Adolescence

Human Lifespan Development - II

 ❏ Physical Development:
❏ Puberty
❏ Sexual Development
❏ The Adolescent Brain
❏ Physical Health
❏ Cognitive Development
❏ Piaget’s Formal Operations
❏ Changes in Information
Unit Overview Processing
❏ Language Development
❏ Moral Development
❏ Psychosocial
Development
❏ Self Esteem & Concept
❏ Erikson’s psychosocial
❏ Marcia’s Identity Status
❏ Parent - teen relationship
❏ Role of peers
Physical
Development
 Adolescence : Developmental
transition between childhood and
adulthood entailing major physical,
cognitive, and psychosocial
changes.

Puberty: Process by which a

Puberty person attains sexual maturity and
the ability to reproduce.
Avg: 10 - 13

Adolescence as a social construction :

before 20th century no such concept -
children who matured physically were
considered adults
Changes in Puberty
Puberty Begins - hormonal changes
- Distalproximal development - extremities to torso
- Growth may look awkward and out of proportion
- Internal organs like heart and lungs develop
- Beginning of puberty may be related to body fat
- Sexual Development:
- Primary Sex Characteristics: sex organs which mature
- Secondary Sexual Characteristics:Physiological signs of sexual
maturation (such as breast development and growth of body hair) that
do not involve the sex organs.
- Sexual Maturity:
- Menarche: first menstruation
- Spermarche: first ejaculation
- Ages of sexual maturity reducing - influenced by diet, exercise, toxins,
SES, genetics, prepubertal fat and weight, stress, illnesses
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Effects of Early Maturation
• Precocious Puberty (before age 8)
• For girls early puberty is associated with depression, substance use, eating
disorders, disruptive behavior disorders, and early sexual behavior (Graber,
2013).
• Early maturing girls demonstrate more anxiety and less confidence in their
relationships with family and friends, and they compare themselves more
negatively to their peers (Weir, 2016)
• Mental health problems are more likely to occur when the child is among the
first in his or her peer group to develop.
• For boys, previous generations : outcomes were better - correlation with more
success in life. Currently, early maturing boys - more aggressive, antisocial,
substance use issues, mood disorders
• Late maturation in boys - leads to anxiety, depression etc, increased risk for
self harm
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Adolescent Nutrition
• Adolescents tend to be deficient in many essential nutrients mainly
Iron ( in girls due to menstruation ) and calcium ( required for bone and
muscle growth)

• Deficiency - related to modern diets - also concerns with body image -

reduction in consumption of milk

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Eating Disorders
Anorexia Nervosa Bulimia Nervosa
Anorexia nervosa is diagnosed Pattern of overeating compulsively
when four symptoms are evident (consuming thousands of calories
(American Psychiatric Association, within an hour or two) and then
2000): purging via induced vomiting or
• Refusal to maintain a laxatives
weight that is at least 85 Three things combine to warrant a
percent of normal BMI clinical diagnosis of bulimia:
• Intense fear of weight gain
• Disturbed body perception ● Bingeing and purging at
and denial of the problem least once a week for three
• Absence of menstruation months
(in adolescent and adult ● Uncontrollable urges to
females) overeat
● A distorted perception of
body size 10
Sexual Activity
Sexual Activity is influenced by not just the hormonal changes but - gender,
culture and availability
Biological Consequences:
• Pregnancy :
• more at risk for drug abuse, depression
• financial struggles
• more risk for STDs
• inadequate medical care - health complications and mortality
• Infections
• accounts for half of the population with STIs
• HPV, gonorrhea, genital herpes, chlamydia
• younger bodies - less defences against infections
• less likely to seek help
• increased risk for same sex relationships
• Sexual Abuse
• Child sexual abuse: Any erotic activity that arouses an adult and excites,
shames, or confuses a child, whether or not the victim protests and
whether or not genital contact is involved
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Adolescent Brain
Brain’s language Areas - insulation is
completing - making it more difficult to
learn second language (By 13)
Synaptic pruning increases - grey matter
is thinner, Myelination continues - white
matter increases
Corpus Callosum - thickens
Hippocampus more strongly connected to
frontal lobes - memory & decision making
Limbic System - early development in
relation to prefrontal cortex - mismatched
timing - risky behaviour, low emotional
control, poor decisions etc
More sensitive to dopamine and oxytocin -
novelty seeking, reward seeking
especially social rewards
High risk for mental illnesses - 50% occurs 12
by age 14, 75% by age 24
Adolescence Brain Development -
Problems and Benefits
• Due to the delay in the development of prefrontal cortex - adolescence
are driven by emotions and sensation seeking
• “response inhibition, emotional regulation, and organization” are
underdeveloped
• Adolescence increases the activity of the dopamine system, including
neurotransmitters that trigger great pleasure - this is beneficial as they
experience joy in many novel experiences
• Synaptic growth enhances moral development as well. Values acquired
during adolescence are more likely to endure than those learned later,
after brain connections are firmly established

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Cognitive
Development
Adolescent Egocentrism
• A characteristic of adolescent thinking that lead young people (ages 10
to 14) to focus on themselves to the exclusion of others.
• David Elkind (1967)
• Heightened self focus
• Imaginary Audience : believe that they are at center stage
• Personal Fable : an adolescent’s belief that his or her thoughts,
feelings, or experiences are unique, more wonderful or awful than
anyone else’s
• Invincibility fable : An adolescent’s egocentric conviction that he or
she cannot be overcome or even harmed by anything that might defeat
a normal mortal, such as unprotected sex, drug abuse, or high-speed
driving

