week 15 - adolescence, adulthood, and aging Flashcards
Describe major features of physical, cognitive, and social development during adolescence.
Physical
Physical changes associated with puberty are triggered by hormones.
Physical changes of puberty mark the onset of adolescence (Lerner & Steinberg, 2009). For both boys and girls, these changes include a growth spurt in height, growth of pubic and underarm hair, and skin changes (e.g., pimples). Boys also experience growth in facial hair and a deepening of their voice. Girls experience breast development and begin menstruating. These pubertal changes are driven by hormones, particularly an increase in testosterone for boys and oestrogen for girls.
Cognitive
Cognitive changes include improvements in complex and abstract thought, as well as development that happens at different rates in distinct parts of the brain and increases adolescents’ propensity for risky behaviour because increases in sensation-seeking and reward motivation precede increases in cognitive control.
Major changes in the structure and functioning of the brain occur during adolescence and result in cognitive and behavioural developments (Steinberg, 2008). Cognitive changes during adolescence include a shift from concrete to more abstract and complex thinking. Such changes are fostered by improvements during early adolescence in attention, memory, processing speed, and metacognition (ability to think about thinking and therefore make better use of strategies like mnemonic devices that can improve thinking).
Social
Adolescents’ relationships with parents go through a period of redefinition in which adolescents become more autonomous, and aspects of parenting, such as distal monitoring and psychological control, become more salient. Peer relationships are important sources of support and companionship during adolescence yet can also promote problem behaviours. Same-sex peer groups evolve into mixed-sex peer groups, and adolescents’ romantic relationships tend to emerge from these groups. Identity formation occurs as adolescents explore and commit to different roles and ideological positions.
Social changes:
Parents
Peers
Romantic relationships
Understand why adolescence is a period of heightened risk taking.
Early in adolescence, changes in the brain’s dopaminergic system contribute to increases in adolescents’ sensation-seeking and reward motivation. Later in adolescence, the brain’s cognitive control centres in the prefrontal cortex develop, increasing adolescents’ self-regulation and future orientation. The difference in timing of the development of these different regions of the brain contributes to more risk taking during middle adolescence because adolescents are motivated to seek thrills that sometimes come from risky behaviour, such as reckless driving, smoking, or drinking, and have not yet developed the cognitive control to resist impulses or focus equally on the potential risks (Steinberg, 2008). One of the world’s leading experts on adolescent development, Laurence Steinberg, likens this to engaging a powerful engine before the braking system is in place. The result is that adolescents are more prone to risky behaviours than are children or adults.
Be able to explain sources of diversity in adolescent development.
Adolescent development does not necessarily follow the same pathway for all individuals. Certain features of adolescence, particularly with respect to biological changes associated with puberty and cognitive changes associated with brain development, are relatively universal. But other features of adolescence depend largely on circumstances that are more environmentally variable. For example, adolescents growing up in one country might have different opportunities for risk taking than adolescents in a different country, and support and sanctions for different behaviours in adolescence depend on laws and values that might be specific to where adolescents live. Likewise, different cultural norms regarding family and peer relationships shape adolescents’ experiences in these domains. For example, in some countries, adolescents’ parents are expected to retain control over major decisions, whereas in other countries, adolescents are expected to begin sharing in or taking control of decision making.Even within the same country, adolescents’ gender, ethnicity, immigrant status, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and personality can shape both how adolescents behave and how others respond to them, creating diverse developmental contexts for different adolescents. For example, early puberty (that occurs before most other peers have experienced puberty) appears to be associated with worse outcomes for girls than boys, likely in part because girls who enter puberty early tend to associate with older boys, which in turn is associated with early sexual behavior and substance use. For adolescents who are ethnic or sexual minorities, discrimination sometimes presents a set of challenges that nonminorities do not face.Finally, genetic variations contribute an additional source of diversity in adolescence. Current approaches emphasise gene X environment interactions, which often follow a differential susceptibility model (Belsky & Pluess, 2009). That is, particular genetic variations are considered riskier than others, but genetic variations also can make adolescents more or less susceptible to environmental factors. For example, the association between the CHRM2 genotype and adolescent externalising behaviour (aggression and delinquency)has been found in adolescents whose parents are low in monitoring behaviours (Dick et al., 2011). Thus, it is important to bear in mind that individual differences play an important role in adolescent development.
identity moratorium
Identity moratorium - An identity moratorium is one step in the process of finding a sense of self. It is a period of active searching for one’s occupational, religious, ethnic, or another form of identity to determine who they really are. It is an identity crisis as part of the quest of teens and tweens to find themselves.
what is the most important conflict in adolescence involving?
The most important conflict in adolescence involved identity formation, according to Erikson
what is differential susceptibility
Genetic factors make individuals more or less responsive to environmental influences. This phenomenon is known as differential susceptibility.
why is 15 year old Charlie prone to risky behaviour?
Fifteen-year-old Charlie is prone to risky behaviour because his dopaminergic system has developed to reward him, but his prefrontal cortex is still immature.
homophily
Homophily - the tendency to associate with people similar to yourself
Homophily - Adolescents tend to associate with peers who are similar to themselves.
crowds
Crowds - Adolescent peer groups characterised by shared reputations or images.
deviant peer contagion
Deviant peer contagion - The spread of problem behaviours within groups of adolescents.
differential susceptibility
Differential susceptibility - Genetic factors that make individuals more or less responsive to environmental experiences.
foreclosure
Foreclosure - Individuals commit to an identity without exploration of options.
identity acheivement
Identity achievement - Individuals have explored different options and then made commitments.
identity diffusion
Identity diffusion - Adolescents neither explore nor commit to any roles or ideologies.
moratorium
Moratorium - State in which adolescents are actively exploring options but have not yet made identity commitments.
psychological control
Psychological control - Parents’ manipulation of and intrusion into adolescents’ emotional and cognitive world through invalidating adolescents’ feelings and pressuring them to think in particular ways.
Explain where, when, and why a new life stage of emerging adulthood appeared over the past half-century.
The theory of emerging adulthood proposes that a new life stage has arisen between adolescence and young adulthood over the past half-century in industrialised countries. Fifty years ago, most young people in these countries had entered stable adult roles in love and work by their late teens or early twenties. Relatively few people pursued education or training beyond secondary school, and, consequently, most young men were full-time workers by the end of their teens. Relatively few women worked in occupations outside the home, and the median marriage age for women in the United States and in most other industrialised countries in 1960 was around 20
Identify the five features that distinguish emerging adulthood from other life stages.
Five features make emerging adulthood distinctive: identity explorations, instability, self-focus, feeling in-between adolescence and adulthood, and a sense of broad possibilities for the future. Emerging adulthood is found mainly in industrialised countries, where most young people obtain tertiary education and median ages of entering marriage and parenthood are around 30.
Describe the variations in emerging adulthood in countries around the world.
There are variations in emerging adulthood within industrialised countries. It lasts longest in Europe, and in Asian industrialised countries, the self-focused freedom of emerging adulthood is balanced by obligations to parents and by conservative views of sexuality. In non-industrialized countries, although today emerging adulthood exists only among the middle-class elite, it can be expected to grow in the 21st century as these countries become more affluent.
collectivism
Collectivism - Belief system that emphasises the duties and obligations that each person has toward others.
