Adolescence: Developmental, Clinical, and School Psychology – Lecture summary
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Puberty refers to a set of biological changes involved in reaching physical and sexual maturity. This is universal. Adolescence refers to the life course between beginning puberty and adult status. It roughly contains the ages 10-18. In this stage, young people are preparing to take on the roles and responsibilities of adulthood in their culture. It is culturally constructed as the length (1), content (2) and daily experiences (3) differ across cultures. It is typically characterized by:
It is debated whether this is a period of ‘storm and stress’ as this may depend on culture and individual characteristics. It may be context dependent how one experiences this period although it is more likely during this period that people experience storm and stress. Recapitulation states that the development of each individual re-enacts the evolutionary development of the human species as a whole. Adolescence was seen as reflecting a time of evolutionary turmoil and this was used as an explanation why adolescence is characterized by storm and stress.
Emerging adulthood refers to the life course between beginning puberty and having adult status. This roughly contains the ages 18-25. It is characterized by:
These characteristics are not unique to emerging adults as it occurs in childhood already and become more abstract during adolescence. However, it becomes more future-oriented (e.g. focus on future job; future partner) during emerging adulthood. People in this stage explore various possibilities in love and work and move towards making enduring choices. Emerging adults focus on themselves to develop knowledge, skills and self-understanding needed for adult life. Emerging adulthood is culturally dependent. Youth refers to both adolescence and emerging adulthood.
The family (1), peer (2), school (3) and social media context (4) are important during adolescence and emerging adulthood. The authoritative parenting style is ideal for adolescence as it is very democratic. This is because adolescents are good at regulating themselves and have a desire for increasing autonomy. This parent style balances allowing autonomy to develop capacities and requiring the child to use this autonomy appropriately.
The family context is a complex system which consists of complex interactions characterized by reciprocal effects between parents and children. It is a transactional model. The parent-adolescence conflict increases during adolescence, especially from the age of 11-12 to 15-16. This is because:
However, during adolescence, there is also a lot of agreement on topics (1), love (2) and respect (3).
In adolescence, the self-conceptions are different from childhood because of cognitive development. It becomes more trait-like and less concrete (e.g. “I am outgoing”). This is because of more abstract and complex thinking. Identity refers to one’s perception of their capacity and characteristics and how this fit into the opportunities available to them. The self-conception depends on individualistic or collectivistic cultures as it is defined by social relationships in a collectivistic culture. The cognitive capacity of self-reflection (e.g. “who am I?”) makes identity possible. There are many explorations (e.g. trying a new hobby) and this eventually leads to commitment.
The ideal self refers to the person the adolescent would like to be. The feared self refers to the person the adolescent imagines it is possible to become but dreads becoming. The false self refers to a self that adolescents present to others while realizing that it does not represent what they are actually thinking and feeling. A discrepancy between the actual and ideal self can lead to problems but can work as a motivator.
Adolescents are able to engage in frequent self-reflection because they are often by themselves. Their moods tend to be lower when they are alone but their moods tend to rise after a period of being alone. The time alone may be used for self-reflection and mood management. It can thus be constructive as long as the adolescent is not alone too often.
Social loneliness refers to the perception of lacking a sufficient number of social contacts and relationships. Emotional loneliness refers to the perception of lacking closeness and intimacy in social relationships. Both types of loneliness are more common in adolescence and emerging adulthood and especially emerging adulthood may be lonely due to the increases in independence without companionship (e.g. a partner).
Erikson’s theory states that every life phase is characterized by a crisis (i.e. healthy development or unhealthy development). According to this theory, the main crisis in adolescence is identity vs. identity confusion. The key areas where identity are formed are love, work and ideology. Identity is relevant throughout development but is most prominent in adolescence.
Identification refers to relationships formed with others in which love for another person leads one to want to be like that person. Identity is formed after identifications (e.g. adolescents model themselves after others). The most important identifications are combined and integrated with individual characteristics.
Erikson’s identity status model consists of four identity statuses:
Moratorium is often seen in adolescence and identity formation rarely concludes in adolescence. However, Erikson’s theory is narrow and outdated because of three reasons:
According to postmodernists, identity consists of diverse elements (1), is not consistent and not unified (2), is context-dependent (3) and develops and changes throughout life (4).
Ethnic identity is more salient when one is part of a minority. Adolescents who are part of an ethnic minority may become more aware of prejudices and stereotypes and having to confront these issues may make identity development more complex. Emerging adulthood may be especially important for developing ethnic identity because emerging adults often enter new contexts that may involve greater contact with people outside their ethnic group.
