Psychology

The paper seeks to identify the writers predominant leadership style. The Situational Leadership theory is discussed. The paper evaluates the situations, in which the dominant leadership style works to the best of the leader and the organization. The recommendations for maximizing the benefits of the leadership style are provided.

Leadership style is the critical component of any organizations success, and it is important that leaders are able to identify and apply their leadership style to maximize their efforts and to improve the quality of interactions between followers. The current leadership theory differentiates between the four different styles  delegating, participating, selling and telling. Although they are never or rarely represented in pure form, it is easy and even desirable to identify the dominating leadership style to which a leader keeps in his daily performance. In the discussed case, participating style was identified as the basic way of taking leadership decisions  the style, which implies that in the major, if not all decisions, the leader engages team members in the discussion of what should be done but takes the final decision himself. However, that participating style promotes participation and empowers team members does not mean that it is equally applicable and useful in all business situations.

To make sure that this leadership style works to the best of the organization, leaders should know the situations when this style is the most appropriate. The Situational Leadership Theory identifies the situations, which are the best for each particular leadership style. In terms of participation, leaders will increase the overall efficiency of their decisions if applied to the situations with low level task behavior and high levels of relationship and support between team members and between them and their leader. In such situations, participating leadership style will work the best because it promotes open discussion and knowledge sharing, and enhances team members desire to perform.

It should be noted, that participating leadership style alone cannot promote the quality and efficiency of all organizational decisions. I would advice that participating leaders are able to balance their desire for participation with the desire to be directive and even selling telling, whenever each particular situation requires being this way. The extent, to which a participating leader is able to maximize his effort, depends on whether he is able to identify the situations when participation is necessary, and to restrain from participation when it goes against the major organizations objectives.

Effective leadership is the process of successfully guiding organizational goals by utilizing available resources. This paper analyses the characteristics of my leader and explains the approach used in this case.

I work in a childrens welfare and a leader in my organization would be my supervisor because she has been with the company for 25 years and she is very smart. My supervisor has helped greatly in the achievement of organizational goals through guiding the marketing She has achieved this through a combination her individual characteristics. Enhanced organizational abilities are one of the characteristics identifiable with my supervisor (Martin, 2007). This supervisor has managed to steer the management team by ensuring that all assignments pertaining to children affairs are completed in time by matching each team members individual strengths to the task. Besides the supervisor guiding the team, she has also succeeded in integrating the team to the top leadership in the children welfare organization hence enhancing efficiency. The supervisor has strong decision-making skills. She uses this ability quite often in successfully help in achieving team goals. She motivates the team members by giving rewards for good work while discouraging poor performance (Theodore, 2002). This has led to an improvement in performance for the all team leading to achievement of targets. This approach of analyzing effectiveness is the best to use in this case. It is an approach based on personal traits and individual characteristics. The reason for using this approach is due to the nature of effective leadership, which is a social art and science that maximizes the utilization of organizational resources to achieve set goal.

Conclusion
Effective leadership plays a big role in enabling organizations to achieve their objectives. Leadership is a social skill and therefore the analysis of individual characteristics can provide a basis for the measurement of effectiveness. Employers should therefore use this approach in determining the effectiveness of their staff in achieving organizational goals.

Verbal learning is a field or discipline in experimental psychology that involves the study of particular verbal associations as well as acquisition of the associations. It is getting hold of verbal information and retaining it. It can be referred to as memorization in daily terms. There have been studies about how people acquire knowledge through connecting or associating things that are repeatedly occurring closely together in a given time. Verbal learning consists of primarily two undertakings which are serial learning and paired-associate learning. Serial learning is learning to reproduce the articles or items in a certain list in their original and exact order such as learning the letters of an alphabet. On the other hand, paired-associate learning involves learning in order to make or create a verbal response upon the presence of a particular stimulus like learning a unfamiliar language vocabulary wherein the stimulus would be the foreign term and the response is the English word. Associations are ultimately formed by means of conditioning. Both serial and paired-associate learning go hand in hand and is simply like memorizing a password or mnemonics.

