The Brain, Body, Motor Skills, and SexualDevelopment

Physical Development

What happens with large individual variations in the timing of the

adolescent growth

Development of the Brain

Brain growth spurtthe period between the seventh prenatal

month and 2 years of age when more than half of the child’s eventual brain weight is

gained.

The brain grows from 25 percent of itseventual adult weight at birth to 75 percent of adult weight by age 2. Indeed, thebrain growth spurt because more than half of one’s adult brain weight is gained at thistime (Glaser, 2000).

Between the seventh prenatal month and a child’s first birthday, the brain increases in weight by about 1.7 grams a day, or more than a milligram per minute..

Motor Development

One of the more dramatic developments of the first year of life is the remarkable progress that infants make in controlling their movements and perfecting motor skills.

Dynamical systemsTheory

they view each new skill as a construction that emerges as infants actively reorganize existing motor capabilities into new and more complex action systems. At first, these new motor configurations are likely to be tentative, inefficient, and uncoor-dinated

adolescent growth spurtthe rapid increase in physicalgrowth that marks the beginningof adolescence.

pubertythe point at which a person reaches sexual maturity and is physically capable of fathering or conceiving a child.

What about adolescent?

The onset of adolescence is heralded by two significant changes in physical development.

First, children change dramatically in size and shape as they enter the adolescent growth spurt (Pinyerd & Zipf, 2005). Second, they also reach puberty (from the Latin word pubertas, meaning “to grow hairy”), the point in life when an individual reaches sexual maturity (Mustanski et al., 2004) and becomes capable of producing a child (Pinyerd & Zipf, 2005).

Sexual Maturation

Sexual Development

in Girls

Sexual Development in Boys

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPACTS OF PUBERTY

Does Timing of Puberty Matter?Think back for a moment to your own adolescence when you first realized that you were rapidly becoming a man or a woman. Did this happen to you earlier than to your friends, or later? Do you think that the timing of these events could have influenced your personality or social life? Timing of puberty does have some meaningful implications, although its impact differs somewhat for boys and girls.

What do you prefer