What evidence from neuroscience helps us understand behavioral development in young adulthood?

 What evidence from neuroscience helps us understand behavioral development in young adulthood? • How do going to college, obtaining career training, and entering the workforce reflect the transition to adulthood? • When do people achieve adulthood in contemporary American society? © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. Emerging Adulthood • No definitive criteria for marking when one becomes an adult, especially in the West • Emerging adulthood: a relatively new term referring to the period when people are not adolescents but are not fully adults – Encompasses the years between late adolescence and early 30s – Social and demographic trends since the 1970s have created this new developmental period © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. Role Transitions Marking Adulthood • Role transitions: new responsibilities and duties that mark movement into the next developmental stages (e.g., marriage) © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. Cross-Cultural Evidence of Role Transitions • Rites of passage: important rituals marking initiation into adulthood (e.g., college graduation or marriage ceremonies) – May last for hours or days • Rituals in non-Western cultures change little with time and provide continuity – Some tribes’ rituals involve pain or mutilation • Many cultures employ religious rituals (e.g., confirmation, bar/bat mitzvahs, quinceanera) © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. Role Transitions in Western Cultures • Role transitions involve assuming new responsibilities and duties – Voting, completing one’s education, beginning fulltime employment – Cohort effects show increasing average levels of education, later marriages, and children living with their parents longer – Western society has no clear age-constant rituals that clearly mark the transition to adulthood © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. Neuroscience, Behavior, and Emerging Adulthood (1 of 2) • The prefrontal cortex is not fully developed until the mid-20s • Higher level reasoning is not possible prior to early adulthood • Young adults are more able than adolescents to take different points of view © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. Neuroscience, Behavior, and Emerging Adulthood (2 of 2) • Emerging adults engage in more risky behaviors than do any other age group of adults – Edgework: living on the boundary between life and death in physically or psychologically risky situations – Gender differences in dealing with edgework ▪ Men do not rehearse these; are highly confident ▪ Women rehearse to ease their initially lower confidence © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. Achieving Milestones: Education, Workforce, and Erikson’s Intimacy (1 of 4) • Education and Workforce Attainment – Nearly 70% of all high school graduates go to college ▪ Rates in upper-income groups are higher than in lowerincome groups – Research has documented how students develop while in college ▪ Advances in intellectual development – College campuses are changing, with increasing numbers of returning adult students (over age 25) © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. Achieving Milestones: Education, Workforce, and Erikson’s Intimacy (2 of 4) • Establishing Intimacy – A major task for adults is to deal with Erikson’s sixth stage, intimacy versus isolation ▪ Men and career-oriented women solve identity issues before intimacy issues, while some women resolve intimacy issues before identity issues ▪ Some women deal with both identity and intimacy issues simultaneously © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. Achieving Milestones: Education, Workforce, and Erikson’s Intimacy (3 of 4) • Quarter-life-crisis – The struggle of finding one’s way into the “real world” ▪ Locked-out form is feeling unable to enter adult roles ▪ Locked-in form is feeling trapped in adult roles ▪ Commitment – independence reflects the longer time it takes more recent generations to traverse the challenges of early adulthood © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. Achieving Milestones: Education, Workforce, and Erikson’s Intimacy (4 of 4) • So When Do People Become Adults? – The evidence is clear that a stage of emerging adulthood exists ▪ Achieving adulthood takes longer today ▪ Shedding of formal rites of passage (religious ceremonies) leaves less clarity ▪ Defining oneself as an adult rests on one’s perception of whether personally relevant key criteria have been met © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. 10.2 Physical Development & Health: Learning Objectives • In what respects are young adults at their physical peak? • How healthy are young adults in general? • How do smoking, drinking alcohol, and nutrition affect young adults’ health? • How does the health of young adults differ as a function of socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and education? © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. Growth, Strength, and Physical Functioning • Height is at its tallest during young adulthood – Young adulthood is the time when several physical abilities peak: height, strength, muscle development, coordination, dexterity, and sensory acuity ▪ Most of these abilities begin to decline in middle age © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. Lifestyle Factors in Health • Death from disease is relatively rare, especially during the 20s • Leading cause of death in early 20s: accidents – Gender and ethnic-related