exam 1 Flashcards
G. Stanley Hall:
Biological theory: hormonal and physical changes of puberty are the driving force of change
Believed adolescence goes from 12-23 years old
Storm & stress view of adolescence
Contradicting tendencies
Energy and enthusiasm vs. indifference and boredom
Gaiety and laughter vs. gloom and melancholy
Vanity and boastfulness vs. humiliation and bashfulness
Sensitivity vs. callousness
Tenderness vs. cruelty
Erik Erikson:
organismic theory: interaction of biological and contextual forces shape change
- Identity is achieved through the successful resolution of tasks, failure to resolve tasks results in role confusion
- Importance of self-identity
Anna Freud:
organismic theory: interaction of biological and contextual forces
-Believed that defense mechanism are the key to understanding adolescent adjustment
2 defense mechanisms of anna freud
Asceticism and Intellectualization
Asceticism
become super religious against sinful sexual desires
Intellectualization
defends against emotional feelings by becoming overly logical about life
cause of psychic disequilibrium
increased ID activity conflicts with superego, adolescent regresses and need for defense mechanisms increases
Markers of adolescence
Cognitive: emergence of more advanced reasoning abilities and ends with consolidation of advanced reasoning abilities
Emotional: beginning of detachment from parents and ends with attainment of separate sense of identity
Social: change in status- political (voting), economic (opportunities to earn $$),
Legal: can be charged as an adult, status offenses: not offensive for adults but bad for a juvenile
Organismic:
interaction of biological and contextual forces shape change
Learning:
contextual (environmental) forces (age & development not important)
Anthropological:
social conditions define the nature of adolescent development (extreme environmental perspective)
Sociological:
how adolescents, as a group, come of age
Theorists associated with organismic perspective:
Erik Erikson and Anna Freud
Plato, focus of education for childhood vs. adolescence:
no point in education in infancy (0-7 years old), childhood (7-14) education is for sports and music, adolescence (14-21) education is for science and math
Life-cycle service:
in late teens and early 20s do domestic or farm work or have apprenticeship, move out of family home for first time, even females, typically approx. 7 year commitment
why life cycle service faded
industrialization
Effect social institutions (like YMCA etc.) had on adolescents:
industrialization had led many young people to move to cities without family or community ties, this led to social problems of sex, drugs, and alcohol. Institutions of social control made those things decrease again
G. Stanley Hall –
Age of Adolescence, storm and stress view, recapitulation, contradicting tendencies
Emerging adulthood:
late teens mid-late 20s, new period in life course due to industrialized society, no longer just a transition period but is now a separate life period
Five features of emerging adulthood
- age of identity explorations
- age of instability
- self-focused age
- age of feeling in-between
- age of possibilities
Three major contributions which made 1820-1920 the “Age of Adolescence”
- legislation prohibiting child labor
- compulsory education laws for both elementary and secondary education
- adolescence became a distinct field of scientific scholarship
Sub-Saharan Africa:
rich in resources, exploited by West, wars, poverty, large supportive families, lots of responsibility, recent strong economic growth, AIDs/HIV- 80% of deaths in Africa
Asia:
industrialized, Confucianism/ expectation to care for parents/ obedience, intense stress of education, parent is primary role- spouse is second, some countries beginning to become more individualistic
India:
huge population with high rate of poverty, Hinduism and Islam, high rate of illiteracy, no compulsory education, child labor, caste system
Latin America:
Catholicism, effects of colonization, governments slowly becoming more stable, leading to economic growth, increasing rates of education and decreasing birth rates, high unemployment
The Monitoring the Future study–
University of Michigan, national annual survey of 50,000 adolescents in 8th, 10th, and 12th grades in 420 schools, 350 kids randomly selected from each school, wide range of topics: substance use, political and social attitudes, and gender roles
Why the hypothalamus increases GnRH production
due to an increase in body fat which leads to an increase in leptin
Hormones that help the gonads to develop and produce their sex hormones
Follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) Luteinizing Hormone (LH)
Reason for different body shapes of males and females after puberty
- Growth spurt occurs about 2 years earlier in girls than in boys (girls peak growth is at 11 and boys is 13) —– boys grow up to 9 inches, girls 6-7
- There is a spurt in muscle growth and surge in body fat
- boys gain about 26lbs due to muscle, girls about 20lbs due to fat
- males broaden in their shoulders, females in hips
- muscle: fat ratio- males—3:1 females— 5:4
Timing of sexual maturity
-timing is largely inherited but also affected by environmental factors (access to food and medical care)
Secular trend in puberty
in Western countries the age of menarche is decreasing as nutrition and medical advances improve, puberty comes sooner
Early maturers female
