Adolescence

Cards (37)

  • Adolescence - Developmental transition between childhood and adulthood entailing major physical, cognitive, and psychosocial changes.
  • Puberty - Process by which a person attains sexual maturity and the ability to reproduce.
  • Spermarche - Boy's first ejaculation. • Occurs at an average age of 13
  • Menarche - Girl's first menstruation
  • Primary sex characteristics - Organs directly related to reproduction, which enlarge and mature during adolescence
  • Secondary sex characteristics - Physiological signs of sexual maturation that do not involve the sex organs
  • Adolescent growth spurt - Sharp increase in height and weight that precedes sexual maturity
    • Older adolescents are more likely to use the frontal lobe, which permits more accurate, reasoned judgment
  • Formal operations - Piaget's final stage of cognitive development, characterized by the ability to think abstractly
  • Hypothetical-deductive reasoning - ability to develop, consider, and test hypotheses
  • Piaget's pendelum apparatus - a task to assess whether children can reason scientifically
  • imaginary audience - adolescents often assume everyone else is thinking about the same thing they are thinking about
  • personal fable - belief by adolescents that they are special, their experience is unique, and they are not subject to the rules that govern the rest of the world; the belief that the events of one's life are controlled by a mentally constructed autobiography
  • Level 1; Pre conventional morality
    stage 1 Orientation toward punishment and obedience - obey rules to avoid punishment
  • Stage 2; Instrumental purpose and exchange - children conforms to rules out of self interest and consideration for what others can do for them
  • Level II; Conventional Morality 10-13 or beyond
  • Stage 3; Maintaining mutual relations, approval of others, the golden rule ; children want to please and help others
  • stage 4; social concern and conscience, what if everybody did it?
  • level III ; postconventional morality
  • stage 5; morality of contract of individual rights and of democratically accepted law, welfare of the society
  • stage 6; morality of universal ethical principles people do what they as individuals thinnk is right'
  • Identity versus Identity Confusion - an adolescent seeks to develop a coherent sense of self, including the role she or he is to play in society. Also called identity versus role confusion.
  • Fidelity: sustained loyalty, faith, or a sense of belonging to a loved one, friends, or companions; identification with a set of values, an ideology, a religion, a political movement, or an ethnic group
  • Crisis - a period of conscious decision making
  • Identity status - crisis and commitment by james e marcia
  • Commitment - involves a personal investment in an occupation or ideology
  • Identity achievement (crisis leading to commitment) - characterized by commitment to choices made following a crisis, a period spent in exploring alternatives
  • Foreclosure (commitment without crisis) - a person who has not spent time considering alternatives is committed to other people's plans for his or her life
  • Moratorium (crisis with no commitment yet) - a person is currently considering alternatives (in crisis) and seems headed for commitment
  • Identity Diffusion (no crisis, no commitment) - characterized by absence of commitment and lack of serious consideration of alternatives.
  • Transgender is a term that refers to individuals whose biological sex at birth and gender identity are not the same
  • Cisgender - a person whose gender identity corresponds to their sex assigned at birth
  • Genderqueer to refer to a wide range of variable identities that may be neither fully male nor fully female
  • Heterosexual - attracted to persons of the other sex
  • Homosexual - attracted to persons of the same sex
  • Bisexual - attracted persons of both sexes
  • Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) -
Infections and diseases spread by sexual contact.