Adolescent's Mind

Into the Adolescent Mind
Andrew Fuller
Andrew Fuller is a Clinical Psychologist who lectures in child, adolescent
and family psychology and consults to communities and schools about the
promotion of resilience.
Andrew is a fellow of the University of Melbourne’s Department of

Learning and Educational Development as well as the Department of
Psychiatry . He is also an ambassador for Mind Matters and a member
of the national coalition against bullying.
Andrew is the author of:

“Tricky Kids”
“Guerilla Tactics for Teachers”
“ Help Your Child Succeed at School”,
“ Raising Real People- creating a resilient family”
“ From Surviving to Thriving- Promoting Mental health in Young People”,
“Beating Bullies” and
“Work Smarter Not Harder- study skills for people who really hate
homework”.
He has co-authored resilience programs used in over 2,500 schools

called “The Heart Masters”. Andrew’s books can be obtained from
www.inyahead.com.au
Andrew can be contacted on 03 9894 3939 or inyahead@satlink.com.au

or www.andrewfuller.com.au
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Into the Adolescent Brain
Andrew Fuller
Abstract
Adolescents are a mystery to many adults- especially their parents, It is a

time when three of the great changes of human life occur: the ability to
reproduce: the establishment of an identity and the formal commencement
of logical rational reasoned thought. Though the attainment of logical
thinking is fairly patchy from where I sit. This presentation provides a wry
and possibly even helpful overview of the way adolescents think. Based on a
synthesis of recent research on early adolescence and mind development,
implications for schools and families will be discussed.
Adolescents are a mystery to many adults- especially their parents, It is a

time when three of the great changes of human life occur:
• the ability to reproduce;
• the establishment of an identity ; and
• the formal commencement of logical rational reasoned thought.
Though the attainment of logical thinking is fairly patchy from where I sit
and some people don’t seem to attain it till the age of 58 or thereabouts.
There is a long history of successful people having fairly dodgy adolescent

years and this has been reflected in their school reports. For example,
Stephen Fry, the English comedian’s, headmaster wrote on his report in the
early seventies,
“ He has glaring faults and they have certainly glared at us this term”.
Norman Wisdom, an actor, received a report that said
“ The boy is every inch a fool but luckily for him he’s not very tall”.
Andrew Fuller inyahead@satlink.com.au
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Carl Jung was similarly dismissed by his teacher who commented,
‘all glib cleverness and humbug”.
So let’s take a walk through the brain and mind of your average adolescent.
Now this is dangerous territory indeed. It’s not just the likelihood of
tripping over the odd torrid sexual fantasy, encountering an obsession with
privacy that would baffle the most secretive hermit or the risk of being
crushed by the wild pendulum of mood swings.
No, even more dangerous than that is the knowledge that this is an area of
research that is expanding so rapidly that in a few short years much of what
I am about to say may well seem laughable in its simplicity.
Oh, well fools step where angels fear to tread and as I’m certainly no angel
here goes…
It is an exciting time to be involved in education. For the first time we can

link the research that emotionally supports young people and protects them
against suicide, drug abuse and violence with our growing knowledge of how
they think, develop and learn.
At the same time, there is a great risk. Some of you will clearly remember
the Professor in Gilligan’s Island. A brilliant man. Able to invent coconut
compasses, a wind powered generator of electricity not to mention a
thousand other quirky creations but somehow never found time to either
work out a way to patch the hole in the ship or build a new ship entirely,
Too often the discussion about education risks becoming a debate about
which side of the ship we should patch first, Today I want to spend some
time talking about what would happen if we built an entirely new ship.
So let’s have a look at what is going on in there.
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Development
We have probably learned more the in past few years about the way people
learn they we have in the past fifty years. For a full discussion of this area
see Gopnik, Meltzoff and Kuhl, 1999; Restak, 2001; Damasio, 1995). Much of
this upsurge has been due to the proliferation of PET scans ( Positron
Emission Tomography) and fMRI ( functional magnetic resonance imaging)
studies,
The three pound blob of grey matter that sits on the top of your neck is the
most complex, adaptable, regenerating object we know of. And it’s busiest
when we are children.
The way the mind develops is not a neat sequence of events. Recent research
is confirming what two of the great thinkers of child development ( Jean
Piaget and Maria Montessori) postulated that children’s minds develop in fits
and starts followed by periods of consolidation. These processes were
labelled as asimmulation and accommodation by Piaget and were described as
cycles of learning by Montessori.
In terms of brain development, there appear to be times of overproduction

or exuberance during which we may be highly receptive to new information
and able to gain specific skills more easily. During childhood and adolescence,
this seems to be the way the brain develops- overdoing it in terms of
production and then cutting back on what is not needed later. It’s a pretty
nifty system because it’s precisely that over-production that allows us to
choose to hone and specialise our skills.
If we place a map of key social competencies at different ages, we get a map

