Adolescent Development and Behavior - Essay Example

Introduction The of adolescent development is one in which the age long dispute of nurture vs. nature has finally found that the dispute itself is outdated. As adolescents mature, and cross the great hormonal divide between child and adult, the adolescent body goes through a myriad of changes. Their bodies change physically. They mature intellectually, and adolescent makes changes which secure their own social identity. Each of these changes pulls direction both from the natural elements in their bodies, and the nurturing environment which is around them. Changes in biology require nature - food, exercise, caloric intake and other environmental contributors. On the other hand, changes in social identity, sexual identity, body image, and position in the pecking order are more a function of the nurturing social network which surrounds the teen than how much food they consume or how much sleep they get each night. Finally, the subject if intellectual development must also be taken into consideration regarding the teen's maturation process. Intellectual development is a function of but nurture and nature. The student can have the best natural environmental surroundings and still mature with the idea that he or she is of diminished intellectual ability. The intellectual maturation process required physiological changes in the adolescent's brain structure. This process also required input from those around the adolescent. The individual must be reinforced, and reassured that their intellectual growth is indeed accomplishing and attaining new levels of intellectual progress in order for the individual to grab a hold of this identity, that they are an intelligent person, and that their thoughts are indeed important and valuable. The process of adolescent development is one which is complicated because of the totalistic range over which the child changes. One set of inputs; factors which catalyze the change also affect other areas. The absence of one of the required inputs, healthy nutrition for example, not only affects the physical growth of the person, but also can impact the child's emotional and intellectual balance and progress. Jerome Dusek in his book Adolescent Development and Behavior attacks this subject and attempts to give an both an overview as well as a detailed understanding of the myriad of changes which occur in the adolescent's mind, body and soul as they mature. This book addresses the list of tasks which the teen must accomplish on his or her journey from child to adult. Through this book, the reader is able to look at the entire process of adolescent maturation, and understand better, as if from a distance, the monumental achievement which we call surviving the teen years, and becoming a successful, balanced adult. Adolescent Maturation Tasks According to Dusek, the process of moving from child to adult is filled with specific tasks. Each of these tasks is specific and quantifiable. In order for the child to arrive in adulthood, the individual must "achieve mastery of "certain social abilities or attitudes related to development. In other words, developmental tasks are skill s, knowledge, functions or attitudes that in individual must acquire at various stages during his lifetime in order to adjust successfully to the more difficult roles and tasks that lie before him."1 As a person who is looking back at the adolescent process, this book has clarified a number of false impressions which are typical to the adolescent mind. There are a number of ideas which the adolescent holds which have nothing to do with the developmental tasks. These beliefs also form a core of what many adolescents think is the purpose of this phase of life. For example, one of the chief beliefs that adolescents believe as part of their cultural identity is that their experience is unique. The teen is out on his own, and alone in this journey. For this reason, peer influence becomes such a highly charged influence for the teen. The teen places much of what is outside his or her sphere of peer social interactions in a bucket labeled "non-sequetor, or unimportant." The teen focuses much of his or her energy into being unique, and apart from the rest of the world which he or she is growing into. The teen is approaching adulthood, which has specific tasks, and required specific skills. Yet the teen pushes this part of the world, the adult world, into a position of perceived irrelevance. This is one of the conflicts of which is of significant influence on modern western adolescent development, and Dusek spends little time discussing this topic. In the first chapter, he says that adult behavior, and social maturity is a learned behavior. Then, after identifying the social, natural, psychological and biological factors which make up this process, he does not spend any time on that which is a major influence on how this process works itself out. Dusek identifies the following tasks as those which the adolescent much master on his way to adulthood. 1. Accepting one's physical makeup and acquiring a masculine or feminine sex role 2. Developing appropriate relations with age mates of both sexes 3. Becoming emotionally independent of parents and other adults 4. Achieving the assurance that one will become economically independent 5. Determining and preparing for a career and entering the job market 6. Developing the cognitive skills and concepts necessary for social competence 7. Understanding and achieving socially responsible behavior 8. Preparing for marriage and family 9. Acquiring values that are harmonious with an appropriate scientific world perspective. Dusek cites Robert Havighurst's work, continues and separates these skills into the following categories. Tasks with a strong biological basis: task 1, 2, and 8. Dusek says that these are fairly universal. Tasks that are not strongly biological, yet are fairly universal: 3, 5, and 6 Tasks which are most strongly cultural, and will vary from culture