Prospective content in parent-adolescent conversations about the upcoming transition to high school

ABSTRACT

Adolescents’ prospection is often assessed as individual differences; however, adolescents likely share anticipated events with adults in their lives. To understand how prospection is shared between adolescents and parents, this study examined conversations about the upcoming transition to high school for the types of prospective content emerging in conversations, whether dyads engaged collaboratively in prospective content, how emergent patterns of prospective content in conversations were organized regarding familial roles, and whether participants’ prospective content is shifted, maintained, or augmented. Participants were 27 parent-adolescent dyads; 15 adolescents were girls, 12 were boys. Content analysis was used to examine four types of prospection: episodic memory of the past, simulation, reasoning about counterfactuals, and constructing multiple possible futures. In most conversations, a partner extended prospective content. Dyads maintained the prospective content, however there was also evidence of dyad partners shifting or augmenting content. The findings point to the shared construction of prospection

KEYWORDS:

• Adolescents
• parents
• prospection
• transition to high school
• conversation

Introduction

Studies of prospection, the process of looking ahead in time and imagining future actions (Seligman et al., 2013) among adolescents have emphasized assessments of individuals’ abilities (e.g. Kostyrka-Allchorne et al., 2020). However, adolescents’ considerations of their futures are often shared by others such as parents and caregivers (Bourret et al., 2023; Lollis, 2003) suggesting that prospection can be understood as a socially constructed dyadic process. This investigation extends research on prospection among adolescents by shifting from a focus on individuals’ abilities to how parent-adolescent dyads engage in prospection. We do this by examining the prospective content of conversations between adolescents and their parents as they talk about the upcoming transition to high school. Although dialogue cannot be assumed to mirror cognitive processes (Young et al., 2017), the findings from this study may have implications for developing models of how adolescents engage in prospection in social contexts. By observing conversations and de-emphasizing individual prospection, the ways in which adolescents engage with others to imagine and plan future actions may be illuminated.

Understanding how adolescents engage in planning with others could have practical implications for interventions designed to support families in navigating transitions such as moving from primary to secondary school. School transition interventions to date have tended to focus on the adolescent’s ability to cope. For example, the Talking about School Transition (TaST) (Bagnall, 2020) promotes the emotional well-being and resilience of adolescents but does not address how parents and adolescents plan for the transition together. Similarly, the Transfer Support Team (TST) intervention emphasizes addressing adolescents’ anxiety and adjustment to secondary school (Bloyce & Frederickson, 2012). Given the substantial challenges that the primary-secondary transition can pose for many students and the importance of parents for a successful transition, it is vital that interventions be informed by how parent-adolescent dyads engage in prospection.

Pragmatic prospection theory (Baumeister et al., 2016) maintains that people think about the future in order to prepare themselves to act in ways that will bring about desired outcomes by imagining an outcome, anticipating potential obstacles to it, then planning to overcome them. Pragmatic prospection has been described as varying in how it occurs with deliberate construction being slow and considerate and spontaneous construction emerging faster and with little effort (Cole & Kvavilashvili, 2021; Kvavilashvili & Rummel, 2020). Planning futures involving competing demands or organizing a sequence of events are likely to involve slow and effortful processes. The transition to high school is a planned future event. Within families, there are often competing demands for resources (e.g. transportation to school and work) and multiple schedules (e.g. siblings, parents) to consider. Simple planning such as opening a closet to hang up a coat involves less effort to inform the intention for action. Prospection in everyday thinking has been shown to be highly pragmatic and in service of accomplishing immediate needs and goals (Baumeister et al., 2018; Kvavilashvili & Rummel, 2020). We selected the upcoming transition to high school as a conversation topic because it is a planned and anticipated family transition (Benner et al., 2021). Students balance new academic demands with family, leisure time, and extracurricular activities and adolescents are expected to assume greater responsibility for remembering to follow through on intended actions (Marshall et al., 2014). This balancing does not occur in isolation. Multiple and Multidimensional Transitions (MMT) theory conceptualizes transitions as ongoing social, educational, and psychological adaptations over time that occur because of changes in context and relationships with others (Jindal-Snape & Rienties, 2016). MMT theory highlights the importance of multiple domains involved in transitions, a prime example of which is the parent-child relationship. Parents play a significant role in facilitating such transitions due to the significant position they occupy in the child’s ecosystem. We draw on this theory to foreground the complexity of how significant transitions like the move to high school involve contributions from parents as they navigate these domains alongside their children. As an approaching transition, we expected to observe pragmatic prospective content (expressions of thoughts related to preparations for future action; Baumeister et al., 2020) such as arranging transportation to school. Drawing on pragmatic prospection theory and MMT theory, we propose that the transition to high school involves engagement by both parent and adolescent in the joint construction and meeting of pressing goals that are navigated within the context of a longstanding relationship.

