Family Representations in Adolescents of Different Psychological Age

The paper analyses self-descriptions made by 32 subjects aged 14—15 years using the Incomplete Sentences technique (J.M. Sacks, S. Levy) and M. Kuhn and T. McPartland test “Who am I?” in T.V. Rumyantseva’s modification. There are three topics of reflection in the adolescent’s responses: activity, communication and self-consciousness. The psychological age of the participants was defined according to the topic which dominated in their self-descriptions: pre-adolescent (situation-based, practical, activity-oriented level of reflection), early adolescent (communicative) and late adolescent (personality-based level of reflection). The outcomes of the study were then compared to other Russian studies of reflection in adolescents. Also, the paper presents a qualitative analysis of the adolescents’ short stories about family life which depicted, as the instruction had put it, the relationships between members of one family, their everyday life and traditions. The paper reveals the differences and similarities in family representations of the adolescents of early and late adolescent psychological age and explores the correlations between the adolescents’ psychological age (the level of their reflection) and their attitudes towards their family, mothers, fathers and to themselves.

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