Adolescence and Young Adult

Assalamualaikum and hye everyone,
I glad to share with you my research about adolescence and young adulthood.
Actually, this is my second assignment for Human Development Psychology course.
And more, it is an individual assessment.

My lecturer is Dr Shaziti Aman. My senior said if you get her as your lecturer, you will fail easily for the course as she is really strict in giving mark.
In spite of that, Alhamdulillah, Thank God. I got A for the course. That's why I dare myself to share with you my research.

At the first place, sorry if I've miss out any other information regarding this two stages.
There are three main things of development that people can observe namely physical, cognitive and psychosocial.

Nevertheless, hopefully this entry will open your mind and also, get to know better about the human development.

Introduction

Human development is unique. There are three domains of development which are physical development, cognitive development and psychosocial development that we can investigate. For physical development, it can be observed based on physical well-being, use of the body and brain, motor skills and appropriate nutrition as well as health. 

Next, cognitive development can be define as construction of thought processes including the learning process, memory, moral reasoning, language, thinking and also, creativity. Last but not least, we can study the psychosocial development based on personality including the acquisition of social attitudes and skills, emotional life and relationship.

As the task given is to study about ourselves, introspection method need to be implemented to complete this task starting with the background information about ourselves and the brief description on our milestones and beliefs. I am Muhammad Haziq bin Roslan. My age is 20 years old now. My date of birth is 9 December 1997. I am male. My religion is Islam and my race is Malay. I was born in Kuala Kubu Bahru, Selangor but my family moved to Georgetown, Penang shortly after. I have lived in Penang since that time till now. In term of my family background, my father, Roslan bin Wan Chik, is an immigration officer and he works at Penang International Airport while my mother, Roseazila binti Ali, is a secondary school’s teacher. I have four siblings including me. I am the second child of the family. As I am the second, so I have an elder brother and a younger brother as well as a younger sister.

For academic qualification, my formal education began at four years old in an Islamic kindergarten that located just behind my home. Then, a year later, I enrolled to Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA)’s kindergarten and it is not far from my home. At seven years old, I moved to a primary school. I studied there until standard six and got straight A’s for Primary School Achievement Test, also known as Ujian Pencapaian Sekolah Rendah (UPSR). I moved to an Islam boys' high school that was also located near to my housing area. I studied there just for three years as after I got 9A’s for Penilaian Menengah Rendah (PMR)’s result, I had been offered to further my study to an Islam boarding school in Bentong, Pahang. After finished my secondary school, I furthered my study to UNIMAS foundation level in life science course. Then, I chose cognitive science as my first choice for degree level and now I am a cognitive science student.

My life goals are I want to make my dreams become true which is I want to be a psychologist and also, become an outstanding preacher like Dr. Zakir Naik. Moreover, I want to travel all around the world as I love traveling. Next, like common people want that is to own a big and peaceful house and fully equipped with modern technology. Above all, I want to have a calm, gorgeous, wealthy and above all, religious wife.

My life’s motto is a lyric from Micheal Jackson’s song, “If you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make a change”. I am categorized as late adolescent and young adulthood. This is because based on the theory of Erikson, there are eight periods of human development and young adulthood categorized around 20 to 40 years old (Erikson, 1968). This is the time where people frequently change and exploration that covers in various facet of their life.

In physical development (Steinberg, 1987), their physical functioning are still develop at early stage of young adulthood and reach the peak at the end of this stage. Nevertheless, they can maintained their physical functioning development through regular exercise. We can find out that there is a gradual change for their body shape, such as weight as well as body fat and also, their lean muscle mass decreases. On the other hand, their organs system’s efficiency is getting decrease and diminish at the rate of 1% every year. In general, their sexual responsiveness stay at high level throughout this stage but in men, there are slightly slowing. At the end of this period, their physical appearance change vividly like grey hair and wrinkles develop.

Next, we can also find out many development for cognitive side (Steinberg, 1987). First and foremost, the way of thinking is getting matured and become practical as to cope with inconsistencies and complexity in daily life. Besides, their short-term memory reach the peak of the function and also, their common sense and skill are developing at this stage. Through work interactions and daily problem-solving, their knowledge carry on to grow. For psychosocial development, by age 30, the issues of identity and intimacy is at top. Plus, they always feed that they need for affiliation that is filled with their friends and usually a partner or marriage. This period also makes the single people to feel that it is crucial to has friendships (Steinberg, 1987). Commonly, the personality traits change to age 30, with extra maturation keep on develop until the age of 40.

