Adolescent development
Hoorcollege 1; Introduction to Adolescent Development
Examples of projects
- Project stars (longitudinal)
o large-scale, national, longitudinal research project on puberty development, love,
romantic relationships, and sexuality among adolescents.
o They looked at the role of personal characteristics in normative and non-normative
romantic and sexual development
The role of physical (puberty/attractiveness) and personality characteristics in
romantic and sexual development
How do these individual characteristics interact with contextual factors (eg.
Parenting/peers) in predicting specific developmental paths?
- Art project (longitudinal survey and experimental lab)
o An experimental investigation of developmental and individual differences in adolescent
risky decision making: the role of peers, siblings and parents (so not only
personal/behavioral characteristics)
o Population: Dutch study (3 years and middle educational studies) and St. Martin study (2
years and lower educational tracks))
Looked at 10 risk behaviors
Alcohol, Delinquency, Gambling, Internet, “extreme sports”, Smoking,
School, Unsafe Sex, Soft drugs, Traffic
- When being different becomes the norm (online sample, school sample (role of school climate)
and qualitative interviews):
o How microaggressions affect Dutch lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth
These 3 research projects have been useful to understand what do we see as normal/healthy
adolescents' development, what are factors that promote that wellbeing and what factors are related to
adolescents engaging in unhealthy adolescent behavior?
What is adolescence?
- In adolescence there is a huge change in physical and socioemotional development
o From immature --> mature
- Adolescence = The period between the onset of sexual maturation and the attainment of adult
roles and responsibilities
o Transition from having a child status (requires adult monitoring) to adult status (self-
responsibility for behavior)
- Hypothetical thinking versus recursive thinking
,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 ect.
o resistance to cold, heat, hunger, dehydration, and most types of injury
- Yet: overall morbidity and death rates increase 200- 300% from childhood to late adolescence
- So. There is something about this period despite all the great increases in health that puts the
adolescents at risk. People focus on this risky behavior, because they try to understand and
eventually prevent this risk/morbidity
Sources or morbidity and mortality in adolescence
- Primary causes of death/disability are related to problems of control of behavior and emotion
o Increased rates of accidents, suicides, homicides, depression, alcohol & substance use,
violence, reckless behaviors, eating disorders, health problems related to risky sexual
behaviors.
o Increase in risk-taking, sensation-seeking, and erratic (emotionally influenced) behavior
This has been recognized for a long time. There is something terrible about the adolescent period
- 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 (The
Winter’s Tale, Act III))
Scientific questions (Ronald Dahl)
- There are questions raised by this health paradox
o What is the empirical evidence that adolescents are “heated by Nature”?
o Are these changes based in biology?
In the hormones of puberty?
In specific brain changes that underpin some behavioral and emotional
tendencies & problems that emerge in adolescence?
o Is it only our biology that allows for this kind of change If it's so, what are the
implications for interventions? Should/Can we intervene?
Intervention
- If we don't intervene
o Onset of problems such as nicotine dependence, alcohol and drug use, poor health
habits, etc. will show up as mortality in adulthood. It’s much harder to not be addicted
as an adult if you use this stuff when you're an adolescent, it is harder to kick those
habits and show up in adulthood
We don't want to impact our body in the development.
We delay substance/alcohol use, by setting these legal ages higher up.
o 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
o Book: Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology,
Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion, and Education (2 volumes)
All the topics related to adolescence a long time ago. Much of what he wrote
about was based on myths, experiences and other ideas that were popular at
that time (for example Darwin's evolution theory)
o Recapitulation Theory
When we look at the stages of development individuals go through (infancy,
childhood, adolescence, adulthood), those stages mimic the evolution of men.
So, adolescence is considered not the adult western civilized world that we live
in today if we will call it that. Adolescence is this wild time where we weren't
settled down as humans.
o Storm and Stress grew out of that idea. So as adolescence go through a period of radical
problems, stress, which is not good for a person.
We have the idea that all adolescents are risk takers and not good for the world
Review of storm and stress (Arnett, 1999)
- Oversimplifies a complex issue
- Many adolescents navigate this interval with minimal difficulties (so there isn't this emotional
upheaval)
- However, there is empirical evidence for:
o Increased conflicts with parents (intensity increases)
o Mood volitivity (so, more mood swings and negative mood)
o Increased risk behavior, recklessness and sensation seeking
- --> He came up with a modified view of storm and stress
o Not a myth, real for many, but not all and not necessarily related to psychopathology
o Storm and stress: all adolescents go to these problems, so let’s normalize it (‘its a phase)
Conceptualizing the study of adolescence across time
- The idea of storm and stress developed over the years
o Aristotle: Youth are heated by Nature as drunken men by wine.
o “G.S. Hall (1904) a period of heightened “storm and stress.”
o 1920 Margaret Meade – questioned storm and stress in all cultures
Not all cultures were western cultures. There were rituals that helped them to
transition into adult. She said it was a normal transition and the idea of Storm
and stress is a western invention
o 1930-50s – psychoanalytic perspective – Anna Freud: storm and stress is normal (normal
to have these kind of difficulties)
If a person doesn't have psychological difficulties during the adolescent period
or question who they are, they are going to have more problems as an adult
o 1960s and 1970s: attempts to understand the problems as due to “raging hormones.”
