As teens cross the wobbly bridge from childhood to adulthood, they're often expected to take on new responsibilities. Though they might not be thrilled about watching siblings or mopping the floor, there are benefits to helping their families, according to Andrew Fuligni, PhD, who heads the Adolescent Development Lab at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles.
In a series of studies, Fuligni has followed diverse samples of teens in the Los Angeles area, exploring such topics as adolescent identity, academic achievement, family relationships, psychological well-being and physical health. In one project, for instance, he explored the pros and cons of adolescents helping family members by providing emotional support, cooking and cleaning, watching siblings or helping parents at their jobs.
Those helping roles were sometimes challenging for kids, Fuligni found. Adolescents with more family responsibilities often reported feeling burdened by their duties. Yet they also reported more happiness and positivity on a daily basis than teenagers who had fewer jobs to do at home ( Developmental Psychologyopens in new window , Vol. 45, No. 4, 2009). "Helping was challenging at times, but also highly meaningful," he says.
Yet the particulars differed for families from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Boys and girls from Asian and Latino backgrounds were more likely than those from European backgrounds to lend a hand at home and to place higher value on familial obligations, he found.
Exploring how cultural and ethnic differences affect adolescent development is a key theme in Fuligni's research. But his broader goal is to understand the processes that affect health and well-being for all adolescents.
Adolescence is often thought of as a time of challenges and risks. But Fuligni sees young people as having more to offer—and he's committed to understanding what makes them thrive. "Ultimately, it comes down to figuring out the extent to which adolescents feel like they have a place in the world, that they have an ability to contribute and the implications of that ability for their health and well-being," he says.
Diversity and diaries
Fuligni earned his PhD in developmental psychology at the University of Michigan. His first academic position was at New York University, where he conducted the foundational work that would form the basis of his current research.
In 2001, after seven years at New York University, Fuligni moved his lab to UCLA because of the collaborative opportunities that exist within the psychology department and across the institution, he says.
"I'm trying to connect what's going on outside the body with what's going on inside, whether that's neuroscience or the biological bases of health," he explains. "It clearly requires interdisciplinary work to make that happen, and we have a remarkable community of folks here that are very willing to collaborate."
That willingness to join forces is evident in his lab, where many of his students are involved in research projects that extend to other labs on campus. Fuligni typically has four to six graduate students at a time, and about half have a second co-adviser in another lab. The lab roster usually includes one postdoctoral researcher as well, plus three to five undergrads. Those lab members all work together to tackle the large, detailed longitudinal studies that are Fuligni's forte.
The Adolescent Development Lab focuses on immigrant families or children from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. His commitment to diversity is twofold. First, he says, it's important to help policymakers and practitioners understand the experiences of children from those backgrounds. Second, investigating a diverse sample of families gives a more complete picture of the central developmental processes at play in all children as they make the transition to adulthood.
"In every study, we have diverse backgrounds. A lot of times it makes a difference [to the outcome]; sometimes it doesn't. But I believe that looking at a diverse population is necessary for really understanding these normative processes," he says.
In one longitudinal study funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), for example, Fuligni and his collaborators are following adolescents from Asian, Latin American and European backgrounds. The researchers use a daily diary method to collect extensive information from adolescents about their daily activities, moods, stress levels, sleep habits and relationships with family and friends. The researchers also collect blood samples, allowing Fuligni and his team to track both short- and long-term changes in stress hormones, inflammation and other biological markers of health.
The project is ongoing, but several findings have emerged from the study's first wave. Fuligni and his colleagues have found that as early as the high school years, there's a connection between sleep patterns and inflammatory processes ( Psychosomatic Medicineopens in new window , Vol. 78, No. 6, 2016). "The extent to which kids fluctuate in the amount of sleep they get each night was predictive of higher levels of inflammation," he says. "That's consistent with emerging findings that it's not just the amount of sleep you get, but the variability in sleep behavior that gets under your skin."
The team also found that adolescents who reported a higher frequency of unfair treatment and discrimination had greater levels of the stress-related hormone cortisol across the day, regardless of their ethnicity or gender ( Hormones and Behavioropens in new window , Vol. 80, No. 1, 2016). "Experiences of discrimination might create a chronically elevated level of stress responsivity," he says.
Providing opportunities
In another ongoing project supported by the National Science Foundation, and in collaboration with UCLA psychology colleagues Matthew Lieberman, PhD, and Naomi Eisenberger, PhD, Fuligni and his team are investigating adolescent prosocial behavior and its connection to the developing brain. "We're looking at the neural processes associated with adolescents giving to others, including friends, family and strangers," he says.