Socially related people, such as adolescents and their parents, may express prospection in conversations in part because of the history of their relationship. Lollis (2003) describes how expectations constructed during past interactions converge with future anticipations in the present actions between parents and children. The past encompasses the history of interactions that have supported the development of the relationship over time and knowledge about the relationship and each other. Thus, time plays a major role in human cognition and may have a social basis as, for example, research findings suggest different categories of thinking about time (e.g. present, future, past, combinations) were all more common in the presence of others than when alone (Baumeister et al., 2020).

To date, studies of prospection have overlooked prospection in face-to-face conversations between parents and children. However, prospection appears to be promoted in children through conversations with adults. Experimental research has found that children who have experience talking with an experimenter about the near future and near past show better planning abilities than children who are prompted to talk about the present and distant future (Chernyak et al., 2017). Similarly, Leech et al. (2019) found that pre-school children who were encouraged to talk and think about themselves in the future fared better on assessments of prospection than children who talk about others. While these studies provide important information on the prospection abilities of young children in the context of a laboratory experiment, we know of no studies that have examined how parents and adolescents engage in prospection together during naturalistic conversations about an upcoming family transition.

However, expressions of prospection have been studied between socially related adults during face-to-face conversations (Young et al., 2017, 2022). Among young adult peers talking about their post-education futures, prospective content was found to emerge sparsely and few dyads collaborated together to augment or clarify prospective content (Young et al., 2017). Different patterns emerged among young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities conversing with parents about the future (Young et al., 2022). These dyads tended to use simulation and episodic memory of the past to talk about the future more than reasoning about counterfactuals. Parents were also found to scaffold the young adults’ thinking about the future. Given the approach to studying prospection in face-to-face conversations was successful, we elected to use the same approach to explore patterns of dialogic prospection between parents and adolescents. The dialogic approach to prospection may be useful for informing transition practices for families about to undergo an important transition such as moving residence or country.

Adolescents and adults bring different experiences and abilities to prospection. Prospection appears to improve through middle to late childhood (Coughlin et al., 2014, 2019; McCormack & Hoerl, 2020) and may continue to advance through adolescence into adulthood (Ghetti & Coughlin, 2018). In addition to developmental changes, it is important to consider life experience. Adults have longer life histories and experiences of anticipating the future than adolescents. However, parents and adolescents have a long history of experience with one another (Lollis, 2003) that may contribute to the ways in which prospection is constructed in face-to-face conversations. Therefore, it is unclear whether differences in abilities and experience between parents and early adolescents will be revealed in simulation and evaluation of possible future scenarios and how prospects are teleologically organized according to their respective goals. This is an important consideration given that individual responses to possible future situations are heavily dependent upon external factors like the context in which they occur (Baumeister & Alquist, 2023). We use the transition to high school to study prospection as it is manifest in conversations between adolescents and parents. To understand the use of prospective content we asked (1) what types of prospective content would emerge during conversations, (2) whether adolescents and parents engaged collaboratively in prospective content, (3) how emergent patterns of prospective content in conversations are organized in relation to differences in length of experiences in thinking about the past and future and familial roles, and (4) whether or not the participants’ prospective content is shifted, maintained, or augmented over the course of the conversation.

Method

Participants

A secondary analysis was conducted on data collected from 27 parent-adolescent dyads recruited from two major Canadian urban centres. The use of existing data reduces costs to both the researcher and participants. Data from 26 of the dyads was reported in a longitudinal study of the transition to high school (see Marshall et al., 2014). One dyad was not retained in the original longitudinal study. However, since only the first session of data collection was analysed for this study, it is included here. Twelve of the adolescent participants were 12 years old and nine were 13 years old; six were 14 years old (Median age = 13.27). Fifteen of the adolescents were female and 12 were male. Four of the adolescents were not born in Canada but had lived in Canada from one to 11 years (Median years = 3). Three adolescents received academic supports at school. Parents’ ages ranged from 35 to 50 (median age n = 44), most were mothers (n = 23), and there was one step-parent. Parents’ education levels ranged from high school completion (n = 6), a college diploma (n = 7), undergraduate degree (n = 10), to a master’s degree (n = 4). Five parents were not currently employed. Nine parents were single. Nine parents were not born in Canada. Four dyads reported speaking a language other than, or in addition to, English at home.

