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Development of interest and enjoyment in adolescence. Part I. Attentional capacities

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Abstract

The first part of this two-part article argues that significant changes in both the capacity and the content of attention emerge in adolescence. Part I reviews evidence from behavioral and biological studies that the capacity for interested attention develops from late childhood into adolescence.

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This article was prepared while the author was a Postdoctoral Clinical Research Fellow in Adolescence, 1977–1978, in a program jointly sponsored by the Psychosomatic and Psychiatric Institute at Michael Reese Medical Center and the University of Chicago Committee on Human Development and Department of Psychiatry; it was supported, in part, by a grant from the Judith B. Offer Research Fund. A preliminary version of this article was presented at the Conference on Socio-Cultural Influences on Adolescence at Michael Reese Hospital, Chicago, June 16, 1978. It was revised in 1981–1983.

Received M.D. from the University of Texas; graduate and postdoctoral psychology training at the University of Chicago; psychiatry residency at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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Hamilton, J.A. Development of interest and enjoyment in adolescence. Part I. Attentional capacities. J Youth Adolescence 12, 355–362 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02088719

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