From adolescence to adulthood: age-related changes in beliefs about cigarette smoking in a midwestern community sample.

The current study used a cohort-sequential design to examine age-related changes in health-relevant beliefs from the middle school years through age 37 in a large, midwestern, community sample (N=8,556). Results suggest systematic age-related changes such that beliefs in the personalized risks of smoking declined in middle school and then increased, beliefs in generalized health risks increased beginning in the middle school years, and values placed on health as an outcome decreased in the high school years and then increased. These findings suggest that intervention programs must counter declining personalized risk perceptions among middle school students and declining values placed on health among high school age students.

The natural history of cigarette smoking from adolescence to adulthood in a midwestern community sample: multiple trajectories and their psychosocial correlates.

Previous research on the natural history of smoking has focused on overall group trajectories without considering the possibility of risk subgroup variation. To address this limitation, the authors of the present study aimed to identify subgroups with varying trajectories of smoking behavior. The authors accomplished this within a cohort-sequential study of a large community sample (N = 8,556) with measurements spanning ages 11-31. After removing 2 a priori groups (abstainers and erratics), the authors empirically identified 4 trajectory groups--early stable smokers, late stable smokers, experimenters, and quitters--and psychosocial variables from adolescence and young adulthood were significantly distinguished among them. Given recent advances in quantitative methods, it is now feasible to consider subgroups of trajectories within an overall longitudinal design.

Maternal socialization of adolescent smoking: the intergenerational transmission of parenting and smoking.

A longitudinal multigenerational design was used to examine the intergenerational transmission of smoking and the correlated transmission of parental support and control. Whether maternal socialization of adolescent smoking (both general parenting practices and smoking-specific strategies) would predict adolescent smoking both directly and indirectly by affecting peer affiliations was tested. There was strong evidence for the intergenerational transmission of cigarette smoking and for the relation between peer smoking and adolescent smoking. Both general parenting practices and smoking-specific discussion and punishment were significantly related to adolescents' smoking, especially for adolescent-reported parenting. Support for the intergenerational transmission of parenting practices emerged only in mothers' reports of support. Results suggest expanding current peer-focused prevention efforts to include parental socialization strategies.

The natural history of cigarette smoking from adolescence to adulthood: demographic predictors of continuity and change.

The current study examined the natural history of smoking from adolescence to adulthood in a community sample. Participants were from a longitudinal study (N = 4,035, 51.7% female, average age = 29 years). Group-level analyses showed a significant increase in smoking from adolescence to young adulthood and a nonsignificant decline after the mid-20s. Individual-level analyses showed that there was appreciable cessation and relapse but little new initiation in adulthood. Both adolescent and young adult smoking status were powerful predictors of adult smoking. Moreover, there was less cessation among less educated individuals and those with smoking parents, and more cessation among those who assumed adult social roles. The findings support the importance of prevention campaigns aimed at adolescent smoking and also suggest that those with lower educational attainment or with a family history of smoking are at heightened risk.

Prospective predictors of quit attempts and smoking cessation in young adults.

This study examined prospective predictors of attempts to quit smoking and successful quitting among those who attempted to quit (n = 700), using a long-term longitudinal study of the natural history of cigarette smoking in a midwestern community sample. Participants, originally surveyed in 6th-12th grade (1980-1983), were followed up in 1987 and 1994. Results showed that amount of smoking, gender, education, health beliefs about smoking, value on healthy lifestyle, motives for smoking, reasons for quitting, and occupancy of young adult social roles were significant predictors of cessation. However, there were different predictors of attempts to quit and successful quitting among those who attempted to quit. From a public health perspective, both predictors of quit attempts and predictors of successful quitting among attempters are useful targets for intervention.

Updating after rotational and translational body movements: coordinate structure of perspective space.

As people move through an environment, they typically change both their heading and their location relative to the surrounds. During such changes, people update their changing orientations with respect to surrounding objects. People can also update after only imagining such typical movements, but not as quickly or accurately as after actual movement. In the present study, blindfolded subjects pointed to objects after real and imagined walks. The role of rotational and translational components of movement were contrasted. The difficulty of imagined updating was found to be due to imagined rotation and not to imagined translation; updating after the latter was just as quick and accurate as updating after actual rotations and translations. Implications for understanding primary spatial orientation, the organization of spatial knowledge, and spatial-imagination processes are discussed.

