Lectures – Adolescent Development
Introduction
Examples of 10 risk behaviors:
1. Alcohol
2. Delinquency
3. Gambling
4. Internet
5. “extreme sports”
6. Smoking
7. School
8. Unsafe sex
9. Softdrugs
10. Traffic
Key to success:
1. Read all documents on Blackboard and assigned readings
2. Attend / listen to / watch all (recorded) lectures and tutorials
3. Attend on-line exam practice sessions
4. Use the discussion board to ask questions
Documents:
1. Syllabus
2. Documents about written assignment
a. Full description and samples
3. Practice exam questions
4. Textbook and required readings (download them tonight!)
Course proceedings
- All lectures for exam 1 will be pre-recorded an posted on Blackboard on or before the
date on the schedule
- A live interactive session will be held each Wednesday before the exams which are on
Friday
- Written assignment done in pairs
- We will help with forming pairs
- Discussion board threads on BB will be set up for you to post questions and help each
other; the coordinators will also post answers
- Also email coordinator with questions put Adolescent Development in subject line
Grade determination
Written assignment = 25%
Term paper part 1 (pre-paper): 5%
Term paper part 2 (final paper) 20%
Exam = 75%
, Exam 1 – 25%
Exam 2 – 25%
Exam 3 – 25% (no cumulative exam about all the material, the exams only contain the
material of those few weeks)
To pass course you must:
1. Pass the final paper
2. Have an overall average of 5.5 or better
New: extra credit assignment – more details will be on BB. Due: April 1.
Preparation Exam 1
Lecture 1: Introduction
Lecture Introduction
Learning Objectives:
1. To understand how adolescence has been conceptualized across time and context
2. Understand old and new views about storm and stress
3. Understand how the beginning and end of adolescence has been defined
A Conceptualizing Adolescence
The Health Paradox of Adolescence
- Adolescence is the healthiest and most resilient period of the lifespan
- From childhood to adolescence:
o Strength, speed, reaction time, mental reasoning, immune function
o Resistance to cold, heat, dehydration, and most types of injury
- Yet: overall morbidity rates increase 200-300% from childhood to late adolescence
Sources of Morbidity and Mortality in Adolescence:
- Primary causes of death/disability are related to problems of control of behavior and
emotion
- Rates of accidents, suicides, homicides, depression, alcohol & substance use, violence,
reckless behaviors, eating disorders, health problems related to risky sexual behaviors.
- Risk-taking, sensation-seeking, and erratic (emotionally influenced) behavior
Recognized for a long time
- Youth are heated by Nature as drunken men by wine – Aristotle
- I would that there were no age between ten and twenty-three… for there is nothing in
between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting … -
Shakespeare
Adults are fed up with the adolescence period.
,Scientific Questions (Ronald Dahl)
- What is the empirical evidence that adolescents are “heated by Nature”?
- Are these changes based in biology?
o In the hormones of puberty?
o In specific brain changes that underpin some behavioral and emotional
tendencies & problems that emerge in adolescence?
- What are the implications for interventions? Should we intervene? Can we intervene?
If we don’t intervene …
- Onset of problems such as nicotine dependence, alcohol and drug use, poor health
habits, etc. will show up as mortality in adulthood – this is why we try to prolong the
age that kids start smoking or start using alcohol, because these early starts have
serious health consequences.
- Many adult onset problems such as depression can be traced to early episodes in
adolescence
The Father of Adolescence
- G. Stanley Hall (1904) (1st president of APA)
- Adolescence: It’s Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology,
Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion, and Education (2 volumes) – much of what he wrote
about was not based on empirical evidence, but based on myths, experiences and ideas
that were popular at the time
- Recapitulation Theory – the idea that individuals develop along the stages of the
evolution of the human species
- Storm and Stress – idea that all adolescence are risk takers and do things that are a risk
for the world.
Arnett (1999) – Review of storm and stress
- Oversimplifies a complex issue
- Many adolescents navigate this interval with minimal difficulties
- However, empirical evidence for:
o Increased conflicts with parents (intensity)
o Mood volativity (mood swings more) (and negative mood)
o Increased risk behavior, recklessness and sensation seeking
- -> modified view of storm and stress: not a myth, real for many, but not all and not
necessarily related to psychopathology
Conceptualizing (the study of) Adolescence across Time
- Aristotle: Youth are heated by Nature as drunken men by wine.
- G.S. Hall (1904) a period of heightened “storm and stress.”
- 1920 Margaret Meade – questioned storm and stress in all cultures (idea of storm and
stress is a Western invention)
- 1930s-50s – psychoanalytic perspective – Anna Freud – storm and stress is normal
(adolescents who have no problems will have more problems in adulthood)
, - 1960s and 1970s: attempts to understand the problems as due to “raging hormones.”
Later conceptualizations …
- 1980s Petersen (1988) questioned the idea that all youth experience trouble (11%
chronic difficulties, 32% intermittent, 57% healthy – not everybody is the same)
- 1990s Arnett (1999) revised the idea of storm and stress
- 1990s-2000s context and time period recognized as important, thus different
developmental trajectories (Dubas, Miller & Petersin, 2003) with consideration of
time and context
- 2000s evolutionary ideas applied to recast concept of risk – see it as an opportunity,
questioning what’s going on could lead to creativity. Risk taking is not necessarily
negative, it can also be positive, that is a new shift that’s been happening in the past 10
years. For instance youth movements.
- 2010s neuroscience models of the adolescent brain in relation to behavior
Developmental Trajectories of Binge Drinking during College
On average alcohol use increases over time during college, but this doesn’t fit everyone.
- Chronic: high at every time
- Remitting: starts high, but decreases over time
- Fling: starts low, increases over time, decreases at the end
- Late onset: starts low, stays low at first but then increase starkly
- Non diagnosing: stay low overall
How to conceptualize Adolescent Development from a scientific standpoint?
Adolescence – interactions between biology, behavior and social context
Interdisciplinary approach needed
B Defining Adolescence
Defining adolescence
- The period between the onset of sexual maturation (doesn’t happen at the same time
for everyone) and the attainment of adult roles and responsibilities
- The transition from:
o “Child” status (requires adult monitoring)
o To “adult” status (self-responsibility for behavior)
Once we start to use these role definitions then we know that the boundaries of adolescence
are becoming even more unclear, undefined, or very depending on the culture.
Framework for the Study of Adolescence
John P. Hill (1973) first president of the Society for Research on Adolescence
- Primary Changes – the developmental changes that make adolescence distinctive
(puberty is one of those, the change in cognitive abilities is another one of those)