Procedure

The protocol for the original study was reviewed by the universities’ behavioural ethics review boards prior to proceeding with data collection. Inclusion criteria were that both the parent and adolescent agreed to participate and both partners could communicate in English. The three-part conversations comprising the data for this secondary analysis took place in private rooms at universities in two urban centres. Prior to the conversations, researchers written informed consent for participation was obtained from parents and written assent was obtained from adolescents. The first part of the data collection was a video-recorded introductory interview where two trained interviewers (graduate students in Social Work and Education) explored the dyad’s views on the upcoming transition to high school (e.g. what they expected, any changes in extra-curricular activities) and what they were currently doing together in relation to the transition. In part two, the participants were invited to have a video-recorded conversation together without the inter-viewers present about an issue related to the transition to high school that they identified as important to both of them, to be terminated at the participants’ discretion.

Immediately following part two, each participant viewed a playback of the conversation with one of the interviewers in separate rooms. This final video-recorded part of the procedure is called a video-recall interview; each participant separately reports on their thoughts and feelings during sections of the conversation at approximately one-minute intervals. All parent-adolescent conversations and video-recall interviews were transcribed. The average parent-adolescent conversation was 10:24 minutes; average video recall interview length was 27:29 for adolescents and 35:24 for parents. In the longitudinal study, dyads were then followed for a period of six months via biweekly telephone ‘check-in’ calls. During these calls, parents and adolescents were asked individually about any progress they had made towards their joint project regarding the transition to high school and whether there had been any significant changes to their project. This project was generated by the research team following analysis of the data from the dyad’s first conversation and were about the young person’s leisure and extra-curricular activities, and how parents contributed to them. After the monitoring period, dyads were invited to participate in another conversation and video-recall interviews. However, the first session of data collection (i.e. joint conversation and video recall) comprise the data for this study.

Coding and analysis

A secondary analysis of the data was completed using four a priori categories from Young et al. (2017) that were adapted from Seligman et al. (2013). These categories were used to code the conversations for prospective content and included: (1) episodic memory of the past in consideration of future actions; or verbal content reflecting a specific episode or event from one’s past is integrated into imagined future actions; episodic memory refers to specific events and includes details like what happened, who was present, and how it was experienced, (2) simulation, or verbalizing hypothetical future simulations of four kinds including the social, memorial, navigational, and intellectual, (3) reasoning about counterfactuals, or verbalizations about counterfactuals where memory of the past feeds into future simulations but whose antecedent is known to be false (i.e. how could things have turned out better), (4) constructing multiple possible futures, or engagement of constructive processes (episodic memory, simulation, and counterfactual simulation) to project oneself into the future. These categories have been adapted to represent verbal content of the conversations.

The data were coded by reading each turn of speech and discerning if the content related to any of the four types of prospective content. If the turn of speech did not contain prospective content, the next turn was read. If the turn of speech contained prospective content, it was marked and the following turns of speech read until the topic changed. This created a segment of the conversation that was then inspected to see if there was collaborative content. We analysed whether an occurrence was collaborative based on an examination of the partner’s responses. An occurrence was deemed collaborative if the partner’s verbalizations added to or guided the prospective segment. For collaborative verbalizations, we were interested in understanding who was most active in extending occurrences. In particular, we sought to understand whether parents were more active than the adolescents because parents have a longer life experience of planning. However, we were also open to the idea that adolescents might be as active as their parents when adding to or guiding prospective content since the conversations were about the adolescents’ transition to high school.

If no contribution was made by a partner in response to an occurrence of prospective content, the incident was not considered collaborative. Thus, all conversations were coded for prospective content of each conversation partner, and for collaborative prospective content, and the order of who initiated and who collaborated. Video recall interview data were used to clarify the speaker’s intentions against the coded verbal prospective categorizations. Moreover, video recall data was used to determine any participant-identified internal cognitive processes with respect to prospective content (i.e. their thoughts and feelings) which provided additional depth about the meaning, intentions and goals of prospective segments. The coding of the conversations was completed by one of the co-authors and then reviewed by another co-author. Consensus about the coding was reached by discussion of the process.