of approximately three-year cycles. Of course there is individual variability
as well as gender differences but nevertheless a map such as the one
presented on the next page can be used to help schools target specific
behaviours and learning processes at different times.
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A Map of the Development of Mind
15 abstract thought
12 self-competence
9 peer relationships and synaptic pruning
6 concentration and language abilities
3 impulse control
Children’s brains are much busier and quite a bit cleverer than adults are.
From birth, the brain is busy setting up connections. At birth each neuron
has 2,500 synapses and the number increases rapidly so that by 2 to 3 years
of age, there are 15,000 synapses per neuron. Preschool children have
brains that are more active, more connected and more flexible than ours. In
many ways you could argue that you will never be cleverer, more flexible or
more adaptable than you were when you were three.
Up until the age of three, children are like sponges. Given sufficient time
and attachment with a caring adult and a reasonably interesting environment
and they just learn. They absorb their surroundings and are especially
interested in differences. In fact they learn by being attuned to
differences. This is true of babies and remains true for all of us throughout
our lives. Babies are particularly interested in faces and stripes.
This means from birth we are intensely interested in our social environment,
we notice difference, we focus our learning towards emotions, we try to
draw causal connections between events and we want to create meaning and
to try out our knowledge in new settings.
We are born to learn about new places and people and to adjust to what we
find there, This means children already know a whole lot more about learning
than adults do,
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Then about the age of three or four years of age, something happens and it
all stops, It is almost as if four year olds stop in their tracks, look around in
bewilderment and express this puzzlement by asking the question “why?”
It is estimated that a four year old asks a “why” questions every two and a
half minutes!
These are the wilful years in which children learn impulse control. Children
who do not learn this at this time can learn how to control their impulses
later but it is harder. Some of you will know adults who never really learned
much about impulse control either. You know those so-called friends of yours
who cut a swathe through any social settings, acting in ways that disregard
the needs of others, failing to take on responsibility. Adults who in short
suffer from the “ who poo-ed in my pants” syndrome.
Around the age of six, there is a second surge as the brain starts to use
language in increasingly complex ways. Aggression management is an
important social competency at this time. Entering school, every year are
children with existing attachment and aggression problems and they don’t
just grow out of it, They get worse! Much, much worse. Girls exhibiting
these problems at this age do worse long term than boys..
Up to the age of nine or ten the brain continues to be twice as active as an

adult’s. Around the age of nine years peer relationships seem to
predominate.
Primary schools often find that bullying increases around this age as children
jostle for position with peers. For this reason, it makes sense for schools to
centre peer relationship programs that include bullying prevention, emotional
intelligence and resilience.
It’s at this point that we start to see the brain gearing up for adolescence.
Many of the neurological changes that occur in the brain during the teenage
years commence well before they get to high school. A fact any primary
school teacher will confirm with a sad nod of the head.
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While the earlier onset of puberty is often viewed with dismay by adults, it
may actually benefit some young people. Early maturers score slightly higher
on IQ tests than their later maturing counterparts and this small advantage
appears to persist into adulthood (Newcombe and Dubas, 1989)
During these years, the brain starts to slow down. An 8 or 9 year olds brain
runs at about twice the speed that yours does and between 8 and 18 it slows
down to its adult running rate. As some of you will know it takes all of Year
nine off for a complete break. I always am amused to think that in most
organisations after ten years service, you get a break called long service
leave. Year nine students have been in the system for about ten years and
could do with long service leave.
Interestingly, this appears to be followed by a split pathway with some

students languishing and loitering their way in to the senior years. While
others, often around the middle of Year Ten, the shutters come off, they
come out of the fogs and mists of adolescence, the light goes back on and
they suddenly get it in a way they haven’t for years. The lucky parents of
this group heave a sigh of relief and if they are clever, take credit for it all.
Synaptic Pruning
It is always worth thinking about the biological and evolutionary

underpinnings of learning. I was recently having a discussion with a group of
Year nine boys which went like this: what, dunno, alright, spose, as if,
whatever! You know that “as if” means no and “ whatever” means yes?
Anyway, the thought just crossed my mind- is it possible all the chatty
hunters got eaten up?
Between ten years of age and puberty, the brain ruthlessly destroys its
weakest connections preserving only those that experience has shown to be
useful, The adage here is “ use it or lose it” – and this applies at any age.
“Synaptic pruning” continues throughout life but occurs mostly during the
late childhood and teenage years so that the synapses that carry the most
messages get stronger and the weaker ones get cut out, This helps in
refinement and specialisation.
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This is why the experiences we give children and young people between their
9th and 18th years are so important.
As many as 30,000 synapses may be lost per second over the entire cortex
in the early adolescent brain leading to an ultimate loss of almost one half of
the synapses that were present in the pre-adolescent period.
Jerome Bruner has suggested that humans are dependent for so long is so
they can learn about their specific social environment. We survive by
learning how to get on in almost any setting, by living by our wits and by
being extraordinarily adaptable.
The brain at this time is re-structuring to become cleverer and more

