Human Development Chapters

Chapter 13 Young Adulthood: Physical and

Cognitive Development

Summary Becoming an adult is a developmental process and is rarely associated with chronological age in Western cultures. Instead, adulthood is associated with achieving the following tasks:

• (1)

accepting responsibility for oneself,

• (2)

making independent decisions, and

• (3)

becoming financially independent (Arnett & Tanner, 2006).

The developmental phase of emerging adulthood, or young adulthood, marks this transitional period from adolescence to adulthood. Arnett (2004) proposed that this developmental phase of the lifespan is characterized by five key characteristics: identity exploration, self-focus, instability, feeling-in-between, and opportunity. In addition to these defining features, emerging adulthood ushers in a variety of physical and cognitive changes.

Young adults experience a peak in their physical performance. Biological systems are highly efficient and the senses are decidedly acute. Physical strength, coordination, dexterity, agility, and flexibility also peak. Most individuals are healthiest during young adulthood and are often exempt from health issues associated with serious illness. While young adults experience peak physical functioning and health, many engage in poor lifestyle practices that compromise their health and may lead to untimely death. The most common lifestyle habits that affect the health of young adults include tobacco use, alcohol and illicit drug use, poor diet and lack of exercise, sleep deprivation, and sexually risky behaviors. A particularly

dangerous lifestyle behavior that increases in young adulthood is binge drinking. Binge drinking is defined as having five or more drinks in a row at least one day in the past month. Binge drinking peaks around age 21 years and declines throughout the remainder of young adulthood. While binge drinking behaviors are short-lived for most young adults, it is associated with numerous health issues and risky behaviors. As a professional counselor, it is important to help young adults understand the impact of lifestyle habits on their health and well-being, and to adopt healthy lifestyle practices.

It is now widely accepted that individuals experience gains in cognition during young adulthood. These gains are due in large part to the continuing maturation of the brain. Specifically, the brain of a young adult undergoes synaptic pruning and enhanced myelination. Synaptic pruning and myelination ensure that young adults have fewer, but more selective and stronger, synaptic connections, which enhance the efficiency of cognitive processing (Kuhn, 2006; Steinberg, 2004) and the ability to evaluate abstract material. Developmental theorists use the term postformal thought to characterize advances in adult cognition. Postformal thought is distinct from Piaget’s formal operational stage of cognitive functioning and is defined by the following achievements:

• (1)

relativistic thinking,

• (2)

flexibility and pragmatics,

• (3)

tolerance for ambiguity and contradictions, and

• (4)

cognitive-affective complexity.

William Perry (1970, 1999) was one of the first developmental theorists to delineate adult stages of cognitive development beyond Piaget’s formal operational stage. According to Perry’s nine-stage theory, individuals move from dualistic thought, an absolute adherence to authority and experts, to relativistic

thinking, which recognizes the contextual nature of knowledge and involves committing to one’s own worldviews rather than relying on outside authority. Kitchener (1983) also proposed that young adults move to a position of relativism and develop reflective judgment to help solve life’s ill-defined problems. In addition to adopting relativistic thinking, young adults experience enhancements in cognitive-affective complexity. This increased capacity to integrate one’s emotions and pragmatic reasoning when solving problems leads to decreased emotional reactivity. Young adults also demonstrate marked increases in divergent thinking and creativity. Specifically, they are able to draw on ideas from numerous disciplines and generate multiple solutions for a problem. Finally, individuals undergo changes in their moral judgment in young adulthood. Kohlberg’s highest stage, postconventional moral reasoning, emerges in mid-adolescence to early adulthood due to the emergence of relativistic thinking and increasingly encountering life’s ill-defined problems. As a result, young adults come to rely less on external standards when making ethical decisions and more on a personal moral code rooted in universal ethical principles. As the expansion of the Internet has increased our access to information and ability to share information globally, young adults today demonstrate moral relativism. They recognize that moral standards vary across cultures and that diverse individuals may have different ways of interpreting right and wrong (Stein & Dawson-Tunik, 2004).