Developmental previewing: enhancing the adolescent's predictions of behavioral consequences

The adolescent years are a time of significant biopsychosocial change. Adolescents develop a variety of cognitive skills that enable them to evaluate future consequences, weigh alternatives, and select behaviors. If these cognitive skills have not matured fully, however, the female adolescent may be predisposed to enact risk-taking behaviors, such as becoming pregnant. An intervention technique that encourage adolescents to predict the consequences of their actions may therefore be beneficial. One such technique, labeled previewing, promotes the cognitive skills necessary for averting future unplanned pregnancies and, in the event the adolescent has become a mother, for establishing a more adaptive relationship with the infant.