Parents & Peers To what extent is our development shaped by early stimulation, by parents & by peers? *Our genes dictate our overall brain architecture but experience fill in the details, developing neural connections & prepping our brain for thought & language. *Rosenzweig’s Rat Study (1987); raising rats in an impoverished environment = impoverished brain cells & raising rats in an enriched environment = enriched brain cells

How much credit (or blame) do parents deserve? Parents do matter. The power of parenting to shape our differences is the extremes – the abused who become abusive, the neglected who become neglectful. In personality measures, shared environmental influences (siblings share the same), typically account for less than 10% of kid’s differences. According to developmental psychologists, “parents should be given less credit for kids who turn out great & blamed less for kids who don’t.”

Peer Influence *Consider the power of peers: Preschoolers who dislike a certain food will eat that food if put at a table w/ kids who like it. Kids who hear English spoken w/ one home & another in the neighborhood & at school will invariably adopt the accent of their peers, not their parents. Accents (& slang) reflect culture, “& children get their culture from their peers.” (Harris, 2007) Teens who start smoking typically have friends who model smoking, suggest its pleasures & offer cigarettes (Rose et al., 2003)

Adolescence “A time of confusion & strife over identity”…

Physical Development Adolescence is marked by sexual development: -Puberty: time of sexual maturation; person becomes capable of reproducing & is a distinct feature of adolescence. (11 girls & 13 boys) -Primary sex characteristics: body structures (ovaries, testes & external genitalia) that make sexual reproduction possible; develop dramatically during this time. -Secondary sex characteristics: non-reproductive traits (female’s breasts/hips;male’s voice deepens & body hair). -Menarche: the 1 st menstrual period -Spermarche: the 1 st ejaculation (usually a nocturnal emission)

An adolescent’s brain is a work in progress… –Frontal lobes continue to develop –Growth of myelin enables better communication w/ other brain regions Improved judgment, impulse control, & the ability to plan for the long term. –Frontal lobe maturation lags the emotional limbic Sx Puberty’s hormonal surge & limbic Sx development helps explain teens’ occasional impulsiveness, risky behaviors & emotional storms

Cognitive Development Gradually, most teens achieve the intellectual summit Piaget called formal operations- the ability to think abstractly & seek deeper meaning about life; the development of reasoning power can lead to heated debates w/ parents… Piaget also believed that children’s moral judgments build on their cognitive development. Agreeing w/ Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg described the development of moral reasoning

*Would you steal medicine to save a loved one’s life? -What does it mean to you to be a moral person? -Does the definition of morality change with a situation or does it remain the same all the time?

Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development As we develop intellectually, we pass through 3 basic levels of moral thinking: 1.Preconventional Morality: Before age 9, most kid’s morality focuses on self-interest; They obey rules either to avoid punishment or to gain concrete rewards 2.Conventional Morality: By early adolescence, morality focuses on caring for others & on upholding laws/social rules b/c they are the laws & rules. 3.Postconventional Morality: With the abstract reasoning of formal operational thought, people may reach a 3 rd moral level. Actions are judged “right” b/c they flow from people’s rights or from self-defined basic ethical principles.