Beyond storm and stress: Typicality, transactions, timing, and temperament to account for adolescent change

Adolescent "storm and stress" has been a focal yet controversial developmental framework for over a century. In the present article, we challenge the current perspective that storm and stress is neither ubiquitous nor inevitable but probable. Instead, we argue, storm and stress is a vestigial developmental framework, and we propose a more comprehensive approach to understanding adolescent-typical changes based on six premises: (1) The biological changes of adolescence are inevitable and ubiquitous; (2) adolescent biological changes drive various mechanisms of adolescent behavior; (3) adolescent biological changes are shaped by environmental influences; (4) individual differences in adolescent emotional-behavior changes are domain specific and vary in intensity; (5) there are individual differences in the age of onset and duration of periods of adolescent change; and (6) individual differences in the duration and intensity of transitions in emotional arousal are functionally modulated by burgeoning emotion regulation skills. We conclude with the more comprehensive 4T (typicality, transactions, temperament, and timing) approach and suggestions to guide adolescent research in the 21st century.