The natural history of cigarette smoking and young adult social roles.

The relation between cigarette smoking (in adolescence and adulthood) and the occupancy of conventional adult social roles was investigated in the current study. Two alternative predictions for this relation were examined--"role incompatibility" (which predicts a negative relation between adolescent smoking and adult role occupancy) and "pseudomaturity" (which predicts a positive relation between adolescent smoking and adult role occupancy). Processes of role selection and role socialization were examined using data from a longitudinal study of smoking from adolescence to young adulthood. Both pseudomaturity and role incompatibility predictions found some support in the data, and the two views could be reconciled by considering the student role as the key transition into other adult statuses. Implications for the study of social roles and substance use are discussed.

Parent educational attainment and adolescent cigarette smoking.

In a longitudinal design, this study examined psychosocial mediators of the effects of parental educational attainment on adolescent smoking acquisition and also examined whether smoking transition had different antecedents among adolescents from families of varying educational backgrounds. Parents' low educational attainment acted as a moderate to strong risk factor for the initial onset of smoking among middle school girls. Some of this effect was mediated by the higher smoking prevalence among both parents and friends of these adolescent girls, as well as by their lowered expectations for academic success. However, these variables only partially mediated the effect of parent education. There were few indications of differential antecedents of smoking acquisition among adolescents from less and more highly educated families. Implications for public health antismoking campaigns are discussed.

Four pathways to young-adult smoking status: adolescent social-psychological antecedents in a midwestern community sample.

Evaluated the ability of social-psychological factors, measured in adolescence, to predict young-adult smoking outcomes. Results showed substantial continuity in the antecedents of adolescent and young-adult smoking but important discontinuities as well. Beliefs in the negative social consequences of smoking and beliefs about academic success and independence were important to adolescent but not to adult smoking. Conversely, beliefs in the negative health consequences of smoking were more important to adult smoking than to adolescent smoking. Results also showed an appreciable amount of smoking onset after the high school years, as well as an appreciable amount of adolescent smoking that did not persist into young adulthood. Antecedents of late-onset smoking and of nonpersistent smoking are described.

The natural history of cigarette smoking: predicting young-adult smoking outcomes from adolescent smoking patterns.

Assessed the magnitude of risk that adolescent cigarette smoking carries for adult smoking. Using a longitudinal, prospective design, results indicate that even infrequent experimentation in adolescence significantly raises the risk for adult smoking and that regular (at least monthly) adolescent smoking raises the risk for adult smoking by a factor of 16 compared to nonsmoking adolescents. Relative risk was also increased by an early onset of smoking and by a stable, uninterrupted course from experimentation to regular smoking. Relative risk did not significantly vary by age or sex. The continuity of smoking behavior between adolescence and adulthood supports the importance of primary prevention programs directed at adolescent populations.

Orientation specificity in spatial memory: what makes a path different from a map of the path?

Three studies investigated the factors that lead spatial information to be stored in an orientation-specific versus orientation-free manner. In Experiment 1, we replicated the findings of Presson and Hazelrigg (1984) that learning paths from a small map versus learning the paths directly from viewing a world leads to different functional characteristics of spatial memory. Whether the route display was presented as the path itself or as a large map of the path did not affect how the information was stored. In Experiment 2, we examined the effects of size of stimulus display, size of world, and scale transformations on how spatial information in maps is stored and available for use in later judgments. In Experiment 3, we examined the effect of size on the orientation specificity of the spatial coding of paths that are viewed directly. The major determinant of whether spatial information was stored and used in an orientation-specific or an orientation-free manner was the size of the display. Small displays were coded in an orientation-specific way, whereas very large displays were coded in a more orientation-free manner. These data support the view that there are distinct spatial representations, one more perceptual and episodic and one more integrated and model-like, that have developed to meet different demands faced by mobile organisms.

Adolescent smokeless tobacco use: future research needs.

Future research needs in the area of adolescent smokeless tobacco use are addressed, based on the studies reported in this volume covering methodologic issues and substantive directions. In addition, we outline some implications for developing preventive interventions to deter smokeless tobacco use among adolescents.

The social image of smokeless tobacco use in three different types of teenagers.

