 500 individuals aged 25–95 years. The chapter first describes models that may have both bidirectional and reciprocal implications before turning to a discussion of health histories in relation to behavioral development. It then considers diseases that seem to affect cognitive functioning and reports the results of a study of health behaviors. Finally, it analyzes the role of intellectual functioning as a predictor of physical health and medication use and as a possible early indicator of impending mortality.

This chapter summarizes the findings of the sequential study of personality traits and attitudes, with particular emphasis on the directly observed trait of social responsibility. The sequential study is part of the Seattle Longitudinal Study (SLS), first launched in 1956 to investigate various aspects of intellectual development from early adulthood to old age in a random sample of 500 individuals aged 25–95 years. The chapter begins by describing the work on personality traits derived from seventy-five questionnaire items in the Test of Behavioral Rigidity (TBR). It then presents data relating the TBR-derived personality factors to the NEO Personality Inventory. Finally, it discusses data from the Center for Epidemiologic Studies–Depression Scale (CES-D) questionnaire used as a subjective measure of depression in the study participants older than 60 years.

This chapter summarizes the findings of the Seattle Longitudinal Study (SLS) regarding biological influences on cognitive change. First launched in 1956, the SLS was designed to investigate various aspects of intellectual development from early adulthood to old age in a random sample of 500 individuals aged 25–95 years. The chapter presents data on the role of the APOE gene in cognition, with particular reference to dementia, as well as the impact of biomarkers of inflammatory disease. It also discusses some preliminary results of neuroimaging work that are currently underway.