efficient. It is important to capitalise on this by helping young people to
create patterns of thinking and habits of learning that are productive.
By doing this we put into place, trajectories of thinking and learning that
lead to success.
Re-structuring and the frontal lobes
The second thing that happens in adolescent’s brains is that the frontal
lobes - the bit that helps us to plan, consider, control impulses, make wise
judgements in short to be kind, caring, considerate people- is the last bit to
mature. In fact someone probably should put a sign of the frontal lobes of
most early adolescents saying “ closed for construction” The frontal lobes
are being re-structured at this time in a way that prepares them for adult
life.
If you are wondering what’s the big deal with the frontal lobes. It’s really
the frontal lobes that allow us to be civilised and human. Susan Greenfield
estimates that over the course of history the size of frontal lobes in humans
has increased by 29 percent compared with chimpanzees who have increased
by 17 % and cats whose frontal lobes have only grown by 3%.
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This not only tells you a lot about why a hungry cat won’t leave well enough
alone, it should give you pause to think compassionately about your ancestors
who had to spend their lives hanging around with a group of eternally
impulsive and erratic teenagers of various ages while working out a way to
produce evolutions latest upgrade- you! I hope you are dutifully grateful.
So if the early adolescents frontal lobes have essentially gone missing in

action for a time. This means that teenagers’ brains are all tuned up for
emotions, fighting, running away and romance but not so well tuned up for
planning, controlling impulses and forward thinking.
This means that when a frustrated parent says to their “ why didn’t you
think of the consequences” , the kid invariably replies “as if”. By the way you
know that “ whatever” means yes and “as if” means no, don’t you?
Some parents kind of forget this. They wouldn’t dream of giving their
teenager free access to their life savings but they will reasonably frequently
leave them in charge of a $ 200,000 house full of fine furniture and still be
stunned by the results!
Parents need to be their teenage children’s frontal lobes. Asking an

adolescent to do a lot of forward planning is like asking a dog to study
physics.
This is also the reason why too much freedom too soon does not seem to help
too many young people.
Early teenagers are yet to grown into themselves yet. The average teenager
gains 20 kilograms and grows almost half a metre in the space of four or five
years. I’m sure many of you know the sensation of being in a room with a
group of young people who seem to be a clumsy jumble of elbows, knees,
pimples and groins. Just as they haven’t grown into their bodies. They
haven’t quite grown into their brains either.
It’s almost as if teenagers at this stage have a very powerful, juiced up

sports car with great acceleration, terrific lines, great sex appeal but very
poor brakes… oh, and a driver with the road sense of an earwig.
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Implications for Education
• Adolescents are NOT mini - adults
* Expecting them to show a lot of fore-thought and planning is like
expecting goldfish to recite Shakespeare
* The brain is re-structuring to become more efficient. Therefore we
need to capitalise on this re-structuring. Help them to develop the habits
and routines that allow them to work smarter not harder
Emotions
A couple of other interesting things are happening in the adolescent brain.

The first is that hormones become more powerful and adolescent’s brains
show more activity in the emotional parts of the brain ( known as the limbic
system) than they do in the planning and impulse control parts of the brain
( known as the frontal lobes and the pre-frontal cortex).
This means that adolescents learn best when there is emotion involved!
Adolescents remember stuff about themselves and stuff that is relevant to
their life situations. As Homer Simpson would say “ doh!”
One father I spoke to wanted to put a sign on his daughter’s bedroom door
that stated, “Warning – Wide Mood Swings!”
Adolescents like intensity, excitement, and arousal. They are drawn to music,
intensity, horror films. Around this time adolescents give off exaggerated
secondary signals. Unwise parents and teachers respond to these.
This is why it is absolutely pointless arguing with teenagers. I like to think

that arguing with a teenager is like mud wrestling with a pig- you both end up
dirty but only the pig is happy!
Not only are they emotionally charged, they are lousy at reading other
peoples emotions. This is particularly true of fear in others.
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We might do better if we were to synthesise all subject areas into an
intensive study of soap operas at this point.
In a large and intricate study Assor, Kaplan and Roth ( 2002) found that
fostering relevance to students authentic goals is more important than
providing choice. The big implication here is if you want them to be
interested in school - make it relevant!
It’s almost as if the brain is acquiring a new set of survival skills at this
point. It is worth, I think, returning to a point I made at the start of this
talk that adolescence is a time when three of the great changes of human
life occur:
• the ability to reproduce;

• the establishment of an identity ; and
• the formal commencement of logical rational reasoned thought.
Of these we could argue that the establishment of an identity that is

acceptable and desirable to peers would have great survival value for
humans.
The puzzling thing to me is that if the brain at this time is so tuned into the
emotions, why don’t we capitalise on this? Instead it seems that we are yet
to grasp in any meaningful way that there is a great deal of crucial learning
that simply cannot be accomplished while dressed up in uniforms that
promote sedentary learning or timetabled in the itty-bitty episodes we call
lessons.
Is the teaching of 'subjects' that obliges each secondary teacher to try to

cope with success in learning for 150 to 240 individual students really the
best model we can come up with? Is a system that divides learning areas into
multiple areas suitable for a group of young people who essentially don’t have
functioning frontal lobes and therefore can’t transfer information from one
setting to another>
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It may well be that the brain develops best when allowed to play, linger and
persist in areas of interest and that this may especially be so, when the
early adolescent is in the company of someone who’s opinion he or she cares
about.
Implications for Education
* relevance, relevance, relevance!
* values- generosity & love
* diversify and intensify relationships
* Stunted roots & clipped wings
When asked what makes a good teacher, boys and girls answer
differently.
Boys Girls
Fair Interesting
Able to control the class Likes me
Sense of humour
Myelination
Another thing that is happening in adolescents’ brains is myelination. Myelin

