HLTHPSYC 122 Tutorial 6 Cognitive development and health promotion in childhood adn adolescence

LO’s:

  • Identify key factors relating to the promotion of positive health behaviours in children, adolescents and young adults.

  • Describe the relevance of Vygotsky and Piaget’s theories in the design of health promotion campaigns.

  • Understand how the characteristics of psychological and social development associated with early, mid- and late adolescence influence the targeting of health promotion to each of these age groups.

What is health promotion?

Empowering people to improve health

  • increase awareness and education - often not enough to start change

  • change behaviour

  • supporting environments - future as risky behaviour accumulates, one good behaviour snowballs

  • society as a whole

Why start early?

  • health behaviours start in childhood to adulthood

  • in childhood, health behavour learned from parents e.g. meals, routine

  • family based interventions in childhood

  • immediate effects early - early adolescence feel they are invincible, ‘here and now’

    • rather than what will happen in future

  • start when young, prevention before future damage

Adolescence

Strategic approaches

  • health education alone ineffective - maslows hierarchy of needs

  • societal level health promotion - often require implementation of policies to make system wide changes

    • e.g. ban smoking below 18, smoking tax, subsidised contraception

  • health education - adolescence ineffective, risk taking behaviours and less likely to listen to authorative figures

Levels of interventions

  • individual - star system - living alone

  • family - star system, family purchasing groceries

  • school - healthy eating in schools, fruit

  • community

  • national - school and community

Interconnections between interventions

Piagets stages of cognitive development

  • sensorimotor

  • preoperationsal

    • egocentric

  • concrete operational

    • reversible problem solving

    • logic to concrete situations

  • formal operational rage

    • hypothetical thinking

    • abstract

Assimilation = new info to schema e.g. horses and cows are cats as all four legged animals

Accomodation = revise schema around new info e.g. difference between four legged animals

  • easier to assimilate info rather than accomodate - easier for info to be absorbed

  • therefore target assimilation strategies

Zone of proximal development

Green scaffolding = students ability to learn info can be supported by someone who is older adn experienced to teach them how to do it themselves

  • account for own ability - provide space for support (e.g. further assistance, do you need help?) and individual learning

Childhood

Health promotion

  • psychological

    • literal and concrete

    • poor memory

    • dependance on family for guiding through needs

    • targeted at parents

  • social

    • modelling parents

  • link to already inviting things, hands on and engaging

    • e.g, charts, aimed at families to overlook children

    • lots of colours, personal, visual, not too much writing

Early adolescence

Health promotion

  • body image

  • don’t have to follow parents

  • influenced from friends - risky behaviours

  • focus on issues here and now

  • interventions on social models

  • concrete thinking but grasping moral concepts

mid adolescence

Health promotion

  • metaphors, some abstract thinking

  • believe they are bullet proof

  • more involved with peers, autonomy

  • focus on risks of self along with others

  • more compassionate to friends than self - if friends at risk, self reflection

Late adolescence

Health promotion

  • more intertwined as increased critical thinking

  • abstract

  • partners and close friends