ABSTRACT
The discussion of “developmental streams” in the previous work concerned the predicted stability or change in particular individuals’ patterns of ability and school adaptation over time. This stability or change was tested in terms of associations between the patterns of intelligence, achievement, self-perceived ability, and school adaptation that characterized girls in early adolescence and the patterns that characterized them 3 years later. This chapter examines a few of these developmental streams more precisely, to identify factors that might underlie the individual differences already observed. The analyses focuses on the characteristics of certain groups of individuals whose patterns of ability and school adaptation changed over time. To assess their representativeness, the four groups of individuals that constituted the developmental streams were designated as “target” groups. One domain in which we expected that the Decreasers and the Increasers might already differ at age 13 concerned their interests.
