Transcript I. Section One: Adolescent Issues Puberty Kohlberg and Gilligan

I. Section One:
 Adolescent Issues
 Physical Issues
 Social Issues
 Psychological Issues
II. Section Two:
 Puberty
 Kohlberg and Gilligan
Physical Development:
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Growth is on average grow 2-3
inches a year.
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Average height at age 11:
 Girls: 4 feet, 10 inches
 Boys: 4 feet, 9 ½ inches
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In America we receive enough nutrition and thus grow at a
natural rate.
In many countries a lack of proper nutrition greatly affects
the maturational process.
Childhood Obesity:
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Defined:
 Body weight that is more than 20% above the average for a person of
a given age and height.
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United States:
 15% of U.S. children are obese.
 This has tripled from 5% since the 1960’s.
 Most obese country in the world. Why?
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We are in no short supply of resources.
Speed of our economy.
No time anymore to make a good meal.
Both parents working.
Are there extreme differences between boys and girls in motor abilities?
 Do boys out perform girls in sports?
 Are boys better designed for this
type of activity?
Truth:
 There are little if any physical differences between boys and girls in
ability to excel at physical activities.
 Testosterone does not make a difference at this age.
 Why would research in the past say one thing and now today it say a
different thing?
 In the past it was not expected of girls and girls were told that they
would fail if they tried.
 Today it is normal and expected for them to participate in physical
activity.
 If a person is told that they will fail all the time they will most likely fail.
Children have more dexterity today than we ever did:
 They can now type on a computer and use a
pen/pencil efficiently, with skill
 Children today are more excelled at this task today
than we ever were. Why is this?
 Video games and internet?
Children in this age group are more likely to get sick.
 Continues through high school but not as strong there.
Asthma:
 Chronic condition characterized by periodic attacks of:
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 Wheezing
 Coughing
 Shortness of breath
Has been on the rise.
Affects more than 15 million U.S. children.
 Potential Reasons:
▪ Increased pollution
▪ More insulated buildings today:
Air can’t flow well
▪ Increased ability to detect it
▪ Increased concern over illness in children
Accidents:
• Not a common source of
mortality in this age group.
• Increased mobility increase
their chances of being in an accident.
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Bicycle and auto Accidents:
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Most frequent of accidents causing death in children at this age.
Kills 5 out of every 100,000 children.
Fires, burns, drowning, and gun-related deaths follow in frequency.
Not many children in this age group die from accidents, nonetheless
they get in many accidents.
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Anorexia Nervosa:
 Individuals refuse to eat.
 While denying that their behavior
and appearance are out of the ordinary.
 Social issue.
 Advertisements and commercials.
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Bulimia:
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Characterized by binges on large quantities of food.
Followed by purges of the food through vomiting.
Or the use of laxatives.
Personal Issue.
Must be treated by looking at their life:
▪ What is out of control?
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Depression:
 State of intense sadness, melancholia or despair.
 That has advanced to the point of being disruptive to an individual's
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social functioning and/or activities of daily living.
More than ¼ of adolescents report
feeling depressed for more than two
weeks at a time.
2/3 of adolescents report having
felt depressed.
3% report major depression.
Adolescent Girls experience depression more often than boys.
African-American adolescents have higher rates of depression than
Caucasian adolescents.
Native Americans have high rates of depression.
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Suicide:
 Willful act of killing oneself.
 Rate of adolescent suicide has
tripled in the last 30 years.
 There is one teenage suicide
every 90 minutes.
 Parents are not reluctant to report it as a suicide as
opposed to an accident anymore.
 Suicide rate is higher for boys than girls
▪ Boys use more violent methods than girls
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Adolescent Egocentrism:
 State of self-absorption in which the world is viewed from one’s own
point of view.
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Imaginary Audience:
 Adolescent’s belief that his or her own behavior is a primary focus of
others’ attentions and concerns.
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Personal Fables:
 View held by some adolescents that what happens to them is unique,
exceptional, and shared by no one else.
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Average dropout makes 42% less than high school graduate.
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Unemployment rate for dropouts is 50%.
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50% of high school seniors and 20% of eighth graders used
THC within the past year.
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Reference Groups:
 Groups of people with whom one compares oneself.
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Cliques:
 Groups from 2 to 12 people
whose members have frequent
social interactions.
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Crowds:
 Larger groups than cliques, composed of individuals who share particular
characteristics but who may not interact with one another.
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Sex Cleavage:
 Sex segregation in which boys interact primarily with boys and girls primarily
with girls.
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Why friendship and more time spent with peers is important in middle
and late childhood:
 Companionship (familiar playmate)
 Stimulation (excitement, etc.)
 Physical support (time, assistance)
 Ego support (feedback, etc.)
 Social comparison
 Intimacy/self-disclosure, affection
 Not all friendships are alike
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In childhood, friends are usually similar in age, sex, race, attitudes,
aspirations, etc.
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Identifying 5 types of peer status
 Popular children
 Average children
 Neglected children (not disliked)
 Rejected children (disliked by peers)
 Controversial children
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Social skills affect being well liked:
 Giving out reinforcements
 Careful listening
 Keeping communication lines open
 Showing enthusiasm and concern
 Being self-confident, not conceited
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Neglected child has low rate of peer interactions
Social cognition is important to peer relationships
Rejected children
 Have serious social adjustment problems
 Often find that rejection increases antisocial
behavior over time
 Best predictor of delinquency or dropping out from school may be
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aggression toward peers
Bullying
 Has many forms
 Ranges in effects on both victims and bullies
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Child victims often tend to
 Be lonely and have difficulty making friends
 Be seen as “different”
 Have overly protective parents
 Lose interest in school, have excessive absences
 Suffer low self-esteem and depression
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Child bullies
 Have low grades in school
 Come from homes with intrusive, demanding, or unresponsive
parents
 Tend to use alcohol and/or tobacco
Bullying Behavior Among U.S. Youth
Belittled about religion or race
Belittled about looks or speech
Hit, slapped, or pushed
Males
Females
Subject of rumors
Subject of sexual comments or gestures
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5
10
15
20
25
Percentage experiencing bullying
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Minority students:
 Segregation is still a factor in the U.S.