Mnemonics are techniques or devices, such as a rhyme or an image, that serve to enhance the storage and the recall of information contained in memory (Solso, 1995). Mnemonics may be visual or verbal in nature. There are different kinds of verbal mnemonics coding, first-letter, and story method. Coding mnemonics are best for memorizing figures or numbers while first-letter mnemonics are best effective when learning an order of learned information. Story method on the other hand is best used in learning lists effectively. Some of the most well-known verbal mnemonics include the SOHCAHTOA which stands for Sine, Cosine, Tangent, the three trigonometric functions.

Adolescence is a stage in a persons life between puberty and adulthood. The stage usually falls between the ages of 10 to the early 20s. The children become young adults. It involves maturity in both social and physical aspects of an individual thus making them to become sexually mature and socially independent. This stage also involves them starting to develop a sense of who they are and they tend to learn more from people outside their families.

Major milestones related to the physical development in adolescence
The physical growth and development during adolescence includes both an increase in body size and also sexual maturation which is usually referred to as puberty. How fast these changes occur to a person varies from one person to another and is usually affected by both the environment and heredity factors. During the adolescence, the boys and girls reach their average adult weight and height. In the boys, the growth spurt usually occurs between the ages of 12 to 17 years. They also grow about 4 inches (ten centimeters) during the year of maximum growth.

The growth spurt in girls usually occurs faster and early which is usually between the ages of 912 and 1412. They on the other hand grow to around 9 centimeters in height during their maximum growth year. In other words, the boys tend to become taller and heavier than girls. By the age of 18, the boys usually have two centimeters of growth left while the girls having slightly less. The specific physical milestone for the boys includes  the changes in voice meaning that the voice becomes deeper and husky, this occurs between the age of 1012 and 18 years growth of the scrotum and testes between the ages of 1012 and 18 years this is followed by the lengthening of the penis between 11 and 15 years public hair growth then follows between 11 and 14 years. At this point in time, the adolescent has reached his peak growth spurt. It is then followed by minor changes in body shape and finally the growth in facial hair between the ages of 13 to 18 years.

In the adolescence, girls milestones includes breast budding between 8-13 years growth of pubic hair between 8-14 years which signifies the peak of their growth spurt other changes are that they start to experience their first period (menarche) between 10-16 years then the growth of underarm hair between 912- 1612 followed by changes in body shape at around 1512 years and they finally develop adult size breasts between 16-17 years.

Major milestones related to the cognitive development in adolescence
Cognitive development is sometimes referred to as mental or intellectual development. Cognitive activities include perception, thinking, and reasoning, problem solving ability, concept development and abstract thinking. One of the most important and complicated cognitive activities is language development. During adolescence the precursors to formal operational thinking develops well and includes a limited ability to think hypothetically and also making multiple perspectives. During the middle and late years in the adolescent stage, the formal operational thinking becomes well developed and it is integrated in a significant and major percentage of their lives. The adolescents long-term knowledge base continues to expand they also develop more complex rules for solving problems and become less self-conscious and focused in addition, they become better in their day to day lives in terms of planning and decision making they are also able to evaluate vocational options in terms of their interests, values and abilities.

During the late adolescence stage, they develop the ability to narrow their vocational options and settle on specific careers.

Major milestones related to the physical development in early, middle, and late adulthood
Early adulthood ranges from 20 years to early 40 years. In these ages, there are several physical milestones that are usually visible. They include some gain in height and body muscle and fat which is the peak of their strength, energy and endurance the brain also grows in size during this stage although there are no new neurons that are formed at this stage by the mid 20s, the body functions are usually fully developed including the sharpest senses.

In the middle adulthood the physical developmental milestones depicts much decline compared to other early stages some of it attributes include the ability to focus declines and in some cases they loose their near vision abilities and hence need more brightness. Their sensory and motor functioning reduces with a loss in the ability to hear high pitched sounds. Their reaction time slows, especially for motor responses. Their general physical strengths also start to decline.

The physical changes during late adulthood include mostly more problems for people in this stage some of the milestones include an almost total decline in taste, vision and even smell they also lose their ability to detect pain or even notice temperature change. These declines usually develop gradually and become more pronounced in late 70s plus. Other physical attributes include rising blood pressure, neural loss, declining lung capacity and a change is sexuality is also evident. Most of these changes are inevitable though they vary according to individuals.

