When trying to understand texts, readers engage in various cognitive processes. If all goes well, the engagement in these cognitive processes during reading results in the construction of a... Show moreWhen trying to understand texts, readers engage in various cognitive processes. If all goes well, the engagement in these cognitive processes during reading results in the construction of a coherent mental representation of the text, the essence of successful reading comprehension. To construct such a representation, readers need to monitor the coherence of the text and of their emerging mental representation of what the text is about. The central aim of the empirical studies described is to examine coherence-monitoring processes across development by measuring reader’s ability to detect coherence breaks during reading of narratives. The first part of this dissertation consists of three empirical studies (chapter 2-4). The first study examined whether good and poor comprehenders at age 8-9 and 10-11 detected coherence-breaks during and/or after reading. The second study builds on the first study by examining the protracted development of coherence monitoring in an adolescent population (ages 10-22) using the same task under more challenging circumstances. The third study explored the neural correlates of coherence-break detection in young adults in an fMRI study. The second part of this dissertation consists of two conceptual chapters in which the results are summarized and discussed in a broader theoretical perspective (chapter 5-6). Show less
The study at hand focuses on the control of sex and youngsters through the response by authorities most notably from within criminal justice. This dissertation consists of five articles and a... Show moreThe study at hand focuses on the control of sex and youngsters through the response by authorities most notably from within criminal justice. This dissertation consists of five articles and a concluding chapter. The emphasis of this study is on the societal interests as protected by the authorities. This approach provides a useful complement to more conventional research on sexual abuse and sexual transgression. In a lot of studies the behavior of individuals receives most attention and not the response by authorities, which can be indicative of the way authorities envision the organization of society. It is this organization through the control of youth and sex that sets this study apart from other studies. Show less
Adolescence is often characterized as a period of increased risk taking and impulsive behavior. Researchers have constructed brain-based models to explain the higher prevalence of risk taking... Show moreAdolescence is often characterized as a period of increased risk taking and impulsive behavior. Researchers have constructed brain-based models to explain the higher prevalence of risk taking during adolescence. It has been hypothesized that brain regions for cognitive control develop relatively slow compared to 'affective' brain regions. An imbalance between the maturity of these brain regions is thought to underlie the increased incidence of risk taking during adolescence. However, results on functional brain development remain contradictory and few studies have investigated the assumptions of imbalance models in large-scale longitudinal studies. In this PhD thesis both cognitive and affective aspects of development were investigated using a combination of functional and structural MRI data, hormonal measures and behavioral assessments, capturing the whole range of adolescence in a large sample of children, adolescents and adults between 8 and 27 years old. The results indicated that, contrary to predictions from imbalance models, brain regions for cognitive control could be recruited even by young children and adolescents, but in different situations than adults. The results have implications for the construction of new theoretical frameworks and may eventually contribute to educational interventions that are better tailored to both the challenges and possibilities of the adolescent brain. Show less
This thesis focused on the development of creative thinking across adolescence and into adulthood. To this end, a range of creativity tasks, both with and without an fMRI scanner, and before and... Show moreThis thesis focused on the development of creative thinking across adolescence and into adulthood. To this end, a range of creativity tasks, both with and without an fMRI scanner, and before and after training paradigms has been used to ex_amine both age- and experience-related effects on creative thinking performance during functional brain develop_ment. Chapter 1 provides a theoretical background for the research described in chapters 2 to 6. In Chapter 2, developmental trajectories of creative cognition across adolescence and early adulthood were examined using a set of tasks gauging both insight and divergent thinking in the verbal and visual domain. In Chapter 3, behavioral and neural differences for creative problem solving in middle-adolescents and adults were examined. Chapter 4 examined the neural correlates of divergent thinking in adults and adolescents. Chapter 5 focused on the effectiveness of creative ideation training in adolescents and adults. In Chapter 6, the benefits of training creativity in adolescents were examined using fMRI techniques. Finally, Chapter 7 summarizes the main results of the empirical studies presented in this thesis. Here, implications of the results are discussed and suggestions for future research are presented. Show less