body changes and psychological consequences of being different
-more restrictive parents, greater conflict with parents, excluded from peer activity, report being under a great amount of stress, poor academic performance, start dating earlier, increased likelihood of early sexual activity, deviant behavior and substance abuse, poor body image, higher rates of depression, anxiety and eating disorders, less likelihood of higher education, and poor job outlook
Late maturers female
psychological consequences of not hitting puberty
-more sociable, cheerful, and expressive in elementary school, more likely to participate in after school activities, teasing, socially handicapped, not included, negative body image that grows more favorable after high school, 2x more likely to continue education after high school, better job outlook
Primary sexual characteristics:
testes, ovaries, sperm, and ova
Secondary sexual characteristics:
breast development, voice changes, facial, pubic, and body hair, increased activity of sweat glands, skin gets rougher, bones get more dense
Gender differences in timing of puberty among the Kikuyu
- boys show their first physical changes of puberty before their female peers
- this is a reversal of the western pattern
- affected by the culture in Kenya
Environmental effects on menarche
2 main effects are:
- Extent to which food production provides adequate nutrition
- Extent to which medical care provides good health through childhood
Other environmental effects on menarche
- Also lower SES –> higher age of menarche (less access to nutritious food)
- Family factors: puberty comes earlier in more conflict-ridden homes and in a home with a stepfather, comes later when you are living with biological relatives
Brain changes:
- frontal cortex (there is an overproduction of cells just before puberty)
- Pruning process- takes away pathways not used frequently
- Pre-frontal cortex is important to adolescence due to function is planning, flexibility, strategies, and warning of possible consequences
Piaget
- formal operational thought: (11-15 yrs) final stage of cognitive development
- Prerequisites: Flexible, second symbol system, introspection
Arguments against allowing young women the opportunity for higher education
- “too much” education for young women is hazardous to them because it would spoil their feminine qualities and it might exhaust them and even make them ill
- women were inherently inferior to men intellectually and higher education would be wasted on them
- women have a smaller brain, women are closer to children and savages
- today women exceed male’s performance on all tests and educational achievement
Pseudostupidity:
we often fail to see the obvious
Hypothetical deductive thinking:
can come up with a hypothesis, variables, and systematically test them to reach a conclusion
Different types of adolescent egocentrism
Imaginary audience
personal fable
invincibility fable
Imaginary Audience:
heightened self-consciousness, think everyone pays attention to you
Personal Fable:
belief adolescent has that their experiences are unique, this can provide a protective barrier and enhance their self-esteem and self-importance
Invincibility Fable:
belief that they can’t be harmed by anything which increases risk-taking
Changes in information processing abilities during adolescence
- Increases in attention: selective and divided
- Improved memory abilities
- Memory control processes become more efficient and organized
- Increases in speed of information processing: process necessary info faster, don’t have to process things that you already know
- Improved organizational strategies
- Advances in metacognition (thinking about your thinking)
- Thinking becomes more automatic
Importance of pragmatism=
adopting aspects of logical thinking to practical constraints of real life situations (part of post-formal thinking seen in emerging adulthood)
Effect of Inuit children attending school
- Inuit children did not go to school until recently
- this doesn’t mean that they didn’t possess and use formal operational thinking
- since recently starting school they’ve had a slow transition to actually respecting school and many find it boring and resort to delinquency
Chief changes in cognition during adolescence
- Better able than children to think about what is possible, instead of limiting their thought to what is real
- Better able to think about abstract things
- Begin thinking more often about the process of thinking itself- metacognition
- Become multidimensional, rather than limited to a single issue
- More likely than children to see things are relative, rather than as absolute
Vygotsky: what is development?
- Children construct their knowledge
- Development cannot be separated from its social context
- Language plays a central role in mental development
General Genetic Law of Cultural Development
-claim that higher mental functions in the individual have their origin in social life
Kpelle tribe – categorization
-members of the Kpelle tribe used functional categories such as a knife with an orange, which they considered to be a “wise” categorization, whereas they believed that simply putting similar objects together (food, clothes, tool, & eating utensils) was unwise
Kearins’ study of white Australian and Aboriginal adolescents – results
- compared the visual spatial memory in Aboriginal and white Australian adolescents
- Aboriginals did better because white Australians used verbal cues instead of spatial cues