Major milestones related to the cognitive development in early, middle, and late adulthood
The cognitive development in young adults involves many things that tend to make people in this stage to have high mental and intellectual abilities. In this stage, these young adults are able to apply their intelligence in situations that have profound consequences in the process of achieving long-term goals like the ones that involve careers. This stage also includes the mastering of cognitive skills that one needs to monitor hisher own behavior. They will also acquire a considerable amount of independence in this stage.

Cognitive development in middle adulthood is usually multidirectional, meaning that there are gains in some areas and losses in others. On the declining side are the ability to apply mental powers to new problems there is also a decline in the way people perceive formal concepts, relationships, and drawing inferences. These declines in mental activity are usually attributed to changes in the brain. These changes also affect the ability to remember and use information acquired over a lifetime. On the gaining part is that they are able to reconcile or choose among conflicting views, thesis and antithesis.

In the late adulthood, one tends to experience a decline in all the primary mental abilities. For instance, in the sensory register, they experience a small decline in ones brain power and sensitivity though this varies with individuals. The working memory whose main role is to store unconscious information is noticeably decreased as this makes processing of information to take a longer time.

Socio- emotional development in adolescence
The brain regions that control emotions tend to develop and mature during adolescence. This period that is characterized by emotional outbursts can prove to be quite challenging for the parents and also teachers. Adolescents however learn how to suppress inappropriate thoughts and actions and replace them with goal-oriented ones.

In this stage, the adolescent also develops a sense of self in relationships to other people and their own internal thoughts and desires. Though opposite sex interactions are frequent in late-childhood, they usually increase during the adolescence stage. This is mainly due to the coming out of romantic attraction, which is both a biological as well as societal standards product. Adolescence dating can be a source of intimacy, heightened self esteem, expanded social competency and also peer status. On the negative side, it can be a source of abuse, jealousy and damage to self esteem if not monitored accordingly. Adolescents also desire autonomy meaning separation from parents and becoming independent adults. Such desires can lead to plenty of family conflicts and defiant characteristics leading to what psychologists refer to as psychological storm.

Major milestones related to the socio-emotional development in early, middle, and late adulthood
Socio-emotional milestones related to early adulthood include the ability to give and receive love a person begins to make long-term commitments to relationships. People in this stage also discover the importance of romantic relationships and individuation since this is what leads to marriage. Their relationships in this stage are mostly influenced on how their parent and peers interacted with one another. For instance, securely attached children are most likely to become securely attached with their spouses in this stage. In addition to that, past experiences also influence their parental behavior.
In the middle and old adulthood stage, the individuals tend to develop interest in guiding the development of the next generation. In the late adulthood, an individual develops a sense of acceptance of life as it was lived and the importance of the people and relationships that individuals develop over a lifespan.

In the Erikssons Stage of Generativity versus Stagnation theory, Eriksson insists that if one has a strong sense of creativity, success and having to leave a mark in life, one needs to develop the act of generativity, meaning that they need to concentrate on the next generation by caring about them and acting as a link for the generations to come and give love without any expectation of a specific return. On the other hand, adults who develop a sense of stagnation, become self absorbed and hence feel little connection to others as they generally offer little or none to the society. It is important to note that too much stagnation can lead people developing a sense of rejectivity and  too much generativity can lead to overextension which means people have no time for themselves simply because they are too busy dealing with other peoples issues.

Language can be defined as a particular and a more specific system of decoding and encoding information. It can also be defined as a means of communicating which entails the use of conventional symbols and sounds. The term language has also been used severally to denote or refer to the natural languages which characterize the most common means of communication which is highly considered peculiar among human beings. Language is thus defined as the process of communicating feelings and thoughts through an arbitrary system of making signals such as gestures, voice, sounds and the use of written symbols (Hattiangagi, 1997).  On the other hand lexicon can be defined as the connection between a language and the knowledge expressed in that language. Different languages have different vocabularies and lexicon gives a way of combining this collection of words to express an unrestricted range of concepts.

