History and Theories of Adolescence Psychology

History and Theories of Adolescence Psychology

1. History and Theories of Adolescence

2. What is adolescence?
•Adolescence is transition from
childhood to emerging
adulthood.
•Although we often think of
adolescence in the context of
age, there are many ways
adolescence can be defined.

3. •Adolescence is marked by several important
transitions
•A transition is a period of growth and change
that is set off when something disturbs an
earlier balance
•These transitions can be biological,
psychological, cultural, or physical
⚬Transitions continue until an equilibrium is
reached (e.g., growth spurt to adult size)
•Transitions can be considered normative or
idiosyncratic
Transitions in Adolescence

4. Transitions
•Normative transitions are those that everybody in a particular culture can expect to
go through at basically the same point in their lifespan (e.g., puberty)
•Idiosyncratic transitions are more particular to the individual and take place at
unpredictable points during adolescence (e.g., parental divorce, friendship
breakdown)
⚬Some transitions may be normative at one stage in life, but idiosyncratic in
others (e.g., death of a parent at middle age vs adolescence)
⚬Timing of normative transitions can have effects on an adolescent (e.g., early
puberty

5. Think about it
•Which ones were normative, and which were idiosyncratic?
•Which of the normative transitions took place at about the same age for you
as for your friends and classmates, and which were earlier or later
•How do you think the timing affected the way you experienced the
transitions?

6. Phases of Adolescence
010203
Early
adolescence
(11-14)
Middle
adolescence
(15-18)
Late
adolescence
(i.e., emerging
adulthood; 19-
22)
•These phases often follow
closely with the division of
education into middle or
junior high school, high
school, and college or
university
•These stages are often linked
to developmental tasks
depending on culture
⚬“the skills, attitudes, and
social functions that a
culture expects members
to acquire at a particular
point in their lives”

7. Adolescence Across
History
01020304
Preindustrial
Europe
18th
century
19th/20th
Century
Canada
Ancient
Greece
•Males =
educated to be
soldiers/citizens
•Females =
wives/mothers
•Life-cycle service
⚬Lived as
apprentices
or servants
•Rousseau:
⚬Storm & stress
⚬Children and
adolescents should
be valued
•Workforce in factories
•20th century -
education promoted
•1960s - 30% increase in
adolescent population

8. Teens in Canada Today
Today’s teens in Canada confront many social changes
and issues:
•Changes in the ways families are made up, and
especially the increase in single-parent families
•Importance of peers
•Sexuality
•Influence of social media
•Racial injustice

9. Globalization
•Aging population: needs may conflict with the needs of
other groups (elderly)
⚬Voting implications
•Information travels from continent to continent in a matter
of seconds
⚬Less locked into traditional ways of doing things
⚬May be more vulnerable to impacts of social and
economic change
⚬Trends from across countries influence Canadian teens

10. Globalization and
adolescence
•Virtuous and vicious cycles
⚬Middle class Canadians often experience the virtuous
cycle of having well-paying jobs, more access to
higher education and technology
⚬Those living in rural or urban poverty may end up
working dangerous or illegal jobs, have less access to
health care, and less education

11. Theories about Adolescence
•Psychoanalytic•Cognitive•Learning and Social Cognitive •Social and Anthropological•Ecological and Developmental Systems

12. •Unconscious desires influence behaviour
•Three components of personality
⚬ID: innate, compelled by drives
⚬Ego: conscious, rational
⚬Superego: internalized moral standard
Psychoanalytic Theories: Freud

13. •Freud’s stages of psychosexual development
⚬Development driven by sexual drives
⚬Stages propose shifts in focus on parts of body
•Oral (birth–1 year)
•Anal (1–3 years)
•Phallic (3–6 years)
•Latency (6–11 years)
•skill development
•Genital (12 years onward)
•exploration of sexual feelings
Psychoanalytic Theories

14. Psychoanalytic Theories: Erik
Erikson
•Erik Erikson’s psychosocial
developmental theory
⚬Identity versus role confusion (5th
stage)
￭exploration of identity,
relationships, hobbies, and
potential career paths

15. Cognitive Theories: Piaget
Jean Piaget
•Theory describes and explains the development of
thought processes and mental states
⚬Go through developmental stages
⚬Schemes
￭An organized pattern of thought or action a
child uses to make sense of experience
•Adolescents think more abstractly, hypothesize (i.e.,
what if?)

16. Piaget’s Stages of
Cognitive Development

17. Cognitive Theories: Information
Processing
•Human mind similar to computer
⚬Receives input
⚬Performs operations on input
⚬Generates output
•Development reflects changes in
⚬hardware (brain and nervous system)
⚬software (mental processes)
•Development is continuous
⚬Maturation and development of brain allows
children to process inputs faster

18. Learning Theories
01 02
Albert Bandura’s cognitive social learning theory
•Focuses on how our thoughts and actions are
affected by our social environment (Bobo)
•Observational learning stressed
•Learning by observing others (models)
⚬Not dependent on reinforcement
⚬Proposed reciprocal determinism
⚬Environment ↔ Person
•Outlined principles of operant conditioning
•Focus on outcome of behaviour for predicting
future occurrences of that behaviour
•Reinforcers ↑ probability of behaviour
occurring again.
•Punishers ↓ probability of behaviour occurring
again.
B. F. Skinner’s radical behaviourismAlbert Bandura’s cognitive social
learning theory

19. Think about it
•What aspects of adolescent development are the greatest concern
for each of the theories?

20. Social and Anthropological Theories
•Adolescents embedded in social groups
⚬Role of society and culture
•Benedict: Continuous and discontinuous societies
⚬Continuous societies: children gradually and peacefully take
on adult roles
⚬Discontinuous societies: abrupt and stressful transitions
from adolescence to adulthood

21. •Urie Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory
⚬Detailed characterization of various
environmental influences on development
•Environment is a series of nested systems.
⚬Microsystem
⚬Mesosystem
⚬Exosystem
⚬Macrosystem
⚬Chronosystem
•
Ecological and Developmental
Systems Theories: Bronfenbrenner

22. •Developmental systems theory stresses
that development has to be thought of as
systematic change in which the
adolescent is the center of a network of
interacting influences
Ecological and Developmental
Systems Theories: Lerner

23. Think about it
•Think of examples for each of the levels of the ecological systems.
How have they affected you?

24. Thank you very much!