An interpretive inductive analytic strategy (Kuczynski & Daly, 2002) guided by pragmatic prospection theory was used to describe what prospection looks like within the collaborative incidents. We started by repeatedly reading through the 57 coded incidents to identify any recurrences in collaborative prospection. We documented observations of these recurrences within case through memoing. We then used the coded collaborative incidents with memos to identify broader patterns of collaborative prospection across cases. Emerging patterns at the stage of within-case analysis were refined by examining similarities as well as points of tension across cases iteratively through constant comparison and ongoing team discussion (Charmaz, 2014).

Findings

Our first research question asked what types of prospective content can be observed in parent-adolescent conversations. In all of the 27 conversations there was prospective content. In total, there were 109 incidents of prospective content identified with a mean of 4.04 incidents during the conversation (SD = 1.48, range = 1 to 7) and evidence of all four a priori categories (see Table 1). As reported in the original study from which the data are drawn, a wide range of topics was observed including time management, changes in academic expectations and social relationships, and safety and communication with parents (Marshall et al., 2014).

Table 1. Distribution of prospective content incidents by category.

Category	Total (N = 109)	%	Collaborative (N = 57)	%
Episodic memory of the past in consideration of future actions	28	25.69	11	19.30
Simulation (imaginative, navigational, intellectual, social)	59	54.13	32	56.14
Reasoning about counterfactuals	11	10.09	5	8.77
Constructing multiple possible futures	11	10.09	9	15.79

The second research question investigated whether adolescents and parents engaged collaboratively in prospective content. The majority of the conversations (n = 22) contained collaborative engagement (i.e. a partner responded to prospective utterances in a way that extended prospective content). These 22 conversations contained between 1 and 5 collaborative prospective content incidents (M = 2.59, SD = 1.05). As shown in Table 1, the most frequent types of prospective content found in collaborative engagement were Simulation (56.14%) and Episodic memory of the past (19.30%).

To investigate whether parents and adolescents differed in their engagement (research question three) in prospective content of conversations, we looked into who extended collaborative engagement. In four cases, only the parent extended any observed collaborative engagements, ranging from one to three instances within the conversation. In two cases, only the adolescent extended the collaborative engagement. In the remaining 16 cases, the adolescent and the parent each extended at least one instance of collaborative engagement. Table 2 displays the frequency of extending collaborative engagement. Parents did so more frequently than adolescents.

Table 2. Distribution of collaborative prospective content.

Extended by	N = 57	%
Parent	34	59.65
Adolescent	23	40.35
Type of pattern
Shift	10	17.54
Maintain	28	49.12
Augment	19	33.34

Our fourth research question asked whether collaborative prospective content shifted, was maintained, or was augmented by conversation partners. To answer this question, we examined the 57 incidents of collaborative prospective content for what occurred during the segment of the conversation (see Table 2). We observed three types of processes. The first type was a Shift in which prospective content changed over the course of the conversation. The second type was a Maintenance during which the prospective content remaining unchanged. The final type, Augmentation, was a process whereby the prospective content did not change entirely, but was supplemented or co-constructed with additions/suggestions by one or both participants. The content of the video recall interview was used to confirm whether individuals maintained, shifted, or slightly altered their prospective content in response to their partner. We then coded all 57 collaborative incidents according to whether dyads shifted, maintained, or augmented their prospective content, an example of which is reported in Table 3.

Table 3. Example of coding for collaborative prospective content.

Code	Definition/clarification	Excerpt
Augmentation	The prospective content of one partner is supplemented or co-constructed by a partner without changing entirely the initial content.	P: How do you get to school? A: I want to really walk by myself. P: Walk? So you have to get up really early then. A: No P: Can you meet up with, can you meet up with A: Like call M and then tell him to wait P: Meet up with him, yeah can you meet up with him then walk to M’s house or his house? A: Sure

The following descriptions, depicted with pseudonyms, illustrate how prospective content was used in conversations and, in cases of collaboration, the types of pattern observed over the course of the conversation.

Episodic memory of the past example

The following non-collaborative episodic memory of the past occurred in a conversation between Colin (age 14) and his father Brent about the balance between schoolwork and time for extracurricular activities. Brent started the conversation by asking Colin about the activities, clubs, and teams he would like to participate in during high school. Colin replied that he would like to continue playing various sports and taking music lessons. Brent picks up on the problem of organizing time for music lessons.

