Chapter 14: Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Adulthood

1. Chapter 14: Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Adulthood

2. The Transition from Adolescence to Adulthood

3. The transition to adulthood: • Occurs in adolescence. • Begins in biology and ends in culture. • Is usually marked by full-time employment. • Is marked by economic independence. • Involves accepting responsibility and consequences for one’s behaviors and choices. • Is influenced by self-perceptions. • College graduates are increasingly returning to live with parents while seeking economic independence.

4. Self-Perceptions of Adult Status

5. Adult status in developing countries is often marked by marriage occurring much earlier than in the United States. • Personal and social assets linked to emerging adulthood sense of well-being: • Intellectual skills. • Psychological skills. • Social skills. • Transition from high school to college: • Has positive and negative aspects. • Can be very stressful.

6. Sources of stress can be: • Academic (exams, grades, competition). • Personal (relationships, parental conflicts). • Economic (balancing work, school). • Psychological (emotional situations). • There are many ways, good and bad, to cope. • An increasing number of people are seeking higher education, as the U.S. is a more educated country. • What makes college students happy?

7. Daily Activity Self-Ratings and College Students’ Happiness

8. Physical Development

9. Early adulthood: • Average peak physical performance is between ages 19 and 26 (under 30), and this includes athletes. • Usually during this time people are healthiest. • Most college students know what behaviors will prevent illness and promote health. • This is a time when most pleasures involve physical resources. • Gender and ethnicity are related to health behaviors and beliefs.

10. Substance abuse in young adulthood: • Heavy binge drinking in college affects academic performance and personal life. • Binge drinking increases risk of having unprotected sex. • Use of alcohol and drugs lessens in the mid-twenties for most. • Globally, differences in alcohol use are affected by culture, religion, and gender.

11. 45 40 19-20 23-24 35 27-28 30 15-16 25 20 15 10 5 0 13-14 17-18 21-22 25-26 29-30 Age (years) Binge Drinking in the Adolescence –Early Adulthood Transition Percentage participants Figure 14.6

12. Alcoholism: a disorder that impairs one’s life: • One in nine of those who drink becomes an alcoholic. • Genetics and environmental factors are involved. • By age 65, the “one-third rule” applies—one-third recover whether or not they are in a treatment program. • Certain factors can predict a recovery. • Various strategies exist for reducing alcohol use. • Fewer people smoke today than in the past: • More is known about the risks of smoking. • Nicotine addiction prevents many from quitting. • Health risks decrease when one quits smoking.

13. Addiction: • Strong dependency on alcohol, drugs, tobacco. • Withdrawal symptoms affect physical functioning. • There are 2 ways of looking at addiction: • Disease model stresses biological influences. • Life-process model stresses habitual behavior in relationships and with regard to one’s environment.

14. Sexuality

15. Sexually transmitted infections (STIs): • A variety of different diseases contracted primarily through sex. • Affect about 1 of every 6 U.S. adults. • AIDS has had a greater impact than any other: • HIV destroys the body’s immune system. • It is a global epidemic causing high death rates and fear; the greatest concerns are in Africa. • U.S. deaths are declining. • There are strategies to protect against AIDS.

16. Sexually Transmitted Infections Fig. 14.8

17. Sexual harassment and rape involve the use of power. • Rape: sexual intercourse without consent: • Definitions vary among U.S. states. • Victims are often reluctant to report it. • It occurs most frequently in large cities. • Actual rates are unknown. • Male social training is blamed for high rates in U.S., almost 200,000 rapes reported annually. • Rape is a traumatic experience for victims and those close to them; recovery varies among victims.

18. There is increasing concern about acquaintance or date rape: • Coercive sex with a person known by the victim. • Rates appear highest for adolescent and college freshman women. • Strategies exist to reduce risks of date rape. • Sexual harassment takes many forms in many settings: • It involves use of power for sexual exploitation. • More women than men are victims. • Victims can suffer serious psychological damage. • It is illegal and can be eliminated.

19. Cognitive Development

20. Piaget: adolescents and adults think qualitatively in the same way—formal operational thought. • Others believe idealism decreases as young adults enter world of work and face constraints of reality. • Perry: as the young move into adulthood, dualistic/absolute thinking changes into reflective/relativistic thinking. • Some believe cognitive changes in young adults create a postformal stage of thought—qualitatively different from Piaget’s stage of formal operational thought.

21. Creativity peaks in adulthood as evidenced by some existing great works in the arts and science. • Decline begins in the 50s but varies by domain and individual characteristics. • Creative people have been found to experience a heightened state of pleasure when engaging in absorbing mental and physical challenges. • A creative life includes cultivating one’s curiosity through a variety of behavioral strategies.

22. Careers and Work

23. Many developmental changes occur during work and career, including changes in one’s personality and value system. • Holland proposed 6 basic career-related personalities, but people are more complex and varied than this. • A more important aspect of choosing a career is matching it up with a diversity of important values. • The Occupational Outlook Handbook, revised every two years, assists with monitoring new jobs and growth. • Education is essential to getting a high-paying job.

24. Realistic: doing things (manual activities) Conventional: working with details (clerical tasks) Investigative: thinking (intellectual professions) Enterprising: persuading others (sales & management) Artistic: creating with materials (jobs rare) Social: helping people (teaching & counseling) Holland’s Model of Personality Types and Career Choices Fig. 14.10

25. Work defines people in many fundamental ways, and most spend about 1/3 of their lives working full-time. • Work settings are linked to stress and health problems; and yet, inability to work for an extended period causes emotional stress and low self-esteem. • Most college students work 26 hours or more per week. • Colleges offer co-op and internship programs that provide work experiences in many occupational areas.

26. 60 50 40 30 20 Percentage who reported a negative influence on their grades 10 0 1 - 15 16 - 20 35 or more Hours worked per week The Relation of Hours Worked Per Week in College to Grades Fig. 14.11

27. Unemployment creates stress and increases feelings of helplessness in both men and women, but intensity varies among individuals based on additional factors. • Dual-career couples make up the majority of workers in American society: • Division of responsibility for family had changed. • Social attitudes and values are changing. • Single-earner married families are the minority of workers in American society. • The workplace has become increasingly diverse.

28. Changes in the Percentage of U.S. Traditional and Dual-Career Couples 45 Dual-earner couples 40 35 Percentage 30 25 20 Traditional couples 15 1967 1971 1975 1979 1983 1987 1991 1995 1999 Year Fig. 14.12