Teenage Behavior Psychology

In the article Why and Under What Contextual Conditions Do Early-Maturing Girls Develop Problem Behaviors? by Therése Skoog and Håkan Stattin, the authors seek to understand why early maturing girls tend to have more behavioral problems than those who mature later. The article starts by introducing two different hypotheses’ the maturational-deviance hypothesis and stage-termination hypothesis. The maturational-deviance hypothesis says that it is stressful for youth to reach milestones in development ahead or behind their peers of the same age. Where stage-termination hypothesis merely focuses on early puberty and how those who go through puberty early lack behavioral skills, unprepared emotionally, and cognitively immature; these factors are …show more content…
The peer-socialization hypothesis, focuses on the effects of early puberty on peer relations and does not focus on the internal distress. This hypothesis suggests that maturing earlier leads to making friends that are older because people tend to seek friends that are similar to them. So they adopt behaviors of friends that are older than them, which could be why they have more behavioral problems compared to their peers. Due to biologically being more mature, girls are granted access to join older adolescence friend groups, in which their friends and boyfriends are much older, leading to be involved in more problematic behaviors such as parties. According to the authors this model is strong in that it is built on solid theoretical and empirical knowledge of adolescent functioning and peer relations, it why explains why early maturation leads to problematic behaviors, and it does not assume all early maturing girls are prone to behavioral problems. The contextual-amplification hypothesis speaks to the contextual conditions that decrease or increase the effects of early puberty on development. So, therefore, it assumes the problem behaviors is due to an accumulation of risks, such as puberty along with a stressor leading to an adverse environment which allows for a problematic behavior to develop. This model does not necessarily explain exactly why links exist, but when the link is more or less …show more content…
Skoog and Stattin seek to understand and explain this correlation through an integrative approach that combines the peer-socialization and the contextual-amplification models. Their goal was to, “specify the theoretical mechanisms involved in the peer-socialization explanation of the link between girls’ early maturation and problem behavior, and to test this explanation by using ideas about contextual amplification to predict which contexts facilitate, and which inhibit, peer selection and peer socialization.” They did two studies with this method. The first study was of youth centers and peer interactions inside and outside of the school setting. This study found that pubertal timing was unrelated to the ages or delinquency levels of friends inside and outside of school, but pubertal timing was related to the ages and delinquency of the friends the girls associated with only outside of school. So this means that the free time friends facilitate the process of peer selection. The second study looked at recreation centers which are generally unsupervised and are not age specific. Because it is not age specific girls are able to socialize with older peers that are at their same maturity level. Their results supported the prediction that the setting facilitated peer socialization and the link between