Beyond IQ, Low-SES Urban High School Students’ Abstract Construals of Social Stories Indirectly Predict Their Young-Adult Identity Coherence Via Longitudinal Brain Development across Middle Adolescence

Community adolescents reacted to compelling video documentaries during open-ended interviews, and underwent neuroimaging immediately and two-years later. Participants’ tendencies to infer broader meaning from the stories predicted longitudinal increases in resting-state functional connectivity between default-mode and executive control networks, which in turn mediated effects of abstractions on young-adult psychosocial outcomes.