An Adolescents Emotional Functioning Is Determined by Very Early Experiences - Term Paper Example

An adolescent’s emotional functioning is determined by very early experiences. Human development is a lifelong process, spanning foetal stage to adulthood. It is a complex phenomenon encompassing various facets of growth pertaining to physical, emotional, and social changes. The most rapid and intensive brain development influencing cognitive, social and emotional growth occurs during the years between the prenatal period and eight years of age, particularly in the first three years of life (World Health Organisation, WHO, Factsheets, 2009). The adequacy of child development is, in addition to the reduction of morbidity and the promotion of physical growth, also defined by behavioural criteria denoting achievement of competence or the ability to cope with environmental challenges and stresses (Wachs, 1999). The cognitive and social aspects associated with development are the subject matter of developmental psychology. What constitutes normal and abnormal development is the focus of studies in developmental psychology, and developmental neuroscience. The long course of the history of developmental psychology is dotted with several questions including whether development is genetically determined (“Nature”) or occurs under environmental stimulation (“Nurture”), and whether early childhood experiences have long-lasting impact on development. The Nature versus Nurture debate on the process of human development has been going on for a very long time. Proponents of the “nature” theory contend that human attributes are primarily conditioned by genetics as opposed to “nurture” theorists who argue that environmental influences and experience determine individual development. However, most of the present-day psychologists believe that both aspects play critical and complementary roles, development being the result of interaction between gene and experience (Wachs, 1999). The current opinion is that while the innate tendencies are due to genetics, human behaviour can indeed be conditioned by the environment as well. Regarding the contention that early childhood experiences could have long-lasting impact on development, psychoanalytical theory dwells upon events that occur in early childhood. According to Sigmund Freud, the emerging personality of a child is crucially dependent on the relationship the child shares with its mother. To the child, the mother is “unique, without parallel, laid down unalterably for a whole lifetime, as the first and strongest love object and as the prototype of all later love relations for both sexes" (Freud, 1940). The psychoanalytical theory has evolved from infant and child development to a life-span view, to include important developmental milestones of adolescence and adulthood (Masling and Bornstein, 1996). Adolescence is a period in human development that marks the transition of an individual from late childhood to early adulthood. It involves important physiological, psychological, and social changes including hormonal changes, cognition and emotional development, altered social roles with peers and the opposite sex, identity development, and the development of emotional autonomy (that is, independence from parents), to name a few. Psychoanalytical theory of Freud emphasised the psychosexual development during this period, describing adolescence “as a recapitulation of the development of sexual awareness in infancy” (Christie and Viner, 2005). According to Piaget’s concept of cognitive reasoning, abstract thinking becomes evident in the formal operational stage that is, between 11 and 14 years of age (Wood, 1998). During adolescence, young people develop new cognitive skills, including the highest level of reasoning which is complex abstract thinking (Christie and Viner, 2005). Erikson considered the development of personal identity as the defining feature of adolescence. The biopsychosocial approach views adolescence as a combination of biological (that is, puberty and sexual development), psychological and social traits (Christie and Viner, 2005). Developmental disturbance triggered by childhood trauma or any other factor or factors can lead to dysfunctional cognitive schemas and disorders of emotional functioning in adolescence, for example, increased social anxiety and adolescent depression (Birchwood, 2003). It was earlier believed that the most rapid proliferation of brain cells occurs at the foetal stage with the brain developing fully between the age of 10 and 12. It is now clear that the brain continues to grow actively throughout adolescence, and even until early adulthood (Spano, 2003). The significant brain growth occurring during early adolescence is characterised by three well-defined processes namely, proliferation, pruning, and myelinisation (Spano, 2003). Genetic, hormonal, and environmental signals elicit intense proliferation of brain gray matter, or unmyelinated cells during early adolescence (National Institute of Mental Health, NIMH, 2001). In adolescence gray matter waxes and wanes in different functional brain areas at different stages of development (Giedd et al., 1999). The pruning process basically involves clearing of nerve fibres and cells that are not cultivated, while allowing those that are important to