Physical and Cognitive Development in Adolescence Essay

Adolescence is a ontogenesisal phase with issues that have repercussions throughout adult life. It is a bound of vast change, more aptly described as a series of phases that mark the transition from childhood to adulthood. It is also a menses of life in which several forms of sociopathy and psychopathology often appears. Adolescence is both a biological carry through and a social-cultural transition.The juvenile organism undergoes a act of product and maturation as it moves toward adult size and functional capacity, and, more or less concurrently, the soulfulness must pass through a transition from the status and conduct of a child to the responsibilities of the adult. The suit adequate adjustment of these processes, each to the separate, and the appropriate direction and timing of the demands made by adults upon the developing adolescent are important factors in the residuum and adequacy of growing up in our culture. Physical Development in AdolescenceThe normal human life s pan whitethorn be considered as dividable roughly into three epochs the first, which extends from c onception until past the age of twenty, is the time required to attain adulthood the help is the variable, but usually very brief, period during which the individual enjoys the peak of his physical efficiency and the third is the period of physical deterioration, a process which begins insidiously as early as the late twenties and, fabrication speed as the long time go by, egresss his change surfacetual senility and dissolution.Thus, the first twenty-odd years of life are spent in achieving physical adulthood and a degree of physiologic equilibrium which is lost, at least in part, almost as soon as it is attained. If this seems an exaggerated statement, one need but recall that the baseball player is usually past the peak of his physical efficiency at thirty and that the pugilists legs have already begun to obtuse him down some years earlier. Viewed in this path, it is, perha ps, not too much to say that man has scarcely begun to live when he begins to die.Adolescence begins early in the second decade and is usually considered as ending at rough the twenty-second or twenty-third year in male childs and somewhat earlier in girls. It covers, therefore, almost the support ten years of what was just referred to as the first epoch of life, the period extending from conception to adulthood. The physical changes which occur during this early period of life acknowledge both growth and development growth, in the sense of an increase in mass, volume, and external dimensions, and development, in the sense of becoming ramp upively more complex.These 2 processes, growth and development, do not proceed at the same absolute rate or at the same relative rate throughout this early period of life. There are intervals during which the body is increasing in size more rapidly than it is growing in complexity, and them are other times at which this birth is reversed. Some of the develop mental changes which occur during adolescence are, perhaps, best appreciated when viewed in the light of some events which have preceded them.When we speak of things which are determined by heredity in the human body, such traits as eye color, hair color, hair form, skin color, or such defects as hemophilia, red-green color blindness, etc. , suggest themselves. We are apt(predicate) to lose sight of the fact that, in addition to determining a vast number of what may more or less properly be called unit characters such as those which were just enumerated, there is also in the germ plasm some mechanism which controls larger aspects of development and which insures, for example, that human beings wear rise only to other human beings and that elephants continue to produce only elephants.The genetic constitution of man, like that of other forms, controls another important aspect of development. It not only determines at bottom rather narrow limits what the end pr oduct of development impart be, but it also prescribes quite definitely the stages to be followed in attaining that end. (Blos, P, 1967). It has change state increasingly unambiguous that the growth and development of the child is a more or less orderly sequence or process which, for convenience, we classify into motley arbitrary steps or periods.It is also clear that each individual child moves through this sequence at his or her own rate of progress and attains dimensions of structure, function, and behavior that are idiomatic to the individual. Thus, while we observe a certain order and regularity of process, we may also note a wide revolution of products, as exhibited by groups of individuals who differ in size, shape, and capacity, although of the same chronological age.As a result of these pronounced differences in rates of growth and maturation, the number of years a person has lived is in many situations of less signifi roll in the hayce than the level of physiological and social maturity he has attained. Differences in the time of maturing are sometimes of great importance to the individual. The early-maturing child has a shorter period of prepuberal development than the late-maturing child.Conversely, the child with early puberty may have a prolonged period in which to make adolescent social adjustments, while the late maturing may have to compress these adjustments into a shorter interval before reaching adulthood. Preceding and accompanying knowledgeable maturation the child undergoes a transformation in size and body form of greater or Im degree, with a lengthening of the legs that sometimes producesan almost emergent change in height. Some rapidly growing boys and girls may shoot up and within a brief period of eighteen months or dickens years attain nearly their full adult stature.Others may grow belatedly but continuously over a longer period. It has become observable that puberty is merely an early stage in adolescent development. It may be two or three years after the first flowing before the girls will ovulate and attain full sex maturation and the capacity for procreation. Less is known about the male, and at present it is not mathematical to say when spermatogenesis or production of motile, functionally potent sperm does occur. At this point we should also note that recent studies show that every individual is