Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Mendola, PhD
Touro College 1
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Chapter 2: Puberty, Health, and Biological Foundations
Outline
• Puberty
– Determinants of Puberty
– Growth Spurt
– Sexual Maturation
– Secular Trends in Puberty
– Psychological Dimensions of Puberty
– Are Puberty’s Effects Exaggerated?
• Health
– Adolescence: A Critical Juncture in Health
– Emerging Adults’ Health
– Nutrition
– Exercise and Sports
– Sleep
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Puberty
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Puberty
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Determinants of Puberty
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Determinants of Puberty
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Heredity
• Puberty is not an environmental accident
– Programmed into the genes of every human being is the
timing for the emergence of puberty (Mueller & others,
2010)
• Recently, scientists have begun to conduct molecular
genetic studies in an attempt to identify specific genes
that are linked to the onset and progression of puberty
(He & others, 2010; Paris & others, 2010)
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Heredity
• Puberty takes place between about 9 and 16 years of age
for most individuals
• Environmental factors can also influence its onset and
duration (Belsky & others, 2010)
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Hormones
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Hormones
• Testosterone is an androgen
– Plays an important role in male pubertal development
– Rising testosterone levels are associated with a number of
physical changes in boys:
• Development of external genitals
• Increase in height
• Voice changes (Campbell & Mbizo, 2006; Goji & others, 2009)
• Also linked to sexual desire and activity (Cameron, 2004)
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Hormones
• Estradiol is an estrogen
– Plays an important role in female pubertal development
– As estradiol levels rise changes in girls occur:
• Breast development
• Uterine development
• Skeletal changes
– The identity of hormones that contribute to sexual desire
and activity in adolescents is less clear for girls than it is
for boys (Cameron, 2004)
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Figure 2.1 – Hormone Levels by Sex & Pubertal
Stage for Testosterone & Estradiol
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The Endocrine System
• Puberty onset involves the activation of the
hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal (HPG) axis
– Hypothalamus
• Structure in the higher portion of the brain that monitors eating,
drinking and sex
– Pituitary gland
• The endocrine gland that regulates other glands and secretes FSH
and LH
– Thyroid gland
• Interacts with the pituitary gland to influence growth and skeletal
maturation
– Gonads
• The sex glands – testes in males, ovaries in females – that secrete
sex hormones 14
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Figure 2.2 - The Major Endocrine
Glands Involved in Pubertal Change
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Figure 2.3 - The Feedback System of Sex
Hormones
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Adrenarche and Gonadarche
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Adrenarche and Gonadarche
• Gonadarche
– Follows adrenarche by about two years; is the period most
people think of as puberty
– Involves the maturation of:
• Primary sexual characteristics: Ovaries in females, testes in males
• Secondary sexual characteristics: Pubic hair, breast, and genital
development (Dorn & others, 2006)
• “The hallmark of gonadarche is reactivation of the hypothalamic-
pituitary-gonadal axis (HPG). . . . The initial activation of the HPG
axis was during the fetal and neonatal period” (Dorn & others, 2006,
p. 35)
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Adrenarche and Gonadarche
– In the United States, the gonadarche period begins at
approximately 9 to 10 years of age in non-Latina white girls,
and 8 to 9 years in African American girls (Herman-
Giddens, Kaplowitz, & Wasserman, 2004)
– In boys, gonadarche begins at about 10 to 11 years of age
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Adrenarche and Gonadarche
• Menarche
– The first menstrual period
– Occurs in mid- to late-gonadarche in girls
• Spermarche
– The first ejaculation of semen
– Occurs in early- to mid-gonadarche in boys
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Weight, Body Fat, and Leptin
• Higher weight, especially obesity, is linked to earlier
pubertal development (Kaplowitz, 2009)
– A body weight of 106 +/- 3 pounds may trigger menarche
and the end of the pubertal growth spurt (Friesch, 1984)
– This specific weight target is not well documented (Susman,
2001)
• Other scientists have hypothesized that the onset of
menarche is influenced by the percentage of body fat in
relation to total body weight
– A minimum of 17 percent of a girl’s body weight must be
comprised of body fat
– As with the weight target, this percentage has not been
consistently verified
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Weight, Body Fat, and Leptin
– In boys undernutrition may delay puberty (Susman, Dorn,
and Schiefelbein, 2003)
– The hormone leptin may signal the beginning and
progression of puberty
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Weight at Birth and in Infancy
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Weight at Birth and in Infancy
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Sociocultural and Environmental Factors
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Sociocultural and Environmental Factors
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Growth Spurt
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Growth Spurt
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Growth Spurt
