Adolescent Cognitive Development

Developmental Psychology's Major Issues

• Developmental psychologists use cross-sectional and longitudinal studies to explore nature vs nurture, continuity vs stages, and stability vs change.
• Researchers emphasizing experience and learning view development as a slow continuous shaping process.
• Those who emphasize biological maturation view development as a sequence of genetically predisposed steps or stages. Key stage theorists and theories include:
• Jean Piaget (cognitive development)
• Lawrence Kohlberg (moral development)
• Erik Erikson (psychosocial development)
• Experiences of stability and change occur through out life, traits like temperament are very stable, unlike social attitudes.
• All future self aspects cannot be based on early life, with everyone changing with age in some way.

Prenatal Development and the Newborn

• Prenatal development is not risk free.
• A teratogen negatively impacts the embryo or fetus during prenatal development.
• Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FAS) manifests as physical and cognitive deficits due to a mother's heavy drinking during pregnancy.
• Signs include a small head or distinct facial features.
• Newborns arrive with reflexes supporting survival, such as sucking, tonguing, swallowing, and breathing.
• Newborns cry as a means to elicit help and comfort.
• Infants search for sights and sounds that link to other humans, especially their mothers.
• Newborns possess and use sensory equipment to learn, demonstrating well-developed senses of smell and sight.
• Newborns possess a biologically rooted temperament.
• Research uses eye-tracking machines and pacifiers wired to electronic gear.
• Fetuses show habituation by adapting to vibrations on the mother's abdomen.
• Newborns prefer face-like images and the smell of their mother's body.

Infancy and Childhood: Physical Development

• Biological growth, or maturation, influences our commonalities.
• Brain cells are sculpted by heredity and experience.
  • At birth, the brain experiences neuronal growth spurts and synaptic pruning.
• From 3 to 6 months, rapid frontal lobe growth occurs which continues into adolescence.
• Brain association areas linked with thinking, memory, and language are the last to develop cortically.
• Fiber pathways supporting agility, language, and self-control proliferate into puberty.
• Unused neural connections go through synaptic pruning.
• Motor development skills develop as the nervous system and muscles mature.
• Motor skill development is primarily universal in sequence, although timing varies.
• Genes guide motor development, which is influenced by the environment, with the same developmental sequence occurring throughout the world.
• Infants are capable of learning and remembering although infantile amnesia may affect conscious memory

Infancy and Childhood: Cognitive Development

• Piaget theorized that children are active thinkers, with minds developing through a series of irreversible stages transitioning them from reflexes to abstract reasoning.
• Maturing brains build schemas that are adjusted through assimilation and accommodation.
• The sensorimotor stage lasts from birth to nearly 2 years.
• Tools for thinking and reasoning change with development.
• Processes include adaptation, assimilation, and accommodation.
• Infants develop object permanence: the awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived. Modern researchers believe; development is more continuous than Piaget theorized due to the nature of objects.
• The preoperational stage occurs from about 2 to 7 years.
• Children are able to represent things with words and images, however cannot yet perform mental operations successfully.
• Symbolic thinking and pretend play occur at this increased rate.
• Preschoolers experience egocentrism, difficulty perceiving things from another's perspective.
• The concrete operational satge takes place between 7 to 11 years.
• Children gain mental operations enabling them to think logically about concrete events.
• They begin to understand changes in form before changes in quantity.
• Children begin to understand simple math and conservation.
• The formal operational occurs from 12, through adulthood.
• Children can ponder hypothetical propositions and deduce consequences.
• The basics begins much earlier than Piaget realized.
• Piaget identified significant cognitive milestones and sparked vast interest in cognitive development.
• Research suggests that sequence of cognitive milestones unfold largely as Piaget proposed.
• Development is more continuous than Piaget theorized.
• Children are more competent than Piaget's original evaluation.
• Young children are incapable of adult logic, parents and teachers should note.
• Children are not passive receptacles waiting to be filled with knowledge.
• Cognitive immaturity is adaptive.

