There 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 to which two people share knowledge thoughts and feelings. There is an increased dependence on friends for intimacy. The need for intimacy intensifies in early adolescence and this is partly due to increases in capabilities for perspective taking and empathy. Friends promote further enhancement of perspective taking because they share their thoughts. However, parents are still preferred to discuss topics related to education and future occupation.
Intimacy enhances development by promoting further perspective taking. It increases personal knowledge (e.g. more knowledge about sex through self-disclosure and emotional labelling) as friends in adolescence discuss their emotions and label their emotions. Intimacy also enhances personal thoughts and feelings. There is a reciprocal relationship between perspective taking and intimacy.
Children’s friendships are typified by shared activities while adolescent friendships are more dependent on loyalty (1), trust (2) and intimacy (3). Self-disclosure promotes emotional closeness in young women and shared activities is the basis of emotional closeness for young men. Adolescents have greater abilities for complex thought and this allows them to discuss the complexities of social relationships (e.g. gossip) and this promotes the exchange of personal knowledge and perspectives that constitutes intimacy. There are some gender differences in the intimacy of adolescent friendships:
This may be due to puberty emphasizing gender more and intimacy being associated with being female. Friendships may change in emerging adulthood in four ways:
One of the key reasons why people become friends is similarity. There is a reciprocal relationship between one’s own characteristics and characteristics of friends. This means that people become friends with people who are more similar (i.e. selection effect) and friends become more similar over time. This also holds for risk behaviour.
Friends are important for building self-esteem and developing social understanding. They may provide four types of support:
There are several social effects that adolescents experience:
This is demonstrated by a driving experiment. This shows that adolescents take more risks in the presence of peers compared to young adults and adults. The strength of friends’ influence increases in early adolescence, peaks in the mid-teens and declines in late adolescence.
Sarcasm and ridicule occur in adolescent friendships and clique interactions. Antagonistic interactions refer to interactions which include sarcasm and ridicule. This may promote the establishment of a dominance hierarchy and may reinforce clique conformity.
Cyberbullying (1), online intimidation (2) and privacy issues (3) are realistic and serious concerns about social media. The prevalence of cyberbullying is 23%. There is a robust relationship with risk of depression. Children and adolescents typically do not have good strategies to deal with cyberbullying.
Relational aggression refers to a form of non-physical aggression that harms others by damaging their relationship. It includes ridicule (1), sarcasm (2), gossiping (3), spreading rumours (4) and exclusion (5). This is more common among girls while physical aggression is more common among boys.
Social media influences how children and adolescents interact. No use of social media is problematic (i.e. it indicates isolation) while a lot of use of social media is also problematic. Websites are platforms where young people can get to know each other (1), socialize (2), learn (3), get information (4). Adolescents are in a vulnerable period (e.g. influence of peers) and there is relatively low self-regulation. This is important to take into account when assessing the effects of social media.
The brain of young children and adolescents is in full development (e.g. prefrontal cortex). Adolescence is a sensitive period for social interactions and judgment. There are subcortical areas related to affective properties which have heightened sensitivity to social interactions and judgment in adolescence. Dopaminergic systems and the striatum are easily triggered in adolescence. These are potential mechanisms of action for risk behaviour and social reinforcement.
The degree to which the adolescent has control over the cognitive system is dependent on motivation. Cognitive abilities are used flexibly depending on social-affective involvement and hormones in puberty. The brain reacts differently depending on the situation.
People are uniquely attuned to the complexities of interpersonal relationships during adolescence. Escalation of risk taking may be the result of the changes and reorganization in the dopaminergic system and related regions in the striatum. The presence of peers is associated with increases in the nucleus accumbens (i.e. hub of reward circuitry). Peer influence is a means by which adolescents learn how to behave appropriately in their sociocultural environment.
Adolescents are more likely to ‘like’ a photo when it had received more likes from peers, regardless of whether risk behaviour is depicted. Adolescents are also especially likely to like their own photo when it had more likes and this may reflect the importance of self-presentation. Self-presentation can be rewarding and a motivation for using social networks.
There was more brain activity in areas associated with social cognition and social memories when a photo had more likes. Adolescents perceive information online in a qualitatively different way when they believe it is more valued by peers. Risk taking may be the result of heightened neural sensitivity to reward combined with immature capacity for cognitive control as the cognitive control network in the brain becomes less active when viewing risky photos. There could thus be more adoption of risky behaviour as a result of reinforcement (i.e. the likes). A like could be seen as a social cue related to the cultural sphere of adolescents.
There are several reasons for adolescents to form love relationships:
Recreation, intimacy and status are the most important reasons. Sex is not mentioned in early adolescence. It is mentioned in late adolescence and emerging adulthood.
Dating scripts refer to cognitive models which guide love relationships. A proactive script refers to being more proactive (e.g. initiating) and is more common in males. A reactive script refers to being more reactive (e.g. waiting for the other to make the first move) and is more common in females. However, the gender differences have been decreasing.
Romantic relationships involve more intense emotions, both positive (e.g. love) and negative (e.g. anxiety). It typically involves sexual activity (1), the feeling of being cared for (2) and includes a social companion in leisure activities (3).
Sternberg’s theory of love states that there are three qualities of love:
According to this theory, these qualities can be combined in different ways to lead to different forms of love.
In (early) adolescence, relationships are typically very short and consummate love is very uncommon as adolescents try out different types of love. Passion and intimacy are most common in adolescence as commitment tends to develop in emerging adulthood.
Adolescence: Developmental, Clinical, and School Psychology – Lecture 1 (UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM) 
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 more Adolescence: Developmental, Clinical, and School Psychology – Lecture 2 (UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM) There 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 more Adolescence: Developmental, Clinical, and School Psychology – Lecture 3 (UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM) In 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 more Adolescence: Developmental, Clinical, and School Psychology – Lecture 4 (UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM) The 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 more Adolescence: Developmental, Clinical, and School Psychology – Lecture 5 (UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM) Externalizing 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 more Adolescence: Developmental, Clinical, and School Psychology – Lecture 6 (UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM) Antisocial 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:
Adolescence: Developmental, Clinical, and School Psychology – Lecture 7 (UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM)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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