Adolescent Development - Universiteit Utrecht

Lecture 1 

Part 1 

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 

• When being different becomes the norm: how microaggressions affect Dutch lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth. 

Who are adolescents? 

• Beginning: 10/11 years old children > you see differences in size and how old they look.  

• The end: physique that is like the adult level. So huge change in physical appearance, but also from being relatively immature to much more mature. 

Defining adolescents 

• The period between the onset of sexual maturation and the attainment of adult roles and responsibilities. 

• The transition from: 

• “child” status (requires adult monitoring) 

• To “adult” status (self-responsibility for behavior) 

Adolescents in action 1 

• Video ‘tieners reageren op Nederland verwelkomt Trump’ 

• The adolescents understand this form of comedy and can reflect on it and can see what other countries think.  

Part 2 

The health paradox of adolescence 

• Adolescence is the healthiest and most resilient period of the lifespan 

• From childhood to adolescence:  

• Increase strength, speed, mental reasoning, immune function 

• Resistance to cold, heat, hunger, dehydration, and most types of injury 

• Yet: overall morbidity and 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. 

• Increased rates of accidents, suicides, homicides, depression, alcohol & substance use, violence, reckless behaviors, eating disorders, health problems related to risky sexual behaviors 

• Increased 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 

Scientific questions (Ronald Dahl) 

• What is the empirical evidence that adolescents are heated by Nature? 

• 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? 

• What are the implications for interventions? Should 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. 

• Many adult onset problems such as depression can be traced to early episodes in adolescence. 

The father of adolescence 

• G. Stanley Hall 1904 

• Adolescence: its psychology and its relations to physiology, anthropology, sociology, sex, crime, religion, and education 

• Recapitulation theory 

• Stages: those stages mimic the evolution of men. Adolescence is this wild time where we weren't settled down as humans. 

• Storm and stress 

• As adolescents go through adolescence, it's a period of radical problems, stress and this is not good for a person. Idea: all adolescents are risktakers and do things that are bad for the world. 

Part 3 

Arnett (1999) - wrote a review of storm and stress 

• Oversimplifies a complex issue 

• Many adolescents navigate this interval with minimal difficulties 

• However, empirical evidence for: 

• Increased conflicts with parents (intensity) 

• Mood volativity (and negative mood) 

• 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 (most of which were not Western. Rituals that helped people to reach adulthood > no storm and stress. So the idea of Storm and stress is a Western invention). 

• 1930-50s – psychoanalytic perspective – Anna Freud – storm and stress is normal (if there's no stress, no questioning, they are going to have more problems as an adult). 

• 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% intermitent, 57% healthy)   

• We have to rethink to not make these generalizations but think of individual differences and paths > awakening for people: 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 

• 2010s neuroscience models of the adolescent brain in relation to behavior 

Developmental trajectories of binge drinking during college 

• Alcohol use increases significantly during university years. But not for all people. Researchers try to understand who fits (and why) and who doesn't fit (and why). 

How to conceptualize adolescent development from a scientific standpoint? 

• Adolescence: interactions between biology behavior and social context 

• Interdisciplinary approach is needed 

Defining adolescence 

• The period between the onset of sexual maturation and the attainment of adult roles and responsibilities. 

• The transition from: 

• The “child” status (requires adult monitoring) 

• To “adult” status (self-responsibility for behavior) 

John P. Hill (1973) first president of the Society for Research on Adolescence 

• Framework for the study of adolescence 

• Primary changes: the developmental changes that make adolescence distinctive (pubertal, cognitive changes) 

• Secondary changes: the psychological consequences of the interaction between the primary changes and the settings – organized into the domains of identity, autonomy, intimacy, sexuality, and achievement 

3 universal primary changes 

• Biological changes of puberty (& brain) 

• Development of abstract thinking 

• Social redefinition of an individual from a child to an adult (or at the very least a non-child) 

Age boundaries are not consistent across researchers 

• Steinberg text: 

• Early Adolescence (10-13 years) 

• Middle adolescence (14-17 years) 

• Late Adolescence (18-21)  

• Young Adulthood (22-30) 

•   

• Others: 

• Emerging Adulthood (18 -25 years)  then young adulthood 

Developmental tasks 

1. Accepting one's physical body and keeping it healthy 

2. Achieving new and more mature relationships with age mates of both sexes 

3. Achieving emotional autonomy from parents and other adults 

4. Achieving a satisfying gender role 

5. Preparing for a job or career 

6. Making decisions about marriage and family life 

7. Becoming socially responsible 

8. Developing a workable philosophy, a mature set of values, and worthy ideals 

Adolescence consists of component processes 

• Rapid physical growth 

• Sexual maturation 

• Secondary sexual characteristics 

• Motivational and emotional changes 

• Cognitive development 

• Maturation of judgement, self-regulation skills 

• Brain changes linked to each component 

• Relative synchrony but not perfect 

Adolescence in context 

Early Adolescence (10-13 years) 

The past 150 years have witnessed a quiet revolution in human development that still sweeps  across the globe today: children nearly everywhere are growing faster, reaching reproductive  and physical maturity at earlier ages, and achieving larger adult sizes than perhaps ever in  human history. 