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Adolescent Egocentrism
• A characteristic of adolescent thinking that lead young people (ages 10
to 14) to focus on themselves to the exclusion of others.
• David Elkind (1967)
• Heightened self focus
• Imaginary Audience : believe that they are at center stage
• Personal Fable : an adolescent’s belief that his or her thoughts,
feelings, or experiences are unique, more wonderful or awful than
anyone else’s
• Invincibility fable : An adolescent’s egocentric conviction that he or
she cannot be overcome or even harmed by anything that might defeat
a normal mortal, such as unprotected sex, drug abuse, or high-speed
driving

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Formal Operational Thought
➔ Abstract Principles
➔ Hypothetical-deductive
reasoning (What ifs)
➔ Inductive vs Deductive
Reasoning
➔ Intuitive vs Analytic thought
➔ Transitivity
➔ Consequences:
◆ Introspection
◆ Idealistic Ideas
◆ Demonstrate Hypocrisy
◆ Pseudostupidity - failing to
see the obvious answer by
looking at the problem in a
complex manner

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Formal Operations - Hypothetical Deductive Reasoning 18
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Psychosocial
Development
Erikson’s Identity vs Role Confusion
• Young people struggle to reconcile their individual identity with their
connection to their heritage (Erikson, 1968)
• Identity achievement: Erikson’s term for the attainment of identity, or the
point at which a person understands who he or she is as a unique individual
Marcia’s 4 Identity Statuses
• Role confusion: A situation in which an adolescent does not seem to know or
care what his or her identity is. (Also called identity diffusion)
• Identity foreclosure: to halt the confusion, they accept (or rebel against)
traditional values without examining them, a comfortable shelter
• Moratorium: An adolescent’s choice of a socially acceptable way to postpone
making identity-achievement decisions - a healthier response than foreclosure
• MAMA cycling or moving back and forth between moratorium and
achievement.

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Marcia’s Four Identity Status

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Four Areas of Identity Achievement
1. Religious Identity
2. Gender Identity
3. Political and Ethnic Identity
4. Vocational Identity

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Parents and Teens
• Greater need for Autonomy - adaptive for teenagers
• Can lead to conflict between parents - teens
• Gender, culture, ethnicity can impact the degree of control parents exercise
• Securely attached teenagers less likely to engage in drug use, criminal
behaviour
• Adolescent Rebellion - not as common as we think
• Teens benefit by connecting to other adult figures besides parents
• Bickering - sign of attachment rather than distance
• Closeness may be more relevant than conflict
a. Communication (do parents and teens talk openly with one another?)
b. Support (do they rely on one another?)
c. Connectedness (how emotionally close are they?)
d. Control (do parents encourage or limit adolescent autonomy?)
• Parental Monitoring - Parents’ ongoing awareness of what their children are
doing, where, and with whom
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Peers
The influence of peers normally peaks at ages 12 to 13 and declines during
middle and late adolescence
Clique
A group of adolescents made up of close friends who are loyal to one another while
excluding outsiders
Crowd
A larger group of adolescents who have something in common but who are not
necessarily friends. Crowd membership is a social construction, a set of labels by
which young people divide the social map based on neighborhood, ethnicity,
socioeconomic status, or other factors
Deviant peer contagion : which is the process by which peers reinforce problem
behavior by laughing or showing other signs of approval that then increase the
likelihood of future problem behavior.
Deviancy training : Destructive peer support in which one person shows another
how to rebel against authority or social norms.
Intimacy with same-sex friends increases during early to mid
adolescence, after which it typically declines as intimacy with the other sex grows 25
(Laursen, 1996)
FIGURE 10.1 Admire Me:
Everyone wants to accumulate
points in a game,earn high grades,
and save money—unless one is a
teenager and other teens are
watching. Then a desire to obtain
peer admiration by taking risks may
overtake caution. At least in this
game, teenage participants chose to
lose points and increase crashes
when other teens were present
Romantic relationships

• Romantic relationships tend to become more intense and more intimate

across adolescence.
• Early adolescents think primarily about how a romantic relationship may
affect their status in the peer group (Bouchey & Furman, 2003).
• In midadolescence, most young people have at least one exclusive partner
lasting for several months to about a year, and the effect of the choice of
partner on peer status tends to become less important (Furman & Wehner,
1997).
• By age 16, adolescents interact with and think about romantic partners
more than parents, friends, or siblings.
• Not until late adolescence or early adulthood, though, do romantic
relationships begin to serve the full gamut of emotional needs that such
relationships can serve and then only in relatively long-term relationships
(Furman & Wehner, 1997).
• Relationship with family and peers influences the teen’s model of romantic
love and choice of partners

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Adolescent Delinquency
Causes:
• Genetic - antisociality and aggression traits
• Neurobiological deficits - related to stress or reward systems
• Types:
• Early onset - beginning before 11 - microsystem and mesosystem
interacting influences
• Late onset - after puberty - minor offences - due to biological changes,
desire for autonomy and decreased adult supervision - normal family
backgrounds
• What causes destructive behaviour?
• prefrontal cortex - impulsivity
• access to means of violence
• peer influence
• rejecting, coercive, or chaotic childhood home environment
• having witnessed or having been victims of neighborhood violence, or
having been exposed to media violence
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Adolescent Delinquency

• Failure to reinforce good behaviours or harsh or inconsistent punishments

for misbehaviour
• lack of parental involvement
• reinforcement of antisocial behaviour - attention
• deviancy training - antisocial peers who talk or laugh about rule breaking
• the hostility elicits hostile responses from others
• protective factors - authoritative parenting, improved monitoring
• Other factors - family economic background, community & neighbourhood -
collective efficacy
• Prevention : early childhood intervention programs - targeting not just
child’s education or counseling but involves the mesosystem & exosystem

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