is a fatty material that wraps itself around the axons of brain cells, Myelin
helps the brain to communicate quickly and efficiently. Simply put, it turbo
charges thinking. Myelin increases by about 100 % during the teenage years
In multiple sclerosis, it is the myelin sheath that breaks down causing such
devastating effects for sufferers.
It is during the adolescent years that myelin is put into place. Two areas of
the brain that are extensively undergoing myelination are the hippocampi,
which has to do with memory; and the cingulate which involves emotions.
This research explains two of the great mysteries of life with teenagers.
For years I would watch parents say to their adolescent children “ what are
you thinking about?” only to receive a blank look, a shrug of the shoulders
and a “dunno”. For years I thought they were putting it on. Now I really
think they don’t know. They weren’t thinking at all. That blank look was
completely justified. They were only reacting.
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The research indicating the level of myelination of the cingulate also points
to solving the mystery of some family interactions. As Damasio (1995) has
pointed out the cingulate is involved in moral reasoning. The relative inability
of early adolescents to think through consequences and measure their
responses again partly explains another common family interaction. For
years, in family therapy parents have lamented how their teenagers went
absolutely beserk, over the top, ballistic, apeshit and so on when asked to do
something minor like take out the rubbish bin.
The great mistake that parents ( and some teachers) often make here is to
think that more words, more explanation will help smooth things over. Well,
I’m here to tell you folks, you might as well be talking about billiards to a
baboon for all the success you can expect to have.
This supports Bill Roger’s suggestions for teachers not to get involved in
secondary issues.
This all means that adolescents sometimes need more help with planning and
organising themselves than you would believe.
Obviously it is important to help young people to become as self-reliant as

possible. In some instances, however, parents can help with organisational
details.
Increased affiliation with Peers
It’s not going to come as news to anyone here that the adolescent brain is
not only tumultuously emotional, it is also incredibly social.
As Linda Spear points out, most species show an alteration in social

behaviour around the time of adolescence. Play fighting and play behaviour
increase before declining as sexual maturity is reached,
During an average week, adolescents have been reported to spend close to

one third of their time awake talking with peers but only 8% talking with
adults ( Csikszentimihalyi, Larson and Prescott, 1977).
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The intensity of peer relationships may serve two purposes here: an
evolutionary advantage as well as a learning purpose.
The interest in peers may have traditionally helped the dispersal of

adolescents away from the family group thereby avoiding inbreeding. An age
related emigration is common among mammalian species and may be
evolutionarily adaptive.
Peer affiliation may also promote learning. In terms of learning. humans are
hard-wired to do two things:
experience differences; and
to imitate ( watch what other people do and copy them).
Imitations are tried out and if successful become patterns or habits.

Teenagers are nothing if they are not great imitators. Fashion, music, lip
gloss, lynx deodorant- it’s all around you!
As well as being great imitators, they are wary in case they loose peer
approval. So they are to quote Con the Fruiterer,” looking, looking, looking! “
Improving Concentration
Did anyone ever say to you,” you’ve got a mind like a sieve?’ Well, they were
right!
Approximately 99% of the information that comes into your awareness is

immediately discarded. That’s just as well because if it wasn’t you would be
swamped with trivial detail. Thankfully, you are a very discerning person.
When you were an adolescent however you weren’t quite so discerning.
All children, not just those with attention problems, need to develop their
concentration.
The amount of learning we can do directly relates to our ability to

concentrate and focus our attention, Einstein, Newton and Darwin were all
noted for their ability to concentrate,
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Concentration is our ability to draw our energy towards a specific issue,
which we can then attend to. There are two types of attention: one is
diffuse and allows us to absorb information in an uncritical way without
judging it; the other is narrower and focuses on specific details. Both types
of attention are necessary. For example, when crossing a road it is vital to
keep your attention of where the car approaching you is if you are to avoid
being hit. However, it is also important to keep some attention for noticing
diffuse events such as another car coming around a corner, or a truck
overtaking and so on.
Find your concentration wandering just then? Well, its just your mind
searching around for something new and interesting to focus on.
Concentration is a bit like a bouncer at a disco. It rapidly inspects

candidates ( in this case ideas) for admission to the brain and filters out
and discards those that it thinks are not worthy. Some kids have a bouncer
that lets in too many ideas, others the wrong sort. So the trick to effective
concentration is to learn what to concentrate on and what to filter out.
Most of us are skilled at screening out irrelevant information. For example,
most of you will not have been aware of your shoes on your feet until your
attention is drawn to it. Young people are often less skilled at working out
what is the main thing to concentrate on.
Like any other skill, concentration can be enhanced and made more
automatic. Anyone who has learned a complex set of manoeuvres such as
riding a bike, playing a musical instrument or driving a car will have
experienced the initial concern of “ how do I concentrate on all these things
at once” only to find with practice they become easier.
Extensive practice allows for the development of pathways of concentration.

