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  • Essay / Adolescence Experience: Perspective Taking and Empathy

    Table of ContentsAnalysis of the Adolescence Experience StudyConclusionReferencesThe adolescence stage in human development is a very difficult year, confusing and fun in a person's life. Added to this are good/bad experiences, physical growth, cognitive and social development. In a deeper analysis of the adolescent experience, let us focus in this essay on two things: perspective taking and empathic concerns for others. With these 2 ideas in mind, cognitive development during adolescence is what plays the biggest key role. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay During puberty, our thinking, physical nature, and self-awareness begin to develop into who you will soon become. Through this puberty status, adolescents believe that the whole world revolves around them. An imaginary public, adolescence believes that it is the center of everyone's attention and concerns. Teenagers are so absorbed in themselves that they forget that there are other people around them who are affected by their behavior. In various Western and non-Western cultures, concerns related to issues of personal choice are strong during adolescence, reflecting the growing adolescent quest for identity and independence. At younger ages, when children can still be more easily influenced by their parents, they are more likely to say that excluding or mistreating others is unfair. In 10th grade, increasingly concerned with equity, indicate that under certain conditions, intimate relationships, private contexts, on the basis of gender and racial exclusion are acceptable. Going through puberty comes with many challenges, you start to develop a clearer mindset, you start to think for yourself and depend less on your parents. Pubertal status affects empathy and perspective taking of others. Analysis of the Adolescent Experience StudyGraff, Branje, Wied, Hawk, and Lier designed a study to investigate the development of perspective taking and empathy in age groups 13 to 18 years old , then examined the results to see if pubertal status had an effect on these 2 ideas. “Cognitive and relational changes can be expected to impact adolescents' abilities or tendency to take others' perspectives and experience feelings of worry. Adolescence is also marked by rapid physical changes, and the development of empathy may undergo a temporary decline that coincides with puberty. This longitudinal study took place in the Netherlands. To date, six annual measurements have taken place. This research is based on data from the Research on Adolescent Development and Relationships (RADAR) project. Over the years, they followed and tested the same teenagers and saw how much they had changed in their perspective and empathy. As the adolescent goes through their own physical and cognitive changes, the goal is to see how aware and understanding they are of another person's emotions. The method used in this experiment was carried out in different parts. Every teenager selected was part of RADAR. A sample of 497 adolescents (214 girls and 283 boys) was randomly selected from schools in the province of Utrecht as well as in four other cities located in the Netherlands. The adolescents were measured in three different domains: empathy, perspective taking andpubertal status. “Adolescents reported their own empathic disposition, using two 7-item subscales of the Dutch version of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index.” An example of this type of subscale is that children were asked a question like "I often have tender, worried feelings for people less fortunate than me," and then asked to rate themselves on a score of 0 to 4, 0 for what is not the case. descry very well and 4 senses describes me very well. After testing them on the Empathy Scale, they tested them on their Perspective Taking. They used the same type of subscales and asked similar questions. An example would be "I try to consider everyone's point of view in case of disagreement before making a decision." Again, they rated themselves the same way, on a scale of 0 to 4. Adolescent pubertal status was measured using the adapted version of the “Self-Reported Pubertal Development Scale.” They used the same fur items in this scale for both boys and girls. The boys were asked if they noticed pubic hair growth, armpit hair, facial hair and a change in voice. The girls were asked if they had noticed pubic hair growth, underarm hair, breast development and if their first period had already occurred. After asking these questions for the three categories and carrying out their own scoring, the analysis part took place in two parts. They first averaged the results for perspective thinking and empathy, using the same basic model for robot girls and boys. Second, they split the results between girls and boys to determine whether there was an association between pubertal status and growth in perspectival thinking and empathy concerns. The results of these experiments were what they initially thought. For boys, empathic concern declined throughout adolescence, but then increased again in late adolescence, almost the same as at the beginning. Boys' perspective taking also declined in the middle years, but in later years it increased to a higher level than at the beginning. For girls, they showed higher levels of empathy from the beginning and they increased during young and middle age, then remained stable in later years. In terms of perspective, girls were once again at a higher level than boys and their level increased dramatically throughout the Middle Ages, then leveled off again towards the end. “The pattern of PT boys and girls with concurrent pubertal status between ages 13 and 16 fit the data, pubertal status was not significantly associated with PT.” The model used for boys when examining EC was that there is a correlation between pubertal status and empathic thinking (EP). So, in the end, the results tell us that pubertal maturation plays an important role in the development of a concern for empathy for boys, not as much for girls. It was a very interesting experience to watch again, it really opened my eyes to how different genres develop. some things more than others during a given period of time. The only thing that could have changed would be the components. This test was carried out in the Netherlands and they did not indicate the diversity of the schools chosen. Diversity would be a very important factor in the difference in the outcome, having different ethnic backgrounds and seeing the lifestyle of these children and the way they live, 50(3), 881–888.