SLK Ch 6 Adolescence

• Body image


  A multidimensional construct encompassing how we perceive, think, feel and act towards our bodies
• Significant influences on body image

  • Peers
  • Media
  • Romantic partners
  • Cultural beliefs and ideals
• Adolescents who don't align with the ideals of beauty and attractiveness


  May be vulnerable to unhealthy body image
• Unhealthy body image


  Leads to unhealthy eating habits
• Eating disorders


  • Anorexia nervosa
  • Bulimia nervosa
• Anorexia nervosa


  The refusal or inability to maintain a normal body weight
• Anorexia nervosa is a serious mental health condition and can be life-threatening
• Main characteristics of anorexia nervosa

  • Body weight is significantly below the average body max index
  • Anything below 18.5 is considered underweight
  • Purging to remove food through self-induced vomiting and diarrhoea
  • A severely distorted body image where patients may genuinely view themselves as obese despite having skeletal frames
• Other mental health conditions associated with anorexia nervosa

  • Onset of depression
  • Onset of anxiety
  • Onset of bulimia nervosa
• Physical symptoms of anorexia nervosa

  • Excessive growth of fine hair on body
  • Menstrual symptoms including amenorrhea (absence of menstruation)
• Anorexia nervosa occurs between puberty and 25 years of age and is more common in females than males
• People who suffer from anorexia nervosa also tend to have a lower self-esteem
• About half of the people who suffer from anorexia nervosa don't recover and about 10-20% die from this illness
• Bulimia nervosa


  Characterised by repeated episodes of binge eating during which the individual consumes an excessive amount of food, followed by a compensatory action to prevent weight gain such as self-induced vomiting or diarrhoea
• Bulimia nervosa patients also suffer from an abnormally low body weight
• Bulimia nervosa tends to peak in late adolescence or early childhood and has been diagnosed in children as young as 5 years old as well as late adulthood
• Obesity


  Abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that presents a risk to health
• Body max index ranges for obesity

  • 25-30 is considered overweight
  • 30-35 is moderately obese
  • Over 40 is morbidly obese
• Reasons for being overweight

  • Environmental dynamics
  • Lifestyle choices
  • Cultural and sociological factors
  • Genetic factors such as hormone regulation and metabolic systems
• A key contributor to obesity is the increased intake of unhealthy foods
• Early onset of obesity in adolescence may also increase the risk of reproductive disturbances and infertility in females
• Individuals who are overweight or obese are at a higher risk for low self-esteem
• Formal operational thinking (according to Piaget)


  The last stage of cognitive development that extends into adulthood, where children aged 11 or 12 develop the ability for hypothetico-deductive reasoning, propositional thinking, combinatorial analysis, and relativistic thinking
• Hypothetico-deductive reasoning


  Piaget's concept that adolescents have the cognitive ability to develop alternative ways or hypotheses to solve a problem, reason from general to specific, and test hypotheses
• Propositional thinking


  The ability of formal operational thinkers to evaluate the logic of verbal statements without referring to real-world circumstances, and envision alternative realities and examine their consequences
• Combinatorial analysis


  The ability to organise various possible combinations inherent in a problem, ensuring all possible values of all variables are investigated
• Relativistic thinking


  The recognition that knowledge is subjectively constructed and there can be differences in the interpretation of the same facts, in contrast to the concrete thinker's belief in absolute right answers
• Six conceptual skills that emerge during formal operations


  • Manipulating more than two categories of variables at the same time
  • Thinking about changes that come with time
  • Identifying relationships between academic performance and occupational options
  • Anticipating the consequences of actions
  • Detecting logical consistency or inconsistency in statements
  • Thinking in relativistic ways about themselves, others, and the world
• The formal operational stage is the most criticised stage of Piaget's theory, with its influence waning considerably over the past decades
• Piaget's research has stimulated a lot of general research about the way people think
• Inductive reasoning


  Reasoning that takes specific information and makes a broader generalisation
• Deductive reasoning


  Reasoning from the general to the particular, regarded as a higher-order thinking skill
• Assumptions and generalisations in deductive reasoning are not based on facts and can be invalid and even dangerous
• Adolescents' advances in cognitive development can affect their study skills, allowing them to better identify gaps in their knowledge and adjust their study methods
• A broader conceptualisation of intelligence may also benefit adolescents, especially those who don't excel in academics
• Adolescents' ability to use abstract hypothetico-deductive reasoning


  Results in their ability to gather facts and ideas to build a case, which can lead to argumentativeness
• Adolescents' increase in the need for independence


  Can lead to conflicts with parents if parents don't consider the children's drives towards independence and allow them to make their own decisions
• Adolescents' questioning attitudes


  Require parents to explain the reasons for some decisions, leading to conflict if parents fail to supply satisfactory reasons or don't accept the adolescents' own views
• The disparity between the world views of adults and teenagers is often called the generation gap
• Social cognition


  The way in which people perceive, think about, interpret, categorise and judge their own social behaviours and those of others