Communication difficulties in teenagers and ways of coping with them during social deprivation

Abstract

The problem of adolescent coping with communication difficulties is discussed in the paper. The sample (N = 108) consists of three sub-samples: teenagers with prosocial behavior, enrolled in the Cadet Corps (n = 36), teenagers having signs of antisocial behavior, secondary school students (n = 36), teenagers whos behavior is anti-social (they have committed a crime and are sentenced to detention in a colony for juvenile offenders (n = 36). At the first stage respondents` group differences in communicative difficulties and coping strategies are analyzed. At the second stage on the basis of a longitudinal study conducted during two years, the evolution of adolescents` hindered communication and coping strategies in prison deprivation is shown; the focus is done on the ambivalent role of communication difficulties in an adolescent`s development as a research subject. The author concludes that social deprivation, forced intercourse in an isolated group are factors of deviant communicative difficulties in adolescents who use specific ways of coping with them: aggression, confrontation, mobbing, manipulations, adaptation, distancing.