grow unhindered (NIMH, 2001, p. 1). The process of pruning leads to strengthening and stimulating of the most essential neuronal pathways, and continues into early adulthood. Neuroscientists view the process of pruning to have implications for youth development and decision-making (Spano, 2003). It is believed to occur mainly in the frontal lobes of the brain that control executive functions such as emotion regulation, self-control, judgment, goal-directed behaviours etc. Thus, adolescence is a crucial period for development of neurobiological processes that affect higher cognitive functions and social and emotional behaviour. Problems in pruning could produce deficient emotional functioning in adolescents leading to reckless behaviour, rule breaking, poor decision-making, predilection for emotional outbursts, and inability to process abstract concepts (Begley, 2000). Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies of the brain structure have revealed that the maturation of the prefrontal cortex occurs later than other regions and its development is accompanied by increased abilities in abstract reasoning, attentional shifting, response inhibition and processing speed (Yurgelun-Todd, 2007). The Attachment theory The life-span effects of the psychological, psychobiological, and neurobiological phenomena occurring in the early stages of human life are just beginning to be understood. A confluence of attachment theory, psychobiology, and neurobiology has been found invaluable in offering a viable explanation to the attachment and social and emotional development paradigm. The proponent of the Attachment Theory, John Bowlby, maintained that a proper understanding of the complexities of normal development was only possible through an integration of developmental psychology, psychoanalysis, biology, and neuroscience (Schore, 2000). According to the Attachment Theory, the early developmental process is best described as the product of the interaction of a unique genetic endowment with a particular environment. (Bowlby, 1969). Integrating biology with developmental psychoanalytical concepts, Bowlby suggested that the attachment relationship at the infant stage directly influences the capacity of the child to cope with stress through promotion of the maturation of a control system in the brain that has the ability to regulate attachment functions. Contemporary neuroscience is now focussing on the early developmental failures of the brain. Recent studies have emphasised the importance of early childhood experiences to childrens long-term emotional and psychological health (Christakis and Rivara, 2010). Teicher (2000) explains it as, “Our brains are sculpted by our early experiences. Maltreatment is a chisel that shapes a brain to contend with strife, but at the cost of deep, enduring wounds." (p. 67). Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) include abuse (emotional, physical, sexual), witnessing domestic violence and battered mother, parental separation or divorce, mental illness in the household, lived with substance abusers, or incarcerated household member (Felitti et al., 1998). Alcoholism, depression, and eating disorders are frequently encountered in individuals who have been experienced severe stress in early childhood (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, 2008). Also, abuse and neglect in early childhood lead to devastating consequences, impacting the chemistry as well as the architecture of immature brains and rendering them susceptible to the risks of drug abuse, teen pregnancy and psychiatric problems later in life. Neurobiological processes and child development Studies in neurobiology are increasingly revealing that, besides exposing infants to the risk of less than optimal development, lack of proper attachment relationship to a caregiver such as mother, that is, the absence of early learning experiences, leads to alterations in the functional organisation of the human brain (Castro-Caldas et al., 1998; Weinberg, 2010). Twelve to eighteen months is a critical period of corticolimbic maturation in children, and maltreated infants exhibit manifestations of an impaired regulatory system, especially a severe structural impairment of the orbitofrontal control system that is involved in attachment behavior (Main, 1996). This period is also a critical for the experience-dependent maturation of the orbitofrontal areas of the cortex, and early traumatic experiences that induce abnormal patterns of neural activity interfere with the organisation of cortical-limbic areas and affect, in particular, brain-mediated functions of attachment, empathy, and affect regulation. EEG abnormalities in frontotemporal and anterior brain regions have been observed in children with early physical and sexual abuse (Teicher et al., 1996). The core attachment deficits accruing in a deprived/abused child can impair the child’s ability during adolescence for social adaptation in the areas of affect regulation, stress modulation and behavioural organisation. Adolescents who had been subject to ACEs have revealed flawed emotional functioning including significant behaviour problems, e.g., recurrent rage episodes, controlling behaviour and frequent emotional dysregulation, besides having basic deficits in social reasoning and judgment (Weinberg, 