Lecture 1 – introduction
Defining adolescence
- The period between the onset of sexual maturation and the attainment of adult roles
and responsibilities
- The transition from
‘Child’ status (requires adult monitoring)
To ‘adult’ status (self-responsibility for behaviour)
Learning objectives
1. To understand how adolescence has been conceptualized across time and contexts
2. Understand old and new views about storm and stress
3. Understand how the beginning and end of adolescence has been defined
The health paradox of adolescence
- Adolescence in the healthiest and most resilient period of the lifespan
- From childhood to adolescence
Strength speed, rt, mental reasoning, immune function
Resistance to cold, heat, hunger, dehydration, and mosttypes of injury
- Yet: overall morbidity and rates increase 200-300% from childhood to late
adolescence
Sources of morbity and mortality in adolescence
- Primary causes of death/disability are related to problems of control of behaviour
and emotion
- Rates of accidents, suicides, homicides, depression, alcohol and substance use,
violence, reckless behaviours, eating disorders, health problems related to risky
sexual behaviours
- Risk-taking, sensation-seeking and erratic behaviour
Scientific questions (Ronald Dahl)
- What is the empirical evidence that adolescents are ‘heated by nature’?
- Are these changes based in biology?
In the hormones of puberty?
In specific brain changes that underpin some behavioural and emotional
tendencies and problems that emerge in adolescence?
- What are the implications for interventions? Should we intervene?
If we don’t intervene…
- Onset of problems such as nicotine dependence, alcohol and drug use, poor health
habits, etc will show up as mortality in adulthood
- Many adults onset problems such as depression can be traced to early episodes in
adolescence
The father of adolescence
- G. Stanly Hall (1904)
, Adolescence: its psychology and its relations to physiology, anthropology,
sociology, sex, crime, religion and education
Recapitulation theory
Storm and stress
Part 3: Arnett(1999): review of storm and stress
- Oversimplifies a complex issue
- Many adolescents navigate this interval with minimal difficulties
- However, empirical evidence for:
Increased conflicts with parents (intensity)
Mood volativity (and negative mood)
Increased risk behaviour, recklessness and sensation seeking
- Modified view of storm and stress
Not a myth, real for many, but not all and not necessarily related
psychopathology
Conceptualizing (the study of) adolescence across time
- Aristotle: youth are heated by nature as drunken men by wine
- G.S. Hall (1904) a period of heightened ‘storm and stress’
- 1920 Margeret Meade – questioned storm and stress in all cultures
- 1930-50s – psychoanalytic perspective – Anna Freud – storm and stress is normal
- 1960s and 1970s: attempts to understand the problems as due to ‘raging hormones’
Later conceptualizations
- 1980s Petersen (1988) questioned the idea that all youth experience trouble (11%
chronic difficulties, 32% intermittent, 57% healthy)
- 1990s Arnett (1999) revised the idea of storm and stress
- 1990s-2000s context and time period recognized as important, thus different
developmental trajectories (Dubas, Miller & Petersin, 2003) with consideration of
time and context
- 2000s evolutionary ideas applied to recast concept of risk
- 2010s neuroscience models of the adolescent brain in relation to behaviour
John P Hill (1973)
- Framework for the study of adolescence
- Primary changes – the developmental changes that make adolescence distinctive
- Secondary changes – the psychological consequences of the interaction between the
primary changes and the settings – organized into the domains of identity,
autonomy, intimacy, sexuality and achievement
3 universal primary changes
- Biology changes of puberty (& brain)
- Development of abstract thinking
- Social redefinition of an individual from a child to an adult (or at the very least a non-
child)
What distinguishes an adolescent from a child?
, Age boundaries are not consistent across researchers
- Steinberg text:
Early adolescence (10-13 years)
Middle adolescence (14-17 years)
Late adolescence (18-21 years)
Young adulthood (22-30)
Developmental tasks
1. Accepting one’s physical body and keeping it healthy
2. Achieving new and more mature relationships with age mates of both sexes
3. Achieving emotional autonomy from parents and other adults
4. Achieving a satisfying gender role
5. Preparing for a job or career
6. Making decisions about marriage and family life
7. Becoming socially responsible
8. Developing a workable philosophy, a mature set of values, and worthy ideals
Adolescence consists of component processes
- Rapid physical growth
- Sexual maturation
- Secondary sexual characteristics
- Motivational and emotional changes
- Cognitive development
- Maturation of judgement, self-regulation skills
- Brain changes linked to each component
- Relative synchrony but not perfect
Schlegel & Barry (1990_
- 187 non-industrialized cultures
- Adolescence recognized as interval between childhood and adult status
- End of childhood marked by a ritual (linked to age or puberty)
- Onset of adult status
Marriage
Work roles
Owning property
Becoming a parent
Independence
- Interval between puberty and marriage as index of length
Puberty, marriage and adult roles in traditional human societies
- Among girls, marriage occurred within two years of the onset puberty in 63% of the
societies
- Among boys the ability to take a wife would require a specific level of achievement
- Boys 64% were married within four years of puberty
Puberty, marriage and adult roles in contemporary societies (US)
- Average age at menarche is now age 12
Defining adolescence
- The period between the onset of sexual maturation and the attainment of adult roles
and responsibilities
- The transition from
‘Child’ status (requires adult monitoring)
To ‘adult’ status (self-responsibility for behaviour)
Learning objectives
1. To understand how adolescence has been conceptualized across time and contexts
2. Understand old and new views about storm and stress
3. Understand how the beginning and end of adolescence has been defined
The health paradox of adolescence
- Adolescence in the healthiest and most resilient period of the lifespan
- From childhood to adolescence
Strength speed, rt, mental reasoning, immune function
Resistance to cold, heat, hunger, dehydration, and mosttypes of injury
- Yet: overall morbidity and rates increase 200-300% from childhood to late
adolescence
Sources of morbity and mortality in adolescence
- Primary causes of death/disability are related to problems of control of behaviour
and emotion
- Rates of accidents, suicides, homicides, depression, alcohol and substance use,
violence, reckless behaviours, eating disorders, health problems related to risky
sexual behaviours
- Risk-taking, sensation-seeking and erratic behaviour
Scientific questions (Ronald Dahl)
- What is the empirical evidence that adolescents are ‘heated by nature’?
