Order from us for quality, customized work in due time of your choice.
Adolescence represents a developmental transition to maturity characterized by swift changes in the body and brain. At this stage, teenagers strive to understand their self-identities and learn to make independent decisions. Consequently, the rapid changes experienced by adolescents can be challenging or stressful. This increased awareness of the implications and mechanisms of adolescents social sensitivity has inspired the rise of scientific interest in brain development and behavioral adjustments. In her article The Teenage Brain: Sensitivity to Social Evaluation, Somerville explores the adolescents responses to social scrutiny (Somerville, 2013). She claims that teenagers exhibit augmented emotional intensity as they process relevant information connected to social evaluation. With continued growth, teens often expand their social circles and spend most of their time with peers who shape their perceptions and actions. Fundamentally, adolescents show increased sensitivity to social assessments at different complexity points and continue to improve their ability to exemplify and accommodate the feelings and thoughts of others.
Somerville succeeds in laying a practical foundation for her article by exploring the uniqueness of adolescent social life. Do et al. (2017) agree with Somerville that the social life of young adults plays an indispensable role in their day-to-day activities. For example, they tend to shift their attention from family members to friends. According to Sharp et al. (2018), this change emanates from the constant development of the teenagers brain, which attains its largest size in early adolescence. The plasticity characterizing a teens brain motivates it to adapt, change, and respond to its setting. With this inspiration for new exploration, adolescents engage in digital peer communication, mainly through text messaging and social media interactions. As a result, the function of social relationships inclines towards intimate romantic and platonic associations. Although adolescent experiences are mainly positive, Sharp et al. (2018) agree with Somerville that they fluctuate regularly. Peer rejection becomes a common phenomenon during the teenage phase due to the tendency of the relationships to diminish with time.
Socioaffective circuitry also helps in influencing the mechanisms and components of social sensitivity among adolescents. The prefrontal cortex maturation happens mainly during the adolescence phase (Sharp et al., 2018). Understanding the functioning of neural systems offers essential clues about the putative aspects of teenagers emotional behaviors. Incidentally, Somerville (2013) outlines critical constituents of socio-affective circuitry such as the amygdala, the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), and the striatum, which continually regulate teens responses to various situations. Coordinated actions of different brain parts help adolescents use available data to guide behaviors and learning, identify salient information, assign aversive, emotional, or hedonic value to facts, and improve social cognition. It also highlights that the influx of hormones influences adolescents behaviors. Healthcare experts believe that puberty hormones contribute to the overlap of the socio-affective circuitry, thus directing the response to essential cues during adolescence (Do et al., 2017). Therefore, hormonal changes strengthen brain-imaging complements in defining the actions and relationships of teenagers.
Adolescents are often sensitive to the perceptions of their peers towards them. Somerville uses an exceptional example of how she stumbled in front of students (Somerville, 2013). Although she was getting an award for excelling in her grade, the slip made her feel embarrassed. Indeed, Somerville could ask herself some rhetorical questions relating to the possible views of her peers. She thought that this event would hurt her even during her high school years. This incident demonstrates how adolescents are judgmental of their actions. According to Sharp et al. (2018), teenagers seek to show their superiority to their peers, and thus, embarrassing moments create dissatisfaction due to fear of exclusion, rejection, or mockery. Additionally, adolescents feel demotivated and emotionally deprived of learning that unknown peers disliked them in actual life instances. They become more vulnerable to stress due to low self-esteem. As their brain is still developing, teenagers respond to distress differently than adults, resulting in stress-related mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety.
Although Somervilles article raises undisputable insights relating to adolescents behaviors and responses to negative feedback from their peers, it has some gaps that require further exploration. For example, the article principally pays attention to the brain structure of teenagers and decision-making based on their interactions with their peers. It has ignored the examination of inherent biological factors that influence behavioral changes. According to Do et al. (2017), cultural and environmental contexts also define actions and relationships among adolescents. The study should include these aspects to explain extensively why teens are often highly sensitive to social evaluation. Somerville also considered the partial effect of the hormonal changes, thus possibly missing critical knowledge about how hormones may be intertwined with socio-affective circuitry and environmental factors to illustrate teens responses in different circumstances. Notwithstanding, she offered a rational conclusion that cannot be refuted based on empirical or scientific research regardless of the existing loopholes.
It is evident that adolescents exhibit intensified sensitivity to social scrutiny at diverse complexity levels and focus on attracting positive reviews from their peers. The brains continued development during the adolescent phase, especially the amygdala, striatum, the amygdala, and the MPFC, results in diverse responses to various situations. Significantly, teenagers concentrate on realizing their self-identities and making autonomous decisions. As a result, they shift their relationships with their family members to their peers. These associations graduate to intimate romantic and platonic relations that create undesirable emotional appeal in case of negative feedback. However, Somerville restricted her article to brain circuitry influences on teens behaviors. It is essential to examine other cultural, biological, and environmental factors that may affect adolescents sensitivity to social evaluation. Undeniably, the adolescent science field is persistently developing and gaining popularity. Thus, there is a dire need for extensive studies revolving around the biological underpinnings of teenagers responses to the social assessment.
References
Do, K. T., Moreira, J. F. G., & Telzer, E. H. (2017). But is helping you worth the risk? Defining prosocial risk taking in adolescence. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 25, 260-271.
Sharp, C., Vanwoerden, S., & Wall, K. (2018). Adolescence as a sensitive period for the development of personality disorder. Psychiatric Clinics, 41(4), 669-683.
Somerville, L. H. (2013). The teenage brain: Sensitivity to social evaluation. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22(2), 121-127.
Order from us for quality, customized work in due time of your choice.