Every kind of language has its own unique set of vocabularies and yet it has a full set of grammatical mechanisms which are used in combining its varied stock of words in various ways to express a broad spectrum of an open ended range of ideas and concepts.

The study of language, its features and structure can and has been addressed in different numerous disciplines such as in education, anthropology, neurolinguistics and philosophy (Brian, 1999).

However, the very fundamental and highly influential studies in the study of language originate from psycholinguistics and linguistics. Human beings are believed to be one among the very most supreme creatures with an exemplary capability of developing and acquiring language, an aspect which is highly necessitated by the existence of high levels of intelligence and reasoning and most probably well developed structure of the vocal tract and voice box.

It is therefore very evident that animals also have their very own unique ways of communicating. For example, whales communicate by singing while bees on the other hand tail wag. However, there are very divergent and diverse differences which characterize and distinguish human communication from other creatures (Robinson, 2001). Numerous features do exist which appear to be common and characterize all human languages which have been proposed. Some of these unique features of language include

Displacement  is a common feature of language which refers to the ability of an individual to speak not only about what is happening at that given period of time  and place but  also the ability to refer to other situations either past or future unreal or real. Displacement refers to the ability to mentally reflect on issues either of the past or future and talk about them even without watching or observing them at present.

Arbitrariness  This is another common feature of language which denotes that there exist no natural connection among sound, word and the thing it denotes.  This is to say, in general language or communication it is difficult to tell the real meaning of a word by simply just looking at it (Wettstein, 2004). Thus, in order to be in a position to understand arbitrary words in a given language one must have mastery of a specific language. However, in various languages there exist several iconic symbols which can be understood or mastered without entirely having to master the entire language.
Productivity  Productivity is a common language feature which is also referred to as creativity or open endedness. Productivity explains that the existence of a potential number of utterances, words as well as the meanings in human language is definitely infinite. For example, human beings can create words such as property in Cyprus, my space codes and the like but the number of these particular terms may have no limit in any given communication. In all animal communication all signal produced have fixed references which explain that one signal can only stand for one idea at time and its meaning cannot by any chance be broadened.

Cultural transmission  Although each and every individual is born with a fixed set of genetic predispositions for language use, that is the nature and shape of our vocal tracts, cultural transmissions explains that this virtue does not rule out and determine the kind of language we are going to acquire or achieve as our mother tongue. For example, a British child brought up in china and raised up by a Chinese family is bound to speak Chinese and not English (Collinge, 1990). Cultural orientations greatly influence and shape language acquisition patterns in human beings especially during the formative early childhood years.

The process of language comprehension and more so language processing is enormously a complicated task usually characterized by quite unique features.  Psycholinguistic studies do recognize four unique levels of language structures and processing. That is sound, syntax, pragmatics and meaning. First and foremost psycholinguistic studies put much emphasis on the importance and significance of sound or rather phonetics and phonology as the central most points of focus in language processing (Romaine, 2001). Sound production and especially articulation of phonetics and the perception of the so called acoustic phonetics is usually the vocal point in language processing and acquisition process.

Thus, phonology which forms the very first level of language structure and processing is mainly concerned with describing the process used in combining sounds to form or create permissible sequences. The most important reason for acquiring congruent knowledge of phonological rules is basically vested towards creating help or assistance in the process of segmenting spoken language.
Meaning or rather semantics and morphology form the second most important level of language structure and processing. Semantics in this case is concerned with the relationships which exist between the meanings in the lexicon, commonly known as lexical semantics. Therefore, in this case the most import focus and area of study is centered at the sentence level which entails studying and describing the meaning of different relationships commonly expressed in the entire sentence through examining the relationship between its own words (Stone, et al, 2004). Morphology on the extreme contrast puts much emphasis on the study of structure of words. Morphemes thus form the smallest units of word structure in any given sentence.

Syntax and the study of syntax form another very import level in language structure and processing. This is the third most crucial level which is concerned with the process of explaining and defining the structure of grammatically acceptable and correct sentences. Linguistics strongly believe that different native speakers of different languages possess tacit knowledge and competences in language which they might not always be aware of (Michael, 2001). In an attempt towards defining and describing phrases and phrase structure, experts and researchers have devised a set of rule system which involves the organization of noun phrases, prepositions and verbs known as phrase structure and this forms the very last crucial level of language structure and processing known as pragmatics, which is concerned with rules and principles in language acquisition and articulation.