,
Hoorcollege 1; Introduction to Adolescent Development
Examples of projects
- Project stars (longitudinal)
o large-scale, national, longitudinal research project on puberty development, love,
romantic relationships, and sexuality among adolescents.
o They looked at the role of personal characteristics in normative and non-normative
romantic and sexual development
The role of physical (puberty/attractiveness) and personality characteristics in
romantic and sexual development
How do these individual characteristics interact with contextual factors (eg.
Parenting/peers) in predicting specific developmental paths?
- Art project (longitudinal survey and experimental lab)
o An experimental investigation of developmental and individual differences in adolescent
risky decision making: the role of peers, siblings and parents (so not only
personal/behavioral characteristics)
o Population: Dutch study (3 years and middle educational studies) and St. Martin study (2
years and lower educational tracks))
Looked at 10 risk behaviors
Alcohol, Delinquency, Gambling, Internet, “extreme sports”, Smoking,
School, Unsafe Sex, Soft drugs, Traffic
- When being different becomes the norm (online sample, school sample (role of school climate)
and qualitative interviews):
o How microaggressions affect Dutch lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth
These 3 research projects have been useful to understand what do we see as normal/healthy
adolescents' development, what are factors that promote that wellbeing and what factors are related to
adolescents engaging in unhealthy adolescent behavior?
What is adolescence?
- In adolescence there is a huge change in physical and socioemotional development
o From immature --> mature
- Adolescence = The period between the onset of sexual maturation and the attainment of adult
roles and responsibilities
o Transition from having a child status (requires adult monitoring) to adult status (self-
responsibility for behavior)
- Hypothetical thinking versus recursive thinking
,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 ect.
o resistance to cold, heat, hunger, dehydration, and most types of injury
- Yet: overall morbidity and death rates increase 200- 300% from childhood to late adolescence
- So. There is something about this period despite all the great increases in health that puts the
adolescents at risk. People focus on this risky behavior, because they try to understand and
eventually prevent this risk/morbidity
Sources or morbidity and mortality in adolescence
- Primary causes of death/disability are related to problems of control of behavior and emotion
o Increased rates of accidents, suicides, homicides, depression, alcohol & substance use,
violence, reckless behaviors, eating disorders, health problems related to risky sexual
behaviors.
o Increase in risk-taking, sensation-seeking, and erratic (emotionally influenced) behavior
This has been recognized for a long time. There is something terrible about the adolescent period
- 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 (The
Winter’s Tale, Act III))
Scientific questions (Ronald Dahl)
- There are questions raised by this health paradox
o What is the empirical evidence that adolescents are “heated by Nature”?
o Are these changes based in biology?
In the hormones of puberty?
In specific brain changes that underpin some behavioral and emotional
tendencies & problems that emerge in adolescence?
o Is it only our biology that allows for this kind of change If it's so, what are the
implications for interventions? Should/Can we intervene?
Intervention
- If we don't intervene
o Onset of problems such as nicotine dependence, alcohol and drug use, poor health
habits, etc. will show up as mortality in adulthood. It’s much harder to not be addicted
as an adult if you use this stuff when you're an adolescent, it is harder to kick those
habits and show up in adulthood
We don't want to impact our body in the development.
We delay substance/alcohol use, by setting these legal ages higher up.
o 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
o Book: Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology,
Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion, and Education (2 volumes)
All the topics related to adolescence a long time ago. Much of what he wrote
about was based on myths, experiences and other ideas that were popular at
that time (for example Darwin's evolution theory)
o Recapitulation Theory
When we look at the stages of development individuals go through (infancy,
childhood, adolescence, adulthood), those stages mimic the evolution of men.
So, adolescence is considered not the adult western civilized world that we live
in today if we will call it that. Adolescence is this wild time where we weren't
settled down as humans.
o Storm and Stress grew out of that idea. So as adolescence go through a period of radical
problems, stress, which is not good for a person.
We have the idea that all adolescents are risk takers and not good for the world
Review of storm and stress (Arnett, 1999)
- Oversimplifies a complex issue
- Many adolescents navigate this interval with minimal difficulties (so there isn't this emotional
upheaval)
- However, there is empirical evidence for:
o Increased conflicts with parents (intensity increases)
o Mood volitivity (so, more mood swings and negative mood)
o Increased risk behavior, recklessness and sensation seeking
- --> He came up with a modified view of storm and stress
o Not a myth, real for many, but not all and not necessarily related to psychopathology
o Storm and stress: all adolescents go to these problems, so let’s normalize it (‘its a phase)
Conceptualizing the study of adolescence across time
- The idea of storm and stress developed over the years
o Aristotle: Youth are heated by Nature as drunken men by wine.
o “G.S. Hall (1904) a period of heightened “storm and stress.”
o 1920 Margaret Meade – questioned storm and stress in all cultures
Not all cultures were western cultures. There were rituals that helped them to
transition into adult. She said it was a normal transition and the idea of Storm
and stress is a western invention
o 1930-50s – psychoanalytic perspective – Anna Freud: storm and stress is normal (normal
to have these kind of difficulties)
If a person doesn't have psychological difficulties during the adolescent period
or question who they are, they are going to have more problems as an adult
o 1960s and 1970s: attempts to understand the problems as due to “raging hormones.”
,
