More physical changes in adolescents:
- By the beginning of adolescence, the brain is 95% of adult size & weight.
- Mylenation and synaptic pruning are nearly complete.
- Limbic system reaches maturity: This regulates reward, desire, pleasure, and emotional experience.
- Frontal cortex continues developing.
- Combine to make adolescents more risky because desire swamps inhibition.
Physical changes in development:
Muscle fibers become thicker and denser; heart and lung capacity increase More so for boys
Body Fat increases: More so for girls
What factors cause the physical changes associated with puberty?
The pituitary releases a growth hormone.
- Also stimulates other glands to produce estrogen in girls and testosterone in boys. (Estrogen needed to develop bone density)
- Both are present in girls and boys but in different amounts.
- *Puberty’s timing is genetically regulated and is affected by health and nutrition.**
How do physical changes affect adolescents’ psychological development?
*Girls are more critical of their appearance and are likely to be dissatisfied.
*Boys are more likely to be pleased with appearance.
Rapid increases in hormones related to greater irritability and impulsivity, but not moodiness.
What are the elements of a healthy diet for adolescents? & Why do some suffer from eating disorders?
Higher growth and metabolism rates require more calories for teens
Boys need iron.
Girls need calcium.
Eating disorders are caused by: TV, parents, and peer pressure.
Anorexia: Irrational fear of being overweight.
Bulimia: Binge eating and purging by vomiting or laxatives.
Do adolescents get enough exercise? Pros & Cons of sport participation in high school?
No they do not.
Pros: Enhance self-esteem & initiative, learn cooperation & teamwork, learn social skills, and cognitive skills.
Cons: Possible steroid use, competitiveness, and difficulty with homework?
How do working memory and processing speed change in adolescence?
Speed of cognitive processing changes little after age 12.
Adolescents working memory capacity is about the same as adults.
Their greater information-processing efficiency reflects increased axonal myelinization. -Allows more rapid neural communication.
How do increases in content knowledge, strategies, and metacognitive skill influence adolescent cognition?
Adolescents can now identify task-specific strategies and monitor how well they are implementing them.
- Outlining text material
- Creating a master study plan
- Making lists of materials they do know well vs. what they don’t.
What changes in problem-solving and reasoning take place in adolescence?
Children use heuristics (rules of thumb) where as adolescents are analytical and logical.
Adolescents are skilled at finding weaknesses in arguments or flaws in reasoning.
How do adolescents reason about moral issues?
At the conventional level (2): Social Norms
Live up to others’ expectations
Follow rules to maintain social order
Is moral reasoning similar in all cultures?
No, it is inconsistent.
How do concern for justice and caring for other people contribute to moral reasoning?
Religious involvement and communities expose adolescents to caring people.
-May promote a sense of duty to others and concern for others.
What are distinguishing characteristics of thought during Piaget’s concrete-operational?
Concrete-operational (7-11yrs):
- Can perform mental operations.
- Mental operations are limited to concrete problems in the here and now. Cannot deal effectively with abstract or hypothetical problems.
What are distinguishing characteristics of thought during Piaget’s formal-operational stages?
Formal-operational (11-to adult):
- Can reason abstractly and hypothetically
- Use deductive reasoning to draw logical conclusions from the facts.
- Engage in combinatorial reasoning: generating all the different ways a given number of items can be arranged.
How do children use strategies and monitoring to improve learning and remembering?
7-8 year olds use less effective learning and memory strategies:
-Rehearsal
Older children use more effective learning strategies such as:
-Taking notes & keeping calendar
-Organization (of new information)
-Elaboration (Critical thinking)
Working memory:
Temporary storage and use of info such as phone #’s
Long-term memory:
The storehouse for memory that is permanent and unlimited.
Metamemory:
Our intuitive understanding of memory.
Diagnosing memory problems accurately and monitoring they effectiveness.
Metacognition:
BEING AWARE of how perception, cognition, intentions, and knowledge work.
Cognitive self-regulation:
Identifying goals, selecting effective strategies, and accurate monitoring. (Staying on top of things)
What is the nature of intelligence & why were intelligence tests first developed?
Psychometricians: (specialists trained in measuring psychological characteristics like personality and intelligence) Administered tests intended to measure the same attribute to numerous people, to determine whether scores from different tests are highly positively correlated & validity. TESTED FOR DISABILITIES.
How well do intelligence tests work?
Not well. Self-discipline can predict school grades better than IQ tests.
Studies show that Head Start programs can be effective in increasing basic reading, readiness, and social skills.
How do heredity and environment influence intelligence?
Intelligence has more to do with being inherited than our environment.
9 Types of Intelligence:
Linguistic Logical-mathematical Spatial Musical Bodily Kinesthetic Intrapersonal Interpersonal Naturalistic Existential MUST FOSTER ALL 9 INTELLIGENCES TO PROPERLY TEACH (Gardner's theory) So that we have more background and more variety in our expanse of knowledge.