Theoretical framework

The psychoanalytic theory of psychosocial development consists of eight stages from prenatal period to late adulthood. This theory was proposed by a German psychoanalyst, Erik Homburger Erikson. For each stages, it will presented as the two contradict statements that indicating the challenges that a person will faces at a particular period of life. Based on Erikson, successful completion of a particular stage results in a healthy personality and the acquisition of intrinsic virtues (Erikson, 1968). The basic virtues are criteria of strengths which the ego can utilized to settle down future crises.

As I am at period of late adolescent as well as early young adulthood, there are many theories executed about this period. According to Erikson, adolescent and young adulthood are the fifth and sixth stage. The fifth stage, the adolescence, is a period between childhood and adulthood which occurs at the age around 11 to 19 or 20 years old, is concern about the identity versus role confusion (Gross, 1987, p. 47). During this period, development rely on basically upon what a person does. An adolescent begin to explore and find for his or her own identity. They are becoming more independent and start to think about their future in terms of lifestyle, career, relationship, family and society (Wright & Eugene, 1982, p. 73). Some effort to detain approach to adulthood and keep away from responsibilities. Those who are experiencing role confusion and upheaval mostly are the unsuccessful persons with this stage.

Marcia’s theory of identity achievement also contributed the ideas about adolescence level (Marcia, 1966). There are four types of psychological identity development namely identity achievement, moratorium, foreclosure and identity diffusion (Marcia, 1980). Identity achievement is an adolescence has gone through an identity crisis and made his or her mind up to have a commitment to a sense of identity. Next, moratorium is a time which teenagers are free from any commitment and responsibilities. Thus, they are free to do experiment with different roles. Foreclosure is an individual may take a commitment without a rational basis that has been given to them either from their parents or family members. They start to commit themselves to a role but still developing. Lastly, identity confusion is a type which ones are struggle searching for their own identity that is does not have a sense of having choices and not willing to have a commitment.

One of the aspects of adolescence is ego-centrism (Erikson, 1956). Ego-centrism can affect the thought, emotions and behavior of teenagers. It is a term that used by David Elkind to interpret the phenomenon of adolescents' incompetence to differentiate between their notion of what others expect about them and what people literally think in real life (Erikson, 1956). This is because they only being able to see the world through their own view. This characteristic is known as argumentativeness (Erikson, 1968). Another characteristics of ego-centrism is self-consciousness or imaginary audience (Erikson, 1968). They trust that they are the center of everyone’s contemplation (Erikson, 1956). An adolescent get very self-conscious whenever he or she is around others or crowd. An adolescent believes that people is looking and judging him or her all the time even they do not give any reaction to him or her. As part of the imaginary audience, ones will also over analyses with what others’ said and do (Erikson, 1956). Apart from that, other personalities of adolescence are idealism and criticalness, indecisiveness, apparent hypocrisy, specialness and invulnerability.

Based on Jean Piaget (Santrock, 1998), psychologist who studied cognitive development and observation of human growth, he identified that there are four stages associated with cognitive growth namely sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operational and formal operational. Adolescence is fall under formal operational stage. In Piaget’s theory (Santrock, 1998), adolescence obtained the ability to think from concrete to more abstract terms. Adolescence can think in more flexible way to operate information. Nevertheless, psychologists make a deep research about this theory. They find out that one out of three late adolescents and early adults are incapable of abstract thought. This is because they fail to apprehend the role or context of a circumstance (Santrock, 1998). Therefore, the theory does not totally consider the role of metacognition.

There are three main stages of moral development namely, pre-conventional, conventional and post-conventional (Kohlberg, 1974). This theory was developed by Lawrence Kohlberg. For every level, two stages of reasoning is composed, with a total of six stages of reasoning. Late adolescence and young adulthood are at the stage of post conventional. Two orientation stages for post conventional are contracts, rights, and democratic laws or also known as ‘Social Contract’ and ‘Universal Ethical Principles’ (Kohlberg, 1974). During this post conventional stage, in stage five which is social contract driven, people are observed as holding various opinions, rights, and avail. Such views should be commonly respected as special to each person or society. In stage six, Universal Ethical Principles driven, this stage of moral reasoning is according to conceptual reasoning using universal ethical principles (Kohlberg, 1974). People discern conflicts between moral standards and create their own perception on the basis of these concepts: right, fairness and justice. The sixth stage of human development based on Erikson’s theory is young adulthood (Erikson, 1968). This stage is concern about the intimacy versus isolation concept which happen around 20’s and 30’s (Erikson, 1968). During this period, they develop the capability to share with and care about others and also, tend to seek for companionship and love. Thus, young adults start to have more intimate relationship with others and discover relationships leading toward longer-term commitment with someone rather than their own family member. Successful completion of this stage can result in happy relationships and lead to the virtue of love. However, keeping away from relationship, responsibility and above all, intimacy, will lead to isolation, alienation and depression.