You might like to think of the activities that give your child a sense of flow
here. Some aspects of a performance can be so well rehearsed that they can
be perceived as happening automatically. Some musicians speak of “ finger
memory” where they no longer need to consciously think about what they are
playing and attention can be freed up for other activities.
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Concentration- Common Styles
The Happy Wanderers

The Frequent Flyers
The Spies
The Finger Safari experts
The Amplifiers
The Star Trekkers
The Social Secretaries (Fuller, 2004)
Motivation
Adolescents are harder to motivate and are motivated by different things

that adults. They seek out new stimuli, novelty seeking and risk taking.
Synaptic pruning may be associated with a major decline in the amount of

excitory stimulation reaching the cortex. Glucose metabolism, a measure of
brain activity, declines during the adolescent years.
Between late childhood and early adolescence there is a “fall from grace “
with the number of reports of feeling” very happy “ dropping by 50%
( Larson and Richards, 1994). Even when engaged in the same activities ,
adolescents find them less pleasurable than adults. They experience an
increase in negative feelings, depressed mood and mood ranges that younger
or older people
Therefore they may attain less positive impact from stimuli with low or
moderate incentive value. Part of the answer is to bombard with positive
experiences.
As children get older their attitude to school deteriorates and adolescents'

academic motivation declines over time.(Hidi and Harackiewicz ,2000).
Considering how to increase motivation in students is a major issue for
schools.
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One way to do this is to build upon the interests of students and link as
many educational outcomes to these as possible. Interests are reasonably
stable over time. However, what sparks people’s interest and what holds
their interest are two different things.
The table on the next page summarises these strategies for sparking and
holding interest.
Spark group work puzzles computers rewards
intrigue novelty quizzes presentation format
Motivation
Meaningfulness importance relevance Cater to interests

( to family)
Set own challenges/ games Co-operative learning
Engage heart & head “just in time” learning.
Continuous feedback loops Optimism feelings of authenticity
Hold
You may have noticed “rewards” mentioned on the table above. This is point
of some controversy. It is often argued that extrinsic rewards undermine
intrinsic motivation ( Deci, Koestner and Ryan, 1999). This may be so, though
it seems the view of intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation is too simplistic.
Rewards do not reduce intrinsic motivation for dull tasks and may be useful
in sparking interest . Rewards might be especially useful for academically
unmotivated students.
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High novelty seeking in pre-teens predictive of conduct problems, alcohol use
The need to seek novelty shows itself in three main areas during
adolescence:
risk taking
anger and aggression
drug experimentation
Sleep
Adolescents eat more and they sleep less, They have a preference for
sleeping and waking later than they did when they were children.
Adolescents need more sleep than they did as children around 9 and a
quarter hours and that their circadian rhythms appear to be set later than
children's or adults, Melatonin flows into their brains later around 10.30 pm
and stays longer. Most teenagers’ brains aren’t ready to wake up until 8 or 9
in the morning,
Teenagers who are sleep deprived do less well at school and are more prone
to feelings of sadness and hopelessness. In short, they feel fairly crappy.
As suggested by Pat Wolfe some guidelines are:
Stay away from caffeine and nicotine after noon. Avoid alcohol that can
disrupt sleep.
Don’t sleep with a computer or TV flickering in the room,
Avoid bright light in the evening but open blinds or turn on lights as soon as
the morning alarm sounds to start the body’s awakening cycle,
Sleeping more than two or three hours later on weekends than on weekdays
can disrupt your body clock.
The sleep cycle influences our “down times”, the times we learn least well of
all. Your down time is fairly easily calculated. Take the mid point of your
sleep cycle go forward 12 hours and thereabouts will be your down time.
( Restak, 2002)
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Stress-sensitivity
The decision making ability of adolescents may be more vulnerable to

disruptions but the stresses and strains of everyday living than that of
adults.
They may also respond more strongly to stressful events physiologically with
greater blood pressure and cardiac output response than children ( Allen and
Matthews, 1997).
Adolescents are often sleep deprived which may in turn increase

vulnerability to stress,
Adolescents may have more negative life experiences ( friendship changes,

alterations in romantic liaisons, school work) that they tend to view more
negatively and have less control over. This may well increase their sense of
helplessness.
The more negative life events an adolescent has the more likely they are to
engage in problem behaviours and the less likely that are to engage in a wide
range of positive activities. (Simmons, Burgeson and Reef, 1988)
Adolescents display considerably poorer cognitive performance under time-

limited situations than under optimal test conditions ( Keating, 1990).
This means that project based assessment may be the best way of assessing
early adolescents.
Increased risk taking
Adolescents are risk takers. Reckless behaviour, sensation seeking, risk

taking . Maggs, Almieda and Galambos (1995) found that 80 % of 11 and a
half to 15 year olds exhibited one or more problem behaviours in a month
( disobeying parents, school misconduct, substance use , antisocial acts such
as theft or fighting)
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As Tracy Moffitt has pointed out risk taking during adolescence is
normative. Risk takers feel more accepted by peers and view risk taking as
fun. Non- risk takers are seen as anxious and over controlled
Adolescents take risks for a variety of reasons:
*Sensations of novelty- this desire for an adrenaline rush may be

particularly strong is those with few chances for other reinforcers. As
Alfred Adler once commented, “ people don’t learn to try to succeed in
socially undesirable ways until they have learned that they cannot succeed in
socially desirable ways”
*Change or intensity of experience
*Improve chances for sex
* reduce dysphoria or cope with stress.
Risk taking can be seen as an attempt to gain real life experiences of your
self and your environment
The perceived risks of risk decline during adolescence.
Anger and Aggression
Aggressive behaviour peaks during adolescence in a number of primate