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Figure 2.4 - Pubertal Growth Spurt
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Sexual Maturation
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Figure 2.5 - Normal Range and Average Development of
Sexual Characteristics in Males and Females
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Sexual Maturation
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Figure 2.7 - Median Ages at Menarche in Selected Northern
European Countries and the United States from 1845 to 1969
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Secular Trend
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Psychological Dimensions of Puberty
• Body image
– Adolescents are preoccupied with their bodies (Lawler &
Nixon, 2010; Markey, 2010)
– Gender differences
• In general, throughout puberty girls are less happy with their bodies
and have more negative body images than boys (Crespo & others,
2010)
• As pubertal change proceeds, girls often become more dissatisfied with
their bodies, probably because their body fat increases (Markey, 2010;
Yuan, 2010)
• In contrast, boys become more satisfied as they move through puberty,
probably because their muscle mass increases
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Psychological Dimensions of Puberty
• Body art
– An increasing number of adolescents and college students are
obtaining tattoos and getting parts of their body pierced
(Beznos & Coates, 2007; Mayers & Chiffriller, 2008)
– Researchers do not agree whether body art is used to express
individuality and self-expression or rebellion
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Psychological Dimensions of Puberty
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Psychological Dimensions of Puberty
– Hormonal factors alone are not responsible for adolescent
behavior
• Hormonal activity is influenced by many environmental factors,
including parent-adolescent relationships, stress, eating patterns,
sexual activity, and depression can activate or suppress various aspects
of the hormone system (DeRose & Brooks-Gunn, 2008)
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Psychological Dimensions of Puberty
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Health
• Increasingly, experts recognize that whether or not
adolescents develop health problems depends primarily on
their behavior (Turbin & others, 2006)
• Experts’ goals are to:
– Reduce adolescents’ health-compromising behaviors, such as
drug abuse, violence, unprotected sexual intercourse, and
dangerous driving
– Increase adolescents’ health-enhancing behaviors, such as
exercising, eating nutritiously, wearing seat belts, and getting
adequate sleep
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Risk-Taking Behavior
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Risk-Taking Behavior
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Risk-Taking Behavior
• What can be done to help adolescents satisfy their
motivation for risk taking without compromising their
health?
– One strategy is to increase the social capital of a community
(Youngblade & others, 2006)
– It is important for parents, teachers, mentors, and other
responsible adults to effectively monitor adolescents’
behavior (Fang, Schinke, & Cole, 2010)
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Health Services
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Health Services
• Among the chief barriers to better health care for adolescents
are cost, poor organization and availability of health services,
lack of confidentiality, and reluctance on the part of health
care providers to communicate with adolescents about
sensitive health issues. (Hoover & others, 2010; Lara-Torre,
2008)
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Leading Causes of Death
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Leading Causes of Death
• Homicide
• Homicide is a leading cause of death in adolescents and
emerging adults, especially among African American males
who are three times more likely to be killed by guns than by
natural causes
• Suicide
• Suicide is the third-leading cause of death in adolescence and
emerging adulthood
• Since the 1950s, the adolescent and emerging adult suicide
rate has tripled, although it has declined in recent years (Ash,
2008)
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Emerging Adults’ Health
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Emerging Adults’ Health
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Figure 2.8 – Mortality Rates of U.S. Adolescents and
Emerging Adults
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Nutrition
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Figure 2.9 - Percentage of U.S. High School Students Who Ate Fruits
and Vegetables Five or More Times a Day, 1999 to 2007
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Exercise
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Exercise
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Figure 2.10 - Exercise Rates of U.S. High
School Students by Gender and Ethnicity
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Exercise
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Exercise
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Roles of Families, Schools, and TV/Computers in
Adolescent Exercise
• Families
– Parents play an important role in influencing adolescents’
exercise patterns (Dugan, 2008)
– A recent study revealed that 9- to 13-year-olds were more
likely to engage in physical activity during their free time
when the children felt safe, had a number of places to be
active, and had parents who participated in physical activities
with them (Heitzler & others, 2006)
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Roles of Families, Schools, and TV/Computers in
Adolescent Exercise
• Schools
– Some of the blame for the poor physical condition of U.S.
