Several theorists have suggested that the observed changes in adolescent future-time perspective are due to the emergence of formal-operations reasoning [e. g., T. J. Cottle and S. Klineberg (1974),The Present of Things Future, Free Press-Macmillan, New York; P. Fraisse (1963),The Psychology of Time, Harper & Row, New York; H. Hartmann (1958),Ego Psychology and the Problem of Adaptation, International Universities Press, New York; J. Piaget (1968),Six Psychological Studies, Vintage Book, New York]. Using a cross-sectional sample of 60 Caucasian adolescents, the present study was designed to examine this hypostatized interrelation. Data obtained through individual interviews provide only limited support for a cognitive hypothesis. As predicted, older students showed greater future extension and the more cognitively advanced students proved better able to project a set of events into the distant future. However, neither the older, nor the more cognitively advanced, students projected a greater number or a more consistent set of future events than did their respective counterparts. Moreover, analysis of the types of events projected obtained significance only for grade level. The findings are discussed from a contextualist perspective, within which consideration is given to the influence of experiential and life-span status factors.

This paper reports the findings of two studies on everyday memory in young adulthood. In Study 1, 387 male and female college students (18-22 years old) completed the 25-item Cognitive Failures Questionnaire (CFQ; Broadbent, Cooper, Fitzgerald & Parkes, 1982). Principal components analysis yielded five internally consistent factors: distractibility; misdirected actions; spatial/kinaesthetic memory; interpersonal intelligence; and memory for names. Further, each of these dimensions was interpretable within an information-processing framework. Study 2 examined the relation of the five everyday memory dimensions obtained in Study 1 to measures of working memory and traditional intelligence in a separate sample of 32 college students. Findings obtained in Study 2 suggest that attentional processes may be important components of the everyday memory construct.

Despite numerous demographic analyses of the sequencing of life events during the transition to adulthood (Kett, 1977; Modell et al., 1976), little is known of the psychological expectancies that adolescents bring to this and other aspects of the life course experience. This research was conducted to determine whether the futures anticipated by high school and college students correspond to the demographic trends previously observed for comparable age groups (i.e., projected vs. actual age at marriage). The findings indicate that, with increasing age, adolescents acquire a shared life course perspective that is at once richer and more differentiated than that implied by previous demographic investigations. This shared life course perspective was manifest in two ways: (1) increased agreement or concordance in the types of future events anticipated, and (2) increased variability in the ages at which future events were expected to occur. These findings underscore the need to complement demographic analyses of the life course with psychological investigations of the expectancies that adolescents bring to the adulthood transition.

The present study examined gender differences in late adolescents' future narratives.Thirty-nine male and 43 female late adolescents (M=20.01 years) completed 90-minute individual interviews assessing dimensional and thematic aspects of the future narrative as well as psychological profile characteristics (abstract reasoning, psychological distress, self-concept, and self-esteem). As predicted, gender differences emerged in the anticipation and projected timing of adulthood transition events. More females than males anticipated marriage and parenthood; females also anticipated younger ages at marriage and parenthood than males. Examination of adolescents' narratives of the life course beyond the adulthood transition revealed greater extensionoverall among males than females. No gender differences in extension or densitywere obtained for the anticipated occupational domain, and no gender differences were obtained in extension in the family domain. Female adolescents, however, anticipated more events in the family domain than did males. The findings are discussed in terms of the implicit theories of adulthood that inform adolescents' future narratives.

This study examined the popular notion that crushes or secondary attachments to celebrity figures are an important aspect of self-concept development during adolescence. In a repeated measures design, 79 male and female 5th, 8th, and llth graders and college sophomores completed a set of personality scales, first describing themselves and later, describing the favorite celebrity. Repeated measures multivariate analyses of variance (MANOVA) analysis of self-object congruence revealed no significant main or interaction effects for the type of attachment, gender, or age of subject. Significant within subject effects were obtained for the repeated measures factor (self-object congruence). Overall, students perceived their attachment objects to be more agentic, yet less expressive and emotionally vulnerable than themselves. MANOVA analyses indicated that males and older students perceived their attachment objects to be higher in agency than expressivity, whereas females and younger students perceived their attachment objects to be higher in expressivity than agency. These data indicate that the function served by secondary attachments in the development of self-concept may be quite similar for adolescent males and females.