adolescence

• period of development that begins with the onset of sexual maturity (11-14) and lasts until beginning of adulthood (18-21)
• puberty: bodily changes associated with sexual maturity
  • primary sex characterstics: bodily structures that are directly involved in reproduction
  • secondary sex characteristics: bodily structures that change dramatically with sexual maturity but that are not directly involved in reproduction
  • brain changes
    • new connections between temporal and parietal lobe
    • proliferation + pruning in the prefrontal cortex

brain and puberty

protraction of adolescnece

• variation in the onset of puberty
• the age of puberty has decreased, but the age of adulthood responsibility has increased
  • has protraction caused adolescent turmoil?

early v. late maturation

• effects of early maturation are different for girls and boys
  • more positive for boys, neg for girls

from parents to peers

• psychologically moving away from the parent
• peer relations > family relations
• process of evolving peer relationships
• relavent to the identity forming
• the adolescent most associated with identity

identity development

• identity: broad, coherent, internalized view of who a person is and wants to be, and what a person believes and values, that emerges during adolescence
• identity crisis: period, usually during adolescence, charactertized by considerable uncertainty about the self and the role the individual is to fulfil in society
  • uncertainity about the self
  • not all teenagers are in crisis
    • Erickson
• how our pyschological self is influenced by our internal self