Developmental Issues in Underage Drinking : Part 2

by National Institute of Health

(Page 2 of 2)

A key assumption underlying developmental research is that, although maturation is progressive, it is not uniform in speed or timing. There are periods of rapid transition, reorganization, and spurts of growth, alternating with periods of quiescence and consolidation. Rapid transitions may be critical developmental periods during which the social or cultural environment most strongly influences the biology and behavior of the developing human, leading to either an adverse or positive outcome. Critical developmental periods may provide key opportunities to redirect the course of development and alter the life course trajectory of the person. Timing health-promoting interventions in terms of critical developmental transitions could enhance efficacy.

Social Context

Social context seems to be particularly important in understanding and modifying human developmental trajectories. During adolescence, parental influences continue to be important, but there is a progressive increase in the influence of peers. Perhaps reflective of this altered balance, Brook and colleagues noted that family-directed alcohol and other drug abuse prevention efforts are generally more effective for children, whereas interventions involving peers are more effective for adolescents.

Self-Regulation

Self-regulation refers to the organism's ability to monitor and modulate internal states. In humans, it includes both the ability to modulate affect and level of arousal and the neurocognitive executive capacities to engage in goal-directed behavior. These executive cognitive capacities include the regulation of attention, planning, organization, concept formation, abstract reasoning, cognitive flexibility, self-monitoring, motor programming, and motor control. Self-regulatory behavioral capacities are refined during early adolescence as neurobiological maturation progresses and frontal brain regions mature. In parallel, early adolescence is characterized by the emergence of a social drive to establish an adult role, behave autonomously, and engage in adult decisionmaking. This social drive for autonomy and adult status is further stimulated by the mass media's shaping of perceived social norms for adolescents.

For some adolescents, however, there may be a mismatch between the drive to assume an adult social role and the adolescents' biologically mediated capacity to regulate internal mood states and outwardly directed behavior. Research indicates that this mismatch between social aspirations and self- regulatory abilities increases the adolescent's vulnerability to a variety of adverse behavioral outcomes, including problematic involvement with alcohol and other drugs. To mitigate problems arising from this mismatch in cognitive-emotional abilities and social pressures, the balanced support, monitoring, and modeling of social roles by influential adults (known as social scaffolding) can help guide and protect the adolescent through this vulnerable period.

Pubertal Timing, Social Factors and Gender Heterogeneity

Boys and girls differ significantly in the onset, tempo, and phenomenology of physical sexual maturation. Puberty's physical changes serve as stimuli for dynamic changes in the social experience of maturing children. These social experiences require significant psychosocial adaptation and are different for boys and girls, particularly when it comes to romantic and peer affiliations. Early physical maturation can lead to attachments to older boyfriends or girlfriends and exposure to social pressures and high-risk situations that younger adolescents may not be able to manage. Having older boyfriends and girlfriends is associated with early sexual activity, engagement in risky sexual practices, and enhanced risk for sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancy.

For adolescent girls specifically, having an older or adult boyfriend raises the risk for underage use of alcohol and other drugs and the adoption of delinquent behaviors. For boys, same-gender peers tend to provide more of a vector for initiation into alcohol and other drug use as well as delinquency. Thus, boys and girls may follow different developmental trajectories, may have a different set of maturational vulnerabilities, and may have a different profile of adverse outcomes. Consequently, developmental underage drinking research needs to explore the roles of gender differences in risk and resilience.

Multicausality, Interdisciplinary Research, and Quantitative Modeling

Multiple causal influences, from molecules to the media, interact in complicated ways over time to influence underage drinking behavior and outcomes. Building empirical models that capture this complexity can be challenging. Constructing developmental models requires repeated measurement of social, cultural, environmental, and biological factors influencing each other across time. Interdisciplinary expertise is typically required to collect and integrate these diverse types of data. Statistical models also must be developed to validly test a developmental theory - to see if it accurately reflects what happens in the real world. Although quantitative methods such as growth curve analysis - an approach to studying change over time - can address some research questions, methods have yet to be developed to deal with more complex theoretical models relevant to underage drinking and adolescent alcohol misuse.

About the Author

NIH is the nation's medical research agency - making important medical discoveries that improve health and save lives. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is the primary Federal agency for conducting and supporting medical research.