CHAPTER 11:
Physical and Cognitive
Development in Young Adulthood
The Life Span: Human Development for Helping
Professionals
Edition 4
Patricia C. Broderick and Pamela Blewitt
© (2015, 2010, 2006) by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Defining Adulthood
 Defining exactly when an individual reaches
adulthood is surprisingly complex
 Marker events
– Sociologists look to events like completing
education, entering workforce, leaving home
– Marker events are increasingly delayed
 New ways of conceptualizing adulthood
– Young adults emphasize responsibility,
independent decisions, financial independence
 Modern transitional period from about 18 to 25
– “Emerging adulthood”
Broderick & Blewitt, The Life Span: Human Development for Helping Professionals, 4th Ed.
© (2015, 2010, 2006) by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved
11-2
Emerging Adulthood in Context
 Emerging adulthood pattern typical of Western,
industrialized cultures
- Globalization, urbanization spreading this pattern
 Leaving home, entering college or work setting
- Social worlds expand beyond family, friends, and
neighbors
- More socially and ethnically diverse contexts
- May intensify identity development process
 Particular stresses for ethic minority youth
- Racial crossover effect
- Increased encounters with prejudice
Broderick & Blewitt, The Life Span: Human Development for Helping Professionals, 4th Ed.
© (2015, 2010, 2006) by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved
11-3
Physical Development in Young Adulthood
 By age 18 to 20, most reach full physical growth
 Biological systems reach peak potential
– Lifestyle affects achievement and maintenance of
peak or near-peak functioning
– Healthy lifestyle includes exercise, healthy diet,
avoiding smoking and drug use
– Behaviors now will be reflected in later health
 The changing brain
– Synapse pruning continues in young adulthood
– Frontal lobes continue to mature
– Advancing abilities in organization, attention,
planning, emotional and behavioral self-regulation
Broderick & Blewitt, The Life Span: Human Development for Helping Professionals, 4th Ed.
© (2015, 2010, 2006) by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved
11-4
Cognitive Development in
Young Adulthood
 Young adulthood is a time of great learning
– Continuing identity development
– Gaining training and experience
 Logical thinking: Is there qualitative change?
– Some propose more advanced kinds of thinking
emerge; postformal or fifth-stage thinking
– Others argue adults simply learn to apply formal
thinking more skillfully, to new problems
– Metacognitive advances lead to understanding
limits of own problem-solving abilities
 Caveat: Most research is within college context
Broderick & Blewitt, The Life Span: Human Development for Helping Professionals, 4th Ed.
© (2015, 2010, 2006) by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved
11-5
Schaie’s View of Adults Adjusting to
Environmental Pressures
 Argues against a new kind of adult thinking
– Changing contexts bring new challenges
– Different skills brought to bear
 Seven stages in adults’ intellectual functioning
– Acquisition stage: Child and adolescent years
– Achieving stage: Young adult years
– Responsible stage: Middle adulthood
– Executive stage: Specific to middle adults who
take on executive functions more than for others
– Reorganizational stage: Early old age
– Reintegrative stage: Elder years
Broderick & Blewitt, The Life Span: Human Development for Helping Professionals, 4th Ed.
© (2015, 2010, 2006) by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved
11-6
Theories of Postformal Thought
 Perry and Kitchener propose stage-like theories
– Adult experience leads to new forms of thought
– Qualitative change in intellectual development
– Full development of postformal thinking may not
be realized until middle adulthood or even later
 Defining postformal thought
– Postformal thought is relativistic
– Recognizes the validity of different truth systems
– Abandons the quest for absolute knowledge
– Similar to concept of postskeptical rationalism
Broderick & Blewitt, The Life Span: Human Development for Helping Professionals, 4th Ed.
© (2015, 2010, 2006) by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved
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Stage-like Theories
 Perry’s theory of adult intellectual development
– Based on many of Piaget’s ideas
– Extensive interviews with college students
– Intellectual shift from dualism to rationalism
– 9 “positions” or stages of intellectual and ethical
reasoning
 Kitchener’s model of reflective judgment
– Standard set of ill-structured problems, questions
about the reasoning used to address them
– Shift from belief in existence of absolute certainty
to contextual relativism
– 7-stages of development of relativistic thinking
Broderick & Blewitt, The Life Span: Human Development for Helping Professionals, 4th Ed.
