DEVELOPMENT THROUGH THE LIFESPAN, 5/E SAMPLE …

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: 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.

2 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: 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. Sabrina was a head taller and some 20 pounds heavier than mostgirls in her sixth-grade class.

3 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. 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.

4 In indus-trialized societies, the skills young people mustmaster are so complex and the choices confrontingthem so diverse that adolescence is greatly extended. 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?

5 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. 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.

6 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. 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). 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).

7 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. Later researchers found that Samoan adolescence was notas untroubled as Mead had assumed (Freeman, 1983). Still, sheshowed that to understand adolescent DEVELOPMENT , researchersmust pay greater attention to social and cultural Balanced Point of ViewToday we know that biological, psychological, and social forcescombine to influence adolescent DEVELOPMENT (Magnusson,1999; Susman & Rogol, 2004). Biological changes are universal found in all primates and all cultures. These internal stresses andthe social expectations accompanying them that the youngperson give up childish ways, develop new interpersonal rela-tionships, and take on greater responsibility are likely toprompt moments of uncertainty, self-doubt, and disappoint-ment in all teenagers.

8 Adolescents prior and current experiencesaffect their success in surmounting these the same time, the length of adolescence and its demandsand pressures vary substantially among cultures. Most tribaland village societies have only a brief intervening phase betweenchildhood and full assumption of adult roles (Schlegel & Barry,1991; Weisfield, 1997). In industrialized nations, young peopleface prolonged dependence on parents and postponement ofsexual gratification while they prepare for a productive worklife. As a result, adolescence is greatly extended so much sothat researchers commonly divide it into three adolescence(11 12 to 14 years): This is a period ofrapid pubertal adolescence(14 to 16 years): Pubertal changes arenow nearly adolescence(16 to 18 years): The young personachieves full adult appearance and anticipates assumptionof adult In this chapter, we trace the events of puberty andtake up a variety of health concerns physical exercise,nutrition, sexual activity, substance abuse, and other prob-lems affecting teenagers who encounter difficulties on thepath to also brings with it vastly expanded powersof reasoning.

9 Teenagers can grasp complex scientific andmathematical principles, grapple with social and politicalissues, and delve deeply into the meaning of a poem or second part of this chapter traces these extraordinarychanges from both Piaget s and the information-processingperspective. Next, we examine sex differences in mental abili-ties. Finally, we turn to the main setting in which adolescentthought takes shape: the 11 Physical and Cognitive DEVELOPMENT in Adolescence363 The more the social environment supports young peoplein achieving adult responsibilities, the better they adjust. For allthe biological tensions and uncertainties about the future thatteenagers feel, most negotiate this period successfully. With thisin mind, let s look closely at puberty, the dawning of : The Physical Transition to AdulthoodThe changes of puberty are dramatic: Within a fewyears, the body of the school-age child is transformed into thatof a full-grown adult.

10 Genetically influenced hormonal pro-cesses regulate pubertal growth. Girls, who have been advancedin physical maturity since the prenatal period, reach puberty,on average, two years earlier than ChangesThe complex hormonal changes that underlie puberty occurgradually and are under way by age 8 or 9. Secretions ofgrowthhormone (GH)and thyroxine(see Chapter 7, page 219) in-crease, leading to tremendous gains in body size and to attain-ment of skeletal maturation is controlled by the sex we think ofestrogensas female hormones andandrogensas male hormones, both types are present in eachsex but in different amounts. The boy s testes release largequantities of the androgen testosterone,which leads to musclegrowth, body and facial hair, and other male sex (especially testosterone for boys) also contributegreatly to gains in body size. Because the testes secrete smallamounts of estrogen as well, 50 percent of boys experiencetemporary breast enlargement.