Recap:

Adolescence is the time between childhood and adulthood. During adolescence, teens are highly influenced by their peer groups, as they become independent of their parents and explore their identity.

The adolescent brain is not fully developed yet. The brain is still growing and changing and that affects the way that adolescents see the world and the way that they behave. Up until puberty, brain cells continue to bloom in the frontal region. Some of the most developmentally significant changes in the brain occur in the prefrontal cortex, which is involved in decision making and cognitive control, as well as other higher cognitive functions. During adolescence, myelination and synaptic pruning in the prefrontal cortex increases, improving the efficiency of information processing, and neural connections between the prefrontal cortex and other regions of the brain are strengthened. However, this growth takes time and the growth is uneven.

The limbic system develops years ahead of the prefrontal cortex. Development in the limbic system plays an important role in determining rewards and punishments and processing emotional experience and social information. Pubertal hormones target the amygdala directly and powerful sensations become compelling. Brain scans confirm that cognitive control is not fully developed until adulthood because the prefrontal cortex is limited in connections and engagement.

When the overall brain chemical system is working well, it seems that these chemicals interact to balance out extreme behaviors. But when stress, arousal or sensations become extreme, the adolescent brain is flooded with impulses that overwhelm the prefrontal cortex, and as a result, adolescents engage in increased risk-taking behaviors and emotional outbursts possibly because the frontal lobes of their brains are still developing.

The theory provides a framework for understanding how people actively shape and are shaped by their environment.

A major component of the theory is observational learning: the process of learning desirable and undesirable behaviors by observing others, then reproducing learned behaviors in order to maximize rewards.

Cognitive biases are flaws or distortions in judgment and decision-making.; and they can have a serious impact on our health.

Adolescents tend to focus mostly on their own perceptions, especially on their behaviors and appearance, because of the “physiological metamorphosis” they experience during this period. This leads to adolescent egocentrism results in two distinct problems in thinking: the imaginary audience and the personal fable. These likely peak at age fifteen, along with self-consciousness in general.