Self-esteem is also different from childhood. There is a stronger focus on physical appearance and this holds more for girls than for boys. In puberty, there often is weight-gain (e.g. breast development). Girls tend to evaluate oneself more negatively, partially due to the increases in weight-gain and this leads to girls typically having a lower self-esteem than that of boys.
Emotions are also different from childhood. There is an increased understanding and managing of heightened emotions. However, there are also more extreme emotions (e.g. extreme sadness) and more fluctuations. Next, in adolescence, there typically also is a decline of positive emotions. This is associated with environmental factors and biological changes. One task in adolescence is to deal with these emotions and manage it.
It is important to evaluate whether there is a trait or a state of personality. A trait holds across contexts and a state depends on the context. There are discussions about stability and change of personality characteristics. Reciprocal links between personality traits and social relationships exist which may indicate co-development of personality with social relationships.
Rank-order stability refers to the degree to which the relative ordering of individuals on a given trait is maintained over time. This is indexed by test-retest corelations. Mean-level change refers to absolute change in the individual’s level of a certain trait over time and this can be demonstrated using longitudinal studies.
The cumulative continuity principle of personality development refers to personality and temperament being moderately stable in preschool years and becoming increasingly stable until middle adulthood. The maturity principle of personality development refers to young adults increasing on absolute levels of agreeableness (1), emotional stability (2), conscientiousness (3) and social dominance (4). The disruption hypothesis states that adolescents tend to experience temporal dips in personality maturity as a result of biological, social and psychological transitions from childhood to adolescence.
Adolescents may not fit the maturity principle because they temporarily conform to deviant peer norms and experience difficulties in adjusting to increasingly mature expectations. There is an U-shaped change in the mean levels of most Big Five traits. Co-development refers to the tendency of group members to show interrelated development on a trait because of their social connectedness. There are several possible trajectories:
Co-development may result from social learning processes (1), conformity to social norms for behaviour and other personality expressions (2) or shared environmental experiences (3). People’s rank position tends to remain stable while there are mean-level changes. Rank-order becomes increasingly stable in early and middle adolescence but this does not increase further in late adolescence.
There is increasing agreeableness in boys and girls throughout adolescence and early adulthood. There is increasing conscientiousness for girls. There is a temporal decline in boys’ conscientiousness and girls’ emotional stability. The mean-level increases in conscientiousness may be driven by increases in self-regulation capacity and expectations regarding behaviour. The temporal dip may be explained by a temporary mismatch between external expectations and actual behaviour, affect and cognition.
The Big Five of personality is a data-driven taxonomy which holds that personality is static while it only accounts for 56% of normal personality traits. There may be a sixth trait or other traits which only express themselves in different cultures. It is not a theory.
Puberty refers to a set of biological changes involved in reaching physical and sexual maturity. This is universal. Adolescence refers to the life course between beginning puberty and adult status. It roughly contains the ages 10-18. In this stage, young people are preparing to take on the roles and responsibilities of adulthood in their culture. It is culturally constructed as the length (1), content (2) and daily experiences (3) differ across cultures. It is typically characterized by:
It is debated whether this is a period of ‘storm and stress’ as this may depend on culture and individual characteristics. It may be context dependent how one experiences this period although it is more likely during this period that people experience storm and stress. Recapitulation states that the development of each individual re-enacts the evolutionary development of the human species as a whole. Adolescence was seen as reflecting a time of evolutionary turmoil and this was used as an explanation why adolescence is characterized by storm and stress.
Emerging adulthood refers to the life course between beginning puberty and having adult status. This roughly contains the ages 18-25. It is characterized by:
These characteristics are not unique to emerging adults as it occurs in childhood already and become more abstract during adolescence. However, it becomes more future-oriented (e.g. focus on future job; future partner) during emerging adulthood. People in this stage explore various possibilities in love and work and move towards making enduring choices. Emerging adults focus on themselves to develop knowledge, skills and self-understanding needed for adult life. Emerging adulthood is culturally dependent. Youth refers to both adolescence and emerging adulthood.
The family (1), peer (2), school (3) and social media context (4) are important during adolescence and emerging adulthood. The authoritative parenting style is ideal for adolescence as it is very democratic. This is because adolescents are good at regulating themselves and have a desire for increasing autonomy. This parent style balances allowing autonomy to develop capacities and requiring the child to use this autonomy appropriately.
