Positive Development in Adolescence: The Development and Role of Intentional Self-Regulation

Adolescence is a period of marked change in the person’s cognitive, physical, psychological, and social development and in the individual’s relations with the people and institutions of the social world. These changes place adaptational demands on adolescents, ones involving relations between their actions upon the context and the action of the context on them, a bidirectional process that has been labeled developmental regulation. The attributes and means through which the adolescent contributes to such regulation may be termed self-regulation. This article differentiates between organismic and intentional self-regulation and examines the development of intentional self-regulation in adolescence, and the individual and contextual contributions to its development. The model of Selection, Optimization, and Compensation, developed by Paul Baltes, Margaret Baltes, and Alexandra Freund, is used as a means to conceptualize and index intentional self-regulation in adolescence. The relation between intentional self-regulation and positive development of youth is examined.