- Are these changes based in biology?
In the hormones of puberty?
In specific brain changes that underpin some behavioural and emotional
tendencies and problems that emerge in adolescence?
- What are the implications for interventions? Should we intervene?
If we don’t intervene…
- Onset of problems such as nicotine dependence, alcohol and drug use, poor health
habits, etc will show up as mortality in adulthood
- Many adults onset problems such as depression can be traced to early episodes in
adolescence
The father of adolescence
- G. Stanly Hall (1904)
, Adolescence: its psychology and its relations to physiology, anthropology,
sociology, sex, crime, religion and education
Recapitulation theory
Storm and stress
Part 3: Arnett(1999): review of storm and stress
- Oversimplifies a complex issue
- Many adolescents navigate this interval with minimal difficulties
- However, empirical evidence for:
Increased conflicts with parents (intensity)
Mood volativity (and negative mood)
Increased risk behaviour, recklessness and sensation seeking
- Modified view of storm and stress
Not a myth, real for many, but not all and not necessarily related
psychopathology
Conceptualizing (the study of) adolescence across time
- Aristotle: youth are heated by nature as drunken men by wine
- G.S. Hall (1904) a period of heightened ‘storm and stress’
- 1920 Margeret Meade – questioned storm and stress in all cultures
- 1930-50s – psychoanalytic perspective – Anna Freud – storm and stress is normal
- 1960s and 1970s: attempts to understand the problems as due to ‘raging hormones’
Later conceptualizations
- 1980s Petersen (1988) questioned the idea that all youth experience trouble (11%
chronic difficulties, 32% intermittent, 57% healthy)
- 1990s Arnett (1999) revised the idea of storm and stress
- 1990s-2000s context and time period recognized as important, thus different
developmental trajectories (Dubas, Miller & Petersin, 2003) with consideration of
time and context
- 2000s evolutionary ideas applied to recast concept of risk
- 2010s neuroscience models of the adolescent brain in relation to behaviour
John P Hill (1973)
- Framework for the study of adolescence
- Primary changes – the developmental changes that make adolescence distinctive
- Secondary changes – the psychological consequences of the interaction between the
primary changes and the settings – organized into the domains of identity,
autonomy, intimacy, sexuality and achievement
3 universal primary changes
- Biology changes of puberty (& brain)
- Development of abstract thinking
- Social redefinition of an individual from a child to an adult (or at the very least a non-
child)
What distinguishes an adolescent from a child?
, Age boundaries are not consistent across researchers
- Steinberg text:
Early adolescence (10-13 years)
Middle adolescence (14-17 years)
Late adolescence (18-21 years)
Young adulthood (22-30)
Developmental tasks
1. Accepting one’s physical body and keeping it healthy
2. Achieving new and more mature relationships with age mates of both sexes
3. Achieving emotional autonomy from parents and other adults
4. Achieving a satisfying gender role
5. Preparing for a job or career
6. Making decisions about marriage and family life
7. Becoming socially responsible
8. Developing a workable philosophy, a mature set of values, and worthy ideals
Adolescence consists of component processes
- Rapid physical growth
- Sexual maturation
- Secondary sexual characteristics
- Motivational and emotional changes
- Cognitive development
- Maturation of judgement, self-regulation skills
- Brain changes linked to each component
- Relative synchrony but not perfect
Schlegel & Barry (1990_
- 187 non-industrialized cultures
- Adolescence recognized as interval between childhood and adult status
- End of childhood marked by a ritual (linked to age or puberty)
- Onset of adult status
Marriage
Work roles
Owning property
Becoming a parent
Independence
- Interval between puberty and marriage as index of length
Puberty, marriage and adult roles in traditional human societies
- Among girls, marriage occurred within two years of the onset puberty in 63% of the
societies
- Among boys the ability to take a wife would require a specific level of achievement
- Boys 64% were married within four years of puberty
Puberty, marriage and adult roles in contemporary societies (US)
- Average age at menarche is now age 12
