Physical and Cognitive Development in ADOLESCENCE Flashcards
puberty
A period of rapid physical maturation, occurring primarily in early adolescence, that involves hormonal and bodily changes.
menarche
A girl’s first menstruation.
hormones
Powerful chemical substances secreted by the endocrine glands and carried through the body by the bloodstream.
corpus callosum
The location where fibers connect the brain’s left and right hemispheres.
limbic system
The part of the brain where emotions and rewards are processed.
amygdala
The region of the brain that is the seat of emotions.
Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs)
Infections that are contracted primarily through sexual contact, including oral-genital and anal-genital contact.
anorexia nervosa
An eating disorder that involves the relentless pursuit of thinness through starvation.
bulimia nervosa
An eating disorder in which the individual consistently follows a binge-and-purge pattern.
hypothetical-deductive reasoning
Piaget’s formal operational concept that adolescents have the cognitive ability to develop hypotheses, or best guesses, about ways to solve problems.
adolescent egocentrism
The heightened self-consciousness of adolescents.
imaginary audience
Adolescents’ belief that others are as interested in them as they themselves are, as well as attention-getting behavior motivated by a desire to be noticed, visible, and “on stage.”
personal fable
The part of adolescent egocentrism that involves an adolescent’s sense of uniqueness and invincibility (or invulnerability).
cognitive control
Effective control of thinking in a number of areas, including controlling attention, reducing interfering thoughts, and being cognitively flexible.
fuzzy-trace theory dual-process model
States that decision making is influenced by two systems—“verbatim” analytical (literal and precise) and gist-based intuition (simple bottom-line meaning)—which operate in parallel; in this model, gist-based intuition benefits adolescent decision making more than analytical thinking does.