2010). The possible explanations from the neurobiological and neuropsychological perspectives include that offered by Schore (2001b) who described the inordinate amount of physiological stress experienced by the developing brain because of lack of responsive and consistent caretaking as due to excessive cortisol production and resultant inefficiencies in the neuro-transmitter system of serotonin, and hyposecretion of the growth-hormone releasing systems. The cascade of neurobiological events impede normal brain development in the abused child which can impair right brain and corticolimbic functioning. Early childhood experiences cause “relational trauma” that impacts the child’s social emotional functioning in the areas of affect regulation, stress modulation and interpersonal adaptation at a later developmental stage e.g., adolescence. Early life traumatic events, occurring during a period of neuronal plasticity, can cause the neuroendocrine stress response systems to become supersensitive permanently, and act as long-term risk factors for the development of psychopathology after exposure to additional stress (Penza et al., 2003). Examination of children, who had experienced physical traumas in the preverbal period at ages ranging from 7 to 15 months, has revealed that children encode and retain meaningful internal representations of the important elements of a traumatic experience even in the absence of acquired language fluency (Gaensbauer, 1995). Neurobiological processes and adolescence Adolescence is a crucial stage for development of neurobiological processes. Brain regions that control attention, reward evaluation, affective discrimination, response inhibition and goal-directed behaviour undergo extensive structural and functional re-organisation throughout late childhood and early adulthood as indicated by advanced neuroimaging techniques (Yurgelun-Todd, 2007). Recent research has shown that neurocognitive development might contribute to behavioural phenomena characteristic of adolescence (Sebastian et al., 2008). A study of adolescents (mean age 13 + 2.7 years) with a history of childhood physical, sexual, or psychological abuse, and variously suffering from major mood disorder or conduct disorder or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder or oppositional defiant disorder or adjustment disorder or primary psychotic disorder or primary anxiety disorder or anorexia nervosa or polysubstance abuse, was conducted by Ito et al. (1993) to investigate whether childhood abuse was associated with definite neurobiological abnormalities. The study revealed that, compared to nonabused controls, adolescents who had experienced abuse in early childhood had increased electrophysiological abnormalities, regardless of age or gender. The majority of abnormality occurred in the frontal, temporal and anterior regions. Executive functions, that is, those skills necessary for purposeful, goal-directed activity, are considered to be largely mediated by the frontal and prefrontal cortices of the brain (Anderson, 2001). EEG abnormalities were found to be localised in the left side of the frontotemporal and anterior regions in those who had suffered physical/sexual abuse. In patients who had been psychologically abused or neglected but not physically or sexually harmed, the abnormalities were present only in the left side of the temporal region. The authors hypothesised that left hemisphere dysfunction in children may result in greater use or dependence on the right frontal lobes leading to increased perception and expression of negative emotion supporting unconscious retention of stressful childhood memories. Conclusion Psychoanalytical theories are losing their sheen as far as human development mechanisms are concerned and are being replaced by biological psychiatry concepts. Human development especially in the early childhood stage is now generally believed to be dictated by the interaction between genetics and environment. Attachment, or the affectional relationship between mother and baby is considered a crucial determinant of the early childhood personality development. Adolescence is a complicated yet critical stage of life during which the maturation of neurobiological processes that control higher cognitive functions and social and emotional behaviour occurs. The early environment has a definite influence on those aspects of neurobiological development that regulate behavioural, emotional, cognitive, and physiological development. The neurobiological and neuropsychological effects of early childhood experiences on emotional functioning in adolescence are being unravelled under the rapidly growing field of developmental cognitive neuroscience. Sophisticated neuroimaging technologies have provided evidence to show that early traumatic experiences associated with long-term changes in emotional and behavioural regulation also cause alterations in brain morphology and neurochemistry. References Anderson, V., 2001. Assessing executive functions in children: biological, psychological, and developmental considerations. Pediatric Rehabilitation, 4(3):119- 136. Begley, S. (2000). Getting inside the teen brain. Newsweek, Accessed 15 May 2010 from http://www.newsweek.com/id/82963/page/1. Birchwood, M., 2003. 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