Early Adolescence Social Withdrawal as a Predictor of Late Adolescence Autonomy and Relatedness with Romantic Partners . Elenda T. Hessel, Megan M. Schad, Joanna Chango, Ann Spilker, Caroline White,

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Early Adolescence Social Withdrawal as a
Predictor of Late Adolescence Autonomy and
Relatedness with Romantic Partners.Elenda T.
Hessel, Megan M. Schad, Joanna Chango, Ann
Spilker, Caroline White, Joseph P.
AllenUniversity of Virginia.We would like to
thank the National Institute of Child Health
Human Developmentfor funding awarded to Joseph
P. Allen, Principal Investigator, (9 R01
HD058305-A11) for funding to conduct this study
as well as for the write-up of this study.
Introduction

• Procedures
• .
• Time 1 (Age 15)
• Target teen and their best friend filled out
  questionnaires about their relationship and each
  other.
• Target teen and their best friend engaged in a 8
  minute interaction, during which the dyads were
  asked to discuss a hypothetical dilemma requiring
  them to come to a consensus on decisions they
  disagreed on. The target teens behaviors
  promoting autonomy and relatedness with their
  best friend during this taskwere observed.
• Time 2 (Age 18)
• Target teen and their romantic partner engaged in
  an 8 minute interaction task similar to the one
  completed at age 15.
• This time, target teens behaviors promoting
  autonomy and relatedness with their romantic
  partners were assessed.
• Measures
• .
• Social Withdrawal
• Best friend rated social withdraw was assessed
  Time 1 using the Withdrawal scale from the Pupil
  Evaluation Inventory (Pekarik, Prinz, Liebert,
  Weintraub, Neale, 1976). This 9-item scale
  asked best friends to evaluate how true
  statements were about the target teen on a
  3-point likert scale, ranging from Not True to
  Very Often or Often True. Interrater
  reliability on this scale has been shown to be
  high, ranging from .61 to .85.
• Autonomy Relatedness Coding System
• Each adolescent-partner dyad participated in an
  8-minute videotaped task in which they were
  presented with a hypothetical dilemma. Teens and
  their interaction partners were asked to first
  separately make decisions to solve the dilemmas,
  and were then asked to work together with their
  partner to try to resolve any differences in
  their choices and to come up with a consensus.
  The Autonomy-Relatedness Coding System for Peer
  Interactions was used for the Teen-Peer
  interactions, and an adapted version of it was
  created and used for the romantic partner dyads
  to code these interactions (Allen et al. 2001).
  The coding system employed (J. P. Allen et al.
  2000, unpublished manuscript, 1994) yields
  ratings for the adolescents overall behavior
  toward their relational partner in the
  interaction. The frequency and intensity of
  teens behaviors promoting autonomy and
  relatedness (e.g., confidence in stating ones
  opinions and validating partners statements) as
  well as their behaviors undermining autonomy and
  relatedness (e.g., over personalizing arguments
  and ignoring) were assessed. High scores on these
  scales indicate increased frequency and intensity
  of the behaviors in question, whereas low scores
  indicate very few and low intensity behaviors.

that undermined both autonomy and relatedness
(ß.38, plt.01, see Table 1) and a decrease in
teen behaviors that promote relatedness (ß-.29,
plt.05, see Table 2). Each of these predictions
was obtained after accounting for prior levels of
the relevant behaviors as observed with close
peers at age 15.

• Premises
• Adolescence is a critical period for learning
  life long skills, including important social
  skills.
• One such skill set is developing the ability to
  establish autonomy in relationships while still
  maintaining a sense of relatedness.
• Teens who are withdrawn from their peers during
  this period are at a greater risk of missing out
  on these life lessons.
• Why are Autonomy and Relatedness important?
• Implications for social adjustment, engagement in
  delinquency, and psychopathology.
• Linked to resistance to peer pressure, higher
  self esteem, and better adjustment to separation
  and the transition to college.
• Important predictor of success in future romantic
  relationshipshas been found to predict both
  dating competence and marital adjustment.
• What predicts Autonomy and Relatedness?
• There is still a relative dearth of knowledge as
  to what factors play a role in promoting or
  inhibiting adolescents ability to simultaneously
  establish autonomy and relatedness.
• One possibility is that adolescents who withdraw
  from social interactions at an early age miss out
  on critical opportunities to develop these
  skills.
• As such, this study seeks to investigate the role
  of mid-adolescent social withdrawal in predicting
  capacity to establish autonomy and relatedness in
  later romantic relationships.
• Hypotheses
• .
• Social withdrawal at age 15 will predict an
  increase in behaviors that undermine autonomy and
  relatedness at age 18.

Conclusions
Method

• Adolescent social withdrawal may predict
  difficulties with establishing autonomy and
  relatedness in later relationships.
• Social withdrawal may limit adolescents
  opportunities to learn how to interact in a way
  that allows them to have close relationships
  while still maintaining their independencean
  ability that may be crucial for some aspects of
  psychological wellbeingas well as adjustment
  within a romantic relationship.
• Future Directions
• Investigate whether intervening with socially
  withdrawn adolescents by promoting their
  engagement in social relationships results in
  more successful establishment of autonomy and
  relatedness in later relationships.
• Continue to search for additional predictors of
  autonomy and relatedness.

• Participants
• Multi-method longitudinal data were obtained
  from 58 teenagers along with their best friends
  and romantic partners.
• 57 Caucasian, 36 African American, and 7
  Mixed or Other ethnicity.
• Median household income was within the 20,000 to
  29,000 range.
• .
• Target teen mean age was 15.12 years at Time 1,
  18.09 at Time 2.
• Best Friends mean age was 14.95 at Time 1.
• .
• Romantic partner mean age was 18.25 years at Time
  2.
• .

Results
Results revealed that teens best friend-rated
social withdrawal at 15 predicted a variety of
behaviors at age 18 that are promoting and
undermining of autonomy and relatedness within a
romantic relationship. Overall, teens social
withdrawal predicted an increase in teens
behaviors