adolescent lifespan development chapter from Development through the Lifespan. 6ed.

1. Adolescence
Chapters 11 and 12

2. Conceptions of Adolescence
• The beginning of adolescence is
marked by the onset of puberty
• Freud – reawakening of sexual
impulses from the Genital stage
• Tribal cultures often have a short phase
between childhood and adulthood
• 3 phases in industrialized societies
– Early adolescence
– Middle adolescence
– Late adolescence

3. Puberty
• Regulated by hormones, which are both
genetically and environmentally
influenced
• Girls reach puberty on average 2 years
before boys
• Pre-pubertal hormone changes begin
around age 8, when body size begins to
change

4. Hormonal Changes
• Both boys and girls have estrogens and
androgens
• Estrogens cause primary and secondary
sex characteristics to change in girls
• Androgens cause primary and
secondary sec characteristics to change
for boys
• Androgens are also active for girls,
causing changes in height and hair
growth

5. Body Growth
• Average adolescents add 10-11” of
height and 50-75 pounds by age 16 (for
girls) and 17.5 (for boys)
• Growth begins at the extremities
• Sex impacts overall frame development
and fat retention

6. Motor Development
• Girls are slower to develop gross motor
muscles, where boys develop much
faster in these areas
• Despite rapid growth, fewer than 30%
of US teens meet recommended levels
of exercise

7. Individual Differences in
Pubertal Growth
Heredity, nutrition, and exercise all
contribute to the age of onset of puberty
Pubertal timing has changed overall in
industrialized societies

8. Brain Development
• Pruning of unused synapses continues
• Prefrontal cortex is still not fully
developed
• Greater emotional stress on the
underdeveloped prefrontal cortex leads
to emotional lability in adolescents
• Sleep regulation changes to trigger
later sleep
– PROFOUND impacts on emotional
functioning

9. The Psychological Impacts of
Puberty
• Information is power!
• Western society confuses adolescents
by granting partial adult statuses
• Other societies celebrate the transition
marked at puberty
• There is more of a link to brain
development than hormonal changes to
explain adolescent moodiness
• Parent/child relationships become less
hierarchical and more mutually
supportive

10. The Psychological Impacts of
Puberty
• Early maturing boys are perceived as
more independent, relaxed, confident,
and attractive
• Early maturing girls are often anxious,
lacking in self-confidence, and
withdrawn
• Early maturing teens often seek out
older companions, which leads to high
risk behaviors

11. Health Issues
• Adolescents experience great growth,
but often have the poorest diets
• Frequency of family meals indicates
healthier eating
• Eating Disorders
– Anorexia nervosa
– Bulimia nervosa

12. Sexuality
• Young people tend to get very little
information overtly from parents
• Mixed messages about sex
• Direct link between social stressors and
early sexual activity
• Sexual orientation can be explored

13. Teen Pregnancy
• US adolescent pregnancy rate is much
higher than that of other industrialized
nations
• Rate appears to have decreased because
of increased rates of abortion
• 70% of teen mothers graduate high
school, compared to 95% of non-
mothers.
• 35% of teen mothers become pregnant
again within 2 years
• Mothers’ ages at birth correlate
strongly with the age at which the child
will become parents

14. Substance Abuse
• Rates of adolescent substance abuse
have declined since the 1990s
• 33% of young people have tried
smoking cigarettes by age 16; 58%
have tried drinking; 37% have tried
marijuana
• Progression of substance use

15. Cognitive Development
• Formal operations
• Deductive reasoning
• Selective attention
• Metacognition
• Speed of thinking
• Imaginary audience
• Personal fable
• Poor impulse control

16. Erikson’s Theory*
• Group Identity vs. Alienation
• Central Process = peer pressure
• PAEQ = fidelity to others
• Core Pathology = Alienation
• Personal identity vs. role confusion
• Central Process = experimentation
• PAEQ = fidelity to values
• Core Pathology = repudation

17. Self-Understanding
• Adolescents begin to define themselves
by personality traits
• More emphasis on social virtues
• New, social measures of self-
evaluation
• Mastery leads to increased self-esteem

18. 4 Identity Outcomes
• Identity achievement
• Identity moratorium
• Identity foreclosure
• Identity diffusion

19. Jacob
• Jacob’s father, grandfather, and uncles
are all police officers. Since he was in
middle school, Jacob has planned to
become a police officer too. During his
first semester of college, Jacob
declared criminal justice as his major

20. Janeesa
• Janeesa spent her senior year of high
school exploring career options. She
attended career fairs and shadowed a
social worker, school principal, and
special education teacher. During her
second year of college, she declared
her major in special education.

21. Yuri
• Yuri is about to finish high school.
Although she plans to attend college,
she has not decided what she wants to
do with her life. She considered
medicine, law, and social work. She
has volunteered at a nursing home and
currently works part-time as a secretary
for a major law firm. Yuri plans to
spend her first year or two of college
exploring her options before settling on
a major

22. Ashton
• Ashton is a junior in high school and
seems uninterested in college or trade
school. He has worked several part-
time jobs but quit each within a few
weeks. When asked what he wants to
do with his life, he usually says “It
really doesn’t matter to me what I do.
I’m not in a hurry to start a career.
There’s plenty of time for that later”.

23. Identity Development
• Enhanced when the family acts as a
secure base
• Supported in schools by high-level
thinking
• Developing an ethnic connection is
hallmark

24. The Family
• Adolescents strive for autonomy, both
emotional and behavioral
• Puberty triggers a distancing
• Improved reasoning allows adolescents
to deidealize their parents
• Families are amalgamated sites of
development

25. Peers
• Adolescents seek intimacy, mutual
understanding, and loyalty from their
friends
• Girls self-disclose more, leading to
emotional closeness in friendships
• Boys’ friendships are achievement
focused
• Adolescent friends tend to coruminate,
leading to anxiety and depression

26. Peers
• Cliques tend to form
• Several cliques form a crowd
• Crowd affiliation is linked to self-
concept

27. Mental Health
• Depression increases sharply in this
age group, but doesn’t look like clinical
depression
• Depression in adolescence can lead to
learned helplessness
• In industrialized societies, girls are
more prone to depression than boys***
• Where girls experience depression
more, boys are more likely to suicide
• LGBT youth attempt suicide 3 times
more frequently than their straight
peers

28. Zeke
• Zeke was well-behaved in elementary
school, but at age 13, he started
spending time with the “wrong crowd”.
At age 16, he was arrested for property
damage.
• Is Zeke likely to become a long-term
offender? Why or why not?

29. • Your Subtopics Go Here

30. TRANSITIONAL PAGE

31. Template Provided By
www.animationfactory.com
500,000 Downloadable PowerPoint Templates,
Animated Clip Art, Backgrounds and Videos