You are encouraged to set yourself to be without distraction from your learning for the period of each lecture. For a self-paced lesson, a minimum of 15 minutes is recommended for each period. This is to enable you to adequately digest the instructions and content, to avoid misunderstanding and miscommunication, and to achieve meaningful learning.
Adolescents are wired to learn — but this same wiring also makes them more vulnerable to addictions. Neuroscientist Frances Jensen discusses how the biology of the teen brain presents a double-edged sword. The video here clearly explains the biological aspect of the adolescent brain and how it affects adolescent behaviour.
I won't be surprise if you're having an "Ah ha!" moment now. As much as your Behavioural Sciences lecturers are advocates of the Biopsychosocial Model of Health, recognise the fact that biology has a part to play in our attitudes, cognition and behaviours. The main points to note in the above video are :
1) The adolescent brain is high in synaptic plasticity. Synaptic plasticity is the biological process where specific patterns of synaptic activity result in changes in synaptic strength and is thought to contribute to learning and memory. In short, adolescents can learn very fast. It also makes them impressionable to both good and bad things. Things like addiction is a form of synaptic plasticity as well. But instead of learning a good thing, the brain is learning something bad and strengthening all the "wrong" synapses. This makes addiction behaviour harder to "unlearn" should they start at a younger age.
2) The myelination or connection process between the different parts of the brain, sends signals from the back to the front of the brain, the last place to connect is the pre-frontal lobe. The pre-frontal lobe controls executive and logical thinking functions like judgement, impulse control, decision-making and empathy. The implication here is that for someone who is not yet biologically 25 years old, that connection to the frontal lobe is not fast and strong enough. This could account for why some adolescents often find themselves making bad decisions. There may be other things going on with their lives that may affect the way they perceive their environment and this may also impact their decision-making.
This video by BrainFacts.org was originally hosted in Youtube within this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8sO4tqfUEs
Why do teenagers seem so much more impulsive, so much less self-aware than grown-ups? The next video gives you details of the adolescent brain structure that causes the difference in how adolescents make decisions from adults. Cognitive neuroscientist Sarah-Jayne Blakemore compares the prefrontal cortex in adolescents to that of adults, to show us how typically adolescent behaviour is simply the result of a growing and developing brain.
This video by Sarah-Jayne Blakemore was originally hosted in Ted Talk within this link: https://ed.ted.com/lessons/the-mysterious-workings-of-the-adolescent-brain-sarah-jayne-blakemore#watch
From the above videos, you will note that a lot of adolescent social behaviour is due to strong biological influence.
Consider the following questions as you move on to the next section:
What are some of the things we need to be mindful of when communicating with adolescents?
How do you assure an adolescent to feel welcome and safe with you?
What should we do (or not do) to empower young people to make good decisions?
If you happen to be interested to find out more about the adolescent brain with some statistics (like me), you can download a compendium (a collection of articles) via this link. The original link can be found in the Reference Section below.
BrainFacts.org . (2016, Sept 16). The Workings of the Adolescent Brain. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8sO4tqfUEs
Dahl, R., & Suleiman, A. (2017). The adolescent brain: A second window of opportunity. Florence, Italy: UNICEF Office of Research - Innocenti.
Ted-Ed. (2013, June 01). The mysterious workings of the adolescent brain - Sarah-Jayne Blakemore. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oKsikHollM
World Health Organisation. (n.d.). Infographics on adolescent health. Retrieved March 13, 2020, from https://www.who.int/maternal_child_adolescent/topics/adolescence/graphics/en/
We will now move on to take closer look at social perception in the next segment.
Keep in mind that health has a "Bio", "Psycho" and "Social" aspect to it, as reflected in the term "Biopsychosocial".
