Psychology

Interference of Adolescents as rated in Anxiety- Related Stroop
This article was written by Richard Anne, Richard Lucy and Mcgeeney Anna and it is from the journal of General Psychology. It was published in the United States through the Gale Group, inc. on 1st July 2000. The article revealed a study on the relationship between anxiety and memory interference in adolescents. This was established through the administration of neutral Stroop and threat related stimuli on detached cards. Adolescents with high anxiety took more time to discover words with threat- related color than the neutral words. However there was no discrepancy in the low- anxiety group. According to the reported literature, memory interference in adolescents gave consistent results while in the adults there were established cognitive biases related to anxiety. Researchers by then had ignored the connection between emotion and cognitive among the adolescent group. Processes involving anxiety and information processing may differ in adults and adolescents hence the need to investigate cognitive biases developments in teens. Studies carried out on children to scrutinize the relationship between emotions and cognitive showed similar results to those of adults Richard.

Relationship of the article to course materials
The adolescence stage is full of behavior traits that include impulsivity and excessive emotion that result to addictions and illness. As a result adolescents are faced with too much uncertainty that affects their memory. Adolescents are actively involved in many activities hence their brains are busy most of the times. Brain development is often rapid during the first three years of a child and fully develops when a person is 12. The queer behaviors observed in some adolescents can be explained to emanate from the hormonal changes in the body. The highest stage of cognitive development is usually around 13 and 14 years. However the brain grows and develops during the teens life and possibly extends to twenty years.

This stage is composed of considerable growth and development. Adolescents are highly vulnerable to drugs as well as alcohol because of the maturing of various systems in the body at different timetables. Alcohol and drugs interferes with an adolescents memory and this increases the level of anxiety. Large amounts of drugs and alcohol leads to brain shrinking and for adolescents this brings negative effects since this is a stage composed of significant processes. However alcohol has little effect on an adult brain. Adolescents who develop the habit of smoking are found to possess an inaccurate working memory. Mostly male adolescents experience divided attention than their female counterparts.  Various aspects of memory or attention development are linked to chronological age changes. However aspects related to emotional processes are particularly associated to pubertal status.    

Conclusion
The adolescence stage is one that gives people the path they should take in adulthood.  This issue has a much deeper meaning than expected.  It is true that adolescents who have high rate of anxiety are very slow in performing their tasks than those who have low anxiety. Such adolescents are likely to have mothers who were under anxiety and stress during their pregnancy. The cognitive development of a child is negatively affected if a mother experiences anxiety during the gestation period of that child. This is more pronounced in the adolescent stage and hence there is need for researches to touch on the relationship between cognitive and emotions in this stage. This is a crucial stage that ought to be the major concern for researchers.