Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

4-25-2025

Keywords

adolescence, adulthood, brain development, childhood, developmental changes, psychosocial development

Disciplines

Developmental Psychology

Abstract

Adolescence is considered the age that bridges childhood and adulthood, Erik Erikson, who has contributed much to our understanding of the developmental stages described adolescence as, “the age mediating between childhood and adulthood (Erikson, 1997, p.xi).” Adolescence includes the sometimes tumultuous years between the ages of 11 and 21, and the Eriksons addressed this as one stage (Newman and Newman, 2013). Some authors attribute the fact that adolescence is such a trying time to the fact that adolescents lose synapses in the brain specifically in the primary visual cortex at a rate of 5,000 per second (Bears, Connor, and Paradiso, 2007; we will discuss this more later in the chapter)!  Erik Erikson and his wife Joan Erikson, in their classic book entitled, “The Life Cycle Completed with New Chapters on the Ninth Stage of Development by Joan Erikson” (Erikson, 1997) discuss how their psychosocial theory focuses on several key words. These key words include “hope, fidelity, and care (Erikson, 1997, p. 54).”

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