L3 PERDEV

• Early Adolescence (ages 12 TO 14 years)

  Physical Growth

  • Puberty - Rapid growth period
  • Secondary sexual characteristics appear
• Early Adolescence

  Intellectual/Cognition

  • Concrete thoughts dominate – “here and now”
  • Cause and effect relationship is underdeveloped
  • Stronger “self” than social awareness
• Early Adolescence

  Autonomy

  • Challenge authority, family, anti-parent
  • Loneliness
  • Wide mood swings
  • Things of childhood rejected
  • Argumentative and disobedient
• Early Adolescence

  Body Image

  • Preoccupation with physical changes and critical of appearance
  • Anxieties about secondary sexual characteristics changes
  • Peers as standards for normal appearance (comparison of self to peers)
• Early Adolescence

  Peer Group

  • Serves as developmental purpose
  • Intense friendship with same sex
  • Contact with opposite sex in groups
• Early Adolescence (ages 12-14 years)

  Identity Development

  • “Am I normal?”
  • Daydreaming
  • Vocational goals change frequently
  • Begin to develop own value system
  • Emerging sexual feelings and sexual exploration
  • Imaginary audience
  • Desire for privacy
  • Magnify own problems “no one understands”
• Middle Adolescence (ages 15 to 16 years)

  Physical Growth

  • Secondary sexual characteristics advanced
  • 95% of adult height reached
• Middle Adolescence

  Intellectual/Cognition

  • Growth in abstract thoughts; reverts to concrete thoughts when stressed
  • Cause-effect relationship better understood
  • Very self-absorbed
• Middle Adolescence

  Autonomy

  • Conflict with family predominates due to ambivalence about emerging independence
• Middle Adolescence

  Body Image

  • Less concern about physical changes but more concerned about personal attractiveness
  • Excessive physical activities alternating with lethargy
• Middle Adolescence

  Peer Group

  • Strong peer allegiances — fad behaviors
  • Sexual drives emerge and teens begin to explore ability to date and attract a partner
• Middle Adolescence

  Identity Development

  • Experimentation
  • Sex
  • Drugs
  • Friends
  • Jobs
  • Risk-taking behaviors
• Late Adolescence (ages 17 to 19 years)

  Physical Growth

  • Physical maturity and reproductive leveling off and ending
• Late Adolescence 

  Intellectual/Cognition

  • Abstract thought established
  • Future oriented; able to understand, plan and pursue long-range goals
  • Philosophical and idealistic
• Late Adolescence 

  Autonomy

  • Emancipation: (Vocational/technical, college and/or work)
  • Adult lifestyle
• Late Adolescence 

  Body Image

  • Usually comfortable with body image
• Late Adolescence 

  Peer Group

  • Decisions/values less influenced by peers
  • Relates to individuals more than group
  • Selection of partners based on individual preference
• Late Adolescence 

  Identity Development

  • Pursue realistic vocational goals with training or career employment
  • Relate to family as adult
  • Realization of own limitations and mortality
  • Establishment of sexual identity and sexual activity is common
  • Establishment of moral and ethical value system
  • More capable of intimate and complex relationships
• Professor Robert Havighurst identified eleven developmental tasks associated with the adolescent transition. Each of the tasks can be seen as elements of the overall sense of self which they carry with them as they move toward young adulthood.