Infancy and Childhood: Social Development

• Attachment is the emotional tie with another person, they shown by the attachment
• Closeness to a caregiver and distress on separation.
• Around 8 months, after object permanence develops, children display stranger anxiety when separated from their caregivers.
• Infants form attachments because parents are comfortable, familiar, and responsive, not just for biological needs.
• Body contact is one important factor in attachment.
• Harry and Margaret Harlow showed that monkeys attached to mothers for comfort and secure base, this applies to mothers that rock, give warmth, and feed.
• Attachment is a similar concept for human infants and parents/caregivers.
• Another key to attachment is familiarity forming during a critical period.
• A critical period is an optimal period early in which exposure to certain stimuli/experiences produce typical development.
• Konrad Lorenz (1937) demonstrated imprinting which is the process by which animals form attachments during early life.
• Self-concept is the understanding and evaluation of who we are.
  • At 6 months self-awareness begins with self-recognition in a mirror.
  • At 15-18 months, children develop a schema of how a face should look.
  • As the school age comes up, more detailed descriptions of gender, group membership, psychological traits, and peer comparisons start.
  • From ages 8 to 10, self-image becomes stable.

Adolescence and Early Adulthood

• Adolescence is the period from childhood to adulthood.
• It includes physical maturation and the beginning of sexual maturity, with the goal of achieving social independence
• Influenced by cultural expectations, it involves diminishing parental control, the need for social acceptance, and potential social disconnection.
• Puberty involves surges of hormones, which intensify emotions and trigger bodily changes.
  • The sequence of physical changes in puberty is more predictable than its timing.
  • Puberty has been starting earlier worldwide, possibly due to obesity, stress, and chemical exposure.
  • Early-maturing adolescents are at increased risk for mental health issues with potential individual differences present.
• Until puberty, brain cells increase their connections, undergoing selective pruning, which removes unused neurons and connections.
• Frontal lobes develop during adolescence, but lag behind the limbic system.
• Myelin and glial cell growth enable better communication with other brain regions, with improved judgment, impulse control, and long-term planning, with delayed impulse control allowing reward seeking.
• Adolescence, or developing reasoning power involves the development of new abstract thinking tools and formal operations.
  • Adolescents reason hypothetically, deduce consequences, and identify inconsistencies/hypocrisy.

Cognitive Development: Developing Morality

• Two crucial tasks of childhood and adolescence are discerning right from wrong and developing character.
• Lawrence Kohlberg agreed with Piaget and proposed that moral reasoning guides moral actions.
• A newer view suggests much functioning occurs unconsciously and automatically.
• Piaget theorized that children's moral judgments build on their cognitive development.
• Lawrence Kohlberg expanded on Piaget's work.
• Development of moral reasoning includes the consideration of right and wrong.
• He proposed three basic levels of moral thinking: preconventional, conventional, and postconventional. Critics note that postconventional stages are culturally limited, especially between individualist and collectivist societies.
• Preconventional morality occurs up to age 9, conforming to self-interest, obeying rules to avoid punishment or gain rewards.
• Conventional morality takes place during adolescence, during which there is an uprising for laws and rules to gain social approval or maintain order.
• Postconventional morality begins after adolescence, with more actions reflecting basic rights and ethical principles.
• Parents' values and expectations forge identities through the adoption of values and expectations or the identity of a peer group.
• Culture, specifically individualism and collectivism, affect identity.
• Group identities are often formed by how we differ from others around us. Identity is self-definition unifying various selves into a consistent sense of self.
• Social identity is the "we" aspect of a person which comes from group memberships.
• Healthy identity formation is followed by the capacity to build close relationships and accomplish personally meaningful goals.
• Self-esteem typically diminishes and depression can increase especially with gender differences being present.
• Image rebounds in the late teens and twenties as self-esteem increases.
• Parental influence declines, with peer influence growing during adolescence.
• Positive parent-teen and peer relations often coincide.
• Frequent parent-child arguments focus on mundane issues, such as parental pressure, which affects gender development.
• Heredity influences individual temperament and personality variances; peer influences have greater impacts in adolescent years.
• During adolescent years, teens talk, dress, and act more like their peers, often going against parental influence.
• Social media use illustrates the power of peer influence.
• Teens are also sensitive to feeling excluded and bully by peers which can result in violence and depression.
• Symptoms and feelings last for decades.
• Emerging adulthood occurs from ages 18 to the mid-twenties.
• This state it characterized by postponed adult responsibilities, with dependence on parents, and feelings of being "in between" during the transition to adulthood.
• May be shorter or nonexistent depending on non-Western cultures.

Adulthood

• Physical health is determined by behavior more so than age alone.

