Beyond I.Q.: Adolescents' Social-Emotional Meaning-Making Longitudinally Predicts Brain Development, Academic Orientation, and Young Adult Outcomes

• In Event: The New Science of Adolescence: Integrating Socio-Emotional and Academic Development in Research, Practice, and Policy

Abstract

Perspectives: Adolescence is a critical period of growth in psychological capacities, in addition to a period of substantial neural development (Blakemore, 2018). Adolescents’ growing capacities and inclinations for abstract thinking, social reasoning, and emotional engagement parallel a major developmental reorganization of brain networks undergirding cognitive, emotional and social capacities across domains (Authors, 2019; Raznahan et al., 2011; Steinberg, 2014; Zielinski et al., 2010). Yet, traditional models of secondary education generally focus on content coverage and mastery, with relatively little regard for developing adolescents’ subjective social-emotional experience of scholarly thinking.
Purpose: It is known that, across the lifespan and especially in childhood and adolescence, brain development is correlated with IQ and with SES, and predicts health and functioning (Authors, 2019). However, existing neuropsychological studies offer limited insight for educators, because they fail to examine how a young person’s subjective experiences of the world may be a critical force organizing their brain development. Were this the case, it would have important implications for education, as it would emphasize the need to attend to youths’ experiences and to support youths in developing dispositions of mind that educational research has shown are beneficial. Using a longitudinal design with low-SES youths from immigrant families, we investigated the possibility that adolescents’ subjective emotional meaning-making predicts their brain development in the major brain networks important for mental functioning, and, in turn, outcomes.
Methods: We privately interviewed 65 low-SES, academically successful urban youth of color, about their life functioning, academics and relationships, and about their reactions to emotionally evocative true stories about other adolescents. The participants then underwent fMRI scanning as they reacted again to the stories and reported their feelings in real time. We also measured participants’ IQ, SES, and other demographic and personal information. The participants returned for fMRI scanning again two-years later, and responded to surveys in young adulthood.
Materials were adapted from Immordino-Yang, et al., 2009.
Results: We found that, even controlling for IQ and SES, adolescents’ use of empathic language, and their references to abstract values and beliefs, predicted key brain networks’ activity during emotional experiences, longitudinal changes to patterns of brain connectivity two years later, and life outcomes.
Significance: Results offer a preliminary example of a holistic and integrative view of adolescents’ cognitive, social, emotional, and neural processing. They provide evidence of the inherently emotional nature of thinking and learning in the brain, as we and others have argued previously (Authors, 2007; Barrett & Satpute, 2013). The findings suggest that how adolescents make personal meaning is both predicated on and shapes the development of brain networks whose functions are critical for social-emotional functioning and for learning and cognition more broadly. Findings suggest the need for a whole-child approach to secondary education, and for designing educational opportunities and pedagogical strategies that attend to the integration of social, emotional and cognitive capacities (Authors, 2019 in press). The inherent interdependence of the social, emotional and cognitive dimensions of mind and brain has important implications for supporting youths’ academic and personal growth in a coordinated way.

Authors

• Xiao-Fei Yang, University of Southern California

• Rebecca JM Gotlieb, University of California - Los Angeles

• Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, University of Southern California