The family context is a complex system which consists of complex interactions characterized by reciprocal effects between parents and children. It is a transactional model. The parent-adolescence conflict increases during adolescence, especially from the age of 11-12 to 15-16. This is because:
However, during adolescence, there is also a lot of agreement on topics (1), love (2) and respect (3).
In adolescence, the self-conceptions are different
.....read moreThere are several developmental trends of social relationships in adolescence:
There are developmental changes regarding peers. They go from being playmates to self-disclosing soulmates and friendships become more stable with age. There are different types of peer relationships:
Although the definition of a peer changes, cliques are often focused around similar activities (e.g. making music). There is a preference for friends above family during adolescence. However, this may differ depending on topic (e.g. prefer to talk to parents about education but prefer friends to talk about sexuality). Adolescents feel good when they are with friends. This may be because friends mirror one’s own emotions and friends may understand one better. Friendships allow for a feeling of freedom and openness.
Cliques (i.e. 3 to 12 people) refer to small groups of friends who know each other well. They form a regular social group and can be defined by distinctive shared activities. There are five stages of clique development:
Crowds refer to larger, reputation-based groups of adolescents who are not necessarily friends and do not necessarily spend much time together. The function of crowds is helping adolescents locate themselves and others within the school social structure. It helps them define their own and others’ identity. The types of crowds are typically elites (i.e. populars) (1), athletes (2), academics (3), deviants (4) and others (5). Crowd development parallels the course of identity development.
There are culture differences regarding friendships in adolescence. Generally speaking, there is a greater focus towards peers and friends than family in adolescence but this is less so in traditional cultures compared to Western cultures. People in collectivistic cultures value family members higher and friends lower on companionship and enjoyment. This means that people in collectivistic cultures like spending time with their family.
Time spent with same-sex friends remains stable and time with other-sex friends increases in adolescence. The relationships with friends and family change in quality and quantity. Intimacy refers to the degree
.....read moreIn adolescence, there are three main biological changes:
Adolescence is characterized by more advanced moral reasoning due to more advanced perspective taking and more risk and impulsive behaviour. There are large structural changes in the brain during adolescence. This occurs through two important processes:
Overproduction (i.e. exuberance) refers to the thickening of synaptic connection and this mainly occurs around the time puberty begins. The disadvantage of pruning is that the brain becomes less plastic.
There are regional differences in grey matter as brain development occurs at different rates for different brain areas (e.g. prefrontal cortex develops later into life). There are also regional differences in myelination. Myelination is believed to be relatively experience-independent. White matter is mainly involved in structural connectivity.
Brain development is influenced by the social environment and by pubertal hormones as they are able to pass the blood-brain barrier. An enriched environment can lead to increased brain development. This may mean that people with a lower socio-economic status have a different brain development (e.g. slower; poorer). It may specifically influence the anterior cingulate cortex (i.e. more activity with a more enriched environment) and the amygdala, striatum and hippocampus (i.e. more activity with medium family income).
The relative size of the neocortex is associated with the size of the social group. There are several systems in the brain:
The medial prefrontal cortex is associated with thinking about social contact and how one is perceived. The systems together make up the social brain (i.e. social information processing network), the network which is active with social contact. It is associated with shame (1), guilt (2), self-focus (3), mental state attribution (4), shifting of attention to others (5), perspective taking (6), face recognition (7) and biological motion (8).
The valuation and emotion network is also dubbed the socioaffective circuitry. It is critical for detection of salient information (1), assignment of hedonic, aversive or emotional value to that information (2), social cognition (3 and
.....read moreThe goal of secondary education is to promote independent thinking and make your own well-informed choices. In the past, the goal was more about socialization and conformity. Secondary education was for the elite and males only before the last century. However, after the last century, a knowledge economy started to develop so secondary education was needed. In developing countries, there is a similar but delayed pattern. This means that secondary education cannot be taken for granted.
There are differences between developed countries when it comes to secondary education. In Europe, children have to decide about their future at an earlier age. The advantage of this is that children will have an early idea of future and this allows for better tailoring of teaching. However, the disadvantage is that there are children who are developing a bit later and those will be disadvantaged.
In the United States, there is a distinction between public and private schools and funding depends on state. In Japan and China, the admission to university is only for the highest performing students. This does not make them more unhappy and they still see and use college as a time of fun and exploration.
There are several factors promoting educational success and engagement:
All factors are interconnected. This makes causality difficult to establish. Teaching should be characterized by a combination of warmth (1), clear communication (2), high standard for behaviour (3) and a moderate level of control (4). However, it may be necessary that students, parents and teachers have the same beliefs as a school which reinforces already existing beliefs could promote outcomes.
