Abstract
Problem and Objective
Transition to adulthood for young people with (IDD) is challenging for both youth and parents. Prospection, an important human adaptive tool and critical for independent living, involves constructing, encoding, and remembering the future. It may be jointly enacted between parents and young people as they discuss the future. This study identified and described evidence of prospective content in parent-youth conversations about the transition to adulthood.
Method
This study involved the content analysis is of eight parent-youth conversations about this transition. Two mother-daughter, three father-daughter, and three mother-son dyads, representing a range of IDD diagnoses, provided 790 min of joint conversations and reflection on them. These conversations were examined for the following characteristics of prospection: simulation, reasoning about counterfactuals, constructing multiple possible futures, and episodic memory of the past.
Findings
Among the four characteristics, simulation and episodic memory of the past were used most frequently and reasoning about counterfactuals the least. Giving advice and scaffolding were additional strategies that emerged from the data.
Conclusion
Identifying how prospection may be fostered in joint parent-youth conversations provides a step toward future research.
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the contribution of the co-authors of the report of the original research (Marshall et al. Citation2018).
Disclosure statement
The authors report no conflict of interest.