Adolescence

What is the Function of Adolescence?

File photo | Credit: Johns HopkinsOpens in new window Adolescence is an exciting time in life when individuals are more excitable, volatile, and exploratory than they will ever be. It is when children begin the long journey toward independence that is central to becoming well-adjusted adults.

This transition period lends itself to many changes that include physical growth and biological development, increasing cognitive sophistication, and changes in psychosocial skills.

The age of onset and conclusion of adolescence vary between genders with girls entering and exiting adolescence at an earlier age than boys. In the United States, adolescence begins at approximately 11 to 13 years of age and ends in the late teenage years (approximately 18 – 19 years of age).

• Early adolescence typically encompasses the period from the middle school years and includes most of the pubertal development that characterizes the early part of adolescence.
• Late adolescence refers approximately to the period after the majority of the pubertal transition. Significant psychosocial and cognitive changes occur during this time, including increases in orientation toward peers, romantic interests, and identity exploration, as well as more sophisticated cognitive abilities, including abstract thought, future planning and goal setting, and career exploration.

Adolescence is marked by changes in physical development, cognitive development, social and self-concept development, and individual ecology.

Physical Development

Adolescent physical development is marked by two significant changes: a growth spurt and pubertyOpens in new window (i.e., sexual maturation). Both the timing and rate of these changes show much individual variation, and can be influenced by a variety of biological and environmental factors.

Both the onset of puberty and the growth spurt are dependent upon the maturation of the hypothalamus-pituitary-gonadal axis of the neuroendocrine system of the brain.

1.   Growth Spurt

During the growth spurt, adolescents begin to grow taller and heavier and begin to take on adult appearances. The age of onset of this growth spurt in North American and European children range from about 9 – 10 years in girls and 10 – 12 years in boys, and the age at which these children reach maximal growth stature is 13 – 15 years in girls and 14 – 17 years in boys.

Girls on average tend to be taller and heavier than boys as their growth spurt tends to occur earlier than boys’, but boys eventually catch up and exceed girls in body size. In addition to growing taller and heavier, girls begin to develop broader hips and boys begin to develop broader shoulders.

With this change in physical stature comes a change in physical performance. Strength, motor, and aerobic performance increase linearly with age, with the performance of boys on average being greater than that of girls.

2.   Sexual Maturation

Sexual maturation occurs at roughly the same time as the growth spurt. During sexual maturation, secondary sex characteristicsOpens in new window, which include breast development, genital development, widening of the hips, appearance of pubic hair, and changes in voice, are developed.

Another sign of sexual maturation is menarche (i.e., the onset of menstrual period) for girls. MenarcheOpens in new window usually begins 2 to 3 years after the onset of breast development, with an average age of onset of 12 – 13, but there is widespread variation in age of onset, and a trend toward earlier onsets.

Menstrual periods may remain irregular and be marked by a lack of ovulation for several years after menarche. Puberty is considered early if it occurs prior to age 8 in girls and age 9 in boys; it is considered delayed if there are no signs by age 13 in girls and 14 in boys.

Sexual Behavior

During sexual maturation, higher and more variable sex hormones are present, and these heightened hormones seem to enhance sexual motivation. In addition, as adolescents begin to mature sexually and begin to look more like adults, changes in behaviour and role expectations also occur.

One of these changes is the social relationship between boys and girls, with the relationship often becoming more emotionally and sexually intimate. Sexual intimacy between teens is becoming more common and seems to have increased over the last several decades, and seems to gradually increase as adolescents go through school transitions.

Cognitive Development

Adolescence is also marked by cognitive maturation. As children enter adolescence, they are leaving concrete operations and entering the final stage of Piaget’s (1970) cognitive development, formal operations.

At this stage in cognitive development, thinking becomes more rational, systematic, and abstract. The adolescent is able to think about hypothetical alternatives to realities. This indicates that the adolescent is now able to see inconsistencies and flaws in the real world, which makes them more prone to question authority.

Piaget suggested that during this period of formal operations, adolescents can become more egocentric than they were during younger years.

Elkind (1967) identified two forms of egocentrism that he believes to be present during adolescence: the personal fable and the imaginary audience. These stemmed from the Piagetian concept of egocentrism that represented the failure to clearly distinguish between one’s own perspective and that of others.

The personal fable includes a sense of invulnerability (“I am incapable of being harmed”), omnipotence (“I possess special attributes of influence and power”), and personal uniqueness (“My thoughts and feelings are unique experiences that others, particularly parents, simply cannot understand”).

The last feature is exemplified by our cameo adolescent who exclaims: “They [my parents] don’t understand me. What do they know about what it’s like to be a teenager?” Her very first utterance to the interviewer (“What am I like as a person? You’re probably not going to understand” ) also reflects the conviction that adults can’t possibly fathom their uniqueness, be it either the agony or the ecstasy that they experience. The theme of vulnerability is evident in her comment about behaviors that her parents would consider risky: “I would never be the one who was hurt or got in trouble.”

The imaginary audience, according to Elkind (1967), reflects the assumption that others, particularly peers, are as preoccupied with your behavior and appearance as you are, and that peers are constantly submitting you to scrutiny and critical evaluation.

When our prototypical adolescent attempts rather unsuccessfully to act like the hot singer Beyoncé, she concludes that “Everybody, I mean everybody else is looking at me like they think I am totally weird!” Elkind suggested a link between these two forms of adolescent egocentrism. The belief that one is of such importance to so many others may lead to the conclusion that one is special or unique.

These two sets of perceptions reflected, for Elkind (1967), cognitive distortions, biased or faulty interpretations about the attitudes of significant others toward the self. Because adolescents do not yet have command of their newfound formal operational skills, they make errors in judgment.

In the case of the imaginary audience, they fail to differentiate their thoughts from those of others, they overgeneralize, projecting their own concerns onto others. The opposite misrepresentation characterizes the personal fable, in that the adolescent overdifferentiates the self and others, failing to appreciate the commonality of shared experiences with peers or parents.

Some studies have suggested that the egocentrism of adolescence is more linked to the development of social perspective taking skills than to the formal operations stage of cognitive development.

Social and Self-Concept Development

Social relationships also change during adolescence. Part of this change in social relationships comes from adolescents’ attempts to attain a stable self-identity; that is Erikson’s famed “identity crisis” (1963). During the identity crisis, adolescents are trying to figure out who they are in relation to others and who and what they want to become.

In order to resolve this identity crisis, adolescents tend to become independent of their parents and associate more with peers (1963) of different groups or cliques. Therefore, peers become an important source of support during the adolescent period, and strongly influence who the adolescents will become.

Erikson theorized that during this process some loss of self-esteem can occur as the adolescent begins to seek an identity. However, most teens show an increase in self-esteem over the course of adolescence.

Another part of the change in social relationships comes from the ability to take on new social perspectives. Adolescents go through two stages of social perspective taking.

• The first stage, mutual role taking, occurs at 10 – 12 years of age, in which teens develop the ability to consider their own and another person’s perspective and recognize that the other person can do the same.
• The second stage, at 12 – 15 years of age, is societal role taking, during which teens become capable of comparing another person’s perspective with that of a social system.

During these stages, an adolescent’s friendships begin to change to emphasize intimacy, loyalty, and emotional support.