to culture: 4, 7, 9. Although these tasks are somewhat general and in nature, they form the basis for the process which the adolescent transverses between childhood and adulthood. They also are the basis for Dusek's statement "One must learn to become an adult."2 Biological Tasks The three tasks Dusek identifies as Biological are not singularly biological, but rather they are strongly biological in nature and somewhat cultural, social, etc. Dusek says that accepting one's physical nature, developing relationships with both sexes and preparing for marriage are strongly biological. However, I strongly disagree with his premise. These factors are facilitated by biological changes in the child. These factors become part of the adolescent's conscious self identity through biological changes. However, the tasks are not labeled as the biological changes. Rather they focus on the adolescent's acceptance, relationships, and mental and emotional preparation for marriage. These are not fundamentally, or strongly biological in nature. One can cite examples from the newspapers which discuss adolescents which are biologically ready to start families, and many 16 year olds do so in the back seat of the family sedan. However, this is nothing close to what society would call preparing for marriage and family. Biologically starting a family and have the emotional commitment and emotional readiness to engage another person for the rest of one's life are two different things. Biological tasks should be limited to those tasks which are strongly affected by biological or 'nature' factors. In the nature vs. nurture, nature accounts for biological issues, such as nutrition, and heredity. Each of these is affect the adolescent's progress toward adulthood in ways which they cannot affect. This is what I would identify as biological issues - how tall a person grows the regularity and strength of the female's menstrual cycle, the person's body shape, etc. These are not affected by the social, or 'nurture' factors which affect the person's progress into adulthood. Other researchers are adding to the body of evidence regarding the confluence of nature, or biologically based adolescent development and nurture, or socially based tasks. It is helpful to identify these issues in these terms because as researchers seek to understand the developmental curve, understanding those facets which can be influenced by outside social input and those which cannot help social workers and researchers further understand adolescent behavior. According to Sheffield, et. al., the desire to connect the dots between social and biological factors regarding the adolescent development process has been a focus of expanding amounts of research for the past decades. One of the reasons they cite for this expanded amount of interest is the increased amount of influence that the adolescent culture has on western society. These researchers cite that as many as four broad trends were likely responsible for the growth of this interest area. 1. These authors believe that the increased influence of the "ecological perspective on human development" (Bronfenbrenner 1979) during the late 1980s and early 1990s in the field of developmental psychology drew researchers' attention. Periods of the lifespan characterized by dramatic changes in the context, and not simply the content, of development, became the focus of these research studies. Thus, adolescence became a natural magnet for researchers interested in contextual variations and their impact. 2. Methodological improvements in the study of puberty enabled researchers interested in biosocial models were able to test these models within a developmental period characterized by wide, but easily documented, variation in both biology and context. 3. Funding priorities shifted toward more applied areas of study, in particular toward the study of social problems. This shift encouraged many scholars to turn their attention to such issues as antisocial behavior, drug use, non-marital pregnancy, and the like. These problems typically have their highest occurrence during adolescence. 4. Finally, many studies of development launched during the 1980s shifted their focus toward adolescence as the study samples matured into preadolescence and beyond. In other words, studies which were started with children could follow the child into adolescence in order to test hypothesis, and gain more accurate data. (Sheffield, et. a., 2001) Researchers who engage in this area of research have all but abandoned the differentiation strategy which Dusek used. They have acknowledged that adolescent development can best be talked about in terms of bio-social tasks. These researchers have assented to the realization that individual tasks regarding adolescent behavior are both biological and socially based. Psychological and Intellectual Development For example, the psychological and intellectual development of adolescents is one of the more complicated aspects of personal growth. The tasks related to these areas are both biologically based and socially based. Neither can be separated from either of the influences and be completely understood. Dusek says that one of the major tasks for adolescent development is that of becoming emotionally independent of parents and other adults. This process required both a transitioning out of existing emotionally social and emotional ties which the child has with their parents and close mentors and establishing their own social and emotional identity. Some teens do not complete this process. Their transition becomes one of being attached to the parent and shifting that attachment to another group, cause, or person. The transition begins with moving away from the parent, but the idea of independence never takes root. Unfortunately, the child in this case does not complete this task, but rather becomes attached to something else larger than himself rather than becoming a self assured and independent person. This process is facilitated by a number