Download PSY 605
Developmental Changes in Adolescence
Ashford University
Course Code: PSY 605 and more Essays (university) Financial Accounting in PDF only on Docsity! PSY 605 Developmental Changes in Adolescence Ashford University Course Code: PSY 605 Developmental Psychology We, as humans, go through so many developmental stages throughout our lifetime, that it is a lot to take in and successfully grow into a functional adult. Many psychologists tried to explain the several stages that we transition from birth to our inevitable deaths. Today I will investigate the adolescence periods between the ages 13-18 years old. During this period, the child will develop in all areas that are physical, emotional, cognitive, and social. This is because, during the adolescent stage, the child(ren) is going through puberty. Throughout puberty, children are growing in height and weight, maturing, developing friendships outside of family members, and developing sexually. The changes that girls experience going through puberty will be different than boys. First, I will start with the change’s girls will see doing puberty. Girls will develop breasts, periods, pubic hair, underarm hair, body growth, and acne. One last thing I wanted to point out about girls is they also mature faster than boys. Now for the boy, the changes they will experience are pubic hair, growth spur (height and weight), enlargement of the testicles, their voice will deepen, and they will experience ejaculations. Sigmund Freud's psychosexual theory is a theory that originated in the early 1900s to help explain mental illness and emotional disturbance. Freud believes that a healthy child develops in five different stages. They are the oral, anal, phallic, latent, and the genital stage; the stage that correlates with the adolescence age is the genital stage. The genital stage is between 12 years old and up to adulthood or till death. The child is focused on his/her genitals and is the time to experiment sexually. To complete this stage successfully is to settle down in a loving one to one relationship with another person in their 20's. Freud's theory states that if an adult had a proper outlet for his/her instinct was through heterosexual intercourse. Just a side bare Freud is one of the psychologists who reinforced the stigma that homosexuality was a mental disorder. When a child does not complete this stage, the child becomes fixated on things like oral sex or kissing rather than having sexual intercourse. Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development was developed in the early 20th century it focuses on children from birth through adolescence and characterized different stages of development. This includes the development of a child's language, morals, memory, and reasoning. Piaget believes that children build their own knowledge based on their own experiences. Next, he believes that children learn on their own without influence from adults or older children. Lastly, he thinks children are motivated to learn by nature/nurture. The four stages include a sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational stage. For Piaget's theory, his adolescent stage is called the formal operational stage. Throughout this stage, starting at 11-year-old to adulthood, children are learning through symbols to understand abstract concepts; also, they can make hypotheses and grasp abstract concepts and relationships. "Piaget believed that people of all ages developed intellectually. But he also believed that once a person reaches the formal operational stage, it is more about building upon knowledge, not changing how it’s acquired or understood” (Marcin, 2018). For my last theorist, I will be talking about Erik Erikson's eight stages of psychosocial development. Erikson modified Freud's psychosexual theory into eight stages of psychosocial theory. The eight stages are trust vs. mistrust, autonomy vs. shame/doubt, initiative vs. guilt, industry vs. inferiority, identity vs. role confusion, intimacy vs. isolation, generativity vs. stagnation, and integrity vs. despair. He believes for a person to successfully complete each
