HUMAN DEVELOPMENT PART 2

• Adolescence is the transition period between childhood and early adulthood, beginning around age 11 or 12 and lasting until around age 18
• Puberty marks the beginning of adolescence, with major hormonal changes preparing the body for reproduction and stimulating changes in body size and proportions
• In females, the release of the sex hormone estradiol from the ovaries transforms girls into women, with the growth of breasts, widening of hips, and an increase in body fat
• Menstruation, known as menarche, marks the beginning of fertility for young women
• In males, the event signaling readiness to reproduce is spermarche, or the first ejaculation, which can occur as a nocturnal emission
• Adolescents develop abstract reasoning and logical thinking, linked with dramatic brain development during this period
• The frontal lobes are the last areas of the brain to fully develop, involved in planning, attention, working memory, abstract thought, and impulse control
• The brain develops more myelin around the axons and more neural connections, with differences in myelination between boys and girls
• Neural synchrony increases throughout adolescence and possibly into early adulthood
• Synaptic pruning allows rarely used synapses to die off, making the brain more efficient
• Teens are more sensitive to rejection and focus on questions of identity, experimenting with group identifications and peer relationships
• Sexual orientation comes in three forms: heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual
• Gender identity is influenced by genes, hormones, brain structures, and environmental factors
• Awareness of ethnic identity increases from adolescence to emerging adulthood
• Young adulthood occurs in the 20s, marked by settled financial and living arrangements, marriage, and parenthood
• In middle adulthood, sensory losses may occur, but the brain remains plastic and generative
• Midlife people confront unfulfilled parts of their personality and ideally develop them through individuation
• Generativity involves the creation of new ideas, products, or people, while stagnation occurs when adults become more self-focused
• Most normal cognitive decline with aging results in changes to the frontal lobes, involved in working memory, planning, and abstract reasoning
• The older brain remains dynamic, with expertise in a given area peaking in middle adulthood
• Expertise in a given area peaks in middle adulthood
• Verbal memory peaks after age 50
• Declines occur in processing and maintaining information while making decisions
• Gradual decline in fluid intelligence, which includes raw mental ability, pattern recognition, and abstract reasoning
• Strengthening of crystallized intelligence, which includes knowledge gained from experience, learning, education, and practice
• Dementia is a loss of mental function impairing cognitive processes like memory, reasoning, problem-solving, decision-making, and language use
• Alzheimer's Disease is a degenerative disease marked by progressive cognitive decline, confusion, memory loss, mood swings, and loss of physical function
• Erikson's theory of personality development: the final stage is old age, starting around 60 or 65, with the conflict between integrity and despair
• Physicians used to pronounce people dead based on vital signs, but brain death occurs when no measurable electrical activity is evident
• Death marks the end of life, and people may move through stages like denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance
• Elizabeth Kubler-Ross detailed stages people may move through after learning they are going to die: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance
• Emerging identity formation related to making life decisions is career identity
• The conflict involving love as its basic strength is intimacy versus isolation
• Crystallized intelligence declines beginning middle adulthood, while fluid intelligence strengthens
• In late adulthood, many people experience significant loss of vision, hearing, or both
• Two virtues that emerge if a person successfully resolves conflicts during middle and late adulthood are care and wisdom
• Cognitive Development of Adolescence:

  • Adolescence is the stage where individuals develop abstract reasoning and logical thinking
  • Frontal lobes are the last areas of the brain to fully develop and continue to mature until late adolescence or early adulthood
  • Frontal lobes are involved in planning, attention, working memory, abstract thought, and impulse control
  • Onset of formal operational and scientific thinking occurs after frontal lobes have developed more fully
• Direct Relationship Between Cognitive Development and Brain Development:

  • Brain develops more myelin around the axons and more neural connections
  • Rate and locations of myelination differ between boys and girls
  • In girls, increased white matter organization is in the right hemisphere; in boys, it is in the left hemisphere
  • Neural synchrony increases throughout adolescence and possibly into early adulthood
  • Synaptic pruning occurs, where rarely used synapses are allowed to die off to make the brain more efficient
• Social Development in Adolescence:

  • Teens are more sensitive than adults to rejection
  • With the onset of puberty and adolescence, children begin to focus on questions of who they are
  • Teens experiment with identity through group identifications, which can be important, long-lasting, and distressing if challenged
  • Family becomes less central, and peer relationships become the focus of life
• Personality Development in Adolescence:

  • Adolescence is a time of more rapid personality change than adulthood
  • Erikson proposed a model of personality development with eight stages, each defined by an identity crisis or conflict
  • Identity versus identity confusion is the major conflict during adolescent personality development
  • Testing, experimenting, and trying on identities are normative during adolescence