Similarly, the insults he received from peers at school that day may become a pivot point for his self-concept in the absence of a commuting or stressed out parent who otherwise might have mitigated the negative emotional effects through discussion, dialogue and supportive comments. While the boy is capable of abstract problem solving when he doesn’t find the key under the door mat (e.g., “Mom is probably held up in traffic”), his thinking about how to cope with a peer insult resembles more closely the cognitive style of a younger child.   One can imagine the repetition of similar events resulting in a pattern of negative self-schemas and perhaps leading to depressed mood.

One recent study may be seen as lending support to this notion.  In a two-year follow-up study of fifth- and sixth-grade children, researchers taught cognitive and social-problem-solving techniques to pre-adolescents with a view toward prevention of depressive symptoms (Gillham et al., 1995).  After two years, the 69 children in the treatment group reported fewer depressive symptoms than the 49 children matched in a no-treatment control group. 

Did the children in the treatment group acquire expertise in domain-specific knowledge that the control group did not possess?  It would appear so and it also seems that this difference in expertise made a significant difference in depressive symptoms.  Furthermore, a surprising outcome of the study was that the prevention effect of the training grew stronger with time.  The research team advanced two possible explanations for this.  First, as children experienced the strains of transition from elementary school to middle school, the effects of the prevention program could have become more apparent.  Alternatively, they suggested that children may have become better at using the techniques over time (Gillham et al., 1995).

If the first explanation is correct, it may be that the increase in cognitive, domain-specific expertise (i.e., self-regulation of emotions) became more apparent as the expertise was needed by the increasing number of stressors.  If the second explanation is correct, it may additionally be that there was a cascading effect in which greater expertise in coping interacted with greater information-processing capacity.  Data supporting a more optimistic (and realistic) appraisal of self, the situation, or the future could be assimilated into the child’s reasoning and counterbalance a more limited, negative appraisal.  It may also be that the newly found cognitive expertise in the domain of emotions facilitated advances in metacognition whereby the children could evaluate how they were thinking about emotions and about the cognitions relevant to their mood states.  Finally, we may speculate that the expertise provided by the training program blossomed into an enhanced “sense of the game” of thinking about emotions, much like a driver’s training course provides initial expertise, but then develops into a sense of the game of driving.

Summarizing this line of thought, we can say that young adolescents invite increased expectations for tasks and responsibilities (and stressors) by virtue of their demonstrated acquisition of expertise in new domains. Parents and teachers expect more from them as they see the increase in their physical stature and abilities.  But current research on cognitive development suggests that these gains are domain-specific and uneven across domains for a given child.  Thus, the increase in stressors may place a high demand on the cognitive expertise relevant to the domain of coping and mood management, whereas the child may function at a higher level in other domains of his or her life.  If there is an absence of additional training or coaching in this domain, the young adolescent may be at higher risk for depression.

What are the implications of early adolescent acquisition of expertise in the domain of mood management for commuting behavior? Because there are no studies at present addressing this question directly, we can only consider the implications of the prevention study discussed above. It would stand to reason that young adolescents who have more time with trusted attachment figures may be benefiting from adult-level expertise through conversations in which the stressors of the day are discussed. For some children, this “coaching” may function as a kind of prevention training in the domain of emotions. If so, then parents whose commute time and fatigue level eclipse this coaching dimension may have children who tend to be less equipped for the emotional stressors they are facing. Do children of parents with longer commutes tend to be more depressed? The purpose of the present research is to help answer this question.

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