Week 11 – Notes – 3011

Physical and Cognitive Development in Adolescence

Readings
- Chapter 11: pp. 361 – 388

Overview of Adolescence
When does it start, when does it end?
- Puberty to adult independence
- Approx. 11 – 18 years
- Recently recognised phase
o Emerging adulthood: 18 - 25
Factors influencing?
- Biological, psychosocial, cultural etc.
- Economic independence
o There are other factors influencing this as well
- People are not often independent at 18
Major Characteristics
- The distinctive and often uneven physical growth
o Both physical and psychological
o Sexually and orientation
- Abstract thought and formal reasoning
- Identity achievement
- Experimentation
o Risk taking, SS
- Self-esteem; multifaceted self-concept changes as integration of the self occurs over
time
- Increasing reliance on peer group
o And the need for peer acceptance
- Relationship with parents’ change
- NB Identity; autonomy intimacy; achievement
Conceptions of Adolescence
1. Biological
a. Stanley Hall
i. “Sturm & Drang”
ii. Adolescence is strewn with wreckage of mind, body, and morals
b. Freud
i. Genital stage
ii. Psychological conflict, volatility
iii. Resolved via intimacy
c. A. Freud
i. Developmental disturbance
 1. The storm and stress of adolescence is healthy and even
necessary
2. Social Perspective
a. Margaret Mead
i. NOT biological, but culturally defined
ii. Adolescence is created through the angst of control that is exerted
by highly westernised societies
iii. Mead’s research in Samoa was eventually discounted/challenged
b. Cultural Differences
i. Tribal initiation vs. western extended period of dependency 
notion of ‘emerging adulthood’. This term is highly relevant in
today’s western cultures
3. Balanced Perspective
a. Argues that it is not a purely biological or social phase that adolescence
rises from but both
PUBERTY
- Period of rapid physical maturation involving hormonal and bodily changes that
occurs in early adolescence
- Initiated by increased secretion of growth, sex, and other hormones from ~8 – 9
years
- Growth Spurts
o Varies greatly across time and tempo
o Growth Trends
 Disto-proximal
 Aspects of the physical self that are most different from the
midline, e.g. extremities grow first, therefore highlighting the
disproportionate nature of growth spurts
 Caudocephalic
 Aspects of physical growth where smaller features are normal
at time
- Gender differences:
o Females
 Wider hips
 Fat in breasts etc
o Males
 Wider shoulders
 Longer legs, taller
 More muscle cells, heart and lung capacity, red blood cells
 Muscle to fat ratio is around 5:4 in females and 3:1 in males
 Body hair
o There is also motor differences in motor development
SEXUAL MATURATION
- Primary Sexual Characteristics
o Directly related to reproduction
- Secondary Sexual Characteristics
o Define gender, not essential for reproduction
- Girls: Menarche: average around 12. 5years
o Secular trend
 Over the generations people are reaching these dev milestones at
earlier and earlier times… shown highly in menarche
 Why? Mostly because of improved diet, healthcare, fewer illness,
hybrid vigour (cross fertilisation of genetic pools)
 Levelled our in first-world countries in 1970, but still happening… (?)
- Boys: spermarche average around 13.5 years
o Much less well studied and understood that menarche
o Greater variability in timing
o Boys less comfortable reporting spermarche
- Initial menstruations and ejaculations may be infertile
o But don’t count on it

Psychological Reactions to Puberty

- Most have a mix of positive and negative reactions
- Many feel awkward, clumsy, ugly
- Self-esteem tied to physical appearance
o Pre-occupation wit body image throughout adolescence
o Acute dissatisfaction and preoccupation during puberty
o More likely in girls – 30% ‘normal’ girls see self as fat
- Self-consciousness, desire for privacy, concerns over normalcy
- Moodiness
o Are adolescents moodier that other people? Is so is this moodiness due to a
changed hormonal balance?
 We often find that adolescents vary similarly when compared to
primary school
 The arguments of moodiness
 Hormones
 Neuronal sensitivity and increases
 Increase in negative life events
 Situational
o Happier with friends in social situations
o Moodier in structured and adult-controlled
environments
o Preparedness
 Girls are better prepared that earlier generations
 Fathers involvement helps
 More likely to discuss with friends
 Better prepared than bots
 Cultural differences
 Initiation rites/ceremonies facilitate transition to adulthood,
provides recognition of value/status
o Individual variations in timing of menarche due to:
  Genes
 Sisters experience menarche within about 12 months of age
 Monozygotic twins – within about 2.8 months
 Diet and body fat
 Threshold weight around 45kg, minimum of 12% body fat
 Environmental factors
 Health threats, climate, family conflict, other social stressors,
presence of a step-father, and others
 Slowed down by physical stressors
 Sped up by psychological stressors
ADOLESCENT SEXUALITY
- Many parents don’t give ‘sex talk’
o Openness and information associated with less risky sexual behaviours,
views more like parents
- Mothers more communicative than fathers
- Girls receive more information than boys
- Peers, popular media, the internet are other sources of ‘education’