• Gradual declines:

• Gradual decline in fertility

• Female: Menopause

• Male: Gradual decline in sperm count, testosterone level, erection, and ejaculation speed

• Sexual activity is satisfying, although occurring less frequent after middle age.

• Life Expectancy rose from 50 years to 73 years between 1950-2015, now 13% of the total world population is now over %60 years of age.

• Males are more prone to premature death while women are better at enduring life.

• Telomere tips shorten, leading to aging; accelerated by smoking, obesity, or stress.

• Elevated chronic stress and anger increases risk of premature death.

• Lower stress and good health habits enable longevity and better health.

• Sensory abilities decline, which include visual and distance perception, and dimished adaptations to light changes.

• Muscle strength and reaction time decline alongside stamina, smell, hearing, and touch.

• Health declines, immunity weakens, and susceptibility to life-threatening disease increases.

• People over 65 suffer fewer short-term ailments, like common colds and the flu.

• The aging brain shrinks and regions important to memory (hippocampus) begin to atrophy.

• Blood-brain barrier breaks down, beginning with the hippocampus.

• Some neuroplasticity in aging brains compensates for what it loses.

• Exercise slows aging, increases brain blood flow, reduces brain shrinkage, and enhances health.

  • It also maintains telomeres and stimulates neurogenesis.

• Some things are better remembered with age, recall if the most important life events, as well as the dependence of what type needs to the retrieved.

• Early Adulthood, specifically those with increased education, demonstrate peak learning potential and prospective memory

• Older Adults; fewer name and number recalls and better work recall.

• Memory is better triggered, tasks become challenging.

• People take a longer period of tome to memorize common knowledge and items.

• Cognitive ability is linked to education level , with programs improving performance on closely related tasks but little effect on unrelated items. Age is less a predictor of well-being than proximity to death

• Terminal Decline

• Neurocognitive disorders can occur in many forms- like Alzheimer's disease (also referred to as dementia): acquired cognitive disorders marked by cognitive deficits.

• Risk doubles of getting these symptoms of one is often from early-life health deficits.

• Disease progression results in memory then reasoning deteriorates along with flat emotions.

• Loss of brain dells and loss of the critical neural links and activity and leads to neurodegenerative issues in the brain.

• Intimacy and productivity dominate the basic aspects of our midlife (Erik Erikson)

• Forming close relationships is a great indicator

• Generativity is the ability to have productivity and support future generations. Both of these are indicators of strong relationships,

• Healthy adults have better relationships and also can love and work (Sigmund Freud). Love

• Pair-bonding: key indicator of intimate self disclosure to relationships.

• Marriage after 20, cohobation is proven to be a better indicator if people are educated and stable.

• Conlfict does not occur. Conflict and a decrease in affection will lead to a divorce, which then will lead to relationship issues.

• The work and job sphere enables identity, competence through accomplishment and having definition as to their person.

• Work gives a sense of purpose, fulfillment, and belonging.

• Working will provide a sense of achievement and work that provides interest with a place to develop competency leads to self-fulfillment.

• Helping and giving to others, like a friend or a helping hand, enables a sense of community for them.

• At positive feelings go through and negative feelings go towards a decline with age in midlife.

• Anger starts to fall along with many relationship problems to improve among relationships.

• As we age, we become more trusting, helpful, and generous.

• Brainwave functions diminish among age, happiness is mellowed when one is not alone.

• Biological: not having early predisposition, appropriate nutrition

• Psychological-being able to have confidence and hope for their future.

• Having a physically and mentally active lifestyle- all of these influence each other to have complete successful aging. Social aspects

• Support from family and friends

• Cultural respect for aging Safe living conditions.

• Grief is extreme when loved one passes away but before expected it is difficult.

• Difficulty is often the passing of a partner in any given relationship.

• Daily habits and activities can increase a daily need for social acceptance that can better build people on each loss. Grief can change from culture, so that means that cultures can differ due to the number of reactions available to build on this.

• Bereaved and terminally ill people do not follow the same stages or behaviors.

• Strong Grief does now mean going through the stage quicker.

• Therapy provides similar and has shown that there could be healing which time could allow. Individuals in terminal care are more positive and have shown less signs of despair unlike those with extreme signs.

This content covers cognitive and moral development in adolescence. It explores brain changes, abstract thinking, identity formation, and the impact of early maturation. Key topics include the limbic system, frontal lobes, and Piaget's formal operational stage.