© (2015, 2010, 2006) by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved
11-8
Perry’s Stages of Intellectual and Ethical
Development in the College Years
 Stages of dualism
– Position 1: Strict dualism
– Position 2: Multiplicity (prelegitimate)
– Position 3: Multiplicity (subordinate), early multi.
– Position 4: Late multiplicity
 Stages of relativism
– Position 5: Contextual relativism
– Position 6: Commitment foreseen
– Positions 7, 8, and 9: Commitment and resolve
Broderick & Blewitt, The Life Span: Human Development for Helping Professionals, 4th Ed.
© (2015, 2010, 2006) by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved
11-9
Kitchener’s Model of the Development
of Reflective Judgment
 Stage 1: Knowing limited to concrete instances
 Stage 2: Two categories, right and wrong answers
 Stage 3: Knowledge uncertain in some areas,
certain in others
 Stage 4: All knowledge assumed to be uncertain
 Stage 5: Knowledge understood within a context
 Stage 6: Knowledge is constructed by comparing
and coordinating evidence and opinions
 Stage 7: Knowledge develops probabilistically,
through inquiry that generalizes
Broderick & Blewitt, The Life Span: Human Development for Helping Professionals, 4th Ed.
© (2015, 2010, 2006) by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved
11-10
Applications: Structuring Decision
Making in Counseling Settings
 Counselors often called on to help make decisions
 Decision-making and problem-solving models are
widely used, with a common series of steps
1. Defining the problem
2. Setting realistic goals
3. Developing a variety of possible solutions
4. Assessing costs and benefits of alternatives
5. Selecting and implementing one alternative
6. Reviewing the effectiveness
 Consider the client’s epistemological level
 Consider your own epistemological level
Broderick & Blewitt, The Life Span: Human Development for Helping Professionals, 4th Ed.
© (2015, 2010, 2006) by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved
11-11
Applications: Putting Things Off
 Explaining procrastination in young adulthood
– No longer bound by controlled routines of home
– Struggling to organize unstructured time
 Subtypes of procrastination
– Perfectionistic, fearful, anxiety-prone: low
conscientiousness with high neuroticism, may
equate failure in one area to failure in all
– Rebellious type: low conscientiousness and
neuroticism, high extraversion, procrastinates
without worry to avoid unpleasant tasks
 Ways to help: Behavioral approaches, facilitated
self-reflection, stress-management
Broderick & Blewitt, The Life Span: Human Development for Helping Professionals, 4th Ed.
© (2015, 2010, 2006) by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved
11-12
Focus on Developmental Psychopathology:
Diagnosis of Depression
 Differentiating symptom, syndrome, and disorder
– Depressive symptom: sad mood
– Depressive syndrome: sad mood plus anxiety
– Depressive disorder: formal diagnostic criteria
 Core features for major depressive disorder (MDD)
– Sad affect, anhedonia, fluctuations in weight
and/or sleep, psychomotor changes, fatigue,
cognitive impairments, feelings of guilt or
worthlessness, suicidal thoughts or acts
 Several presentations
– Unipolar, bipolar, dysthymic, cyclothymic forms
Broderick & Blewitt, The Life Span: Human Development for Helping Professionals, 4th Ed.
© (2015, 2010, 2006) by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved
11-13
Focus on Developmental Psychopathology:
Prevalence and Comorbidity
 Prevalence
– Lifetime prevalence rate of MDD in US is 16.6%,
or about 32.6 to 35.1 million adults
– Annual rate 6.6% for adults, 4% in childhood,
5%–15% in adolescence
– Incidence of MDD is increasing worldwide
– Age of onset is decreasing
 Comorbidity
– Anxiety, impulse-control disorders manifest prior
to depression in children, high comorbidity later
– Often coexists with other problems in adulthood,
impacts physical health and mortality
Broderick & Blewitt, The Life Span: Human Development for Helping Professionals, 4th Ed.
© (2015, 2010, 2006) by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved
11-14
Focus on Developmental Psychopathology:
Search for Causes and Treatments
 Specific causes of depression remain unknown
 Some variables clearly correlate with risk
– Genetic/familial predispositions
– Early adverse life experiences
– Hormonal changes in puberty
– Cognitive and motivational processes, coping
– Number and intensity of stressors
– Absence of protective factors, social support
 Effective treatments are available for depression
– Pharmacological, cognitive-behavioral (CBT),
interpersonal (IPT), mindfulness-based cognitive
(MBCT) therapies
Broderick & Blewitt, The Life Span: Human Development for Helping Professionals, 4th Ed.
© (2015, 2010, 2006) by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved
11-15