In search of explanations for early pubertal timing effects on developmental psychopathology - Ge et al. - Universiteit Utrecht

In search of explanations for early pubertal timing effects on developmental psychopathology 

Ge & Ntasuaki, 2009 

Abstract 

Early puberty maturation has been identified as a potential risk factor for internalizing and externalizing problems during adolescence. Four hypotheses: 

1. Hormonal influence hypothesis predicts that an increase in hormones at puberty leads to increased psychopathology. 

2. Maturation disparity hypothesis focuses on the gap between physical, social and psychological maturation in early matureres that exacts the toll on individuals’ adjustment. 

3. Contextual amplification hypothesis proposes that experiencing early pubertal transition in a disadvantaged context increases the risk for psychopathology.  

4. Accentuation hypothesis maintains that preadolescent vulnerabilities and challenges during early pubertal transition together increase problems. 

Adolescents who undergo pubertal maturation earlier than their same-age, same-sex peers are more likely to have a number of detrimental outcomes, including problem behaviors, substance use, and emotional distress in adolescence. This article: describing four hypotheses to explain why early puberty exerts its influence on externalizing and internalizing psychopathologies.  

The hormonal influence hypothesis 

→ The rise in the adrenal and gonadal hormones at puberty increases risks for developing psychopathologies.  

• Adrenarche, which typically occurs between ages 6 and 9, refers to the maturation of the HPA-axis. In this period, adrenal androgens begin to rise. There is some evidence that adrenal androgens are related to dominance, depression, and antisocial conduct. 

• Gonadarche, which begins at ages 9 to 11, involves the maturation of the HPG-axis. Hormones of the HPG-axis, gonadotropins and sex steroids, increase rapidly during pubertal transition. Individual differences in concentration in testosterone and estradiol are related to negative affect, behavior problems, and aggressive tendencies. 

What are possible connections with psychopathology?  

1. Pubertal hormones, particularly gonadal hormones, organizing neural circuits in the developing adolescent brain and leading to behavioral consequences. 

2. Pubertal hormones are linked to psychopathology via alternations in stress sensitivity.  

3. Social and environmental factors may mediate the effects of pubertal hormones on behavior (including reactions on physical changes).  

Although it is intuitively appealing to directly ascribe the rise of psychopathology at puberty to a surge of hormonal activities, the empirical findings for such a link in humans are fragmented and equivocal. Verifying a direct link requires a rigorous demonstration that puberty-related hormonal changes precipitate the increase in externalizing and internalizing psychopathologies. It is also important for researchers to attend to the confounding nature of hormonal changes, puberty, and age in examining their relations to psychopathology. 

The maturation disparity hypothesis 

→ It is the gap between physical and psychosocial maturities that places early (physical) maturers at risk for developing psychopathology. Developmental change is sequential: chronologically ordered developmental tasks in childhood must be completed successfully before the transition to adolescence to ensure normative adjustment. Because early maturers experience a briefer prelude to pubertal change than do their peers, they might be less well prepared socially and cognitively for the biological and psychosocial challenges at puberty. 

Despite its plausibility, this hypothesis has more often been implied rather than directly tested. 

• Conceptual difficulty in defining psychological “(im)maturity". 

• Empirical difficulties in demonstrating such effects, for it requires researchers to show that cognitively and emotionally immature “early bloomers” are at the highest risk for internalizing and externalizing problems.  

But also, a fresh look at this hypothesis: portions of the prefrontal cortex that subserve executive functions or self-regulatory control continue to develop well beyond puberty. From this view, the higher rates of psychopathology among early matureres are expected because their slow-developing neurocognitive systems are mismatched with the fast-approaching social and affective challenges at the onset of puberty.  

The contextual amplification hypothesis 

→ Focus on the interaction effect between puberty processes and social contexts. The rapid biological changes at puberty, coupled with adverse contexts (stressful environment, family conflict etc.), further exacerbate these problems. It is reasoned that contextual circumstances can either facilitate or impede early puberty effects through the opportunities, norms and expectations, and implicit reward and punishment structures that the contexts provide. Adaptation is particularly difficult for children who negotiate an early pubertal transition in a stressful social environment because new challenges at the entry to puberty and a widening array of social stressors may overtax their relatively undeveloped coping resources. 

Studies 

• Risks of girls’ early maturation could arise particularly in mixed-sex contexts because their sensitivity to peer norms and pressures from boys is heightened at puberty. Residing in a disadvantaged neighborhood, where opportunities for involvement in delinquent activities are abundant and collective supervision is lacking due to deteriorating informal social control, also places early matureres at risk for deviant peer association and externalizing behavior. 

• Better methodological design and statistics are required to tease apart the complex web of effects of intertwined factors: stressful life events, family adversities, deviant peers, lack of parental supervision and harsh parenting, school and neighborhood conditions. 

The accentuation hypothesis 

→ Demanding life transitions characterized by high novelty, ambiguity, and uncertainty tend to accentuate previous emotional and behavioral difficulties during those periods. This is because transitional events call forth an individually coherent and consistent way of approach and response that is likely to reveal each person's most salient disposition.  

Studies  

• Girls with prepubertal behavior problems display even more norm-violating behaviors in adolescence if they experience early menarche.  

• Early maturers with maladaptive stress responses manifested higher levels of subsequent depression than did youth without such personal vulnerabilities.  

• Challenges with this hypothesis:  

• Rigorous examination of this hypothesis requires a longitudinal design based on a large representative sample. 

• Selecting right measures of existing dispositional vulnerabilities requires considerable conceptual understanding as well as methodological sophistication. 

Additional issues: sex and racial/ethnic differences 

• Early maturation effects have been consistently observed for girls but the results are mixed for boys. 

• In adolescence, girls are more likely than boys to manifest internalizing psychopathology, while boys show more externalizing problems. 

• Girls and boys undergo different hormonal changes at puberty. 

• The two sexes differ in the sequence, timing and manifestation of growth in primary and secondary sex characteristics, weight and height, as well as in body composition. 

• There are racial/ethnic differences in rates of physical maturation. 

Conclusion 

The four emerging explanations discussed in this article provide a conceptual basis for further studies of explanatory mechanisms. While these explanations offer many new challenges, they also hold the promise of exciting and innovative research characterized by integration across different fields, both within psychology and across disciplines. Although each of these explanations emphasizes a single dimension, they are by no means independent of each other, and they can help piece together the web of pathways from pubertal timing to developmental psychopathology. Not only will the examination of these hypotheses help explain developmental challenges uniquely faced by early maturers, they will also provide mental health practitioners with possible social and cognitive avenues to preventing early maturing children from developing internalizing and externalizing psychopathology.