Brent: Um, but you know sometimes we say you have to get yourself there or

Colin: That’s fine

Brent: You have to bring your own music books

Colin: [Laughs] yeah, that’s just me being forgetful … .

Brent: But is there stuff, that you like, we should do or I should do or

Colin: Um . remind me to get my music books [sighs] Yeah, no.

Brent: Is there stuff that ah, you want to ask me? About high school or whatever that you should or shouldn’t or concerned with?

Colin: Um … Not that I can think of right now … … . Just staying organized is my biggest problem.

Brent: That’s sort of academically/but like/

Colin: /Yeah/

In the video-recall interview, Brent expressed his concern about the stress and time pressures his son may be experiencing regarding schoolwork and activities. He used past events related to preparing for music lessons to assist his son’s attempts to stay organized as he balances academic demands of high school with extracurricular activities.

Simulation example

This collaborative simulation example occurred within the larger context of Abby (age 13) and her mother, Payton, discussing Abby resisting peer pressure when offered illicit substances at parties in the future. Abby’s expression of concerns about being offered illicit substances are extended by Payton as she offers advice about planning how to respond to such offers.

Abby: Not really scared but I don’t wanna fall into the wrong category.

Payton: And so what category do you not want to fall into?

Abby: Like the drugs

Payton: Do you think there, there is that possibility that you might, that you feel tempted to try them?

Abby: I don’t feel tempted, but I think I might get pressured into it.

Payton: Mm and do you think you have friends right now that would be tempted to do that sort of thing? And have done it already perhaps?

Abby: Uhuh [yawns, chair squeaks]

Payton: Yeah

Abby: There’s a lot of my friends have done it

Payton: Like what pot or drinking?

Abby: Pot, drinking …

Payton:

So do you feel that you might get pressured by them to try that sort of stuff? Y’know then that’s something that you have to think about before it happens right? So you know how to um, how to react to them and how you know how to handle it …

Abby’s comments on this segment in the video recall interview indicate an understanding of Payton’s extension of the original prospective comment. Abby described ‘I guess you … do have to have a backup plan at a party or if you do go to a party ’cause like if someone, if your ride or the person who’s driving decides to get drunk then how are you gonna get home? … if you can’t drive then you’re kinda stuck.’ Abby then articulated a plan to get home safe in the future, saying ‘those are the friends that I hang out with so it’d be like [clears her throat] … easier to get home … if I was with them.’ Abby said that her backup plan to rely on sober friends was to call her mother because ‘at least I’m like getting home safely not having to wonder … like how to get home.’ Therefore, Payton extended Abby’s social simulation by suggesting proactive planning, which even led to Abby formulating a contingency plan.

The way that Payton attempts to engage in prospective content with Abby is also informed by her eldest son’s past experiences. In her video recall interview, Payton described,

I fully expect that y’know she’s going to experience these things … I’m a fairly open-minded parent, I have a son who y’know he’s dabbled in things too and I think yeah it’s not gonna shock me … if she comes home … drunk.

Payton said she trusts that Abby will be able to resist temptation and call her if she needs a ride home. However, Payton also expressed concern in her interview about the feasibility of Abby’s future plans:

She has an answer for everything … she doesn’t see that there’s problems … ’cause she had said ‘Oh I’ll just walk home’ but she doesn’t see that well it may be miles away from home … Walking through a dangerous area or something like that but that, that’s the part that she doesn’t think through so yeah.

Payton continued with an explanation that her strategy to address this concern was to ask her daughter questions to get Abby to make her plan more robust by talking about it together. Nonetheless, Payton acknowledged that asking too many questions could be counterproductive, saying

I’m not sure if she’s telling me everything … and I don’t push it ’cause I don’t want to back her into a corner where she has to feel defensive, I’d rather just sorta um y’know, I don’t know maintain it to a point where I’m getting at least something out of her.

Therefore, Payton is strategic in her attempts to extend her daughter’s prospective content and balances the desire for information and evidence of detailed planning with maintaining a positive relationship with her daughter.

Reasoning about counterfactuals example

In this collaborative exchange of reasoning about counterfactuals, Trevor (age 13) and his mother discuss how he would be spending his time after school and during the weekends once he starts high school. During the beginning of the conversation they discuss options for getting to school and then turn to how Trevor will spend his time on weekends.