species. Aggression has its origins in the limbic areas and particularly the
amygdala which relates to the emotions, and shapes “fight or flight”
responses.
When emotional, adolescents have lower activity in their frontal lobes and
more activity in the amygdala than adults. The amygdala may also be more
easily activated in adolescents. In one experiment, young people were
reported to exhibit greater activity in the amygdala than in the frontal
lobes when engaged in a task requiring subjects to identify emotional states
from facial expressions – adults showed greater frontal activity ( Yurgelen-
Todd, 1998)
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One interesting but curious research finding is that it is young people with
low resting heart rates that are more likely to be aggressive and engage in
high risk behaviours. This raises the possibility that adolescents who have
been exposed to high stress during childhood may habituate to that level of
stress and become harder to excite or motivate and use more extreme ways
of behaving and relating to others to relieve boredom.
Risk taking and Drug Experimentation
One way of relieving boredom is substance abuse. Some exploratory drug

use is normative during adolescence. They may become dependent more
rapidly than adults. Within a year of starting, smoking most attempt to quit
but 97% are smoking two years later,
The young people with low resting heart rates that I mentioned above have
an increased their susceptibility to substance abuse. For example, after peer
substance use, perceived levels of stress most strongly predicts adolescent
alcohol and drug use ( Wagner, 1993)
Alcohol and cigarettes are often considered gateway drugs that can lead to
more illicit drug abuse, Early onset alcohol use powerfully predicts later
alcohol abuse and dependence. May alter neural development, Other risk
factors collect around early initiation into alcohol use.
21
Summary and Key Implications of this Research for Schools
So what does all this mean for schools? A number of things:
1. Realise that adolescents are not just a smaller version of adults, The
adolescent brain is in transition. It differs neuro-chemically and
anatomically from adults.
2. Remember that adolescents frontal lobes are “closed for construction”.
Expecting teenagers to show a lot of fore thought, planning,consideration
and impulse control is like expecting a goldfish to recite Shakespeare.
3. Grab them by their emotions. If you want adolescents to learn make it
emotionally relevant to them. Use their TV shows – Friends, Home and
Away, Dorks on Heat – to spark their interest. The major interest and
activity in the adolescent brain is all about the” two F”s”- do I fight it or
do I .. er.. become extremely friendly with it.
4. Bombard them with positives. This is the age where motivation gets
tricky. Use rewards, damn it use anything you can thing of to keep them
intrigued with learning. If at the end of these years, they can say I like
learning, it’s fun and I can do it, you deserve a medal
5 Too much freedom is not good
6 There is a great opportunity at this time to teach young people how to
work smarter not harder, to develop practical intelligence and to instill
the habits and routines that increase the likelihood of academic success
7 Last but not least, never underestimate your power. Adolescents need
someone around them – an adult who has more options that they do.
Someone who they may battle with, but someone who ultimately they
imitate and emulate and believe it or not, that someone is you. And the
best way of maintaining at least the illusion of having more options than
they have, is to know when not to waste your breath!
Andrew Fuller
22
References
Allen,M.T. and Matthews, K.A. (1997) Hemodynamic responses to laboratory

stressors in children and adolescents : the influences of age, race and
gender, Psychophysiology, 34,329-339.
Blum, R.W. ( 2005) , A Case for School Connectedness Educational

Leadership April, 62,7,16-20
Carskadon, M.A., Acebo, C. and Oskar,G.J. ( 2004) Regulation of Adolescent

Sleep: Implications for Behavior, Annual New York Academy of
Science, 1021,276- 291.
Csikszentimihalyi, M. Larson, R., and Prescott, S.(1977) The ecology of

adolescent activity and experience, Journal of Youth and
Adolescence , 6,281-294.
Dahl, R.E. (2004) Adolescent Brain Development: A Period of

Vulnerabilities and Opportunities, Annual New York Academy of
Science, 1021,1-22.
Damasio, A.R.( 1995) Desartes Error; Emotion Reason and the Human Brain,
New York : Quill.
De Bellis, M.D., Keshavan,M., Beers, S.R., Hall, J., Frustaci.K., Masalehdan, A.,
Noll, J., and Boring , A,M. ( 2001) Sex Differences in Brain
Maturation during Childhood and Adolescence, Cerebral Cortex, 11,
552-557.
Deci, E.L. Koestner, R. and Ryan,R.M. (1999) A meta-analytic review of

experiments examining the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic
motivation, Psychological Bulletin, 125,627-688.
Fuller, A (2004) Help Your Child Succeed At School, Inyahead press:

Queenscliff
Gee, J.P. ( 2003) What video games have to teach us about learning and
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literacy, New York : Palgrave
Gopnik, A, Meltzoff, A. and Kuhl, P. (1999) how babies think, London:

Weidenfeld and Nicolson,
Greenfield,S. ( 1997) By some estimates, the human pre-frontal cortex: The

Human Brain : a guided tour, Basic Books.
Giedd, J, Rumsey, J.M., Castellanos, F.X., Rajapakse,J.C., Kaysen,D.,

