Lifespan Final Essay

Module 8

Final Essay Examination

1. Information processing theorist refer to many specific mechanisms that underlie cognitive change in teenagers: some of these mechanisms are as follows:

• Attention becomes more selective and better adapted to the changing demands of tasks (Berk, 2010).

• Inhibition- both of inappropriate stimuli and well learned Reponses in situations where they are unsuitable - improves, supporting gains in attention and reasoning.

• Strategies- become more useful, improving storage, illustration, and retrieval of information.

• Knowledge increases, easing strategy use (Berk, 2010).

• Metacognition- broadens, leading to new insight into efficient strategies for gaining information and solving problems.

• Cognitive self- regulation improves, leading to improved moment- by -moment monitoring, evaluation, and redirection of thinking.

• Speed of thinking and processing capacity increase. Then more information can be retained at once in working memory and combined into increasingly complex, efficient representations, “opening for growth” in the capacities just listed and also improving as a result of gains in those capacities (Berk, 2010).

2. Emotional closeness is more common in female adolescents than male. Girls tend to communicate more and interactions contain more self- disclosure and supportive statements. Boys are opposite of this, they get together for an event, usually sports and games. Their conversations are usually centered on accomplishments. In teenagers peer groups are common. They are organized into cliques which are described as groups of about 5-7 members who are friends and therefore, usually resemble one another in family background, attitudes, and values. Often several cliques with similar values form a larger, more loosely organized group called crowd (Berk, 2010).

5. According to Levinson, for middle aged adults to reassess their relation to themselves and external world and rebuild their structure, they must...