Adolescent Development Flashcards

Flashcards for reviewing key vocabulary and concepts from a lecture on adolescent development, covering identity, relationships, emotional challenges, and drug use.

Identity

A consistent definition of oneself as a unique individual, in terms of roles, attitudes, beliefs, and aspirations.

Identity achievement

The point at which a person understands who he or she is as a unique individual, in accord with past experiences and future plans.

Role confusion (identity diffusion)

Adolescent does not seem to know or care what his or her identity is; Erikson’s term for the fifth stage of development.

Foreclosure

Erikson’s term for premature identity formation, which occurs when an adolescent adopts parents’ or society’s roles and values wholesale, without questioning or analysis.

Moratorium

An adolescent’s choice of a socially acceptable way to postpone making identity-achievement decisions (e.g., college, military service).

Sexual identity (now gender identity)

Self-definition of oneself as male, female, both, or neither.

Bickering

Petty, peevish arguing, usually repeated and ongoing, about everyday concerns.

Parental monitoring

Parents’ ongoing awareness of what their children are doing, where, and with whom.

Psychological control

When parents make a child feel guilty and impose gratefulness by threatening to withdraw love and support.

Peer pressure

Encouragement to conform to one’s friends in behavior, dress, and attitude.

Clinical depression

Feelings of hopelessness, lethargy, and worthlessness that last two weeks or more.

Rumination

Repeatedly thinking and talking about past (negative) experiences.

Suicidal ideation

Thinking about suicide.

Parasuicide

Deliberate acts of self-destruction that do not cause death.

Juvenile delinquent

Person under the age of 18 who breaks the law.

Adolescence-limited offender

Person whose criminal activity stops by age 21; affected by antisocial peers.

Life-course-persistent offender

A person whose criminal activity typically begins in early adolescence and continues throughout life; a career criminal.