Treasured possessions and their meanings in adolescent males and females.

Although studies have found that treasured possessions function in developmentally significant ways for infants and young children, little research has focused on their meanings and functions during later life stages. The present study analyzes treasured possessions and their meanings in adolescence, including their relation to those treasured during early life. Subjects were 249 14- to 18-year-old high school students (119 males, 130 females) who completed a questionnaire. Results showed that males' most treasured possessions (i.e., motor vehicles, sports equipment, and music) embodied enjoyment and instrumental meanings, whereas females' treasured objects (i.e., jewelry, stuffed animals, motor vehicles) embodied primarily interpersonal meanings. Comparisons of early childhood vs. adolescent treasured objects showed that the kinds of objects treasured changed with age, and that instrumental qualities of objects became more important with age. Thus, clinical claims that adolescents' treasured objects function in ways similar to that of early childhood were not supported. Active use of early treasured objects declined with age, although these objects continued to be psychologically important, especially for adolescent females. It is proposed that during adolescence, treasured objects mirror age- and gender-related aspects of the adolescent self, and simultaneously contribute to the development of self-identity.

Identity development in late adolescence: Causal modeling of social and familial influences.

The purpose of this study was to develop a causal model to examine the ways in which familial and social variables influence identity development in late adolescence. Four hundred and ten 18-to 21-year-old male and female college students at a large Midwestern university completed a questionnaire assessing familial security, familial and social relations, and three dimensions of identity. The resulting causal models indicated that security in familial relations enhanced identity development directly, and also indirectly by initially enhancing adolescents' social confidence and degree of interpersonal affiliation. However, the pattern of interaction among these variables varied with sex and with the specific identity measure used. It is suggested that security in familial relations may provide the support for meaningful exploration and experimentation, and enhance aspects of adolescents' sociability, which, when taken together, may enhance the identity formation process.

Sex differences in spatial task performance of patients with and without unilateral cerebral lesions.

Two visuospatial tasks, the WAIS Block Design and the Street Gestalt Completion Test, were administered to men and women with and without unilateral cerebral lesions. These two tasks represent different categories of visuospatial functions. The Street test is a visual-perceptual gestalt task, requiring the closure of fragmented pictures, whereas Block Design is an analytical, manipulospatial task requiring rotation of spatial coordinates. For the non-brain-damaged group, the men showed a nonsignificant trend toward better Block Design performance relative to the women, whereas there was no sex-related difference in Street performance. For the brain-damaged groups, patients with right hemisphere lesions performed significantly worse than patients with left hemisphere lesions on both the Street test and Block Design, indicating that both tasks were more sensitive to right hemisphere functioning. There was, however, a significant sex X side of lesion interaction on Block Design only, with the men showing a more asymmetrical pattern of scores. These results suggest that sex differences in functional lateralization may underlie sex differences in visuospatial ability, and that sex differences in functional lateralization may be present for only certain visuospatial processes.

Connected and separate selves: development of an inventory and initial validation.

We describe the development and validation of the Relationship Self Inventory (RSI), which assesses 2 general self-orientations, (a) the Separate Self (SS) and (b) the Connected Self (CS), as well as two manifestations of connection, (a) Primacy of Other Care and (b) Self and Other Care. The CS reflects the importance of interconnectedness with others and a "voice of caring," whereas the SS reflects autonomy, independence, and a "voice of justice." Adequate reliability was demonstrated for the RSI on samples consisting of 927 women and 218 men ranging in age from 26 to 78. Construct validity of the RSI was also explored in a subsample (n = 604) by comparing its scales with measures of personality, temperament, and psychological adjustment. Although mean scores of men and women differed minimally on the CS and SS scales, gender differences in patterns of correlation with validity measures suggested that the meanings of the scales differed for men and women. The RSI appears to be an adequate survey tool for assessing these self-orientations.