Cognitive psychology is defined as the scientific investigation of cognition in human beings which encompasses all our diverse mental capabilities such as learning, perceiving, remembering, reasoning, thinking and understanding. Language processing in cognitive psychology plays a very significant role which helps in coding of information, decoding, interpretation and retrieval of information from memory (Moats, Foorman, 2003). Language processing is entirely significant in interpretation of signals as information is coded in memory. Thus, internal mental process can highly be understood and described in terms of the algorithms and rules as those observed in the information processing model. This makes it easier to even understand the basic functions of the mind.

One of the fundamental characteristics of life is the fact that change is inevitable as age advances. A primary change occurs in the duties and responsibilities that individuals have to contend with as they grow. For people getting into adulthood, they are faced with social compulsory roles of forming families, caring for their aging parents, catering for their children as well as strategizing for an imminent retirement. As one grows, change occurs in all the facets of the individuals life including the physical, emotional, cognitive and social facets.  Some of the changes that occur to the physical being include the decline in the functional ability of body organs as age advances. For an average person, there is a 0.8 to 1 decline in the biological cells function ability per year once a person reaches age 30. Although a great percentage of the decline is normal, a good percentage of the decline is associated with life factors such as diseases, stress, nutritional factors, environmental factors and other socio-environmental issues.  Some of the physical changes that are evident in the physique of average persons going through adulthood include graying hair, wrinkled skin, change in body posture as well as an aging skin.  Some of the internal changes that accompany the growth to adulthood include changes in the gastro-intestinal system, respiratory system, central nervous system and the cardiovascular systems. Growing into adulthood is also associated with a biological loss of the sensory and cognitive abilities.

The concern in this study is to analyze some of the ways through which individuals respond to the changes that accompanies their transition and general life in adulthood.   There is general evidence to show that the coping mechanisms among different genders and social classes may significantly be different especially considering the resources available at an individuals disposal during this period of adulthood. Most of the coping mechanisms adopted by individuals involvers the application of physical resources and materials to relieve life pressures in the different faculties of a person. For instance, the adoption of sports as a recreation tool by most adults is a response to physical fatigue or it can be a conscious effort to avert fatigue accumulated through lifes multiple struggles. An important feature that accompanies the different changes in growth is the accumulation and change in the roles that individuals are expected to participate in. According to Burr (1972) individuals accumulate diverse roles at every stage in their development process.  Individuals moves and transfers into different roles, leaving some and keeping others and beginning new roles that are demanded by their biological, economic and social lives.  For instance, it is socially expected that young people joining adulthood should form families in almost all the societies of the world. Biologically, a young man joining adulthood is under biological pressure to find a partner who would fulfill his sexual needs that are fully developed following adolescence.

Rodgers and White (1993) assert that role transitions are not always smooth and that they are affected by social context and the timing of transitions.  It is also noted that movement into different roles may produce direct effect on concurrent transitions in other important aspects of life. For instance, it is observed that women in European countries, especially Germany delays entry into motherhood due to educational responsibilities. Their stage in student hood directly affects their entry into adulthood (Blosfeld  Huinik, 1991).At each stage of life, an individual holds different roles. In most cases, individuals hold multiple social roles that are expected by the society and that are equivalent to an individuals social status. For instance, when a girl goes into marriage, she eventually takes the role of being a wife, a mother while at the same time continues playing he role of a daughter and daughter in law. All the roles that she acquires are accompanied by conscious and unconscious social, behavioral and economic expectations by the social circles that every role places her (Merton, 1957).It is to be noted here that the different roles that accompanies an individual automatically due to growth requires distinct skills and attention which is expected of the individual. For instance, a mans role in the house is crucial and different from the roles that is expected of him in the workplace either as a worker, a manager etc. As such, one crucial coping mechanism by adults is in the acquisition of skills that enables them play their roles effectively. The skills can be acquired formally in structured learning or informally through interactions with other peers faced with similar challenges.  According to Lopata (1991) the different roles an individual finds himself in the process of growth forms the persons role cluster and all roles in the cluster are interconnected considering that all of them are dependent on the individual.

