Download Adolescence-Adulthood Part II

Adolescence-Adulthood
Adolescence
Adolescence is
the transition
period from
childhood to
adulthood,
extending from
puberty to
independence
Adolescence
 G. Stanley Hall
described
adolescence as the
tension between
biological maturity
and social
dependence
Physical Development
• Puberty paves way to a
surge of hormones,
creating mood swings.
• The primary sex
characteristics
(reproductive organs)
develop dramatically
• Menarche- first menstrual
period
• Spermarche-first
ejaculation
Physical Development
• Early developing boys become stronger and more
athletic, as well as more popular and have a higher self
esteem.
• Hereditary and environmental interaction plays a major
role of how both boys and girls feel about puberty
• During puberty, unused neural connections are
weakened
• Myelin also grows in the frontal lobe during puberty
• The frontal lobe maturation slows down the emotional
limbic system. This explains why teenagers can be
impulsive
• Younger teens are more likely to smoke or do drugs
since they are unable to plan ahead.
Cognitive Development
• Adolescents are more
likely to worry about what
others think about
themselves. Since this is
when they start to think
about how others perceive
them
• During the early teenage
years, reasoning is often
self-focused. They feel
that their private
experiences are unique.
They think that others can
not understand their
unique experiences
• Formal operations is the shift from
preadolescents thinking concretely to
adolescents becoming more capable of
abstract logic. This is Piaget’s theory
• The teenager’s ability to reason
hypothetically and deduce consequences
allows them to detect inconsistencies in
other’s reasoning and to spot hypocrisy
Developing Morality
 Kohlberg did studies
in which he recorded
the morality thoughts
of people of different
ages. He found that
there were 3 different
stages
Developing Morality
o Preconventional
Morality- When
children before 9 years
old, have a
preconventional
morality of self
interest. These
children obey either to
avoid punishment or to
gain concrete awards
Developing Morality
Conventional Morality
– When young
teenagers, use
morality which
includes caring for
others as well as
upholding laws and
social rules just
because they are rules
and laws.
Developing Morality
o Post conventional
morality- When
someone develops
personally perceived
ethical principles, they
confirm people’s
agreed upon rights
Developing Morality
• Kohlberg constructed the
moral ladder, which
included the three stages
• Once our thinking
matures, our behavior
becomes less selfish and
more caring
• Elevation- tingly, warm,
glowing feeling in the
chest, usually felt when
witnessing someone
doing charity
Developing Morality
• Jonathan Haidt exclaimed in his book social
intuitionist, that moral feelings overpower moral
reasoning. He revealed that moral reasoning
aims to convince others of what we feel
• Joshua Greene found that when a person is
faced with dilemmas, their neural responses
varied, based on how much their emotion areas
lit up
• Despite the identical logic, the personal dilemma
allowed emotions that altered mood judgment.
Developing Morality
• Morality is influenced by social influences, and is
doing the right thing.
• Children are taught to be empathetic to others.
• Those who rely on delay gratification (restraining
one’s impulse and waiting for a greater award)
became more socially responsible as well as
academically successfully. Students are
engaged in responsible action through service
learning.
Social Development
• Erik Erikson exclaimed
that individuals go
through eight stages in
life, each with a
psychosocial task.
• Till age 1, the issue was
that of trust and
mistrust
• Till age 2, it becomes
autonomy vs. shame
and doubt
• Till age 5, the issue is
initiative and guilt
Social Development
• Till puberty, the child is given the issues of
inferiority and competence
• From adolescence till becoming a young adult, it
becomes about finding one’s identity
• For young adults, the issue is between intimacy
and isolation
• From 50-60 years old, it becomes generativity
vs. stagnation.
• From 60s up, the issue becomes integrity vs.
despair.
Forming an identity
• Erikson revealed that
some teenagers take
their parents values
and expectations and
use it as their identity.
• Other teenagers tend
to gain a negative
identity by rejecting
traditional values ant
conforming to a
particular group
Forming an identity
• William Damon revealed that a main idea of
teenagers is to try to make a difference in the
world
• Daniel Hart discovered that younger teenagers
were more likely to reflect the values of a certain
group while older teenagers were more likely to
reflect their own personal values.
• Older teenagers were also more likely to have
intimacy, the ability to form emotionally close
relationships. This is after these individuals get a
better sense of who they are
Parent and Peer Influence
• Positive relations with
parents support
positive peer relations
• Teenage years is a
time of decreasing
parental connection
and a more peer
connection
Parent and Peer Influence
 Parents have a bigger
influence on religious
faith, career, college
and thinking values.
Most teenagers share
their parents political
views
Emerging Adulthood
• Emerging adulthood
are people who are
no longer teenagers
but are not ready to
take on adulthood
responsibilities.
• Due to this emerging
adulthood, marriage
has been delayed by
several years.
Physical Changes in Middle
Adulthood
• Physical vigor has less to do with age; it has
more to do with a person’s health and exercise
habits.
• In Eastern countries, respect is given to the
aged. Power is seen to be derived over age
• In many western cultures, young people are
more prized.
• Menopause is the ending of the menstrual cycle
beginning around when a woman hits her 50th
birthday. Estrogen is reduced during this period.
Physical Changes in Middle
Adulthood
• Menopause usually does not
create psychological problems
for women.
• A woman’s attitudes reflect on
how she will perceive and go
through menopause
• Bernice Neugarten went
around and asked women who
had their menopause how they
felt. The majority felt at the
prime of their lives.
• Men experience a more
gradual decline of sperm
production over age.
Testosterone levels, erection
and ejaculation are also at a
declining rate.