Engagement refers to the quality of being psychologically committed
.....read moreExternalizing problems consists of several aspects:
Children with externalizing problems often come from families where parental monitoring and control is lacking (i.e. under-controlled). These problems are more common among males than females. There is a discrepancy between how adults and youth view the behaviour as youth often do not view it as problematic and do not experience distress. The problematic behaviour can be an expression of a desire for excitement (i.e. sensation seeking).
Adolescents are more likely to have accidents when driving due to inexperience and because younger drivers are more likely to engage in risky driving. This includes driving at excessive speeds (1), following other vehicles too close (2), violating traffic signs and signals (3), taking more risks in lane changing and passing other vehicles (4), allowing too little time to merge (5) and failing to yield to pedestrians (6). In addition to this, they are more likely to drive under the influence and less likely to wear seatbelts.
Risky driving is influenced by parental involvement (1), parental monitoring (2), friends’ influence (3), sensation seeking (4), aggressiveness (5) and the optimistic bias (6). The optimistic bias refers to the belief that one is less likely than others to get into a car crash. This belief is stronger in younger drivers. The probability of an accident during adolescence increases depending on how many peers are in the car.
Almost all risk behaviour increases during adolescence. There are differences in risk behaviour (e.g. drinking) depending on whether one looks at onset, frequency, culture or gender.
Substance use is a common form of risk behaviour in adolescence and emerging adulthood. The rate of substance abuse depends on the substance. The rate of all substance use rises through the late teens in the early 20s before declining in the late 20s with the peak of substance use being in emerging adulthood. There are different reasons to use substances:
The propensity and opportunity theory states that people behave defiantly when they have a combination of sufficient propensity (i.e. motivation to behave defiantly) and sufficient opportunity to do so. Emerging adults have a high degree of opportunity for engaging in substance use and other deviant behaviour.
Unstructured socializing refers to spending time together with no specific event as the centre of activity (e.g. driving around). Substance use may be especially high during unstructured socializing due to the lack of activity and sensation seeking. Substance use may decline in the late 20s due to a decline in unstructured socializing.
.....read moreAntisocial behaviour includes lying (1), fighting (2), bullying (3), truancy (4) and stealing (5) and it also occasionally occurs in typically developing children, adolescents and adults. This behaviour is most common in toddlerhood as disruptive behaviour in young children one of the most common problems experienced in the parenting context. It is one of the main reasons for parents to seek help.
The age-antisocial behaviour curve refers to antisocial behaviour becoming more common during adolescence and decreasing in frequency after adolescence. About 70% of the adolescents have ever engaged in antisocial behaviour. Antisocial behaviour is most common during adolescence in the interpersonal sphere and antisocial behaviour also hurts the development of the individual.
The maturity gap refers to a gap between biological and social maturation. This may explain the rise in the age-crime curve during adolescence.
Disruptive behavioural disorders refer to disorders which include problems in the self-control of emotions and behaviours. The problems are manifested in behaviours that violate the rights of others (e.g. aggression; destruction of property) and it brings the individual into significant conflict with societal norms or authority figures.
There are several types of disruptive behavioural disorders:
There is a continuum between behaviour and emotions with behaviour and emotions in the middle. Oppositional defiant disorder has a prevalence from 1% to 11% and has several characteristics:
A depressed mood refers to an enduring period of sadness without any related symptoms. About 35% of adolescents report a depressed mood within the past six months. To receive a diagnosis of major depressive disorder (MDD), at least five of the following symptoms need to be present during a 2-week period, and must represent a change from previous functioning:
At least one symptom needs to be depressed mood or reduced interest and pleasure. The prevalence is 3% to 7%.
There are several courses of depression:
The prevalence of depression increases with age and peaks in adolescence and emerging adulthood, especially for females. The relapse rate of depression is 40% to 70%.
There rise in depression in adolescence may be explained by several things:
Hormones sensitize brains for harmful effects of stress and this is especially the case for girls, partially explaining the higher prevalence of depression in girls. Peer relationships require work and depression can lead to isolation, exacerbating the disorder.
The difference in depression rates between males and females may be explained by several things:
About 40% to 70% of adolescents with depression have a comorbid disorder with anxiety (30%) and ADHD (15%-30%) being very common. This may be due to common factors such as a difficult temperament and a deficient emotion regulation. Depression is characterized
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