Vaituzis,A.C., Vauss,Y.C., Hamburger, S.D.,Rapoport,J. (1996) A
quantitative MRI study of the corpus callosum in children and
adolescents, Developmental Brain Research, 91, 274-280.
Huttenlocher, P.R. (1999) Dendritic and Synaptic development in

human cerebral cortex: time course and critical periods,
Developmental Neuropsychology, 16,3,347-349.
Keating, D.P. (1990) Adolescent Thinking. In Feldman, S.S., Elliot, G.R. ( Eds)
At the threshold: the developing adolescent, Cambridge, MA, Harvard
Uni Press. ( p. 54-89)
Larson, R. and Richards, M.H. (1994) Divergent Realities : the emotional lives
of mothers, fathers and adolescents, New York: Basic.
Maggs, J.L. Almieda, D.M. and Galambos, N.L. (1995) Risky business : the
paradoxical meaning of problem behavior for young adolescents ,
Journal of Early Adolescence, 15,344- 362.
Marsh, H.W and Kleitamn, S. (2002) Extracurricular School Activities: The

good, the bad and the nonlinear, Harvard Educational review, 72,4,464-511.
24
Moffit ,T. E.,(1993), Adolescence limited & life course persistent antisocial
behaviour: a developmental taxonomy, Psychological Review, 100, 674-
701.
Newcombe, N and Dubas, J.S. (1989) Individual differences in cognitive

ability: are they related to the timing of puberty? In Lerner, RM,
Foch, TT ( Eds.) Biological- psychological- interactions in early
adolescence , Hilldale, NJ : Lawrence Erlbaum and Associates. 249-
302
Perkins-Gough,D ( 2005) , Special Report / Fixing High Schools

Educational Leadership April, 62,7,88-89
Restak, R . (2001) Mozart’s Brain and the Fighter Pilot, New York: Harmony
Simmons, R.G., Burgeson, R. Reef,M.J. (1988) Cumulative change at entry to

adolescence . In Gunnar, M.R., Collins, W.A.,( Eds.) Development
during the transition to adolescence .vol 21. Hillsdale, NJ Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates p. 123-150.
Sisk, C.L. and Foster, D.L., ( 2004) The neural basis of puberty and
adolescence, Nature Neuroscience, 7 (10): 1040-1047
Spear,L.P. (2000) The adolescent brain and age-related behavioral

manifestations, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 24,417-463.
Spear,L.P. (2000) Neurobehavioral Changes in Adolescence, Current

Directions in Psychological Science, 9,4,111- 114.
Strauch, B. (2003) Why are they so weird? What’s really going on in a

teenager’s brain, London: Bloomsbury.
Tomlinson,C.A. and Doubet, K. ( 2005) , Reach Them to Teach Them

Educational Leadership . April, 62,7, 8-15
Wagner, E.F. (1993) Delay of gratification , coping with stress and substance
use in adolescence, Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology,
1,27-43
25
Wolfe,P. (2001) Brain Matters- translating research into classroom practice,
Association for Supervision and Curriculum Developent: Virginia, USA.
Wolfe,P. (2002) The Adolescent Brain: A work in progress, www.patwolf.com
Yurgelen- Todd, D.( 1998) Brain and psyche seminar. White head Institute
for Biomedical Research, Cambridge MA June 11.
26
Handy Hints for Improving Learning
The following handy hints for improving learning are available for schools to
use in newsletters. They are extracted from Andrew Fuller’s book “ Help
Your Child Succeed At School”

No. 1 Most Learning Doesn’t Happen At School!
Children spend only 15% of their time at school. They spend more time
asleep (33 %) than they do at school. Most of their time (52 %) is at home,
awake, mucking around, playing, and learning about life and it’s what they do
with that time that is important.
Most of their future learning also won’t occur in school, It is estimated that
70% of the jobs that will exist in the year 2020 do not exist now. We know
that knowledge is doubling every three years. It is estimated that 50 years
ago a high school graduate left school knowing about 75% of what they would
need to know in their working life – today’s high school graduate will leave
knowing about 2%!
This series of handy hints to improve learning are designed to help us work
together to ensure that we prepare your children for success.
From “ Help Your Child Succeed at School” by Andrew Fuller

www.inyahead.com.au

No.2 Organising a Learning Space for Your Child
As your child grows and develops, there will need to be somewhere set up
for them to study and do projects. Some kids just can’t get themselves
organised and may need a parent to take care of the practical aspects of
setting up a home study area. The parent may also need to be responsible for
keeping it neat. It’s ok for parents to assist by thinking of ways to better
organise notes as well.

www.inyahead.com.au
27
No.3 Organising a Learning Space for Your Child - Lighting
Natural or indirect lighting such as a desk lamp is best for learning. It is
best for your child not to study under fluorescent lighting as it is related to
raised cortisol levels in the blood stream (an indicator of anxiety and
agitation). Cortisol also suppresses language functions. If you are purchasing
a desk lamp try to avoid fluorescent lights.

www.inyahead.com.au

No. 4 How much Television viewing should I allow my child to watch if I
want them to succeed at school.
There is growing evidence to suggest that any TV viewing for children under
the age of two impairs their ability to concentrate, As children develop, a
small amount of television viewing is positively associated with academic
achievement. A nine year old shouldn’t watch more than one and a half hours
per day. A thirteen year old shouldn’t watch more than one hour a day.
Bad news for those of you with older children! At 17 years of age the
optimal amount of TV viewing is half an hour per day.
While there is no real evidence on the amount of time spent playing

computer games, it is a good idea to keep televisions and computer out of
children’s bedrooms.

