1: Physical and neurological development Flashcards
Plato & Aristotle’s views on adolescence
Plato: reasoning appears first in adolescence; adolescents should study science, mathematics, & children should study sports and music.
Aristotle: the ability to choose is of utmost importance, development of self-determination is a sign of maturity; independence, career choice, identity, etc. Adolescents are very egocentric; “they think they know everything and are quite sure about it”.
Middle Ages & Rosseau’s view on adolescents
Middle Ages: Children & adolescents are miniature adults
Rosseau: in adolescence, reasoning develops, curiosity should be encouraged in 12-15 year olds education. From 15-20 years, emotional maturity takes place, selfisness is replaced by an interest in others. Adolescent devleopment has distinct stages.
G. Stanley Hall: Storm-and-Stress view
Applied Darwin’s view to the study of adolescence: proposed that adolescent development is controlled primarily by biological factors.
Storm and stress view: Hall’s concept that adolescence is a time of conflict and mood swings. In his view, adolescents’ thoughts, feelings, and actions oscillate between conceit and humility, good intentions and temptation, happiness and sadness.
Margaret Mead: Sociocultural view of adolescence
She concluded that the basic nature of adolescence is not biological, as Hall envisioned, but rather sociocultural. In cultures that provide a smooth, gradual transition from childhood to adulthood, which is the way adolescence is handled in Samoa, she found little storm and stress associated with the period. Mead concluded that cultures that allow adolescents to observe sexual relations, see babies born, regard death as natural, do important work, engage in sex play, and know clearly what their adult roles will be tend to promote a relatively stress-free adolescence. However, in cultures like the United States, in which children are considered very different from adults and adolescents are restricted from full participation in society, the period is more likely to be stressful.
Criticism: Samoan adolescence is more stressful than Mead suggested and that delinquency appears among Samoan adolescents just as it does among Western adolescents.
Inventionist view of adolescence
Adolescence is a sociohistorical creation. Especially important in this view of adolescence are the sociohistorical circumstances at the beginning of the twentieth century, a time when legislation was enacted that ensured the dependency of youth and made their move into the economic sphere more manageable. increased mechanization during the Industrial Revolution, which raised the level of skill required of laborers and necessitated a specialized division of labor; the separation of work and home; age-graded schools; urbanization; the appearance of youth groups such as the YMCA and the Boy Scouts; and the writings of G. Stanley Hall.
Some scholars argue that the concept of adolescence was invented mainly as a by-product of the movement to create a system of compulsory public education. In this view, the function of secondary schools is to transmit intellectual skills to youth. However, other scholars argue that the primary purpose of secondary schools is to deploy youth within the economic sphere. In this view, American society conferred the status of adolescence on youth through child-saving legislation (Lapsley, Enright, & Serlin, 1985). By developing special laws for youth, adults restricted their options, encouraged their dependency, and made their move into the world of work more manageable.
Cohort
A cohort is a group of people who are born at a similar point in history and share similar experiences as a result.
Cohort effects
In discussing and conducting research on such historical variations, the term cohort effects is used, which refers to influences attributed to a person’s time of birth, era, or generation, but not to actual chronological age.
Millennials
In recent years, generations have been given labels by the popular culture. The most recent label is Millennials, which applies to the generation born after 1980—the first to come of age and enter emerging adulthood in the new millennium. Two characteristics of Millennials stand out: (1) their ethnic diversity, and (2) their connection to technology.
Adolescent generalization gap
Refers to generalizations that are based on information about a limited, often highly visible group of adolescents.
The five C’s of Positive Youth Development
Competence, which involves having a positive perception of one’s actions in domainspecifi c areas—social, academic, physical, career, and so on
Confi dence, which consists of an overall positive sense of self-worth and self-effi cacy (a sense that one can master a situation and produce positive outcomes)
Connection, which is characterized by positive relationships with others, including family, peers, teachers, and individuals in the community
Character, which comprises respect for societal rules, an understanding of right and wrong, and integrity
Caring/compassion, which encompasses showing emotional concern for others, especially those in distress
Positive Youth Development
Positive youth development emphasizes the strengths of youth and the positive qualities and developmental trajectories that are desired for youth.
What is needed to successfully develop the five C’s of PYD?
To develop these fi ve positive characteristics, youth need access to positive social contexts—such as youth development programs and organized youth activities—and competent people—such as caring teachers, community leaders, and mentors.
What & when is adolescence?
Adolescence is the period of transition between childhood and adulthood that involves biological, cognitive, and socioemotional changes. A key task of adolescence is preparation for adulthood. Indeed, the future of any culture hinges on how eff ective this preparation is.
Although the age range of adolescence can vary with cultural and historical circumstances, in the United States and most other cultures today adolescence begins at approximately 10 to 13 years of age and ends in the late teens. Th e biological, cognitive, and socioemotional changes of adolescence range from the development of sexual functions to abstract thinking processes to independence.
Early & late adolescence
Early adolescence corresponds roughly to the middle school or junior high school years and includes most pubertal change.
Late adolescence refers approximately to the latter half of the second decade of life. Career interests, dating, and identity exploration are often more pronounced in late adolescence than in early adolescence.
From childhood to adolescence: biological changes
Among the biological changes are the growth spurt, hormonal changes, and sexual maturation that come with puberty. In early adolescence, changes take place in the brain that allow for more advanced thinking. Also at this time, adolescents begin to stay up later at night and sleep later in the morning.
Childhood to adolescence: cognitive changes
Among the cognitive changes that occur during the transition from childhood to adolescence are thinking more abstractly, idealistically, and logically. In response to these changes, parents place more responsibility for decision making on the young adolescent’s shoulders, although too oft en adolescents make decisions that are fi lled with risk, especially when they are with their peers. Compared with children, adolescents process information faster, can sustain their attention longer, and engage in more eff ective executive function, which includes monitoring and managing their cognitive resources, exercising cognitive control, and delaying gratifi cation.
