Adolescence is a unique period of life when our bodies, hormones, and social environment are rapidly changing, our brains are developing, and our cognitive capacities become more refined. Physical changes that happen in our brains during adolescence manifest themselves into behaviour, and these changes lay down the blueprint for our self-identity and the adults we become.
In this seminar, we will start by considering what adolescence is from a biological and cultural perspective. We will move on to look at a variety of neuroimaging studies to understand how the brain develops from childhood to adulthood. We will examine how different brain regions show varying patterns of development, and look at regions involved in higher-level cognitive processes (e.g. attention, memory, self-control) which continue to develop into our 20s. We will then look at the impact these brain changes, puberty and the social environment may have on adolescent behaviour, cognitive functioning and mental health.
With the social environment adolescents are in becoming increasingly important with age, we will also explore the role of social influence in behaviours such as risk taking. As part of this, we will investigate what it is that drives groups of teenagers to engage in risky behaviours by conducting our own experiment using the Balloon Analogue Risk Task.
We will cover different types of emotion regulation strategies and look at how the ability to regulate these emotions varies with age and individual differences, such as anxiety levels. Given that most mental health problems start to emerge around puberty, we will investigate the effectiveness of different school-based mental health interventions, including cognitive behavioural and mindfulness-based interventions, and will have the opportunity to try out some practical examples of these in class ourselves.
Learning outcomes
- To demonstrate an awareness of the different developmental trajectories of adolescent biological, psychological and social development.
- To develop critical thinking skills.
- To gain a deeper understanding of mental health during adolescence.