bi-sexual, with the provide of producing both male and female sex hormones.These male and female hormones have been found in the urine of boys and girls as early as five or six years of age they increase in quantity as children approach puberty. Initially, the female sex hormones (estrogens) are more signifi undersurfacet for puberal development even in the male, who develops only somewhat later a characteristic preponderance of male hormones (androgens). This balance of male and female hormones directs or controls the sex maturation of the boy and girl and the appearance of the secondary sex chara cteristicsbreasts, pubic and axillary hair, beard, voice changes, etc. Esman, A. H, 1975).One important aspect of adolescent development is that the growth of other dimensions and of the several organ systems may lag behind growth in stature. The very tall boy of fifteen or sixteen may even have juvenile, undeveloped gonads, while his heart and circulatory system, the respiratory system, and the gastrointestinal tract may still be relatively immature and progressing only slowly toward the size and functional capacity appropriate to his stature.Conversely, the boy or girl who reaches puberty at an earlier age apparently grows and develops more as a whole, with fewer biological discrepancies and organic imbalances. But this earlier puberty has its disadvantages as well as advantages, especially in view of the social consequences of outgrowing former friends and associates. A simple analogy may serve to illustrate this. We can imagine a hundred boys and a hundred girls starting from N ew York to California. A wasted number of them will travel by airplane, arriving there quickly.Another and larger group will travel by fast limited express trains and cause soon after the first group. A still larger group will travel by trains operating on the usual time-schedules some will go by bus, others by hitch-hiking, and a very few will attempt to trudge across the continent on foot. Not all of the two hundred will reach their destination, for some will be lost en route. Those who do arrive will bear the evidence of how they traveled-including the discomforts and dangers of each method of travel.Similarly, in the course of child development, each mode of travel, each pattern of growth and maturation, involves its peculiar biological and personality risks. Just because the whole organism is changing, in organ systems and functions as well as in external size and shape, impairment often occurs in the ability to maintain homeostasis, or physiological stability. particularly during the period when mixed parts of the organism are cover their maximum discrepancies in rates of growth, we may find that some functional sotivities are amiss integrated.If these interacting functions become seriously out of balance, as may sometimes happen as a result of neglect, overstrain, inadequate nutrition, or other adverse factors, it in possible that the residual effects of this adolescent disturbance will be carried over to influence, when they emerge, the physiological patterns and homeostatic capacity of the adult. (Freud, A, 1958). Boys or girls who complete their growth within a relatively short time may experience only a brief period of instability and may therefore be able to go forward to adult status with less internal incongruity.On the other hand, a brief period of growth may entail disturbances of various kinds merely because of the sudden, unexpected increase in size. During this brief period the adolescent must revise his image of the body and campaign to become accustomed to a new body size and form. Moreover, many of the eye-hand co-ordinations and other patterns of muscular co-ordination built up over the years of childhood may be rendered obsolete by these changes, so that the individual may find himself clumsy and painfully incapable of even simple activities. Cognitive Development in AdolescenceAdolescence is a time in which cognitive process is ever expanding, reminiscent of the childs shift from being a nonreader to being a reader. Suddenly, the innovation opens up to that child. What once appeared as jumbles of letters now appears as words messages, directions, communications of all kinds. For adolescents, it is the abstract world that is now open the world of ideas and concepts. Adolescents can think about thinking, think through hypotheses, think ahead. This is what allows them to use the defense of intellectualization, which A. Freud (1958) identified in Adolescence. Adolescents can think instead of taking action as a way to discharge energy and reduce conflict. With the development of the capacity for abstract thinking, adolescents can think beyond the present they can conceptualize a past. This is how they can give way childhood, an abstraction, behind while they live in the present and, eventually, begin to contemplate a future.In her 1937 article, Katan described object removal as a process that involves a directional change for adolescents wherein they leave old ways of looking at important people behind. This takes place in the context of an adolescents ability to conceptualize a past. When analytic thinking develops, the social, governmental, aesthetic, and religious spheres open up for the adolescents exploration. Adolescents develop theories about how these spheres should be and then try to validate their theories by looking at the world around them. According to Inhelder and Piaget (1958), this represents an important change in the direction of thinking Children look at the world an d develop hypotheses to explain what they see adolescents think about what is possible and then look out to see whether they are correct. Reality is secondary to possibility.This is described as the change from concrete to formal operations. In Piagetian theory, adolescence marks the transition from the concrete operational thinking characteristics of school aged children to formal logical operations. egg operations involve the ability to manipulate abstraction such as algebraic expressions, to reason from known principal, to way many points of view according to change criteria, and to think about the process of thinking itself. Some early adolescence demonstrates formal thinking, others acquire the capability later, and others dont acquire at all.Young adolescents may be able to apply formal operations