 Almost one-third of all African American and Latino students attend
schools with minority group populations of 90% or more
 Less likely to be in college prep courses
 More likely to be in remedial or special education programs
 African Americans are twice as likely to be suspended from school
than any other group
 90% of U.S. teachers are white
 Asian students take more advanced math and science courses than
any other group
James Marcia:
 Suggested that identity can be seen in terms of which of two
characteristics:
 Crisis or Commitment
 Is it present or Absent
Crisis:
 Period of identity development in which an adolescent consciously
chooses between various alternatives and makes decisions.
Commitment:
 Psychological investment in a course of action or an ideology.
Marcia proposed 4 categories of adolescent identity:
 Identity Achievement
 Status of adolescents who commit to a particular identity following a
period during which they consider various alternatives.
 Identity Foreclosure
 Status of adolescents who prematurely commit to an identity without
adequately exploring alternatives.
 Moratorium
 Status of adolescents who may have explored various identity
alternatives to some degree, but have not yet committed themselves.
 Identity Diffusion
 Status of adolescents who consider various identity alternatives, but
do not commit to one or even consider options.
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Controversial Adolescents:
 Children who are liked by some peers and disliked by
others.
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Rejected Adolescents:
 Children who are actively disliked.
 Whose peers may react to them in an obviously negative
manner.
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Neglected Adolescents:
 Children who receive relatively little attention from their
peers in the form of either positive or negative
interactions.
Permissiveness with affection:
 Premarital intercourse is viewed as
permissible for both men and women if it
occurs in the context of a long-term,
committed, or loving relationship.
One in five children and adolescents has a
psychological disorder that produces at least some
impairment:
 5% depression
 13% anxiety disorder
Diagnosed disorders have been higher than it has ever
been:
 Increased acceptance
 Increased ability to diagnose
 Increased concern about psychological problems
Defined:
 Difficulties in the acquisition and use of:
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Listening
Speaking
Reading
Writing
Reasoning
Mathematical
Growing concern in America.
Growing trend toward child diagnosis in America.
Dyslexia:
 Reading disability that can result in the
misperception of letters during reading and writing.
 Unusual difficulty in sounding out letters.
 Confusion between left and right orientation.
 Difficulties in spelling.
ADHD (Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder):
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Inattention, impulsiveness, low tolerance for frustration, and generally a great deal of
inappropriate activity.
Affects 3-7%
Social Problems:
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Many, many children are misdiagnosed with this disorder.
Many teachers will say that a child has it when they don’t because they don’t know how or refuse to
learn how to deal with children.
If the teacher is using up a large chunk of her class time to deal with a student then there is a
problem.
School stigmatizes these children and these children grow up believing that they will never succeed
in life.
Treatment:
 Ritalin (Meth-Amphetamine): Common treatment for these children
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Not most effective.
Division of Class Work and Activity:
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Children need rewards and often.
Instead of giving them 20 questions to work on divide it up into 4 sets of 5 and have them bring it up
to you after completing each.
Give them lots of physical activity and involve them often.
Don’t give them sugar.
Maria Montessori (1870-1952)
 Interesting: Montessori almost died at age 10
of illness, she told her mother“Don’t worry, Mother, I cannot die; I have too much to do”
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First interest was in mental retardation.
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She was impressed by the extreme interest in knowledge that institutionalized children
showed.
 We can’t teach developmentally delayed children things that we think they ought to
know.
▪ Such as reading and writing.
▪ This will only lead to frustration.
▪ They are not intellectually ready.
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Best time to learn a language is this at this
age, this ability will get worse and worse as
they mature.
Theory of Development:
o Owed much to Rousseau.
o Children think and learn differently than adults.
o Concept of Sensitive Periodso “If a child is prevented from enjoying these experiences at the very time when
nature has planned for them to do so, the special sensitivity which draws him to
them will vanish, with a disturbing effect on development”
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Main component:
o Need a certain attitude about education.
o It is not our job to direct our children’s learning.
o Respect their efforts at independent mastery.
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Sensitive Periods:
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Order
Details
Use of Hands
Walking
Language
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Montessori School:
 2 ½ years to enter.
 All ages through 6 are in same class.
 Environment contains the right materials that correspond to the
children’s inner needs at various sensitive periods the children will
enthusiastically work on them on their own.
▪ Without supervision.
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Methods:
 Free Choice
 Rewards and Punishments (never reward or punish a child)
 Gradual Preparation
Mental Age/Chronological age X 100
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Standardized test with 100 being the mean IQ.
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2/3 of all people on this planet fall between one standard deviation of the
population mean (85-115)
 Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale
 Wechsler-Adult Intelligence Scale
 (WISC-IV) Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children Revised
Two types of Intelligence:
 Fluid Intelligence: Reflects information processing capabilities, reasoning, and memory
 Crystallized Intelligence: Accumulation of information, skills, and strategies that people
have learned through experience and that they can apply in problem-solving situations
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8 types of Intelligence:
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Musical
Kinesthetic
Mathematical
Linguistic
Spatial
Interpersonal
Intrapersonal
Naturalist
Do you believe in this division?
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Triarchic Theory of intelligence: Model that
states that intelligence consists of three
aspects of information processing:
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Componential
Experiential
Contextual
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