There are four aspects to adult psychosocial development namely normative stage models, timing of events model, trait models and typological models. Based on the theory of adult development developed by Daniel Levinson, referred as Season of Life theory, he distinguished the stages that occur in adulthood (Levinson, 1986). There are four stages of young adults which are early adult transition (age 17-22), entering the adult world (age 22-28), age 30 transitions (age 28-33) and settling down (age 33-40) (Levinson, 1959).

In early adult transition, young adults leave the adolescence stage and start to make preliminary choices for their adult life (Slater, 2003). The decisions include making a choice whether to enter a college or begin to work, choosing to have a deep relationship and also choosing to live by own. When they entering the next stage, they tend to make more firm choices about work and career, friendship and relationship and health and fitness (Slater, 2003). The next stage is age 30 transitions. We can identify that they frequently changing their lifestyle that could be slightly change or more severe (Levinson, 1986). For instance, one’s lifestyle will influenced by marriage and having children. These changes have contrary effects based on how one manage to handle this situation. At the end of young adulthood stage, usually one frequently start to make a routine, making progress on how to achieve their goals in the future and matured on their behavior (Levinson, 1986). Commonly in this stage, people are becoming parents or ones who have much responsibilities. 

Findings 

Based on the theories of adolescence and young adulthood, I found that mostly the theories are align with my behavior. I believe my development depend basically upon what I do. This is because, for motor skill, I just learnt how to ride a motorcycle with a clutch when I rode it by myself. Before this, I was too afraid to ride the bike with clutch as it is too rare to find those motorcycles. Moreover, only expensive and costly bike that are using clutch. Therefore, I do not want to take any risks if anything happen upon the bike.

During adolescence period, adolescences concern about the identity versus role confusion (Gross, 1987, p. 47). I was searching for my own identity when I entered the adolescence period. I realized that I was facing this situation when I liked to try new things and easily influenced by my friends and acquaintances’ behavior like smoking, going to cyber-cafe until late night, play truant from school, playing football in the classroom, owning a ‘fixie’ bicycle and etc.

As time goes by, I realized that all the negative things that I done were wrong and slowly I changed my behavior to become more positive. I remained with the positive behavior and avoiding myself from involved with the unhealthy habits again. According to Marcia’s journal, ‘Identity in adolescence’, he stated that adolescence may belong to any four elements of psychological identity development namely identity achievement, moratorium, foreclosure and identity diffusion (Marcia, 1980).

In my view, I admitted that I was belong to identity achievement’s category. This is because at age of 16, I was critically thinking about my future: what I want to be, when I should get married and does my job’s salary is enough to accommodate my future family (Wright & Eugene, 1982, p. 73). During teenager, one behavior that I acquired was ego. I was not satisfied if someone is better than me in many aspects like in academic, sport and others. I will tried with all efforts that I had to make sure that no one could be better than me. For example, when I was form 1, regardless of bad behavior, I got the first position in the class but in school ranking, I just got the fifth position for the final examination. I did not satisfied with the achievement. I studied harder. Every day I will burned the midnight oil and slept late. My mother was worried about me as I studied too hard until I dared to skip my meals. She asked me to stop that habit. She also asked me to study smart, not study hard. However, I was too ego and did not care about my mother’s advice.

After I had seated for many examination from form 1 until form 3, I still could not be the first in school. The highest position that I had achieve was second place. This situation proved the theory of Elkind as he stated that one of the aspects of adolescence is ego-centrism (Erikson, 1956). The adolescences can only be able to see a particular things through their own sight.

Other facets of ego-centrism is imaginary audience (Erikson, 1968). When I started to enter the adolescence stage, I will wore the best attire that I had when leaving my home. This is because I always felt that people were looking at me wherever I went. In my mind, a good attire will avoiding me from public to look down on me. Besides, I often wanted to compare my attire and other people around me. For instance, I felt elegant when I wore a blazer as I was a prefect during my school time and I noticed that my friends looked like jealous of me as they only wore white uniform to school. Moreover, I also felt the juniors attracted with me when I put on my blazer.