of social and biological influences Biologically, the adolescent's body is becoming a Petri dish for new hormonal flows. The adolescent's behavior is marked by wide emotional swings, which make it virtually impossible for the parent - child emotional bond to continue unchanged. This is a biologically induced experience. Neither the child nor the adult can change or stop the process. While this part of the adolescent experience is not the same for each child, i.e. it does not occur at the same age, nor last for the same amount of time from teen to teen, the process will take place. The biological changes in the adolescent help facilitate the social changes. However, moving away from the parent is only the first half of the task. The second half of the task is for the child to make a personal identification with who he or she is as an independent person. The old adage of how child should be able to 'stand on his or her own two feet' is a reflection of the process, and the way the child attains this state is through social interaction with peers, teachers and other mentors, and by accomplishing tasks on their own which previously were not possible. These steps are not made in a vacuum, apart from social input from others. In fact, the child who attempts to make these steps on their own is likely not remaining emotionally immature, not having learned the place of appropriate emotional relationships and interdependencies. This child may look for co-dependant relationships, never having stood on their own two feet, and established their own personal identity. Intellectual development is also a bio-social event. Just as the body is building new cells, and expending energy to do so, the mind is building new thought connections, and must expend energy to do so. Researchers believe that the brain does not grow new brain cells once early childhood is completed. So the process of building intelligence and amassing information is the process of teaching the mind to make new connections. Thought is simply the electrical impulses across new connections which are forged through the exercise of the mind. Thought and the biology of thought are simply the transmission of electrical impulses and exchange of chemicals from one brain cell to another. The idea is, biologically speaking, an electro-chemical event. Therefore, if the proper chemicals and stimuli are present in the brain and in the child's environment, then it would stand to reason that thought, and with it intelligence would grow. However, we can see in every adolescent classroom that this is not the case. While the stimuli and brain matter are present, getting the child to exercise these new abilities is a social function. Many children do not dare make new thoughts because of the social stigma that may be attached to being 'wrong.' Others may not want to exercise their brain ability because it will make them stand out as smarter than their friends, and therefore no longer be a part of the social network which gives them safety and identity. Therefore, the process of education is more of socialization processes that one of biology or tasks. The student must be encouraged, helped to make the steps from one year to the next in order to attain mastery of the subject matter. The same is true regarding the process of adolescent development. Adulthood is a learned behavior, and the adolescent must be taught what it means to be an adult, how this is accomplished, and then encouraged through the awkwardness of change in order to complete the process. Rate of Change between the sexes Early in the test, Dusek points out that the rate at which the biological changed happen in male and female bodies is different. The female engaged the biological changes measurably sooner than the male. For most of the strictly biological changes between childhood and adulthood, the female's body enters these changed almost 2 years ahead of the male. One can only wonder why nature designed male and female bodies to grow at these different rates. One would assume that if mankind evolved out of a primordial soup, that the rates at which male and female bodies engaged these changes would be more closely aligned. The reason for the differences in these biological clocks may be found in one of the tasks which Dusek points out. The first and second task identified by the author are accepting one's physical makeup and acquiring a masculine or feminine sex role and then developing appropriate relations with age mates of both sexes. Since it is important for the adolescent to develop a sense of an independent self before attempting to build an inter-dependant relationship with the opposite sex, it may be that the way male and female biological clocks tick at different rates is designed to encourage the different sexed to stay apart until this developmental process is complete. In that way, both the male and female stand on their own solid ground before attempting to build a corporate identity with another person. Conclusion It seems that Dusek spends much of his time discussing the male and female identify formation process in terms which are not completely suited for the task. The adolescent development process, while triggered by biological changed in their bodies, is much more of a social process which this author seems to identify. The person which the adolescent becomes once he or she dons adulthood is much more a function of personal relationships, interpersonal experiences and the social image he or she has formed as a result of these experiences than a function of the biological processed which were at work in their lives. Works Cited Bronfenbrenner U. (1979.) The Ecology of Human Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press Dusek, J. (1977) Adolescent Development and Behavior. Chicago, Ill: Science Research Associates, Inc. Havighurst, R.J. (1951) Develpmental Tasks and education. New York: Longmans, Green. Sheffield, A; Steinberg, L. (2001) Adolescent Development. Annual Review of Psychology. Read More