Transition-To-Adulthood Profiles and Well-Being: Similarities and Distinctions Among Urban and Remote Contexts

In this study, two different contexts were examined to identify and describe transition-to-adulthood profiles at age 25 (based on four adulthood markers) and to determine whether these profiles differ in well-being at age 25. Two French-Canadian samples (urban sample, N = 321; remote sample, N = 363) completed questionnaires at age 25 regarding adulthood markers (having left school, being a parent or expecting a child, having left the parental home, and being in a romantic relationship) and well-being (depressive symptoms, alcohol use, and self-esteem). A person-centered approach helped determine the presence of five distinct profiles for both samples: workers, parents, independent students, singles, late bloomers. The results indicated similarities and differences between contexts regarding the experience of transition to adulthood and demonstrated that youth’s well-being is associated with their profile and their context. This study contributes to the literature on emerging adulthood by describing heterogeneity in the transition to adulthood.

Mentorship and protégé success in STEM fields

Einstein believed that mentors are especially influential in a protégé’s intellectual development, yet the link between mentorship and protégé success remains a mystery. We marshaled genealogical data on nearly 40,000 scientists who published 1,167,518 papers in biomedicine, chemistry, math, or physics between 1960 and 2017 to investigate the relationship between mentorship and protégé achievement. In our data, we find groupings of mentors with similar records and reputations who attracted protégés of similar talents and expected levels of professional success. However, each grouping has an exception: One mentor has an additional hidden capability that can be mentored to their protégés. They display skill in creating and communicating prizewinning research. Because the mentor’s ability for creating and communicating celebrated research existed before the prize’s conferment, protégés of future prizewinning mentors can be uniquely exposed to mentorship for conducting celebrated research. Our models explain 34–44% of the variance in protégé success and reveals three main findings. First, mentorship strongly predicts protégé success across diverse disciplines. Mentorship is associated with a 2×-to-4× rise in a protégé’s likelihood of prizewinning, National Academy of Science (NAS) induction, or superstardom relative to matched protégés. Second, mentorship is significantly associated with an increase in the probability of protégés pioneering their own research topics and being midcareer late bloomers. Third, contrary to conventional thought, protégés do not succeed most by following their mentors’ research topics but by studying original topics and coauthoring no more than a small fraction of papers with their mentors.

Revisiting the competency trap

We revisit the competency trap and reexamine when it occurs. We show that a bias against alternatives that improve with practice does not require that learning is myopic in the sense of lacking foresight or failing to explore. The same bias occurs even if learners engage in substantial exploration and have foresight. In fact, we demonstrate that even a rational and foresighted learner, who follow an optimal strategy for balancing exploration and exploitation, will learn to prefer alternatives with initially high payoffs that decrease with practice over alternatives, with identical expected values, that have initially low payoffs that increase with practice. Our results show that a bias against alternatives that improve with practice is due to an asymmetry in error correction rather than to myopic learning. The implication is that a wide range of selection systems, even optimally designed ones, will be biased against late-bloomers.

Puberty and Adolescence in a Lifespan Context

The final chapter zooms out to explore some bigger picture questions about puberty and adolescence that remain unanswered; the authors provide their perspectives on these larger issues. For instance, how do we define the end of adolescence, and how do we know when adulthood has been achieved? Are cultural expectations partially responsible for the protracted nature of human adolescent brain development? How does the timing of puberty (early vs. late bloomers) influence psychosocial development and risk of psychopathology in females and males? What are the potential consequences of medically suspending puberty onset in gender dysphoric youth? Is adolescence an experience-expectant (a specific type of experience is absolutely required for normal development) or experience-dependent (specific experiences influence developmental trajectory) developmental period? Finally, the limitations of animal models for understanding human adolescent development are discussed and experimental approaches for future research are recommended.

Children with Language Disorders or Late Bloomers – the problem of differential diagnosis

Communication problems are often the first noticeable symptom of developmental abnormalities. About 15% of children at the age of 2 years demonstrate a lower level of speech expression than their peers. Speech development disorders may constitute either symptoms of global developmental delay or only isolated difficulties. One of the main challenges for professionals dealing with early development support is recognizing whether a child whose linguistic competence differs significantly from that of their peers suffers from a specific language impairment, or whether they belong to the group of ‘late bloomers’ who at some point, without the intervention of a specialist, will achieve an appropriate level of communication skills. Although a differential diagnosis can be extremely difficult, the analysis of the literature leads to the conclusion that there are some markers that can aid a specialist in establishing an accurate diagnosis.