prevalence – Young adult men (age 25–34) 2.5 times more likely to die than women of the same age – African American and Latino young adult males: 2– 2.5 times more likely to die than European American men – Asian or Pacific Islander young adult males only half as likely to die as European American men © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. Lifestyle Factors • Smoking – Nicotine is a known potent teratogen – Smoking is the leading contributor to health problems in smokers – Quitting smoking is usually beneficial, regardless of how or when it happens • Nonsmokers also at high risk for diseases – Over 40% are exposed to secondhand smoke © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. Drinking Alcohol • Occasional drinking, while not driving, is not known to seriously affect health – 1–2 glasses of wine or beer/day • Heavy or “binge” drinking is costly to health, hampers productivity, and can promote victimization (e.g., assaults, rape) • Binge drinking: consuming 5 or more (men) or 4 or more (women) drinks in a row within 2 weeks – Binge drinking is a major international health concern, especially among college students © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. Drinking Alcohol: Alcoholism • Alcohol Use Disorder: an addiction involving physical dependence on alcohol and withdrawal symptoms when not drinking • Excessive, long-term drinking affects brain – Important neurotransmitters become dangerously depleted or increased ▪ Causes alcohol cravings meant to reduce negative, or increase, positive feelings • Treating alcoholism long-term is challenging © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. Nutrition • Metabolism: how much energy the body needs; slows down with age • Should limit intake of saturated and trans fats, cholesterol, added sugars, salt, and alcohol • Obesity: growing health problem • Body mass index (BMI): ratio of body weight to height, related to total body fat – BMI of 25 or less is healthy – Health risks increase as BMI increases © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. Nutrition: Cholesterol • Low-density lipoproteins (LDL): cholesterols impeding blood flow by causing fatty deposits to accumulate in arteries • High-density lipoproteins (HDL): cholesterols that keep arteries clear and break down LDLs • LDL/HDL ratio is important to health – LDL should be less than 160 mg/dL – HDL should be at least 40 mg/dL in men – HDL should be at least 50 mg/dL in women © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. Socioeconomic, Ethnic, and Education Issues in Health • The three most important social factors in health are socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and education – Being poor is a major predictor of health challenges – In the United States, ethnic differences exist in the quality of health care received – Educational level also matters ▪ The risk of dying increases as education level decreases © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. Ethnic Group Differences • In the United States, the residents of inner-city neighborhoods have the poorest health conditions • African American men in large urban areas have lower life expectancies even than men in developing countries – Poverty plays a major role – Lesser likelihood of being treated for chronic diseases © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. 10.3 Cognitive Development: Learning Objectives (1 of 2) • What is intelligence in adulthood? • What are primary and secondary mental abilities? How do they change? • What are fluid and crystallized intelligence? How do they change? • How has neuroscience research furthered our understanding of intelligence in adulthood? © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. 10.3 Cognitive Development: Learning Objectives (2 of 2) • What is postformal thought? How does it differ from formal operations? • How do emotion and logic become integrated in adulthood? How do emotional intelligence and impression formation demonstrate this integration? © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. How Should We View Intelligence in Adults? • Most theories are multidimensional, though there is disagreement as to the dimensions • Baltes et al.’s three dimensions: – Multidirectionality: some aspects improve while others decline during adulthood – Interindividual variability: patterns of change vary between people – Plasticity: abilities can be modified under the right conditions © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. How Do We Study Intelligence? • The psychometric approach studies how interrelationships among intellectual abilities are organize – The structure of intelligence is the organization of interrelated intellectual abilities – Testing and factor analysis lead to a factor, or the relationship between the performance on one test and the performance on another test being identified as a common ability © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. Primary – and Secondary Mental Abilities • Primary mental abilities: groups of related skills organized into hypothetical constructs – Number – Verbal meaning – Inductive reasoning – Spatial orientation – Word fluency • Secondary mental abilities: clusters of related primary abilities used as a framework for describing intelligence’s structure; difficult to measure directly © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. Fluid and Crystalized Intelligence • Fluid and crystallized intelligence are secondary mental abilities • Fluid intelligence: being a flexible, adaptive thinker, who can make inferences, and understand concepts’ relationships – Declines throughout adulthood • Crystallized intelligence: knowledge of facts, definitions, language, etc., acquired by life experience – Improves throughout adulthood © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. Neuroscience Research and Intelligence • Parieto-frontal integration theory (P-FIT): intelligence comes from distributed and integrated networks of neurons in the parietal and frontal lobes – Research supports the P-FIT model – Still controversial • The neural efficiency hypothesis states intelligent people process information more efficiently – greater intelligence = increased efficiency in neural processing © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. Going Beyond Formal Operations: Thinking in Adulthood • Postformal thought • Reflective judgment • Prereflective reasoning • Quasi-reflective reasoning • Reflective reasoning © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. Integrating Emotion and Logic in Emerging and Young Adulthood • Adults understand that there is more than one right answer. – This type of thinking is characterized by the integration of emotion with logic – As they age, adults tend to make decisions and analyze problems not so much on logical grounds but rather on pragmatic and emotional grounds. – The integration of emotion with logic provides the basis for decision-making © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. Emotional Intelligence • Emotional Intelligence (EI) refers to people’s ability to recognize their own and others’ emotions, to correctly identify and appropriately tell the difference between emotions, and use this information to guide their thinking and behavior – EI increases with age and may contribute to higher subjective well-being © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. Impression Formation • Hess and Pullen (1994) found older adults modify their impression of a person from positive to negative when negative information follows positive – Older adults modify their impression less when positive information follows negative – Younger adults make their impression based on the most recent information and do not show a difference in their impression based on whether the new information was positive or negative © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. 10.4 Personality in Young Adulthood: Learning Objectives • How do adults create scenarios and life stories? • What are possible selves? Do they show differences during adulthood? • What are personal control beliefs? © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. Creating Scenarios and Life Stories • Life-span construct: one’s unified sense of the past, present, and future • Scenario: expectations of how one’s future life will play out – Helps people formulate a game plan and a way to track progress • Social clock: a personal timetable tagging the time or age by which future goals or events are to be completed © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. McAdams’s Life-Story Model • Life story: a personal narrative organizing past events into a coherent sequence reflecting one’s identity, ideology, and goals – Agency and communion are themes – Attitudes toward one’s story are conveyed through emotions (e.g., optimism) – Begins forming in late adolescence – From middle age onward, reshaped to form generativity © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. Possible Selves • Possible selves: representations of one’s hopedfor-selves and feared-for-selves • With increasing age, important possible selves concern personal matters more than family ones • Young and middle-aged adults are more optimistic about achieving hoped-for-selves • Much older adults perceive the self as remaining stable – Physical health is an important feared self © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. Personal Control Beliefs • Personal control beliefs: extent to which performance depends on one’s own effort or ability rather than outside forces – Greatly affects personality, social, health, intellectual, and career outcomes • Results of research on development of personal control beliefs are inconsistent • Control beliefs vary depending upon the domain in which they are studied (e.g., intelligence versus health) © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. Personal Control Beliefs: Domains • Examples of domain-specific findings: – People’s perceived control of marital happiness increasing with age – One’s development declining with age • One domain-nonspecific finding is that satisfaction is greater for: – Younger adults who attribute success to their effort – Older adults who attribute success to their ability © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. Personal Control Beliefs: Research • Some research shows four types of control experience: – Control from within oneself – Control over oneself – Control over the environment – Control from the environment • Other research distinguishes two types of control: – Primary versus secondary control © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved. Personal Control Beliefs: Primary and Secondary Control • Primary control: modifying the external environment to fit one’s needs and goals (e.g., asking a teacher for tutoring) • Secondary control: modifying one’s cognitions, goals, or behavioral standards (e.g., attributing failure on a test to task difficulty instead of ability) • Primary and secondary control operate in parallel during first half of life; primary declines in midlife © 2019 Cengage. All rights reserved.

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