Childhood to adolescence: socioemotional changes
Among the socioemotional changes adolescents undergo are a quest for independence, confl ict with parents, and a desire to spend more time with peers. Conversations with friends become more intimate and include more self-disclosure. As children enter adolescence, they attend schools that are larger and more impersonal than their neighborhood elementary schools. Achievement becomes more serious business, and academic challenges increase. Also at this time, increased sexual maturation produces a much greater interest in romantic relationships. Young adolescents also experience more dramatic mood swings than they did when they were children.
Emerging adulthood
The transition from adolescence to adulthood has been referred to as emerging adulthood, which takes place from approximately 18 to 25 years of age. Experimentation and exploration characterize the emerging adult. At this point in their development, many individuals are still exploring which career path they want to follow, what they want their identity to be, and which lifestyle they want to adopt (for example, single, cohabiting, or married).
Emerging adulthood: five key features
Identity exploration, especially in love and work. Emerging adulthood is the time during which key changes in identity take place for many individuals.
Instability. Residential changes peak during emerging adulthood, a time during which there also is oft en instability in love, work, and education.
Self-focused. According to Arnett (2006, p. 10), emerging adults “are self-focused in the sense that they have little in the way of social obligations, little in the way of duties and commitments to others, which leaves them with a great deal of autonomy in running their own lives.”
Feeling in-between. Many emerging adults don’t consider themselves adolescents or full-fl edged adults.
The age of possibilities, a time when individuals have an opportunity to transform their lives. Arnett (2006) describes two ways in which emerging adulthood is the age of possibilities: (1) many emerging adults are optimistic about their future; and (2) for emerging adults who have experienced difficult times while growing up, emerging adulthood presents an opportunity to reorient their lives in a more positive direction.
Freud’s theory: adolescence
Freud stressed that adolescents’ lives are filled with tension and conflict. To reduce the tension, he thought adolescents bury their conflicts in their unconscious mind. Freud said that even trivial behaviors can become significant when the unconscious forces behind them are revealed. A twitch, a doodle, a joke, a smile—each might betray unconscious conflict. For example, 17-year-old Barbara, while kissing and hugging Tom, exclaims, “Oh, Jeff, I love you so much.” Repelled, Tom explodes: “Why did you call me Jeff? I thought you didn’t think about him anymore. We need to have a talk!” You probably can remember times when such a “Freudian slip” revealed your own unconscious motives.
Freud’s theory: id, ego, superego
Freud (1917) divided personality into three structures: the id, the ego, and the superego. T h e id consists of instincts, which are an individual’s reservoir of psychic energy. In Freud’s view, the id is totally unconscious; it has no contact with reality. As children experience the demands and constraints of reality, a new structure of personality emerges—the ego, which deals with the demands of reality. Th e ego is called the “executive branch” of personality because it makes rational decisions. The id and the ego have no morality—they do not take into account whether something is right or wrong. The superego is the moral branch of personality. The superego takes into account whether something is right or wrong. Think of the superego as what we often refer to as our “conscience.” You probably are beginning to sense that both the id and the superego make life rough for the ego. Your ego might say, “I will have sex only occasionally and be sure to take the proper precautions because I don’t want a child to interfere with the development of my career.” However, your id is saying, “I want to be satisfied; sex is pleasurable.” Your superego is at work, too: “I feel guilty about having sex outside of marriage.”
Erikson’s psychosocial theory: adolescence
During the adolescent years, individuals explore who they are, what they are all about,and where they are going in life. This is Erikson’s fifth developmental stage, identity versus identity confusion. If adolescents explore roles in a healthy manner and arrive at a positive path to follow in life, they achieve a positive identity; if not, identity confusion reigns.
Piaget’s theory: adolescence
Th e formal operational stage, which appears between the ages of 11 and 15 and continues through adulthood, is Piaget’s fourth and fi nal stage. In this stage, individuals move beyond concrete experiences and think in abstract and more logical terms. As part of thinking more abstractly, adolescents develop images of ideal circumstances. Th ey might think about what an ideal parent is like and compare their parents to this ideal standard. Th ey begin to entertain possibilities for the future and are fascinated with what they can be. In solving problems, they become more systematic, developing hypotheses about why something is happening the way it is and then testing these hypotheses.
Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory
Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory holds that development reflects the influence of five environmental systems: microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem.
Th e microsystem is the setting in which the adolescent lives. Th ese contexts include the adolescent’s family, peers, school, and neighborhood. It is in the microsystem that the most direct interactions with social agents take place—with parents, peers, and teachers, for example. Th e adolescent is not a passive recipient of experiences in these settings but someone who helps to construct the settings.
Th e mesosystem involves relations between microsystems or connections between contexts. Examples are the relation of family experiences to school experiences, school experiences to religious experiences, and family experiences to peer experiences. For example, adolescents whose parents have rejected them may have diffi culty developing positive relations with teachers.
Th e exosystem consists of links between a social setting in which the ado-lescent does not have an active role and the individual’s immediate context. For example, a husband’s or an adolescent’s experience at home may be infl u-enced by a mother’s experiences at work. Th e mother might receive a promo-tion that requires more travel, which might increase confl ict with the husband and change patterns of interaction with the adolescent.
Th e macrosystem involves the culture in which adolescents live. Culture refers to the behavior patterns, beliefs, and all other products of a group of people that are passed on from generation to generation.
Th e chronosystem consists of the patterning of environmental events and transitions over the life course, as well as sociohistorical circumstances. For example, divorce is one transition.
