Current Event Psychology Article Review

According to Erik Erikson, adolescence is marked by the child’s questioning his or her identity during what he refers to as the identity versus identity confusion developmental stage. During this phase, the adolescent becomes mindful of his or her identity and seeks his or her purpose in life, as well as the answer to the eternal question, “who

The building blocks of personal identities begin at birth. Parents and teachers are a major influence on one’s identity. They teach the individual the basic morals, knowing right from wrong. However, some individuals do not have the benefit of parental or teacher’s guidance, and this results in a stunted personality, which negatively affects these individuals’ sense of identity. In some circumstances, these

Sociological Accounts on Individuals Acquiring Their Identities The concept of identity has been defined as 'A sense of self that develops as the child differentiates from parents and family and takes a place in society' (Jary and Jary, 1991.) Through the process of socialization, individuals acquire their identities, but this issue cause different understandings according to sociological accounts. Here, I will show these accounts, and make an analysis understood by me.

According to Dr.Penner’s lecture about Canadian adolescents, adolescence is defined as the years in which biological, physical, emotional and social movements transpire to cue the onset of adulthood and signify the end of childhood. I believe that it is in these crucial years that highly self-conscious teenagers desperately strive to find their identity rather than their sense of self. Sense of self is considered as something that every individual is born with. During Dr.Penner’s lecture I agreed with some of his statements, one of which states, parents can see their teenagers’ character and personality more as they mature, but he suggests that they have always been that way, they don’t just suddenly become a self because parents are now able to understand them. The sense of self unlike identity, in the early years, is not criticized to be true or false or judged as right or wrong. Rather, it is associated with the feeling of safekeeping, security and recognition of attributes that the child acknowledges as important. Throughout later years, sense of self becomes positively or negatively correlated with characteristics that parents value and portray for their children according to how they live their lives. I highly place importance on the fact that this sense of self must be nurtured in their environment and cherished by their loved ones. On the other hand, identity is an internal, subjective self structure that is comprised of one’s own personal experiences, history, attitudes, morality, abilities, drives and overall uniqueness. This complex internal structure of individuality is adaptive to their audience. I am certain that every teenager’s main aspiration in their adolescent years is to find their identity. Identity from my perspective is something that unique and is customized to every individual. I do believe that adolescents begin to piece together their identity through what they have found works for them and what doesn’t, but they don’t completely establish their identity as a whole. This is because they are notoriously so self-conscious that they have difficulty finding their individuality which is basically the whole meaning of what identity is. They attempt to establish themselves through others’

With respect to Erikson’s eight stages of psychosocial development, the adolescence is the stage of identity versus role confusion. He also believes that identity as the significant personality achievement of adolescence is an essential step toward becoming a productive happy adult (Feldman, 2006). I remember so vividly my high school experience; especially

Identity is a critical aspect of the growth and development in human beings. It is defined as a condition or character as to who a person or what a thing is; the qualities that distinguish or identify a person. Identity influenced by relationships is when the people one associates themselves with shape their identity. “Researchers posited that it is important to recognize the process of exploring and making commitments in interpersonal relationships is four domains: friendship, dating, sex roles, and recreation.” Relationships with friends, parents, and partners help influence an identity in a person. They each have a specific time where one is more important than the other. Each one shapes the person's identity, it could be for the better or for the worst. Parents are the first influence that a child has, then peers/friends become more important, and lastly partners help finish off shaping the person's identity. They each have a role in the

One of the theorists to investigate the development of identity would be Erik Erikson. According to Erikson (1968), throughout an individual’s life-span, they experience conflicts. These conflicts arise at certain points in life and need to be successfully resolved for the progression in to the next of Erikson’s eight stages (Sigelman & Rider, 2015). The specific stage relevant to the development of identity formation in adolescence would be the ‘identity versus role confusion’ stage. Identity development involves exploring options and making commitments to obtain a relatively stable self-perception (DeHaan & MacDermid, 1996). In contrast, role confusion occurs when individuals are not able to commit specific life choices (DeHaan & MacDermid,

Identity has been defined in many ways. It is the concept used to describe an individual's sense of who he or she is (Dashefsky and Shapiro, 1976). Changes in identity occur throughout the life cycle, however, the changes in identity are usually most notable during adolescence. Integrating a positive sense of ethnic identity into one's overall personal identity is an important task of late adolescence (Steinberg, 1996).

Working memory refers to one’s ability to complete immediate tasks through the use of short-term memory and precision to make actively conscious choices. This is especially important in one’s organizational ability, reasoning, and decision-making. Unfortunately, working memory is yet another function of your brain that only gets weaker as you age into your midlife years. If you’ve ever placed a soup can in the wrong cabinet drawer, or put on non-matching socks or shoes, then you know exactly what it feels like.

al., 2010). While individuals with ADHD may be hindered in working memory, bilinguals are noted to have better executive skills and thus better working memory. According to the article, "Effects of classroom bilingualism on task-shifting, verbal memory, and word learning in children", bilingual individuals outperform monolingual individuals on tasks involving verbal working memory (Kaushanskaya et al., 2014). Moreover, it is shown that bilingual performance relative to monolinguals increases with more difficult tasks. These results were interpreted that bilinguals perform better than monolinguals in these tasks because bilinguals may have a greater executive functioning , specifically controlling attention, than monolinguals. As proposed in "Bilingual brain training: A neurobiological framework of how bilingual experience improves executive function", bilingual practice enhance the key functions of the basal ganglia- "the capacity of selecting the appropriate rules in response to very specific conditions, and the capacity of overriding habitual responses encoded within cortico-cortical connections" (Stocco,

The idea behind self-identity is one’s concept of the perceptions and recognitions of individuals one has about abilities, flaws, status and worth in relation to social context. Elements that can influence the difficulties and hardships that young adults face during their self-identity is family, pressure to conform and gender expectations. Usually the family environment plays a large role in shaping the identity of young people as they grow into adolescence and become adults through socialisation, cultural identity and the parental influence. The pressure to conform shapes actions, beliefs to align with opinions and behaviours of other people. Young people mainly feel the pressure to conform during the middle-adolescent years of theirs lives.

Much attention, from the public as well as medical and legal communities, is focused on addictions to alcohol, prescription drugs, and illegal substances. These addictions can be very dangerous to the addicts and often to the people around them. Food addiction does not seem to be in the same class as these other addictions after all, everyone needs to eat. However, new studies show that food can indeed be an addiction for some people, and as dangerous to their health as if they abused alcohol or drugs.

(Abernathy, 2010). Working memory includes several components, for example, short-term storage, rehearsal, and executive processes operating on the contents of storage (Smith, 2000).

Julia has just suffered a massive heart attack and her family is waiting in the hospital,

All throughout our lives, we wrestle with the question of who am I and what do I want in life? However, it is usually during the adolescent years that this issue really comes to a head and we begin a more earnest search into finding ourselves and deciding the direction we want to take with our lives. One of the theorists who studied this idea of identity formation was James Marcia. Marcia proposed that there were four different stages or statuses in the development of identity which he labeled Identity Diffusion, Identity Foreclosure, Identity Moratorium, and Identity Achievement. In this essay, we will briefly summarize his four different stages and then apply his theory to my own identity development during the adolescent years.