DEVELOPMENT THROUGH THE LIFESPAN, 5/E …

1 THROUGHTHE lifespan , 5/E 2010 Laura E. BerkISBN10: 020568793-8 SAMPLE CHAPTERThe pages of this Sample Chapter may have slight variations in final published contact your local Pearson begins on next page >> JON FEINGERSH/JUPITER IMAGESA dolescence brings momentous advances. A floodof biological events leads to an adult-sized bodyand sexual maturity. Cognitive changes allowteenagers to grasp complex scientific principles, grapple with political issues, and detect the deepmeaning of a poem or and CognitiveDevelopment inAdolescencePHYSICAL DEVELOPMENTC onceptions of AdolescenceThe Biological Perspective The SocialPerspective A Balanced Point of ViewPuberty.

2 The Physical Transitionto AdulthoodHormonal Changes Body Growth MotorDevelopment and Physical Activity SexualMaturation Individual Differences in PubertalGrowth Brain DEVELOPMENT Changing Statesof ArousalThe Psychological Impact of Pubertal EventsReactions to Pubertal Changes Pubertal Change,Emotion, and Social Behavior Pubertal TimingHealth IssuesNutritional Needs Eating Disorders Sexuality Sexually Transmitted Diseases AdolescentPregnancy and Parenthood Substance Useand AbuseSOCIAL ISSUESGay, Lesbian, and BisexualYouths: Coming Out to Oneself and OthersA lifespan VISTALike Parent, Like Child:Intergenerational Continuity in AdolescentParenthoodCOGNITIVE DEVELOPMENTP iaget s Theory: The FormalOperational StageHypothetico-Deductive Reasoning Propositional Thought Follow-Up Researchon Formal Operational ThoughtAn Information-Processing View ofAdolescent Cognitive DevelopmentScientific Reasoning.

3 Coordinating Theory withEvidence How Scientific Reasoning DevelopsConsequences of AdolescentCognitive ChangesSelf-Consciousness and Self-Focusing Idealismand Criticism Decision MakingSex Differences in Mental AbilitiesVerbal Abilities MathematicsBIOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENTSex Differencesin Spatial AbilitiesLearning in SchoolSchool Transitions Academic Achievement Dropping OutOn Sabrina s eleventh birthday, her friend Joyce gave her a surprise party,but Sabrina seemed somber during the celebration. Although Sabrinaand Joyce had been close friends since third grade, their relationshipwas faltering.

4 Sabrina was a head taller and some 20 pounds heavier than mostgirls in her sixth-grade class. Her breasts were well-developed, her hips andthighs had broadened, and she had begun to menstruate. In contrast, Joyce stillhad the short, lean, flat-chested body of a school-age into the bathroom while the other girls put candles on the cake,Sabrina frowned at her image in the mirror. I m so big and heavy, she whis-pered. At church youth group on Sunday evenings, Sabrina broke away fromJoyce and joined the eighth-grade girls. Around them, she didn t feel so largeand a month, parents gathered at Sabrina s and Joyce s school to discusschild-rearing concerns.

5 Sabrina s parents, Franca and Antonio, attended wheneverthey could. How you know they are becomingteenagers is this, volunteered Antonio. The bed-room door is closed, and they want to be , they contradict and disagree. I tell Sabrina, You have to go to Aunt Gina s on Saturday fordinner with the family. The next thing I know,she is arguing with me. Sabrina has entered adolescence,the transi-tion between childhood and adulthood. In indus-trialized societies, the skills young people mustmaster are so complex and the choices confrontingthem so diverse that adolescence is greatly extended.

6 But around the world,the basic tasks of this period are much the same. Sabrina must accept her full-grown body, acquire adult ways of thinking, attain greater independence fromher family, develop more mature ways of relating to peers of both sexes, andbegin to construct an identity a secure sense of who she is in terms of sexual,vocational, moral, ethnic, religious, and other life values and beginning of adolescence is marked by puberty,a flood of biologicalevents leading to an adult-sized body and sexual maturity. As Sabrina s reactionssuggest, entry into adolescence can be an especially trying time for some young DAVID YOUNG-WOLFF/PHOTOEDIT362 PART VIAdolescence: The Transition to AdulthoodPhysical DevelopmentConceptions ofAdolescenceWhy is Sabrina self-conscious, argumentative, and inretreat from family activities?

7 Historically, theorists explainedthe impact of puberty on psychological DEVELOPMENT by resort-ing to extremes either a biological or a social , researchers realize that biological and social forcesjointly determine adolescent psychological Biological PerspectiveTAKE A several parents of young childrenwhat they expect their sons and daughters to be like asteenagers. You will probably get answers like these: Rebelliousand irresponsible, Full of rages and tempers (Buchanan &Holmbeck, 1998). This widespread storm-and-stress viewdates back to major early-twentieth-century theorists.

8 Themost influential, G. Stanley Hall, based his ideas about devel-opment on Darwin s theory of evolution. Hall (1904) describedadolescence as a period so turbulent that it resembled the erain which humans evolved from savages into civilized , Anna Freud (1969), who expanded the focus onadolescence of her father Sigmund Freud s theory, viewed theteenage years as a biologically based, universal developmentaldisturbance. In Freud s genital stage,sexual impulses reawaken,triggering psychological conflict and volatile behavior. As ado-lescents find intimate partners, inner forces gradually achievea new, mature harmony, and the stage concludes with mar-riage, birth, and child rearing.

9 In this way, young people fulfilltheir biological destiny: sexual reproduction and survival ofthe Social PerspectiveContemporary research suggests that the storm-and-stressnotion of adolescence is exaggerated. Certain problems, such aseating disorders, depression, suicide, and lawbreaking, do occurmore often than earlier (Farrington, 2004; Graber, 2004). Butthe overall rate of psychological disturbance rises only slightly,by about 3 percent, from childhood to adolescence, when it isnearly the same as in the adult population about 15 percent(Roberts, Attkisson, & Rosenblatt, 1998).

10 Although some teen-agers encounter serious difficulties, emotional turbulence isnot first researcher to point out the wide variability inadolescent adjustment was anthropologist Margaret Mead(1928). She returned from the Pacific islands of Samoa with astartling conclusion: Because of the culture s relaxed socialrelationships and openness toward sexuality, adolescence isperhaps the pleasantest time the Samoan girl (or boy) will everknow (p. 308). Mead offered an alternative view in which thesocial environment is entirely responsible for the range ofteenage experiences, from erratic and agitated to calm and stress-free.