We propose to continue a comprehensive longitudinal study of individual adaptation in an at risk sample from infancy into the late adolescent/early adulthood period (N-185). Principle foci of the proposed assessments are salient social relationships, work adjustment, behavioral and emotional disturbance, and parent-infant attachment in the next generation. Beyond merely extending documentation of continuity of individual adaptation, which has been demonstrated from infancy to adolescence by our past research, our aim is to further understand factors supporting continuity and promoting change. Our continuing goal is to examine the interplay of prior adaptation, current circumstances, and representations of self and relationships, which we presume to be carriers of continuity and mediators of change. In this current period, close personal relationships will be examined as an arena of social competence in early adulthood and related to comprehensive measures of social behavior and relationship representation obtained in early childhood, middle childhood, and adolescence. The assessment in this period will involve observation of our participants in interaction with romantic partners as well as interview and self report measures of relationship qualities, including the Current Relationship Interview, which is modeled after Main's Adult Attachment Interview. For our participants who have infants, we will assess attachment and relate it to the participant's relationship history, including their early attachment. Degree of parental involvement will be assessed for our male participants, even when they are not primary caregivers. In addition, work adjustment, a salient developmental task of the transition to adulthood, will be assessed in follow-ups of interviews on work experience from the current grant period and an expanded set of measures in the proposed funding period. We also will examine psychopathology using standard diagnostic schedules, and we will assess ongoing developmental supports and liabilities. Finally, we seek to specify unique developmental pathways that are probabilistically associated with particular qualities of relationships and particular kinds of behavioral and emotional disturbance, as well as factors maintaining individuals on, or deflecting them from, a given pathway.
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