to school work but to not to personal dilemmas. When the emotional stakes are high, magical thinking, such as the conviction of invulnerability, may interfere with higher order co gnition. The ability to treat possibilities as real entities may affect critical decision, such as whether or not to have unprotected intercourse or engage in other risk taking behavior. Some theorists argue that the transition from concrete to formal operations follows from quantitative increases in knowledge, experience, and cognitive efficiency rather than a qualitative recognition of thinking.Consistent with this view are data showing a steady rise in cognitive processing speed from late childhood through early adulthood, associated with a reduction in synaptic number (pruning of less used path ways) and progressive maturation of electroinsephalographis results. It is unclear whether or not the hormonal changes of puberty directly affect cognitive development. The development of moral thinking roughly parallels general cognitive development. Mostly adolescents perceive right and wrong as absolute and unquestionable.Taking a loaf of starting line to feed are starving child is wr ong because it is Stealing. Adolescents often question received morality, embracing the behavior standards of the peer group. Group membership may allow them to displays guilt feelings for perceived moral infractions from themselves to the group. With the transition to formal operational thought, middle adolescents question and analyze extensively. Questioning of moral conventions fosters the development of personal codes of ethics. such(prenominal) codes often appear design to justify the adolescents sexual apatite anything I want is right.In other cases, adolescents may embrace a code that is more strict than that of there parents, perhaps in response to the anxiety engendered by the weakening of the conventional limits. An adolescents new flexibility of thought has pervasive effects on relationships with self and others. In late adolescents sexual experimentation decreases as they adopt more stable sexual identities. cognition tends to be less self-centered, with increasing thou ghts about concepts such as justice, patriotism, and history. Older adolescents are often idealistic but also may be absolutistic and intolerant of opposing views.Religious or political groups that promise answers to complex question may hold great appeal. According to Kohlberg and Gilligan (1971) looked at whether the Piagetian stages of cognitive development corresponded to Kohlbergs six stages of moral development. They found correspondence in childhood and established that it was only with the attainment of formal operations that Kohlbergs last stages of moral development could be achieved. Adolescents delight especially in consideration of that which is not, a capacity that develops in the move from concrete to formal operations.They show a marked preference for abstraction. This may be what permits adolescents to deidealize their parents, a necessary component of the second individuation process that takes place at this time (Blos, 1967). Early adolescents can see that other p arents are different from theirs by midadolescence, they are able to criticize their parents for things that they have not done or ways that they have not been. Both of these serve the adolescent disengagement process. According to Esman (1975) the state of anomie in which adolescents find themselves once the deidealization of their parents takes place.They go through a mourning process in which they may search for alternative gods in politics, religion, or ideology. This process may also simply serve to motivate a search for values, political and religious beliefs, or ethics. This search often brings the adolescent into contact with different groups. The group involvement diminishes some of the anomie that results from the disengagement from the family of origin. That to which people aspire is denoted as their ego ideal. As people approach this ego ideal, self-esteem rises.Blos posited that there is a maturation of the ego ideal during adolescence given that adolescents develop the capacity and the pauperism to formulate values and goals that are different from those of their parents. It is the move toward autonomy that permits goals and values to be examined and reformulated. Adolescents look to the world around them for both people and ideas that may be transiently used to aid them in forming these new goals and values. Thinking about, through, ahead, and beyond are all forms of exercising new likely and gaining mastery over both internal and external reality.These contribute to the adolescents achievement of greater competence. An adolescent does not have to look to others for explanations of that which is not immediately comprehensible hypotheses can be generated and tested. This contributes to the adolescents sense of greater autonomy. Researchers on the development of a concept of self during adolescence note that there is more differentiation evident over time. This is seen as a direct result of adolescents increasing cognitive ability. The component s of their self-concept become more and more complex, both quantitatively and qualitatively.This is very much in keeping with the second individuation theory of Blos (1967), which posits that adolescents have an increased capacity to see and define themselves. In their major study of sex differences, Maccoby and Jacklin (1974) established that the effect of childrens cognitive skill is greater than the influence of their parents attitudes and behavior on the development of sex roles. This suggests that it is the greater cognitive skill of adolescents that leads them to be more aware(predicate) of and responsive to sex differences.A major psychoanalytic characterization of self or identity is that people form mental pictures or representations of themselves. The representations of adolescents must include images of their now more mature bodies. This gives them a sense of ownership of their bodies. It is no longer the caretaker of bodily needs from childhood who is responsible for se eing to the body it is the adolescent. These mental representations of the body must include images of the genitals as functioning organs for the adolescent to feel identified as male or female, or potential father or mother.