Cora: Ok but then also on the weekend I want you to continue swimming too because the [community] pool is just right across from the school right did you want to do that?

Trevor: /but how am I supposed to like chill with my friends/

Cora: no but your friends can go swimming with you too/while you continue/

Trevor: /that’s so lame/

Cora: because swimming is going to be part of the [school name] High School for sure/

Trevor: I don’t want to do swimming

Cora: No but you want to upgrade it/because/

Trevor: /I don’t wanna do swimming

Cora: when you have it as part of your class because

Trevor: /I know

Cora’s plan for Trevor to be swimming at the community swimming pool is countered by Trevor’s query about time with friends on the weekends. Cora suggests combining friends and swimming by having friends also take lessons. Despite Cora’s assertion that swimming is part of high school physical education, Trevor maintains his position of not wanting to do swimming on the weekends. During Trevor’s video-recall interview for this conversation segment, he describes countering his mother’s suggestion about swimming because he was bored and wanted the conversation to end. Cora also does not change her position and simply changes the topic to after school activities. Cora described in her video-recall interview that ‘Trevor and I have always had this issue about swimming. Uh um, he enjoys swimming but he doesn’t enjoy the lessons.’

Constructing multiple possible futures

This example of collaborative prospective content comes from a discussion between Allison (age 12) and her mother, Pamela, about Allison’s need to eat lunch every day at school when high school starts. Pamela began this section of the conversation by asking about visiting the school cafeteria, an action that Allison had not previously planned to do. Allison acknowledged her mother’s suggestion but extended Pamela’s prospective content by offering her own plan which she saw as superior (i.e. bring a healthy lunch from home) and an alternative (i.e. stop at the store for a snack if needed).

Allison: I am not concerned about the cafeteria, no.

Pamela: Are you concerned about what you’re gonna eat, did you check out the cafeteria? I heard it’s a very good one so …

Allison: No it’s okay, I mean they always have like, they always have hot lunches but there’s a good store if you just need a snack and I’m pretty sure I’ll mostly bring my own lunch ‘cos I don’t wanna pay for lunch every day, but …

Pamela: Yeah, I prefer that because it’s, what we make at home is healthier too.

Allison: Yeah but I don’t think it’s that bad I think that’s about it.

Pamela: You’ll have a locker to keep snacks in.

This example illustrates that Allison already had multiple futures in mind because she had a repertoire of potential future actions including the store and bringing lunch. During her recall, Allison said that she changed her mind about the cafeteria because of Pamela’s recommendation, stating ‘I should be worrying about this even if it’s just a cafeteria like … maybe it matters maybe I shouldn’t just be like “oh it’s a cafeteria I’m not gonna worry about that”.’ Pamela’s recommendation extended Allison’s construction of possible futures in that the cafeteria has become a viable option for obtaining food in high school. Even though Pamela had initially suggested that Allison visit the cafeteria, she agreed with Allison’s proposed plan instead of insisting on the cafeteria. Pamela stated during her recall that she had recommended the cafeteria because Allison is an athlete, and Pamela wanted to ensure that she gets enough to eat so that she can concentrate in class and perform well in sports. She stated, ‘she spends so much time saying, “I’m hungry what can we eat” because she [gets] so much exercise.’ Pamela expected that Allison might need quick access to meals at school because she can no longer go home during the day. In her video recall interview, Pamela specifically recommended the action of Allison making a trip to the cafeteria because she remembered that Allison had previously expressed fear of getting lost in high school. Therefore, if Allison familiarized herself with the location of the school cafeteria before high school began, it would be easy for her to get food when she needs it. Thus, the outcome of the conversation is that Allison has a plan to go to see the cafeteria as part of her goal to stay fed in school. Pamela has added a future to Allison’s existing multiple futures.

Discussion

The transition to high school was used in this study as an opportunity to investigate prospective content in conversations between adolescents and their parents. Research questions addressed the types of prospective content, the degree of collaboration in prospective content, whether roles differed in exchanges, and whether prospective content was shifted, maintained, or augmented during conversations. Dialogue cannot be assumed to mirror cognitive processes (Young et al., 2017). However, we maintain that the verbalizations of intended future actions by adolescents and their parents, in combination with video recall interviews provide valuable information about how dyads engage in imagining the future together during conversations.

