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Social Cognition in Middle School . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Adolescence, as most parents and adults know, is a time of tremendous biological, emotional, social, and cognitive change. Social cognition has been conceptualized as the process by which individuals think and reason about their social world--the people they watch and interact with; their relationships with people and groups; and how they make use of social cognition to navigate their worlds and reason about themselves and others. As children move into adolescence, they acquire more social knowledge, but individuals acquire this knowledge to varying degrees, resulting in considerable variation in how much an individual adolescent knows about what it takes to navigate his or her changing social environment. The result is that adolescents may have difficulty in peer relationships because they lack appropriate social cognitive skills. The Laboratory for Adolescent Studies is currently conducting a longitudinal project investigating the social cognition of students in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade at local middle schools. In cooperation with teachers and administrators we have surveyed over 600 middle-schoolers, asking them questions about peer dynamics, coping skills, executive functioning skills, forms of aggression, anxiety, and other aspects of their social and emotional lives. It is our hope that this data compiled and examined over time will give insight into adolescent experience and development. We are also studying the brain development of these students. All students completing our survey have been invited to come into our lab at Dartmouth College to take part in an MRI study. Survey and functional brain data may give clues to the neurobiological changes underlying development and social cognitive changes. If you are an educator or parent and might be interested in having your students or children participate in our survey study (either locally or remotely), please contact us. |
