Transactions between adolescents' sense of responsibility and disclosure to parents in the United States and China: implications for academic adjustment

This research examined the transactions between children’s sense of responsibility to parents and disclosure to them during early adolescence in the United States and China, with attention to the role of such transactions in children’s academic adjustment. Four times over the seventh and eighth grades, 825 adolescents (mean age = 12.73 years) in the United States and China reported on their sense of responsibility to parents and their spontaneous disclosure of everyday activities to them. Information on children’s use of self-regulated learning strategies in school was also obtained. In both the United States and China, the more children felt responsible to parents, the more they disclosed to them over time. Children’s disclosure in turn contributed to children’s enhanced sense of responsibility to parents such that the two transacted over time, mutually maintaining one another over early adolescence. Such transactions appear to be of import for children’s academic adjustment, with children’s disclosure to parents mediating the effects of their sense of responsibility to parents on their subsequent self-regulated learning strategies