According to the theory, idealism is a personality of adolescence (Erikson, 1968). Based on my experience, I believed with the theory as during adolescence, my mind always came out with new creative ideas especially when dealing with hardship. For example, I always lack of money. So, I tried to encounter these problems by selling cartoon stickers, made a saving by cutting my food’s allowance and avoiding myself from going to bazaar and night market.

In Piaget’s theory, adolescence gained the capability to think from concrete to more abstract terms (Santrock, 1998). Even though, this theory does not fully consider the role of metacognition but as I am doing self-reflection, I think this Piaget’s theory is true. This is because before entering adolescence, I hated to learn about idiom, proverb and other abstract terms because I could not relate them with the real situation. However, once I became adolescence, I could identify the abstract thought and apprehend the role or context of a circumstance.

Lawrence Kohlberg had developed a theory about the stages of moral development. There are three main stages of moral development namely, pre-conventional, conventional and post-conventional (Kohlberg, 1974). During post-conventional stage, there is a stage which is social contract driven, people are observed as holding various opinions, rights, and avail (Kohlberg, 1974). I believed with this theory because I always think differently with my friends about some occasions, for example when we want to conduct an event.  We always arguing about what are the meals need to serve, what is the attire code of the event, how about the budget for the event and many more. This happened because we have our own opinions. Therefore, I should respect any views from the other people as it is unique to each person. To avoid from disputing other, we tried to tolerate with each other whenever our opinion were different.

In addition, Kohlberg stated in stage six (Kohlberg, 1974), Universal Ethical Principles driven, people distinguish conflicts between moral standards and make their own perception on the basis of these concepts: right, fairness and justice. As I just entered the period of young adulthood, I still could not discern conflicts between moral standards and also, could not create my own apprehension regarding the concepts: right, fairness and justice. Perhaps, I was not matured yet to think about this Universal Ethical Principles.

As stated by Erikson, the sixth stage is young adulthood and this stage is concern about the intimacy vs isolation concept (Erikson, 1968). Individuals develop the capability to share with and care about others and also, tend to seek for companionship and love during this period (Erikson, 1968). As I reached 20 this year, a desire that I acquire is look for a serious relationship. I always feel that I need to have a partner. Every time I look at my girlfriends, I always say to myself that I want her to be my partner and more, I also want her to be my life partner. Even though I had already planned about my future since adolescence, but I did not have the feeling to have a partner not to mention a life partner at that time.

Based on the Season of Life theory, developed by Daniel Levinson, there are four stages of young adults and I am belong to the stage of early adult transition (age 17-22) (Levinson, 1986). Levinson stated that in early adult transition, young adults leave the adolescence period and begin to create preliminary choices for their adult life (Levinson, 1986). They tend to make their own decision including making a choice whether to enter a college or begin to work, choosing to have a deep relationship and also choosing to live by own. This theory is really related to my life as I just leaving the adolescence stage and now, I have already made my mind to enroll a university and likely to have a serious relationship and live independently.

Conclusion 

As conclusion, every people will under go all three major development which are physical, cognitive and psychosocial. In general, for physical development, at early stage of young adulthood, the physical functioning are still developing and reach the maximum point at the end of this stage. Rapid growth in height and weight also occur during adolescence. For cognitive development, the adolescence as well as early young adult show maturity in thinking and become more practical. Lastly, for psychosocial development, adolescence and young adulthood is concern with the issues of identity and intimacy.

Basically, there are eight stages of psychoanalytic according to theory of psychosocial development from prenatal period to late adulthood. Adolescent and young adulthood are the fifth and sixth stage. During adolescence, ones are concern about the identity vs role confusion. An individual begin to explore and search for his or her own identity.  Unsuccessful persons with this stage will experiencing identity confusion. Marcia developed theory about the types of psychological identity development namely identity achievement, moratorium, foreclosure and identity diffusion.

Apart from that, adolescence will undergo ego-centrism and imaginary audience or self consciousness based on the theory of David Elkind. Jean Piaget also developed a theory regarding human growth,he identified that there are four stages associated with cognitive growth namely sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operational and formal operational and adolescence is fall under formal operational stage. Formal operational indicates that adolescence obtained the ability to think from concrete to more abstract terms.

There is a theory developed by Lawrence Kohlberg which he stated that there are three main stages of moral development namely, preconventional, conventional and post conventional . Two orientation stages for post conventional are ‘Social Contract’ and ‘Universal Ethical Principles’.

Many theories are been developed by the researchers regarding the adolescence and young adulthood. These theories can give us a clear view and understanding more about the period of adolescence and young adulthood.