1. Adolescents’ Competencies
H236: Adolescent Development

2. The Plan… Reflecting on your beliefs about the purpose of adolescence
What should be true for an adolescent to “transition to adulthood?”
What are the competencies they bring to their development?
Uneveness of development

3. What is our modern purpose of adolescence?
The modern purpose of adolescence is to form one's identity, ideally with a positive, experimental approach. The variation in adolescence across cultures and times, however, makes it difficult to identify a single set purpose for adolescence.
Trying-out or exploring the rules. Discovering your identity and finding a purpose.
- Not a disease – It’s a stage, a transition. - Physiological transitions need structure and support. - We need to shift our cultural perspective into a more balance and understanding. - Purpose – to find out who you are, and start asking the biggest questions
To explore the social, biological, and personal identity realms of existence in a way that helps the adolescent establish his or her own future character and path with greater levels of responsibility than in previous stages of development.
Period of life where individuals explore and define the role they envision for themselves in their society.
Adolescence is a period of experimentation and self-discovery.
Prepare for adulthood: self-sufficiency, productive relationships with others, understanding your identity, strong moral compass
It is a time of assuming or developing greater social independence and responsibility.

4. What is our modern purpose of adolescence?
Legend:
Purpose of the stage
How to do it/process
What they need
What is our modern purpose of adolescence?
The modern purpose of adolescence is to form one's identity, ideally with a positive, experimental approach. The variation in adolescence across cultures and times, however, makes it difficult to identify a single set purpose for adolescence.
Trying-out or exploring the rules. Discovering your identity and finding a purpose.
- Not a disease – It’s a stage, a transition. - Physiological transitions need structure and support. - We need to shift our cultural perspective into a more balance and understanding. - Purpose – to find out who you are, and start asking the biggest questions
To explore the social, biological, and personal identity realms of existence in a way that helps the adolescent establish his or her own future character and path with greater levels of responsibility than in previous stages of development.
Period of life where individuals explore and define the role they envision for themselves in their society.
Adolescence is a period of experimentation and self-discovery.
Prepare for adulthood: self-sufficiency, productive relationships with others, understanding your identity, strong moral compass
It is a time of assuming or developing greater social independence and responsibility.

5. What is our modern purpose of adolescence?
Legend:
Purpose of the stage
How to do it/process
What they need
What is our modern purpose of adolescence?
The modern purpose of adolescence is to form one's identity, ideally with a positive, experimental approach. The variation in adolescence across cultures and times, however, makes it difficult to identify a single set purpose for adolescence.
Trying-out or exploring the rules. Discovering your identity and finding a purpose.
- Not a disease – It’s a stage, a transition. - Physiological transitions need structure and support. - We need to shift our cultural perspective into a more balance and understanding. - Purpose – to find out who you are, and start asking the biggest questions
To explore the social, biological, and personal identity realms of existence in a way that helps the adolescent establish his or her own future character and path with greater levels of responsibility than in previous stages of development.
Period of life where individuals explore and define the role they envision for themselves in their society.
Adolescence is a period of experimentation and self-discovery.
Prepare for adulthood: self-sufficiency, productive relationships with others, understanding your identity, strong moral compass
It is a time of assuming or developing greater social independence and responsibility.

6. Is there anything else to accomplish?

8. How do you know when you have reached adulthood?
“Do you feel that you’ve
reached adulthood?”
Characteristics of “emerging
Adulthood/extended adolescence
Identity explorations
Instability
Self-focus
Feeling in-between
Possibilities
Arnett, 2000; N=519

9. Adolescence’s End: Marking Adulthood
Traditional markers
Marriage, fulltime work, parenthood, financial independence
Newer markers
75% would consider themselves
Adults without…
Completing school
Starting career
Getting married (sig. rel.)
Having children
“Adolescence has no precisely identifiable end: it slowly shifts into adulthood as the individual comes to terms with his (sic) new state.” Brizio et al.

10. Competencies: Cognitive
Mental Processing
Speed
Adolescents are faster than children at processing information
Increase in processing speed from age 10 through the late teens
Reaction Times
Video games(?)
Quick judgments
Implicit beliefs/associations
Automaticity
Cognitive effort to process information
Development of “gut” responses between emotion and decision-making (desensitization)
Allows for deep conceptual understanding necessary for developing expertise.
Not just abstract thinking, but reasoning about abstract ideas
Understanding how to meet multiple goals with a single action
Identify a wider range of choices/options
Learning from their successes and failure & Anticipating consequences
Envisioning and anticipating situations they have not experienced

11. Competencies: Social Cognition
“Various psychological processes that enable individuals to take advantage of being part of a social groups
Requires…
Social Perspective taking: Understanding the mental states of others including their…
Intentions and attributions
Desires and beliefs
Being able to predict and explain others’ actions and reason about their actions
Negotiate complex interpersonal relations
Meta-cognition: being about to think about one’s own and others’ thinking (e.g., theory of mind)
Complex role of emotion

12. Development is Uneven in Context
Subjective feelings of maturity
Maturity Gaps—discrepancy between social and biological age:
Pseudo-Maturity—assumption of adult roles, without the development of psychological maturity to go along with it.
Adultification
Mismatch across contexts
“proving” their adult status and independence
Lower connections to school and academic achievement
High subjective age, problem behavior, moderate self reliance; low work orientation, undifferentiated identity
Immature—felt and acting younger than age
Low levels of problem behavior
Low levels of psychosocial maturity
Low across the all indicators
Mature—felt slightly older than age, low levels of problem behavior high levels of psychosocial maturity, good decision making
High levels of identity, self reliance and work orientation

13. Uneven Cognitive Development
Less impulsive & Sensation Seeking
Logical Reasoning, resisting interference
% at each age to reach adult competency
Steinberg et al. 2009

14. When do teens make the best decisions?
When the decision is not emotionally charged (hot/cold cognition)
When they have had practice making the decision (exacerbated by imaginary audience & personal fable)
When those who they admire make similar decisions or scaffold their decision (peer effects)
When an immediate “reward” is not offset by a consequence well into the future

15. Applications. Politicalization of research on adolescent development.
Given the unevenness of development, when and in what contexts should “mature” behavior be expected?
Policy makers want single recommendations, how do we communicate nuance
What should we know about research methodology?
Who should be in our samples?
Value of longitudinal versus cross sectional work
Challenges of doing research, how do we build upon what we know
Given our “age graded school system,” how can teachers provide differential contexts to encourage development?