Human Development Colloquium: Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang (USC)

Building meaning builds teens’ brains: Mid-adolescents’ transcendent thinking predicts young adult psychosocial outcomes via brain network development

Abstract: A major achievement of adolescent development is the capacity to integrate abstract cognitive construals with affective experiences to construct meaningful, transcendent narratives about one’s self and the world—constructing identities and coming to feel strongly about complex social issues. Leveraging these capacities, adolescents can be among the most visionary and committed citizens, as the world has recently seen with such extraordinary youth as Malala Yousafzai, Greta Thunberg, and Emma González. In this talk, I will discuss our longitudinal, neuropsychological studies of the processes underlying such capacities with Los Angeles-area adolescents and young adults from diverse backgrounds. Findings from qualitative interviews paired with neuroimaging reveal coordinated psychological, behavioral and neural processes by which youth transcend concrete, empathic reactions to also experience values-driven emotions reliant on abstract thought, such as moral inspiration, curiosity and compassion. They further reveal dispositions toward abstract construals in social contexts that predict subsequent brain development irrespective of IQ and socio-economic status, and in turn young adult relationships and well-being. Findings underscore the active role adolescents play in their own brain development through the meaning they make of the social world. In addition, especially as our intervention studies demonstrate that abstract construals increase over time in supportive developmental contexts and mediate increases in life purpose, the work has implications for redesigning secondary schools and out-of-school programming to promote youth thriving.

Bio: Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, EdD, studies the psychological and neurobiological bases of social emotion, self-awareness and culture and their implications for learning, development and schools. She is a Professor of Education at the USC Rossier School of Education, a Professor of Psychology at the Brain and Creativity Institute, a member of the Neuroscience Graduate Program Faculty at the University of Southern California, and Director of the USC Center for Affective Neuroscience, Development, Learning and Education (CANDLE).