Transcript Young Adulthood Physical and Cognitive Development

12
Young Adulthood
Physical and Cognitive Development
Chapter 12
Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
Young Adulthood
Physical and Cognitive Development
• Perspectives on Adult Development
• General Physical
Development
• Sex and Sexuality
• Cognitive Development in Adulthood
• Frameworks for Understanding Adult
Development
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Perspectives on Adult Development
• Many key events are normative, occurring at
predictable times for most people in an age
cohort
• Idiosyncratic events are not anticipated and
generally cause stress and readjustment
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Perspectives on Adult Development
• Age Clocks and Social Norms
– age clock: our internal sense of time for when major life events
are supposed to occur
– influenced by cultural factors and more flexible today than in
times past
• Three Components of Age
– biological age: physiological perspective
– social age: one’s status compared to cultural norms
– psychological age: one’s ability to adapt to social and
environmental demands
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Perspectives on Adult Development
• Contextual paradigms
– examine effect of multiple factors interacting
together that influence adult development
– Contextual approaches are complex, but
contextual considerations become very
important in young adulthood
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General Physical Development
• Strength and Stamina
– Peak time for vitality, strength, and good health, as
most biological systems begin to decline in the 30s
and 40s
• Fitness and Health
– peak performance in physical abilities
– leading cause of death in early adulthood is accidents
– men three times as likely as women to die from
accidents
– Other diseases that may cause later problems may
begin at this time (e.g., heart disease)
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Average Declines in Biological
Systems
SOURCE: Adapted from Vitality and aging, by J. Fries and Crapo, 1981. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.
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Percent of U.S. Population Reporting
Weekly Physical Activity, 2006
SOURCE: From Health, United States, 2007 with chartbook on trends in the health of Americans. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics.
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General Physiology Across Lifespan for
Active and Sedentary Persons
SOURCE: From Figure 11.5, in Lifelong motor development, by C. P. Gabbard, 2004 ( p. 368). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson
Education. Reprinted by permission.
Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
Major Causes of Death in United States,
2005, for Youths, Ages 15–24
SOURCE: From Health, United States, 2007 with chartbook on trends in the health of Americans, Vol. 53. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics.
Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
Major Causes of Death in United States,
2005, for Young Adults, Ages 25–44
SOURCE: From Health, United States, 2007 with chartbook on trends in the health of Americans, Vol. 53. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics.
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Sex and Sexuality
• Fertility
– Women’s fertility declines after age 38 and ends with
menopause
– Men remain fertile from puberty on
• Sexually Transmitted Diseases
– HIV/AIDS
– Chlamydia
– Gonorrhea
– Herpes
– Syphilis
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Video Clip
CNN report on rising STD rates and the
disproportionate effects on women and
minorities:
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/health/2009/01/1
3/cohen.std.rates.up.cnn
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Video Clip
CNN report on rising rates of HIV/AIDS in
Washington D.C.:
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/2009/03/
17/verjee.aids.report.cnn
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Video Clip
Overview of the AIDS epidemic in Africa
from the video Hope in the time of AIDS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mogTwwepces
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Sexual Attitudes and Behaviors
• Since the 1970s, sexual attitudes and behavior have
continued to shift
• Most U.S. adults are monogamous
• Three patterns of sexual relations
• Married couples have the most sex and are most
likely to have orgasms during sex
• Only minor variations in sexual activity across ethnic
groups
• People in 20s and 30s report highest frequencies of
sexual activity
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Sexual Identity and Orientation
• Realizing an attraction to one’s own sex is often
accompanied by a self-questioning process
• Gay, lesbian, and bisexual persons often experience
social prejudice and discrimination
• Sexual orientation is a complex interaction of heredity
and environment
• Sexual orientation is not “either-or,” but exists along a
continuum
• Homophobia is prejudice, aversion, fear, or negative
attitudes directed toward persons of same-sex
orientation
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Video Clip
Excerpt from 60 Minutes nature vs. nurture
sexual orientation debate:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Osw05HGe5I&
feature=PlayList&p=75A12E1782A4D814&playnex
t=1&playnext_from=PL&index=23
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Three Measures of Sexual
Satisfaction with Primary Partner
SOURCE: Figure 9, “Three measures of sexual satisfaction with primary partner,” From Sex in America, by R. T. Michael, E. O. Laumann, and G. Kolata,
copyright ｩ 1994 by CSG Enterprises, Inc. By permission of Little, Brown and Co., Inc., and Brockman, Inc.
Copyright © 2010 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
A Continuum Approach for
Understanding Sexual Orientation
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Demographics of Same-Sex
Orientation
SOURCE: Table, from The social organization of sexuality, by Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, and Michaels, Copyright ｩ 2004. Reprinted by permission of the
University of Chicago Press.
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Cognitive Development in
Adulthood
• Cognitive skills involving response speed and
rote memory are at their peak
• Some researchers suggest adults reach a level
of cognitive development beyond Piaget’s formal
operations stage, that of dialectical thought
– Includes being able to consider ambiguous situations,
involves judgment and decision making
• Postformal thought is heavily contextualized and
includes social, interpersonal, cognitive, and
emotional aspects
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Cognitive Development
• Emotional intelligence (EQ)
– Aspects of the intellect that relate to the way
people manage their own and others’
emotions and emotional responses
• Schaie’s concept of cognitive flexibility
– The ability to use intelligence in different ways
during different periods throughout the
lifespan
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Goleman’s Four Areas
of Emotional Intelligence
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Schaie’s Life-Span Model of
Cognitive Development
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Frameworks for Understanding
Adult Development
• Stages and Contexts
– The stage approach is the idea that we all progress
through stages in an orderly way; specific life events
play relatively minor roles
– Context models focus on the specific experiences in
one’s life
• Havighurst’s Developmental Tasks
– Adulthood consists of three periods during which a
series of tasks must be accomplished
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Havighurst’s Developmental Tasks
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Frameworks for Understanding
Adult Development
• Erikson
– Young adulthood is the age of intimacy versus isolation
– Resolution in each stage rests on the preceding stages
• Levin
– Identified three major eras in the male life cycle
– Women experience adult development much the same way as
men, but the tasks are different
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Levin’s Developmental Tasks for
Man’s Entry Into Adulthood
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Comparison of Men’s and Women’s Entry
into Careers (Levinson)
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Frameworks for Understanding
Adult Development
• Normative Models
– organized around major life events
– reflect the experiences of culture and gender
– less useful in times of rapid cultural change or
when people have multiple roles
• Gould’s model focuses more on cognitive
view than social changes
– Adults of different ages look at the world
differently.
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Gould’s Transformations in Early
Adulthood
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Frameworks for Understanding
Adult Development
• Limitations of stage theories of adult development
– They tend to ignore the uniqueness of individual lives
– They undervalue the interactive nature of multiple
contexts
– They often reflect the values and experiences of a
particular cohort group
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Selected Theorists’ Views of Major
Tasks of Early Adulthood
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Summary
• Compared to earlier periods, changes in
adulthood are less predictable and individuals
vary more in the paths their lives take
• Age is a complex concept that represents
biolgoical, social, and psychological age
• Most people enjoy peak vitality, strength, and
good health systems during young adulthood,
with peak performance in many physical abilities
occurring in the decade of the 20s
• The leading cause of death at this age is
accidents
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Summary
• Early adulthood is the time during which people
are most sexually active
• STDs affect millions of young adults
• Sexual orientation issues may emerge
• Cognitive skills are at their peak in early
adulthood, and cognitive flexibility is apparent
• Postformal thinking, which is highly
contextualized, may be manifest at this time
• Social and emotional intelligence may enhance
young adult cognition
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