This brief summarizes the working paper, "Understanding Motivation: Building the Brain Architecture That Supports Learning, Health, and Community Participation. Working Paper 14," which explains the science behind motivation--the "wanting" system and the "liking" system--as well as how those systems develop, and how…

Out-of-School Time (OST) programs play a crucial role in child and youth development, serving as a bridge between school, home, and the community. They offer structured environments where young people can engage in meaningful activities, build relationships, and develop essential life skills. OST programs foster personal growth, academic support,…

The article examines the problem of the aesthetic development of children and adolescents as a fundamental condition for the quality of education and the modern approach to educational process organization in the context of interaction of general and additional education. The authors disclose this direction of research from the point of a…

Previous literature has suggested the existence of a close relationship between individuals' intellectual abilities and their cognitive profile, understood as their performance in tasks tapping into the different cognitive domains. This relationship has typically been discussed in populations characterized as having high intellectual abilities, as…

Climate change is an existential threat facing humanity on a global scale. To handle this problem, all societal actors, including young people, need to get involved. This narrative review focuses on what implications climate change has for research in developmental psychology. It is argued that how young people relate to climate change is closely…

Inuit communities in Northern Quebec (Canada) are exposed to environmental contaminants, particularly to mercury, lead and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Previous studies reported adverse associations between these neurotoxicants and memory performance. Here we aimed to determine the associations of pre- and postnatal exposures to mercury, lead…

Aim: As more children become increasingly physically inactive, efforts to reverse this negative trend are growing. Research has indicated, however, that we know relatively little about the pedagogical processes built into programmes and interventions. This is especially true in respect of how children view the process of becoming more physically…

Developmental scientists are often interested in subgroups of people who share commonalities in aspects of development; these subgroups often cannot be captured directly but instead must be inferred from other information. Mixture models can be used in these situations. Two specific types of mixture models, latent profile transition analyses and…

It has long been assumed that children and adolescents want to be with their peers and therefore make active efforts to engage with them. However, a sizable minority of youth avoid peers for internal reasons (e.g., anxiety, preferences for solitude) or because they are socially withdrawn. Although by definition, withdrawn youth tend to stay away…

Many young people are inclined toward risk taking and also toward helping other people. "Prosocial risk taking" is a term that can describe different ways that youth provide significant instrumental and emotional support to family members, friends, and strangers, even when it involves a personal risk. In this article, we review research…

Background: Dynamic, relational developmental systems-based models of development emphasize that developmentally-nurturant youth-adult relationships elicit in youth perceptions of being known and loved. Although such perceptions are foundations of positive youth development (PYD), such measures do not exist. Objective: We sought to create a…

At what ages are young people most open to political influence? We test the "formative years" model that underscores the importance of childhood experiences for political development against the "impressionable years" model that asserts the primacy of lessons learned during adolescence. To assess the relative merits of these…

This brief summarizes the working paper, "Understanding Motivation: Building the Brain Architecture That Supports Learning, Health, and Community Participation," which explains the science behind motivation--the "wanting" system and the "liking" system--as well as how those systems develop, and how that development…

Talent development constitutes an important phenomenon of human development; yet it is rarely considered a mainstream topic in the field of child and adolescent development. Conversely, in the field of gifted and talented studies, various talent development (TD) models developed in the past have had minimal interaction with the literature on child…

Cultural brokering refers to the process of youth (i.e., children, adolescents, and emerging adults) from immigrant families interpreting cultural norms for others. Cultural brokering is not an acontextual, individual, or passive experience but varies by context (e.g., situational demands), is interpersonal (e.g., involves the broker and a social…