Maturity (psychological) - Socio-emotional and Cognitive Markers

Socio-emotional and Cognitive Markers

Although psychological maturity is specifically grounded in the autonomy of one’s decision-making ability, these outcomes are deeply embedded in not only cognition, but also in lifelong processes of emotional, social and moral development. Various theorists have provided frameworks for recognizing the indicators of maturity. Erikson's stages of psychosocial development describe progression into adult maturity, with each maturational stage characterized by a certain kind of psychsocial conflict. The “Identity” stage is characterized as being mainly concerned with issues of role exploration and role confusion, and also the exploration of sexual and other identities. Adolescents navigate a web of conflicting values and selves in order to emerge as 'the person one has come to be' and 'the person society expects one to become'. Erikson did not insist that stages begin and end at globally pre-defined points, but that particular stages such as “Identity” could extend into adulthood for as long as it took to resolve the conflict. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development defines the formal operational stage as a plateau reached once an individual can think logically using symbols and is marked by a shift away from “concrete” thought, or thought bound to immediacy and facts, and toward “abstract” thought, or thought employing reflection and deduction. These theories have shaped the investigation of adolescent development and reflect the limitations of cognition prior to adulthood.

While maturity is often termed as a label awarded to a child, research has revealed that children themselves hold a clear sense of their own autonomy and personal jurisdiction. For instance, American elementary-aged school children demonstrated an acknowledgement of the limits of their parents’ authority over their choice of dress, hairstyle, friends, hobbies, and media choices. But this constrained earlier concept of personal autonomy later develops into a broader understanding of individual freedoms, with an understanding of freedom of speech as a universal right emerging by elementary school age. However, younger children do have difficulty with maintaining a consistent view on universal rights, with 75% of first-grade children expressing uncertainty about prohibiting freedom of speech in Canada. But this same study also found that 6-11 year old Canadian children rejected nondemocratic systems on the basis of violating principles of majority vote, equal representation, and right to a voice, which provides evidence for an emerging knowledge of political decision-making skills from a young age.