Prospective content in parent-adolescent conversations about the upcoming transition to high school

Abstract

ABSTRACT Adolescents’ prospection is often assessed as individual differences; however, adolescents likely share anticipated events with adults in their lives. To understand how prospection is shared between adolescents and parents, this study examined conversations about the upcoming transition to high school for the types of prospective content emerging in conversations, whether dyads engaged collaboratively in prospective content, how emergent patterns of prospective content in conversations were organized regarding familial roles, and whether participants’ prospective content is shifted, maintained, or augmented. Participants were 27 parent-adolescent dyads; 15 adolescents were girls, 12 were boys. Content analysis was used to examine four types of prospection: episodic memory of the past, simulation, reasoning about counterfactuals, and constructing multiple possible futures. In most conversations, a partner extended prospective content. Dyads maintained the prospective content, however there was also evidence of dyad partners shifting or augmenting content. The findings point to the shared construction of prospection