This study proposes to analyze and report on the implications of a 20 year longitudinal study of personality and cognitive development from early childhood into young adulthood. Beginning with 128 children, subjects were assessed individually at ages 3, 4, 5, 7, 11, 14, 17-18, and 22-23. In the most recent assessment, 104 subjects participated. During each of the assessments, every subject was administered an extensive battery of widely-ranging test, situational, questionnaire, interview, and interaction procedures. In addition, extensive data on the parents of the subjects and on parent-child interaction styles have been gathered. The present longitudinal data base is unprecedented in psychology; no other sample of subjects has been as extensively and intensively evaluated. We will now use this data base in a variety of ways: to evaluate the implications of ego-control and ego-resiliency for understanding behavior from the nursery school years through middle childhood and adolescence into young adulthood; to evaluate the intensive, systematic, and quantifiable information gathered about the subject regarding their peer relationships, family relationships, how they spend their time, and their physical and mental health problems; to evaluate the extensive information available on self-percept, self-esteem and self-consciousness; to evaluate the many gender-related findings that have emerged from our various assessments, seeking to develop a conceptual rubric for better understanding the factors influencing gender-role orientations; to evaluate the continuity-discontinuity and consistency-inconsistency issues that have aroused controversy in developmental psychology and in personality psychology; to evaluate the antecedents, concomitants, and developmental trends surrounding such central personality, cognitive and health marker variables as field- independence, affective responsivity, intimacy development, ego-identity status, creativity, self-monitoring, autonomic functioning, life stresses, etc. The preparation of scientific articles and monographs will be the major emphasis during the present research grant period.
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