Chapter Two - The Importance of Puberty for Adolescent Development: Conceptualization and Measurement
Section snippets
Puberty and Adolescent Development
How and why are teenagers different from children and adults? Developmentalists have long been interested in psychological changes that take place in adolescence. These include normative changes associated with the attainment of reproductive maturity (e.g., family, peer, and romantic relationships, adult cognition), variations in those normative processes (e.g., risk-taking), and the development of problems that originate in adolescence or increase in incidence or severity at this time (e.g.,
Defining and Measuring Puberty
In order to understand how puberty might affect psychological development, it is important to be clear about the pubertal processes themselves and the aspects of those processes that are thought to matter. We discuss the changes of puberty and then how they have been considered in relation to psychological development.
Evidence for Pubertal Influences on Adolescent Development
In this section, we briefly summarize work on pubertal influences on adolescent development, highlighting the themes, findings, and questions that await further research. This is not an exhaustive review, but rather an illustration of the type of work being done, with representative findings and challenges.
Research on links between puberty and adolescent psychological development has a long history (for reviews, see Dorn et al., 2006, Susman and Dorn, 2009), but until recently it has not been a
Assumptions, Strengths, and Limitations of Work on Puberty–Behavior Links
In this section, we consider the assumptions that underlie most of the research literature we just summarized, articulate the different ways in which puberty is thought to affect behavior, and consider how previous research has been successful (or not) in testing links between puberty and behavior. In doing so, we also consider methodological improvements that could enhance our ability to study the paths from puberty to behavior.
Conclusions and Future Directions
It is an exciting time to study pubertal influences on psychological development. The topic is of interest to scientists, funding agencies, policy makers, and the general public. Methodological and conceptual advances have created new opportunities, along with challenges that should generate new research and new discoveries. In this section, we summarize what is known and what remains to be understood, and provide suggestions for future work.
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