                                    Carol M. Worthman, Ph.D. 

Secular trend in age at menarche 

Schlegel & Barry (1990) 

• 187 non-industrialized cultures 

• Adolescence recognized as interval between childhood and adult status 

• End of childhood marked by a ritual (linked to age or puberty) 

• Onset of adult status 

• Marriage 

• Work roles 

• Owning property 

• Becoming a parent 

• Independence (absence of monitoring) 

• Interval between puberty and marriage as index of length 

• The longer the distance between when you go to puberty and when you marry, that's how long you define this interval. 

Puberty, marriage, and adult roles in traditional human societies 

• Among girls, marriage occurred within two years of the onset of puberty in 63% of the societies 

• Among boys the ability to take a wife would require a specific level of achievement (e.g., making a kill on a hunt) 

• Boys 64% were married within four years of puberty 

Puberty, marriage and adult roles in contemporary societies (US) 

• Average age at menarche is now age 12 

• Average age of first marriage for females 27 

• Pattern reflects recent changes: 

• 1970 timing of first marriage in the US: 

• Age 21 for women 

• Age 23 for men 

• 2015 

• Age 27 for women, birth: 26,3 

• Age 29 for men, birth: 31 

Contemporary Japan 

• Average age at menarche has decreased four years over the past century 

• In 1875 menarche at 16,5 years 

• In 1975 menarche 12,2 years 

• Average age at first marriage in Japan now 

• 26 years for women, birth: 30,3 

• 28,4 years for men 

Contemporary Europe 

• The Netherlands 

• Females M 2012: 30; B 2016: 29,4 

• Italy 

• Females M 2011: 30,6; B 2016: 30,3 

• Males M 2011: 33,7 

• Denmark 

• Females M 2012: 32,3; B 28,7 

• Males M 2012: 34,8 

Nowadays: people live together at the same age people got married. So, how do we definite it?  

Puberty 

• Not simply changing attitudes about marriage 

•  Many other adult social roles 

• Starting careers, owning a home, choosing to become parents, are now occurring a decade or more after puberty 

• Adolescence has expanded from a 2-4 year period in traditional societies to an 6-15 year interval in contemporary societies 

• These changes have advantages (academic, economic) and costs (vulnerabilities) 

Maturity gap – chronological hostages of a time warp 

1. Biologically capable and compelled to be sexual beings but asked to delay most positive aspects of adult life. 

2. Cannot work until 16 and labor not respected by adults 

1. Role-less 

2. Economic liabilities 

3. Segregated 

1. Youth culture 

2. Sexual socialization 

Maturity gap 

• Illustrates how changes in nutrition has led to an almost world-wide lenghtening of the adolescent period... but other (rapid) contextual changes are also likely to affect adolescents. 

Contextual approaches and social change 

• Social change 

• In typical characteristics of a society 

• Economic system en social institutions 

• Cultural products (internet, smart phones) 

• Laws, norms and values 

• Symbols 

• In direct social context 

• Friends, peers, family 

• At the national or international level 

• Breakdown of communism 

• Formation of EU 

• Globalization 

Importance 

• Creates important developmental challenges for adolescents 

• Cohort-specific demands explains diversity in results 

• Useful for individual X context effect 

• Implications for interventions research 

• Theoretical concepts may only be limited to particular historical circumstances 

Hall and social change 

• Affects fit between needs and opportunities 

• Social change doesn't affect all individuals equally 

• Restrict options, industrial resources, coping 

• Adolescents are the most responsive to change “sensitive period” 

• Adolescents and YA more likely to use new substances 

• New technologies 

• Social change is bidirectional 

• Demographic changes – including fertility 

• Globalization – weakening of community ties 

• Individualization and pluralization of life paths 

Now in a privileged position to better understand adolescence 

• Early theories 

• Focus on one main issue 

• Biological 

• Psychoanalytical 

• Sociocultural 

• Cognitive 

• Current theories 

• Integrative 

• Complementarity of approaches 

• Cumulative change 

• Contextualism 

• Life history 

• Life course theory 

• Historical time and place 

• Timing in lives 

• Linked lives