Trends in Cognitive Sciences
Cognitive and affective development in adolescence
Introduction
Adolescence is characterized by an increased need to regulate affect and behavior in accordance with long-term goals and consequences, often at a distance from the adults who provided regulatory structure and guidance during childhood. Because developing brain, behavioral and cognitive systems mature at different rates and under the control of both common and independent biological processes, this period is often one of increased vulnerability and adjustment. Accordingly, normative development in adolescence can profitably be understood with respect to the coordination of emotional, intellectual and behavioral proclivities and capabilities, and psychopathology in adolescence may be reflective of difficulties in this coordination process.
The notion that adolescence is a heightened period of vulnerability specifically because of gaps between emotion, cognition and behavior has important implications for our understanding of many aspects of both normative and atypical development during this period of the life-span. With respect to normative development, for instance, this framework is helpful in understanding age differences in judgment and decision-making, in risk-taking, and in sensation-seeking [1]. With respect to atypical development, the framework helps us to understand why adolescence can be a time of increased risk for the onset of a wide range of emotional and behavioral problems, including depression, violent delinquency and substance abuse [2].
Questions about the nature of normative and atypical development in adolescence have taken on special significance in the last few years as scientists have begun to recast old portraits of adolescent psychological development in light of new knowledge about adolescent brain development. Recent discoveries in the area of developmental neuroscience have stimulated widespread scientific and popular interest in the study of brain development during adolescence, as well as substantial speculation about the connections between brain maturation and adolescents' behavioral and emotional development. Indeed, the topic has garnered such widespread public interest that it was the subject of a recent cover story in Time magazine aimed at parents of teenagers [3], and was raised in arguments submitted in late 2004 to the United States Supreme Court in connection with the Court's consideration of the constitutionality of the juvenile death penalty [4].
Section snippets
Brain development in adolescence
As reviewed in the accompanying article by Paus [5] there is growing evidence that maturational brain processes are continuing well through adolescence. Even relatively simple structural measures, such as the ratio of white-to-gray matter in the brain, demonstrate large-scale changes into the late teen-age years 6, 7, 8. The impact of this continued maturation on emotional, intellectual and behavioral development has yet to be thoroughly studied, but there is considerable evidence that the
Cognitive development in adolescence
Until recently, much of the work on adolescent cognitive development was devoted to a search for a core mechanism that could account parsimoniously for broad changes in adolescent thinking [10]. After nearly 50 years of searching, what has emerged instead is the necessity of an integrated account. What lies at the core of adolescent cognitive development is the attainment of a more fully conscious, self-directed and self-regulating mind [10]. This is achieved principally through the assembly of
Implications of new brain maturation research for adolescent cognitive development
After a rather lengthy period during the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the study of adolescent cognitive development was more or less moribund, interest in intellectual development during adolescence has been revitalized in recent years in two ways. First, researchers in the field of developmental neuroscience began to direct attention to the study of structural and functional aspects of brain development during early adolescence 6, 8, 13, 22. These studies have pointed both to significant
Cognitive development in context
A second relatively new direction in research on adolescent cognitive development has involved the study of cognitive development as it plays out in its social context and, in particular, as it affects the development of judgment, decision-making and risk-taking 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35. New perspectives on adolescent cognition-in-context emphasize that adolescent thinking in the real world is a function of social and emotional, as well as cognitive, processes, and that a full account of the ways
Affect and cognition
In contrast to most measures of cognitive development in adolescence, which seem to correlate more closely with age and experience rather than the timing of pubertal maturation, there is evidence for a specific link between pubertal maturation and developmental changes in arousal, motivation and emotion. For example, there is evidence that pubertal development directly influences the development of romantic interest and sexual motivation 47, 48. There is also evidence that some changes in
Decision-making and risk-taking
Behavioral data have often made it appear that adolescents are poor decision-makers (i.e. their high-rates of participation in dangerous activities, automobile accidents, drug use and unprotected sex). This led initially to hypotheses that adolescents had poor cognitive skills relevant to decision-making or that information about consequences of risky behavior may have been unclear to them 56, 57. In contrast to those accounts, however, there is substantial evidence that adolescents engage in
The development of regulatory competence
During the adolescent transition, regulatory systems are gradually brought under the control of central executive functions, with a special focus on the interface of cognition and emotion. Two important observations are especially important. The first is that the development of an integrated and consciously controlled ‘executive suite’ of regulatory capacities is a lengthy process. Yet, adolescents confront major, emotionally laden life dilemmas from a relatively early age – an age that has
Concluding comments
Like early childhood, adolescence may well be a sensitive or critical developmental period for both normative and maladaptive patterns of development 69, 70, 71. Several aspects of development during this period are especially significant in this regard, among them: the role of puberty in a fundamental restructuring of many body systems and as an influence on social information-processing; the apparent concentration of changes in the adolescent brain in the prefrontal cortex (which serves as a
Acknowledgements
Many of the ideas expressed in this article grew out of the work of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Psychopathology and Development. I am especially grateful to Ron Dahl, Dan Keating, David Kupfer, Ann Masten and Danny Pine for their contributions to the enterprise. Thanks also to Marnia Davis for bibliographic assistance.
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