Why do Latino Teens Help Their Family and What Does it Mean for their Development?

A lecture by Andrew Fuligni, Professor Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences (UCLA). Adolescents from Latin American backgrounds generally spend more time helping and assisting their families than teenagers from other groups. In this talk, I will describe a multi-disciplinary program of research in which we have examined the sources of this helping behavior as well as the implications of family assistance for other aspects of psychological and behavioral development, focusing on the role of economic resources, cultural identity, the psychological meaning of assistance, and neural development during adolescence.