Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood Physical and Cognitive Development

1. Adolescence and Emerging AdulthoodPhysical and Cognitive Development Chapter 10 10

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. Characteristics of Emerging Adulthood

6. 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

7. Growth Rates and Sexual Development During Puberty

8. Typical Physical Changes in Adolescence

9. 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

10. Video Clip • Tyra Banks visits an eating disorder clinic • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ct-q1FCeLc

11. Video Clip • Tyra Banks interviews a teenage girl about her struggle with anorexia: • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JixbTHj6FKY

12. 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

13. 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

14. Video Clip • ABC News story on teen sex: Oral sex as the new goodnight kiss: • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gF7Kn3a37p4

15. 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?

16. 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

17. 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

18. 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

19. 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

20. 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).

21. 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

22. Summary of Teen Parenthood Consequences in the United States

23. Summary of Teen Parenthood Consequences in the United States (continued)

24. 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

25. 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

26. Video Clip • Discussion of formal operational thought • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw36PpYPPZM

27. Examples of Problems Used to Test Hypothetical Thinking

28. 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

29. Hallmarks of Adolescent Cognition

30. 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

31. Adolescent Egocentrism • These beliefs may be based, to some extent, in reality • Egocentric thinking not confined to adolescence

32. 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

33. 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

34. 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

35. 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