In a related project, Fuligni and his former student Eva Telzer, PhD, now an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, took a neuroimaging angle, in partnership with Lieberman and fellow UCLA psychology professor Adriana Galván, PhD.
Telzer recruited a subset of families and used fMRI to observe adolescents' neural function as they decided to accept or decline financial offers in which the teens and their families could win or lose money. Compared to white adolescents, Latino adolescents had greater activity in the brain regions associated with reward when making deals that benefited their families rather than themselves. And those individuals who placed a high value on family obligations had more activity in brain regions associated with self-control and perspective taking ( Child Development Perspectivesopens in new window , Vol. 7, No. 3, 2013).
That brain activity could help to explain another of Telzer and Fuligni's findings: Mexican-American adolescents who placed more value on family obligations had lower rates of substance use than their peers. Yet in families with a lot of parent-child conflict, kids who reported providing more family assistance had higher rates of substance use. In other words, family values can be protective, but could turn risky in certain contexts ( Journal of Youth and Adolescenceopens in new window , Vol. 43, No. 2, 2014).
At the time Telzer was beginning her graduate work, around 2006, developmental neuroimaging was an emerging field, she says. But when Telzer proposed the idea to Fuligni, she found a receptive audience.
"Whenever I said I was interested in culture, development and neurobiology, most people looked at me like I was crazy. When I talked to Andrew about it, he was excited," she says. Fuligni hadn't yet done any fMRI work in his own lab, but he helped Telzer pull together an interdisciplinary team to make it happen.
Fuligni takes care to expose his students to the gamut of research experiences. "All of my projects involve extensive involvement of students and trainees, from design and data collection to analysis and writing papers," he says.
And there are often a lot of data to collect. The lab is usually engaged in two or three active data collection efforts at a time, while the researchers also analyze reams of data from previous projects.
"Everyone makes the whole project move along and everyone contributes to the entire project," he says. Still, he makes a point to let students carve out their own niche. "When it comes time to write up papers, we have discussions about what each student wants to focus on and where it makes sense for him or her to take the lead."
Joanna Kim, a current PhD student, joined the lab in the middle of the NICHD-funded longitudinal family health study. When it came time for the next wave of data collection, she says, Fuligni gave her a chance to add some new items to the daily diary checklists for participants. "The core research questions and methodology were already established, but he opened it up and gave us opportunities to chime in," she says.
Kids in a candy store
Perhaps because he's used to juggling many large projects at a time, Fuligni has a reputation for being flexible, which shows in his approach to meeting students where they are. "He communicates and finds out how best to work with each student's individual style," says Jessica Chiang, PhD, a lab graduate who now works as a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University. "For some, that means giving more autonomy early on, while for others it means providing more frequent guidance."
That guidance can be particularly important as new lab members get up to speed on the projects' moving parts—and the sophisticated analyses that those large data sets require. "There is an overwhelming wealth of information to be gained from these datasets. It took a while to gain knowledge on all the different tasks, questionnaires and collection protocols," says Evelyn Mercado, PhD, a postdoc in the lab who is studying how the family environment affects mental health in adolescence. "It has been an analytical challenge, but also rewarding, to learn how to best capture the growth these families are experiencing," she says.
Analyses from the lab's longitudinal studies often require the statistical framework known as multi-level modeling, which allows the researchers to evaluate multiple, hierarchically organized variables such as individuals within families over time. Even seasoned researchers with a background in that framework can find it daunting to figure out how best to make use of such a rich dataset, Mercado and Kim agree.
Yet that challenge can be stimulating, Kim adds. "It's hard because there are so many variables at your disposal. Should I look at family conflict? Support? Autonomy? Sleep? It can feel like being a kid in a candy store, and you have to decide what you can prune away to get at a cohesive question."
Fortunately, Fuligni has fostered a culture in which his lab members are eager to jump in to help new arrivals learn the ropes. Established students often spend time helping newer students familiarize themselves with the datasets and analyses. Fuligni also helps connect lab members with similar interests. "The culture in the lab is one of collaboration rather than competition," Chiang says.
Fuligni is understandably proud of that congenial culture. "It's incredibly gratifying to see the willingness of older students to engage with younger students to teach them the skills and analytical techniques," he says.
That openness extends to Fuligni himself, who is always willing to listen to new ideas from students and collaborators. "It's important as a scientist to continue to change and learn and develop. You want to follow where the science is going and also keep yourself interested—and really exciting work is often driven by my students," he says.
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