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Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood Physical and Cognitive Development. Chapter 10. 10. Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood Physical and Cognitive Development. Adolescent Development in a Cultural and Historical Context Physical Development and Adaptation Gender Identity and Sexual Practices
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Adolescence and Emerging AdulthoodPhysical and Cognitive Development Chapter 10 10
Adolescence and Emerging AdulthoodPhysical and Cognitive Development • Adolescent Development in a Cultural and Historical Context • Physical Development and Adaptation • Gender Identity and Sexual Practices • Cognitive Changes in Adolescence
Adolescent Development in Cultural and Historical Context • The adolescent period, between childhood and adulthood, is apparent in all cultures, often associated with a rite of passage
Adolescent Development in Cultural and Historical Context • The period between ages 18-25 is often filled with activities aimed at preparing for adulthood and called emerging adulthood • Adolescence in the U.S. is characterized by: • age-segregation • economic dependence • mass media • instability, uncertainty, and challenge
Physical Development and Adaptation • Physical Growth and Change • Rapid biological changes occur • Secondary sex characteristics develop, controlled by increased hormones • Growth spurt takes place • Hormones have powerful effects on the brain, influencing development and emotionality • Girls experience menarche; boys produce the first sperm emission
Physical Changes and Adaptation • Secular Trend: In many industrialized countries, puberty occurs at younger ages than in the past • Adolescents below to a marginal group, on the fringe of dominant culture • Body image is of major concern • Girls worry about being too fat or too tall • Focus on obesity can lead to eating disorders • anorexia nervosa • bulimia nervosa
Video Clip • Tyra Banks visits an eating disorder clinic • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ct-q1FCeLc
Video Clip • Tyra Banks interviews a teenage girl about her struggle with anorexia: • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JixbTHj6FKY
Physical Development and Adaptation • Boys and girls mature at different ages • Girls mature 2 years earlier than boys, on average • Late maturation is a disadvantage for boys • Early maturation can be a problem for boys and girls, because childhood is cut short • Late maturation can be an advantage for girls, because then they are in more in sync with boys
Gender Identity and Sexual Practices • Sexual attitudes have gone back-and-forth across the last several decades • Teenagers today are highly sexually active: by 12th grade 66% of females and 63% of males report sexual activity • Early sexual activity is associated with gender, ethnicity, family situation, and age of sexual maturity
Video Clip • ABC News story on teen sex: Oral sex as the new goodnight kiss: • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gF7Kn3a37p4
Percent of Students who Have Had Sexual Intercourse, by Gender and Racial/Ethnic Identity SOURCE: From “Healthy Youth!” by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2008. Retrieved December 12, 2008, from http://apps.nccd.cdc.gov/yrbss/pfQuestYearTable.asp?
Consequences of Adolescent Sexual Behavior • Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) • About 20% of sexually active teens have an STD • By age 24, the number increases to 33% • Teenage pregnancy • About 8% of teen girls become pregnant • Pregnancy rate for teenagers who identified as Black or Hispanic was more than twice that for teenagers who identified themselves as White • 30% of sexually active teens use no contraception • Rates of teen pregnancy have fallen 30% over the past decade
Video Clip • Scene from the documentary In My Room: girl describes her experience with and reasons for self-cutting: • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkiZZHmW9f8
Video Clip • Associated Press news story describing a “pregnancy pact” between 17 teen girls in a town in Massachusetts: • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6shsEeSuL3
Video Clip • CBS news interview with teenage mother from high school where a number of her classmates made a “pregnancy pact”: • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnHSnlhZ2ZA
Live U.S. Birth Rates for Mothers Ages 15 to 17, 2005 and 2006 SOURCE: From “Births: Final data for 2005,” by J. A. Martin et al., 2007, National Vital Statistics Reports, 56(6); and “Births: Preliminary data for 2006,” by B. E. Hamilton, J. A. Martin, and S. J. Ventura, 2007, National Vital Statistics Reports, 56(7).
Teenage Parenthood • Teen mothers may drop out of school, work lower paying jobs, experience job dissatisfaction, and become dependent of government support • Teen fathers may leave school and take low-paying job to support new family • Marriage of teen parents generally does not produce positive outcomes in part because marriage leads to school dropout • Children of teenaged parents are at a disadvantage compared to children of older parents
Summary of Teen Parenthood Consequences in the United States
Summary of Teen Parenthood Consequences in the United States (continued)
Cognitive Changes in Adolescence • Used to be thought that brain was fully developed by adolescence • New research using brain imaging techniques shows otherwise • Synaptic pruning takes place • Gray matter (neural tissue) and white matter (myelin) increase until about the age of 40 • Last area of brain development in teens is in frontal lobes, where decision making, problem solving, and thinking occur • Judgment skills are the last to develop
Cognitive Changes in Adolescence • Hormones affect brain development, especially in the amygdala, where emotions are regulated • Risky behaviors and emotionality may be the result of brain areas developing at different rates • Cognitive development in adolescence • acquiring more knowledge • using abstract thought • metacognition • Piaget’s formal operations stage associated with hypothetical (scientific) reasoning
Video Clip • Discussion of formal operational thought • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw36PpYPPZM
The Scope and Content of Adolescent Thought • More breadth and complexity in their thought content • Adolescents’ ability to understand contrary-to-fact situations often affects parent-child relationships • Adolescents want to “negotiate” at this age • Teens show increasing concern with social, political, and moral issues
Adolescent Egocentrism • Self-absorption in understanding own thoughts, attitudes, and values leads to egocentrism • They imagine themselves as the center of everyone’s scrutiny—imaginary audience • Personal fable, the teen’s belief that he or she is so special that nothing bad can happen to them, is often apparent in adolescent thinking
Adolescent Egocentrism • These beliefs may be based, to some extent, in reality • Egocentric thinking not confined to adolescence
Moral Development in Adolescence • Most teens move beyond Kolhberg’s conventional stage (at least sometimes), where judgments conform to social expectations and stereotypes • May begin to rely on internalized moral principles (post-conventional stage) • Giving teens more complex moral issues to consider creates a disequilibrium that encourages them to struggle to resolve contradictions
Summary • Adolescence is a complex time of development, and how and when children experience it depends on their culture • In the United States, adolescents spend more time with their peers than younger children or adults, they are economically dependent on their parents, and they are heavily influenced by the media • It is a time of rapid biological change, which preoccupies them
Summary • Puberty is characterized by the first menstrual period in girls (ages 10 to 16), and by the first emission of semen with sperm for boys (ages 11 to 16) • Puberty is occurring at earlier ages now than in the past • Adolescents are on the fringes of dominant culture and feel a strong pressure to conform • Body image is critical to boys and girls; as a result, eating orders may develop • Teens today in the United States are highly sexually active, and teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease are some of the problems associated with early sexual activity
Summary • Brain development continues, including development in the frontal lobes between the ages of 12 and 15 • Adolescents enter the stage of cognitive development Piaget called formal operations. They can reason abstractly and think hypothetically • Parent-child relationships are challenging at this time • Teens develop a sense that they are invulnerable (personal fable) and believe that they are the center of everyone’s attention • Morally, they begin to make choices that don’t necessarily conform to social standards, but that rely on internalized moral principles