Prospective content was explicit in all the conversations. The most frequently observed prospective content was simulation which is likely because of the anticipated transition to high school. Less frequently observed were episodic memories of the past, reasoning about counterfactuals, and constructing multiple possible futures. Memories of the past may not have been frequently explicitly expressed as thoughts about the past have been found to be relatively rare in research about adults’ everyday thinking about time compared to their thinking of the present and the future (Baumeister et al., 2020). Parents and adolescents did use the past to construct other prospective content such as reasoning about counterfactuals as illustrated in an example (Cora and Trevor).

The majority of the conversations (81.5%) contained an episode of prospective content that was extended by the responses of the conversation partner. We found instances where one conversation partner facilitated the articulation of the other partner’s prospective content. For example, parents made recommendations or asked questions to challenge or encourage deeper thinking about unexpected contingencies in their children’s prospective content. These parental actions were goal-directed and often tailored to their children based on past episodes or knowledge about their abilities (e.g. the ability to plan for the unexpected). We also observed instances of adolescents extending their parent’s prospective content. Adolescents used questions to challenge their parents and suggested alternatives to their parent’s suggestions. Similar to their parents, adolescents’ attempts to extend their parents’ prospection were strategic and goal directed. Thus, both parent and adolescent play an important role in their partner’s prospection and, when there was a shift in expressed content, the influence was observed to go in both directions (adolescent to parent; parent to adolescent). However, the collaboration was more often initiated by parents suggesting they may take on a greater role in steering the prospective content and the conversation. This finding, congruent with MMT theory, highlights the important role that parents play as part of the child’s ecosystem during a significant and potentially stressful transition.

The transition to high school can have important implications on adolescents’ well-being (Benner et al., 2017; Sznitman et al., 2022; Yu et al., 2022). As such, it is vital to understand key buffers of this transition to designing prevention and intervention efforts to support student’s’ move to high school. Interventions that focus on adolescent capacity have shown promising results (Blossom et al., 2020) but may be overlooking opportunities to capitalize on an important source of support in the adolescent’s life. In line with MMT theory, adolescents’ perceptions of their parents being autonomy supportive have been found to contribute positively to young people’s adjustment in high school (Sznitman et al., 2022). Moreover, parental support has been found to be buffer against transition disruptions in the socioemotional domain and may buffer against academic disruptions (Benner et al., 2017). Our finding that parents play a significant role in scaffolding their children’s prospection suggests a need to investigate further the relationship between thinking about the transition to high school and the quality of the parent-adolescent relationship. Interventions designed to help adolescents transition successfully to high school should include guidance for how parents can effectively walk alongside their children during this transition.

The nature of the content that dyads engaged in together was pragmatic and organized teleologically. Rather than fantasizing about high school, prospective content of conversations often involved concrete needs met through specific tasks in sequence like eating lunch at school and getting home safe from parties. Together, adolescents and parents anticipated obstacles to plans, discussed inadequacies of plans together and suggested alternatives or contingencies. Video recall interviews revealed how some parents’ actions in the conversations were motivated by goals for their adolescents that extended beyond the transition to high school, such as acquiring good work habits or have the ability to formulate detailed plans. Adolescents did not express longer term goals in the same way as parents; their goals were primarily directed towards the nearer future. Whether parents’ longer-term goals influence adolescents’ prospection is unclear and an important consideration in future research.

The prospective content in these parent-adolescent conversations was narrative rather than propositional (Baumeister et al., 2016). Through the conversations, parents and adolescents were able to organize the upcoming future as imagined accounts of the transition to high school. Past events were linked to the present conversation by meaningfully linking to future imagined actions. For example, anticipation of future actions was linked to episodes from the past (e.g. not organizing time for homework effectively), knowledge about others (e.g. a sibling’s prior substance use) or themselves (e.g. needing multiple food sources to play sports and study).

Although this study extends the literature on prospection among adolescents, it is limited in several ways. First, the sample is small to accommodate the intensive data collection protocol. However, the size limits the ability to assess group differences such as gender comparisons or comparisons between mothers and fathers. Second, there are few fathers involved so we are unable to understand whether there are differences in the ways that mothers and fathers engage with their adolescents in imagining the future. Third, the study is cross-sectional; developmental change in prospective content is an important topic and remains as a direction for the future.