Due to an increasing number of roles as a person goes into adulthood, individuals consciously or unconsciously develop coping mechanisms that enable them to handle the increased responsibilities that they are not familiar with. Some of the theories that are used to explain the transition to adulthood in regard to roles include the role conflict theory and role overload theory. Role conflict refers to an incongruity between expectations demanded by one role as compared to the other. In role conflict, the roles an individual is supposed to attend to normally conflict and results to strain on the part of the individual. Role overload on the other hand refers to an overload of roles on an individual who does not have all the necessary resources required to meet the expectations required by the role.  According to Goode (1960) both role overload and conflict results to a situation where the individual is unable to satisfy the demands of each role. The result is what is described as role strain where an individual generally struggles to satisfy conditions imposed upon him by the roles.

Due to the strain, there is a great likelihood for individuals to develop physical, emotional and social problems as a direct reflection of the strain they are going through. Women in many cultures such as Japan and China experience burnout, distress and stress as a result of combining family roles and work responsibilities.  How individuals respond to the strains and challenges presented by different roles in great way affects the psycho-social development that accompanies their life development. According to Marks and MacDermid (1996) individuals who manage to participate actively in a variety of roles are able to reduce strain associated with their expected roles and this helps them to foster high self esteem in their lives and reduce chances of depression and the associated health and medical consequences. Individuals who participate in multiple roles are in a great way active and time occupied and this helps them to cope with the social and emotional strains associated with adulthood roles. Women with multiple roles such as that of a mother, paid worker and a wife manages better health than women who have fewer or no roles.

It is important to point out here that there are no universally expected coping mechanisms for individuals who take up adult roles, but that there are general mechanisms that are developed either consciously or unconsciously by individuals as a response to the roles expected of them. Some individuals develop a flexibility attitude that allows them to handle the pressures that comes along with roles. Most young people especially in the developing countries enter adulthood with little or no formal knowledge of the challenges that abides in such age. As such, their response to challenges is based on flexibility and efforts to handle every challenge that emerge. For many people in developed countries, a great percentage is consciously aware of some of the challenges associated with adulthood and as such, they engage in information seeking and participation of activities that assists them to effectively handle their adult responsibilities.  Such includes participation in formal adulthood classes, counseling sessions, physical exercises etc.

According to Hanan (2000) the transition of young people into adulthood is often marked with an identity crisis in regard to the role they are expected to play in their society. The role normally rotates around their sexuality and gender identity. From their peer influence in their teenage, young people are able to isolate some of the roles expected in regard to their sexes. For instance, boys in most societies grow up with a psychological orientation towards being fathers and in most cases being breadwinners. Crisis normally revolves around their gender expectations considering that sexuality is not necessarily the same as gender. (p. 2). In regard to their gender orientations, young people graduating to adulthood cope with adult roles through role sharing.  In role sharing, the growing young men and women unconsciously shares out roles that they play in their social units such as the family. For instance, a man in the house is expected to cater for specific roles and the woman is expected to cater for other roles. When these roles are shared, they induce a feeling of cooperation between partners that reduces the build up of stress associated with individualism and isolation.

According to Drew, Emerek and Mahon (1998) role sharing is common across all stratas of the society and it cuts across the class divides.  In both the high and low classes, men and women share common roles implying that there is a similarity in coping mechanism irrespective of socio-economic status. For instance, the roles of fathers in China and Europe are primarily that of a disciplinarian, teacher and breadwinner while that of the mother is primarily that of a caregiver to the children. In a situation where these roles are clearly cut among partner adults, there is limited likelihood of too much role strain and therefore acts as a coping mechanism. A more recent trend among a good number of older adults especially in the western societies is the adoption of simple lifestyles such as adopting pets which serves to fantasize them during their lonely moments. In conclusion, the pressures in life demands for a mechanism that can reduce their effects and this can successfully be acquired through personal activities as well as involvement in social active duties.