The current study used an unobtrusive methodology to describe the social image associated with smokeless tobacco use and with cigarette smoking in three "types" of teenage models--an athlete, a cowboy, and an average teenager. As in previous research, the social image associated with smokeless tobacco use was more positive than that associated with cigarette smoking, suggesting that adopting smokeless tobacco use may have perceived social image benefits for adolescent males. The image conveyed by smokeless tobacco use was similar across the three different types of adolescent. Relations between social image factors and tobacco use behavior were examined, and implications for tobacco use prevention are discussed.

"Constructive" vs. "Destructive" deviance in adolescent health-related behaviors.

Previous literature suggests that the adolescent at risk to engage in substance use and other negative health-related behaviors is deviant in a negative sense (i.e., rebellious, antisocial, and alienated from traditional institutions). However, some researchers have distinguished between two types of deviance-a true autonomy and independence that is more positive and constructive, and a reactant "anticonformity" that is more negative and destructive. The current study assessed the roles of both constructive and destructive deviance in adolescent cigarette smoking and positive health-related behaviors. Adolescents who were constructively deviant engaged in higher levels of health-protective behaviors. Moreover, constructive deviance was an independent predictor of both cigarette smoking and positive health behaviors over and above the effects of traditional negative deviance indicators. These data suggest that constructive deviance is not a competing model to more traditional notions, but that it is an additional possible pathway into adolescent positive and negative health behaviors.

The development of landmarks in spatial memory: the role of differential experience.

To assess how differential experience with objects in a spatial array might serve to establish relative landmarks within the array, first and fifth graders learned models of a town and farm under two conditions. In a homogeneous condition, all elements in the array were visited an equal number of times. In a landmark condition, the relative landmark status of an element was established by distributing the same total number of visits unequally across the elements. The effects of such landmarks on spatial memory were assessed both in reconstructions of the entire array and by pairwise distance estimations. The landmark condition led to a general improvement in spatial recall accuracy as well as providing a relative landmark within the array to help organize the space. The results suggest that different levels of experience (controlling for overall experience and object salience) can establish elements as relative landmarks in spatial memory. Although there was clear developmental improvement in spatial memory, the specific landmark effects were similar for both first and fifth graders.

The changing smoking environment for middle and high school students: 1980-1983.

Cultural-historical changes in smoking prevalence and in smoking-related attitudes and beliefs were examined as part of a cohort-sequential study of 6th- to 12th-grade midwestern adolescents (N = 8681) between 1980 and 1983. Smoking prevalence decreased over the 4 years for the younger cohorts and remained unchanged for high school students. Paradoxically, however, some specific beliefs and attitudes about smoking (including health beliefs) became less negative with time. It is suggested that continuing negative social beliefs about smoking are supporting declines in smoking prevalence among younger cohorts. Implications of these cultural-historical changes for smoking behavior and smoking control are discussed.

Building spatial representations through primary and secondary learning.

The current study examined the conditions under which cognitive representations of spatial information are stored in orientation-specific ways (like pictures) versus orientation-free ways. College students learned simple paths by viewing a map of them (map condition), by walking them while blindfolded (walk condition), or by directly viewing the route from a single vantage point (look condition). Blindfolded subjects then stood on the route in various orientations and made directional judgments to other locations on the route. When subjects learned the route by indirect, symbolic means (map), judgments were quite easy when aligned with the learned map orientation and were difficult if the judgment was not aligned with the learned map orientation. However, when subjects learned the route by more direct, primary spatial learning (walk or look), there were no alignment effects. Thus, subjects treat information from primary (direct) and secondary (symbolic) spatial learning in distinct ways. Learning from a map results in a figural representation that has great precision but a specific orientation. Learning the route more directly results in a representation that is less precise but one that can be used in more flexible ways.

Predictors of adolescents' intentions to smoke: age, sex, race, and regional differences.

The present study investigated the predictors of smoking intentions among subgroups of adolescent nonsmokers, examining age, sex, ethnic, and regional differences. Both proximal factors specific to smoking and more general, distal factors were successful predictors of intentions to smoke. The similarities in prediction outweighed the differences between demographic subgroups. There were three demographic differences: (1) peer and family smoking levels were more important in predicting intentions for girls than boys; (2) smoking initiation was more of a way of adopting deviant or problem behavior for midwestern than for southwestern subjects; (3) familial smoking models were more related to the intentions of midwestern than southwestern subjects. The theoretical significance of these results and their practical implications for smoking prevention are discussed.