Physical Changes in later life
• Life expectancy has increased from the
average 49 years to 67 years
• Women outlive men and after the stage of
infancy, outnumber them
• After age 70, hearing, distance perception,
reaction time, stamina, muscle strength,
sense of smell all decrease
• Neural process slow their rate
• Around age 80, 5% of the brain shrinks.
Physical Changes in later life
• Physical exercise
however, can stimulate
the development of some
new brain cells and
connections.
• The risk of dementia
increases, doubling every
five years from age 60. It
is not a normal part of the
aging process.
Physical Changes in later life
• Older adults who exercise
regularly become smart
thinkers due to the oxygen and
nutrient circulation.
• Alzheimer’s disease affects
over 3% of the world’s
population by age 75. They are
not part of the normal aging
process. It is the loss of brain
cells and deterioration of
neurons that produce the
neurotransmitter acetylcholine.
Memory and thinking thus
decrease.
Aging and Memory
• Recalling new information
declines during the early
and middle adulthood
years.
• Older adults are able to
recall meaningful
information more easily
than meaningless
information, they may
however take longer to
produce words to
describe these memories
Aging and Memory
• Thomas Cook and Robin West discovered that younger
adults were more likely to recall names after one
introduction, while older age groups had a poorer
performance.
• When asked how they heard a certain event or news ,
many could recall instantaneously upon a few moments,
while asking after a couple of months prompted
variations in their recalls.
• David Schonfield and Betty-Anne Robertson found that
recognition memory is better for older adults early in the
day rather late.
• Being able to recognize a set of words via multiple
choices had a minimal decline when compared to the
results of each age. It was the recall of the words which
had a greater difficulty
• Time based tasks as well as habitual tasks decline over
age
Aging and Intelligence
• Cross sectional studies
are comparing people of
different ages with one
another.
• These studies revealed
that intelligence declined
after early adulthood
• They excluded the factors
of generational
differences of education
as well as life
experiences
Aging and Intelligence
• Longitudinal studies is the
retesting the same people over a
period of time, these studies
showed that intelligence may be
stable through out the years.
They however, excluded the
factors of people dropping out of
studies, those who were less
intelligent and that in poor health.
• The present day view is that fluid
intelligence takes place by
declining later in life and that
crystallized intelligence does not.
(Paul Baltes)
• Crystallized intelligence is the
accumulation of knowledge and
skills
Aging and Intelligence
• Fluid intelligence is the
ability to reason speedily
and abstractly
• Scientists and
mathematicians are more
likely to have their best
outcomes in earlier
adulthood, while
historians and writers
experience success later
in life.
Adulthood’s Ages and Stages
• Midlife transition takes
place in the early forties
and is associated with
struggle, regret, and
feeling struck down.
Usually triggered by
illness, divorce or by job
loss.
• The social clock is the
cultural prescription of
when the right time of
each stage in life must
occur. For example, what
time to leave home,
college, get a job, family,
etc.
Aging and Intelligence
• Romantic attraction is
often influenced by
chance encounters.
• Not many identical
twins would feel
attracted to their
twin’s partners.
• The social clock
varies from culture to
culture
Adulthood’s Commitments
• Erik Erikson pinned two
aspects of our live.
Intimacy and Generativity.
• Generativity is being
productive and supporting
future generations.
• Love and work are two
major themes of adulthood
• The social expectation of
families staying together, is
explained by evolutionary
psychologists in having a
better chance of passing
down one’s genes.
Adulthood’s Commitments
• Due to the increased expectations of both
women and men and women’s increased
independence, divorce rates have doubled in the
past 40 years
• Those who tested out their marriage before
getting married had a higher rate of divorce and
marital dysfunction.
• The risk of poor martial outcomes appears
greatest for those who cohabit prior to
engagement. Cohabiters tend to be less
committed to the ideal of enduring marriage.
Adulthood’s Commitments
• John Gottman discovered
that stable marriages provide
five times more instances of
smiling, touching,
complimenting, laughing
than of sarcasm, criticism
and insults.
• Work satisfaction reveals the
roles of the woman, such as
a paid worker or a wife did
not matter, but the quality of
her experiences in these
roles meant a lot.
• Satisfying work correlates
with life satisfaction
Well Being Across the Life Span
• A person’s feeling of
satisfaction and well
being are stable through
out one’s lifespan
• Older adults may
experience a higher rate
of satisfactions since
they had satisfied the
tasks of early adulthood.
They are filled with a
strong sense of
satisfaction and identity
Well Being Across the Life Span
• Older adults are less sensitive
to negative facts. The
amygalda show decreased
activity in response to
negative events while
maintain its responsiveness to
positive events.
• Mihalay Csikszentmihalyi and
Reed Larson revealed that
teenagers got over an
emotion within an hour while
older people endured their
emotions longer.
Death and Dying
• Death of spouse is the hardest
for a person
• When death comes at an
expected time, grieving may
be short lived.
• When death comes earlier,
grief is more severe
• Erikson believed that older
people were filled with a sense
of meaning and identity when
thinking about death
Continuity and Stages
• Researchers who stress
biological maturation see
development as a series of
genetically predisposed
steps.
• Researchers who stress slow
continuous development
stress experience and
learning.
• Piagets’s, Erikson’s and
Kohlberg’s ideas have shown
us the ways people differ at
various points in the life
span.
Continuity and Stages
• Lifelong development
also shows stability and
change
• Personality gradually
stabilizes throughout
age.
• When we age, we may
change our earlier
personalities but
sustaining characteristic
traits in comparison to
our age mates.