One of the strengths of this study was its emphasis on dyadic level prospective content within the context of parent-adolescent conversations rather than focusing on individuals. Joint prospection may be beneficial for working through the construction of imagined future events if relationship dynamics are not hostile. For example, the findings have the potential to inform educational programming for adolescents and parents experiencing stressful future events such moving residence or changes in parents’ employment. Supportive challenging of expressions, suggested alternatives, and extensions of partners’ prospective content may provide assurance that future events are not overwhelming. Working jointly through imagined future events may support mental health (Stoddard et al., 2020).

Although the original study was not designed to investigate prospective content, the topic was congruent with understanding prospective content in parent-adolescent conversations. The participant-led conversation and video-recall interview generated a rich set of data that supported the secondary content analysis reported in this study. Although the methodological approach we used was successful, there is a need for more research examining dialogic prospection in the context of parent-adolescent conversations. This is an important area for investigation because there is evidence to suggest that from three to five years old and into adolescence, children’s concept of time and ability to engage in thinking about future events undergoes significant development (McCormack & Hoerl, 2020). Research on the ways that prospection emerges and develops in social relationships will contribute to better understanding of developmental changes prior to and during adolescence. Further, studying how prospection develops during adolescence becomes even more important considering research showing that the development of pessimistic or faulty prospection can have negative consequences on individual wellbeing (Roepke & Seligman, 2016).

Future directions for research include identifying different types of prospective content interactions (e.g. positive/supportive or negative/antagonistic) and the effects on their partner’s prospective content over time. Studies could describe what shared prospection looks like moment-to-moment between partners and whether dyads engage in future thinking in different ways over the course of a significant transition event. There are also opportunities to examine in greater depth the contribution of factors like socioeconomic status (SES), ethnicity and gender to how parent-adolescent dyads engage in prospection. Progress is being made in describing future thinking in Black and Latino adolescents (Carey, 2022), and future research on prospection could explore further how race, ethnicity, language, SES and contextual and or environmental factors are associated with how young people think about their futures. It may be fruitful to examine in detail whether environments that are not stable or nurturing hinder prospective abilities (Ghetti & Coughlin, 2018) and how such environments dialogue with the formulation of future goals. The ability to align goals with desired future actions provides meaning for life (Baumeister et al., 2016; Bronk & Mitchell, 2022), therefore understanding how adolescents engage in prospection with socially related other people may provide important insights into how adolescents construct purpose and pursue meaningful goals. Such knowledge may be useful in the design of interventions to support adolescents in meeting their goals by training parents on how to support their adolescent children prepare and plan for the transition. This approach to the design of transition interventions departs from existing ones that emphasize child coping and resilience. Policy and practice interventions that are informed by the perspective that prospection is shared between parents and their adolescent children may be more likely to contribute to a successful primary-secondary school transition because they are accounting for a vital component of the child’s ecosystem. This study represents a first step in describing the ways in which prospection is socially constructed to give greater emphasis to the shared nature of prospection in parent-adolescent conversations.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Grant 410-2009-0060. We are very grateful to the parents and adolescents who participated in the study.

Notes on contributors

Daniel Ji

Daniel Ji is a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of British Columbia’s School of Social Work. He received his BA in Psychology, Family Studies, BSW, MSW, and PhD in Social Work from the University of British Columbia. His research focuses on parent-adolescent interactions, and how growth of youth and parents occurs in the context of a long-term relationship. Particular research interests include the ways that youth engage in constructing a unique sense of self during interactions with their parents.

Sheila K. Marshall

Sheila Marshall is a Professor Emeritus in the School of Social Work and an associate faculty member of the Division of Adolescent Health and Medicine in the Faculty of Medicine at UBC. She received her B.A.Sc. in Family Studies, MSc. and Ph.D. in Family Relations and Human Development from the University of Guelph. Her research focuses on psychosocial development during adolescence and young adulthood with an emphasis on the contexts of family and peer relationships. Particular research interests include examining the ways adolescents’ actively engage in their own development during interactions with parents and peers, and how adolescents’ construction of their social identities contribute to social and emotional well-being.

Richard Young

Richard A. Young is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology and Special Education at the University of British Columbia. A Fellow of the Canadian Psychological Association and the American Psychological Association, Professor Young's interests are in the areas of parent-adolescent interaction, health psychology, and career development. With a number of colleagues, he has extended the application of action theory to topics in career development, health promotion and, particularly, parent-adolescent communication. These applications have included the refinement of a qualitative research method based on action theory as well as its application to cultural studies.