children and adolescents falls on U.S. schools, many of which
fail to provide physical education class on a daily basis (Pate
& others, 2010; Schmottiach & McManama, 2010)
• A recent national survey revealed that only 30% of U.S. 9th through
12th graders participated in PE classes 5 days in an average school
week (Eaton & others, 2008)
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Roles of Families, Schools, and TV/Computers in
Adolescent Exercise
• Males (33%) were more likely to participate at this level than females
(27%)
• Tenth graders were most likely to regularly take a PE class (47%); 11th
(30%), and 12th graders (31%)
– Other research studies have found positive benefits for
programs designed to improve the physical fitness of students
(Timperio, Salmon, & Ball, 2004; Veugelers & Fitzgerald,
2005)
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Roles of Families, Schools, and TV/Computers in
Adolescent Exercise
• TV/Computers
– Screen-based activity may be involved in lower levels of
physical fitness in adolescence (Leatherdale, 2010; Rey-
Lopez & others, 2008; Sisson & others, 2010)
– A recent study revealed that children and adolescents who
engaged in the highest amount of daily screen-based activity
were less likely to exercise daily (Sisson & others, 2010)
– Children and adolescents who engaged in the low physical
activity and high screen-based activity were almost twice as
likely to be overweight as their more active, less sedentary
counterparts
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Sports
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Sports
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Sports
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Sleep
• There has been a surge of interest in adolescent sleep patterns
(Abe, Hagihara, & Nobutomo, 2010; Fakier & Wild, 2010;
McHale & others, 2010)
• In a survey conducted by the National Sleep Foundation
(2006):
– 45% of the adolescents got inadequate sleep on school nights
(less than eight hours)
– Adolescents who got inadequate sleep on school nights were
more likely to feel more tired or sleepy, more cranky and
irritable, fall asleep in school, be in a depressed mood, and
drank caffeinated beverages than their counterparts who got
optimal sleep
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Sleep
• Mary Carskadon and her colleagues have conducted a number
of research studies on adolescent sleep patterns
– They found that when given the opportunity adolescents will
sleep an average of 9 hours and 25 minutes a night. Most get
considerably less than 9 hours of sleep, especially during the
week
– Carskadon has suggested that early school starting times may
cause grogginess, inattention in class, and poor performance on
tests
• Research indicates that sleep patterns change in emerging
adulthood (Kloss & others, 2011; Wolfson, 2010; Galambos,
Howard, & Maggs, 2011)
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Evolution, Heredity, and Environment
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Evolution, Heredity, and Environment
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Evolution, Heredity, and Environment
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Evolution, Heredity, and Environment
• Evolutionary psychology
– Emphasizes the importance of adaptation, reproduction, and
“survival of the fittest” in explaining behavior
– The process of natural selection favors those behaviors that
increase organisms’ reproductive success and their ability to
pass their genes on to the next generation (Enger, Ross, &
Bailey, 2009)
• Evolutionary developmental psychology
– There is growing interest in using the concepts of
evolutionary psychology to understand human development
(Buss, 2011; Greve & Bjorklund, 2009; Hawley, 2011)
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Figure 2.12 - The Brain Sizes of Various Primates and
Humans in Relation to the Length of the Juvenile Period
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Evolution, Heredity, and Environment
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The Genetic Process
• Our many traits and characteristics that are genetically
influenced have a long evolutionary history that is retained
in our DNA
• The nucleus of each human cell contains chromosomes –
threadlike structures that contain DNA
– DNA: A complex molecule that contains genetic information
– Genes: Short segments of DNA which direct cells to
reproduce themselves and to assemble proteins
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Figure 2.13 - Cells, Chromosomes,
Genes, and DNA
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The Genetic Process
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The Genetic Process
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Genotype and Phenotype
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Heredity-Environment Interaction
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Heredity-Environment Correlations
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Shared and Non-Shared Environmental
Experiences
• Behavior geneticists emphasize that another way of
analyzing the environment’s role in heredity-environment
interaction is to consider experiences that adolescents share
in common with other adolescents living in the same home,
as well as experiences that are not shared (Plomin & others,
2009)
• Behavior geneticist Robert Plomin (2004) has found that
common rearing, or shared environment, accounts for little
of the variation in adolescents’ personality or interests
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The Epigenetic View
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Figure 2.15 - Comparison of the Heredity-Environment
Correlation and Epigenetic Views
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Gene x Environment (GxE) Interaction
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Conclusions About Heredity-Environment
Interaction
• Heredity and environment operate together
– The relative contributions of heredity and environment are not
additive
– Nor is it accurate to say that full genetic expression happens
once, around conception or birth
• Genes produce proteins throughout the life span, in many different
environments
• The emerging view is that many complex behaviors likely
have some genetic loading gives people a propensity for a
specific developmental trajectory (Goldsmith, 2011; Plomin
& others, 2009)
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E-LEARNING TOOLS
http://www.mhhe.com/santrocka14e
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