life span class-life interview paper
DISCUSSION
Jane is an adolescent girl that would be classified under the late adolescent stages. This transitional stage between childhood and adulthood is characterized by the individual experiencing biological changes and strong emotional issues (Banham, 2010). Psychologist Erik Erikson described this as the stage that adolescents form personal and social identities.
Cognitive development
Cognitive development among adolescents manifests itself with the ability to think and reason in a concrete manner starting at the age of 6-12 years which is the latter of which is the onset of early adolescence (Wilmore and Costill, 2008). From this age onward, more complex thinking takes over and characterizes the adolescents life and one way that adolescents do this is through abstract thinking where hypothetical and deductive reasoning is applied. According to Paiget, abstract thinking marks the end of concrete thinking and the adolescent no longer has to depend on concrete objects for himher to make decisions. Jane tells of the period she learnt that she could perform complex mathematical equations such as algebra. She was 13 years old then and she tells of how she never thought she could ever be able to do such equations. In addition to this, subjects such as philosophy turned out to be easier to understand. This ability to perform calculations such as this among teenagers is a characteristic of cognitive development. Thinking here is more logical with the development of abstract propositions and multiple hypotheses.
When Jane talks of her education experience beginning with her transition from elementary school to middle school and finally to high school, I was able to see the developmental changes that took place. With the shift from elementary school to middle school Jane realized that she was now becoming grown up. Unlike in elementary school where she was limited in the number of subjects she could do and their material content in middle school through high school she was exposed to a wide range of subjects and she realized that with every stage learning did not seem so hard. Cognitive development makes it easier for teachers to teach adolescents a wide range of subjects because their minds can cope with all the information. Jane tells me she was very rebellious and when she thinks about it, she cannot really explain why she behaved this way. She remembers always wanting to question authority be it her teachers or her parents or the society at large. Due to this she usually associated herself with people of a like mind who were mostly her peers and figures of authority were considered public enemies. In addition to this Jane found out that she no longer required her parents to make decisions on what subjects she could do at school because her future was now in her hands. Thinking about what she said on her rebellion and the effect it had on her relationship with her parents and teachers and on choosing who to associate with, it is evident that her cognitive development influenced her social behavior.
In high school, Jane tells me she began to take more control of her life and was more critical about the decisions she made. She could spend hours worrying if the subjects she had picked would help her attain a good career or worrying about who she really was and whether she was making any impact in this world. Jane thinking about her future career is characteristic of middle stage adolescents who begin thinking about long-term goals in life and this influences the types of relationships they have. For instance, Jane tells me she picked nursing as her future profession and therefore tended to hang around like-minded girls who also had this goal in mind.
For now Jane is in her late teen years and she tells me her concerns and outlook on life has become more serious. While previously she would not be concerned with what was going on in the political world or what it entailed to be a patriotic citizen, she tells me now that she takes a keen interest n knowing what is going in within the country. She follows keenly on any news about her career and she even has her own views on what the government should do to solve some of the health care issues facing the country. Jane also tells me that now her thoughts are focused on finishing her college education and starting her own family after ward. It is quite evident that Jane is now showing signs of an emerging adult role. This comes about with the onset of a more advanced abstract type of thinking where the individual begins to be less self centered and starts thinking beyond the self (McCarthy, 2010).
Social development
Jane admits that adolescence is a problematic phase of life in terms of the social aspect. She talks about this stage of her life as a time characterized by social awkwardness. Not only does she remember this as the time she was faced with confusion on how she could understand her bodys development, she also realized this was the least of her worries as she also had to belong to the right peer group social circles. Jane recalls this as a time when she spent most of her time hanging out with her peers as well as confiding in them as opposed to confiding in her mother whom she had previously confided in. She says she felt her peers were in a better position to understand her more than her mother could as she felt that they were going through the same experiences as her. This view that her peers were able to understand her better than her mother could, was a constant cause of conflict between her and her mother. This is normal social behavior amongst adolescents who are more likely to associate better with their peers as opposed to their adults (McCarthy, 2010).
According to Jane, she discovered that this was also a period where she found herself more attracted to the opposite sex and wanted to keep their company but could not since she was shy in character. This is supported by Eriksons theory on psychosocial development stages where he describes the fidelity stage characterized by identity versus confusion as a time whereby the adolescent develops a sense of sexual identity. Given the fact that she was shy, Jane found it difficult socialize and make friends due to some of her beliefs and principles for instance, her peers viewed her as a geek as she had the tendency to spend most of her time reading as compared to trying to make friends. She attributes this to the fact that she was more focused on her future and the desire to be a nurse rather than spend her time socializing. At times she would find herself questioning as to whether she was making the right decision as concerns opting to study rather than socialize as well as how the society perceived her. She often wondered if she would fit into the normal teenage cliques. At this stage, Jane seemed to be experiencing an identity crisis because on one side, she had the desire to be a normal teenager who would not be concerned as much about reading as making new friends.
Due to the kind of personality she had developed in school, the type of friends Jane tended to associate with were chosen on the grounds of having similar interests and social behaviors (Aslin, 2010). She tells me that her friends were not considered to be the typical high school girls who are expected to spend their times at the shopping malls, hanging out with boys and thinking that homework is uncool. In addition, her group of friends was perceived as being too serious and anti-social by other students. At this point, Jane felt like a social outcast but this changed as they neared the late adolescent stage whereby everybody began being more concerned about their future. In the end, those who had earlier on perceived them as social outcasts began to see that they were after all heading in the right direction.
CONCLUSION
Taking Janes experience, I am able to see an interaction between her cognitive and social development stages. The onset of cognitive development in the course of Janes adolescence period had a major influence on her social development as indicated in the instance whereby she realized that with her ability to comprehend more complex subjects. She was in a position to undertake a career in nursing and this in turn determined the types of friends she chose to associate with.
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