Die rol van kognitiewe funksionering in hoop by adolessente

English: The primary aim of this research was to clarify the cognitive function of hope in adolescents. The hope construct was theoretically investigated in this research and an integrated hope model and hope process were developed. The nature of hope was investigated in adolescents (boys and girls respectively). Hope is furthermore described (for the purpose of this study) as a mood condition which activates emotions. A cognitive process starts when pathway thoughts (the setting of objectives) and work agency thinking (motivation) take place. Cognitive function in hope is discussed by means of describing cognitive styles. The connection between cognitive styles and hope is further investigated and also related to cognitive development in adolescents. Specific attention is paid to hope and the adolescent in the South African context. During the empirical study, the cluster sampling method was used to identify four schools in the North West Province which would participate in this research. All the grade 12 learners of those specific schools were approached to complete questionnaires. The study group consisted of 485 adolescents. In this research, hope was determined by the Hope Scale of Snyder et al. (1991a) and cognitive function by means of the Constructed Thinking Inventory (Epstein, 1993) and the Cognitive Flexibility Scale (Martin & Rubin, 1995), respectively. Good reliability indices were obtained for all the questionnaires and scales used. Five variables, namely cognitive flexibility, naïve optimism, esoteric thinking, personal beliefs (superstition) and behaviour coping, contribute considerably to the clarification of the variance of the pathway component of hope in adolescents. As far as culture and cognitive functioning were concerned, definite differences between score averages were obtained on four scales of the two culture groups. These scales were global constructive thinking, esoteric thinking, naïve optimism and cognitive flexibility. Afrikaans-speaking adolescents obtained a higher average score than the Africanlanguage adolescents on the scale of global constructed thinking. Concerning the scales of esoteric thinking, naïve optimism, and cognitive flexibility the Africanlanguage adolescents obtained a higher average score than the Afrikaans-speaking adolescents. The higher average score of the African-language adolescents indicates lower cognitive flexibility. However, it is important to take into account that the cognitive flexibility scale is based on western culture. Despite the fact that the biographical variable, culture, does not considerably contribute to the clarification of the pathway component variance, it does contribute to the clarification of the agency component variance. As far as gender differences are concerned, the results of this study give no indication of any contribution to the clarification of the variance of the agency or the pathway components of hope. Obvious differences were evident concerning the average emotional coping and naïve optimism of the two sexes. Concerning the emotional-coping scale, the boys obtained a higher average score than the girls, while the girls obtained a higher average score than the boys on the scale naïve optimism. Recommendations for further research were made on the strength of the results.