www.inyahead.com.au
28
No. 5 How much sleep does my child need to succeed at school?
A good nights sleep (at least 8 hours) is essential for optimal brain
functioning at school. Memory consolidation occurs during sleep especially
during dream (or REM) sleep. During the normal 8-9 hours of sleep, five
dream (REM) cycles occur. Adolescents getting only 5-6 hours of sleep lose
out on the last two REM cycles and thereby reduce the amount of time the
brain has to consolidate information.
Teenagers need as much sleep as children, partly because their brains are
doing so much development.
Always remember there is no such thing as a sleep bank. So just because you
slept 10 hours one night doesn’t mean you can get away with only sleeping six
hours the next night.
Students who don’t get enough sleep have to work much harder to do well at
school.

www.inyahead.com.au

No. 6 Know Your Child’s “Down” time
Everyone has a down time when they learn new information less well. As a
rough guide, think of the time they go to sleep, then think of the time they
usually wake up, calculate the midpoint of their sleep, add twelve hours and
around that time is their “down time”.
For example, if your child sleeps from 9.30 pm to 7 am, the midpoint of their
sleep is 2.00 am. Adding twelve hours takes us to 2.00 pm which is the time
your child is likely to learn least well.
It is important for teachers and parents to know students likely down times
so they can schedule in active, hand on learning at these times.
www.inyahead.com.au
29
No. 6 Eat a good breakfast
If your Mum ever said have fish or eggs for breakfast because it’s brain
food, she was right! As long as it’s medically safe to do so, a breakfast that
is high in protein (think cheese, milk, bacon, eggs) and lower in
carbohydrates (think cereal, orange juice and toast) promotes concentration
and learning.
Also encourage your child to drink lots of water- the brain runs on it!
Students who don’t eat breakfast are not only more likely to gain weight;
they will also have to work harder than others to do well at school.
www.inyahead.com.au

No. 7 Use Music
There is a growing evidence to suggest that playing instrumental music softly
in the background enhances learning. Pachabel’s Canon, Mozart and Baroque
music seem to be particularly effective though you might like to use a range
of music.
It is always good to have students study for some time without music. Exam
rooms don’t have music playing in them.
www.inyahead.com.au

No. 8 Use aromas
Most people have had the experience of smelling a particular aroma and
having a series of memories flood back. Partly this is because your olfactory
nerve is directly linked to the hippocampus, which is the part of your brain
where memories are integrated.
The aromas most often associated with improvements in concentration and

memory are lemon, basil and rosemary.
30
www.inyahead.com.au
No. 9 Monitor their use of video and computer games
Video games are incredibly popular and give a sense of great mastery,
challenge and involvement. Boys particularly use video games in a social way.
It is important to realise that the use of video and computer games is not
completely passive.
Too much playing of these games

can be negative. These games can
be so compelling they become
addictive. While some games
require quite intricate problem
solving, the skills learned on these
games do not appear to readily
transfer into other arenas of life.
Very few of the games require
creative problem solving or an
opportunity to be an active
participant in determining a story
line.
31
Some exposure to computer games is good. Too much, though, can be toxic.
Sadly, there is no research that tells us what the right amount of time spent
of computer games should be so you’ll need to think about the balance of
your child’s life and their range of activities and interests.

www.inyahead.com.au

No. 10. Help them to build the essentials skills for success.
Three of the skills needed for success at school (and in most areas of
life) are concentration, memory and sequencing or getting things in the
right order. The games that parents play with their children such as
Snap, Uno, Concentration, Battleships, Monopoly, Chess, Jigsaw puzzles
all play an incredibly important role in developing these skills of success.
Computer versions of these games are not as effective in helping
children develop these skills. To really help your child to succeed at
school every so often switch off the TV, unplug the computer and pull
out a game.

www.inyahead.com.au
32
No. 11. Limit the amount of part-time work
Senior secondary students should not work more than ten hours a week
at a part-time job. If they do so, there is clear evidence that their
marks will suffer.

www.inyahead.com.au
33

Adolescent&#39;s Mind

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Into the Adolescent Mind

Andrew is a fellow of the University of Melbourne’s Department of

Andrew is the author of:

He has co-authored resilience programs used in over 2,500 schools

Andrew can be contacted on 03 9894 3939 or inyahead@satlink.com.au

Adolescents are a mystery to many adults- especially their parents, It is a

Adolescents are a mystery to many adults- especially their parents, It is a

There is a long history of successful people having fairly dodgy adolescent

Norman Wisdom, an actor, received a report that said

‘all glib cleverness and humbug”.

It is an exciting time to be involved in education. For the first time we can

So let’s have a look at what is going on in there.

Andrew Fuller inyahead@satlink.com.au

In terms of brain development, there appear to be times of overproduction

If we place a map of key social competencies at different ages, we get a map

Andrew Fuller inyahead@satlink.com.au

9 peer relationships and synaptic pruning

6 concentration and language abilities

Up to the age of nine or ten the brain continues to be twice as active as an

Andrew Fuller inyahead@satlink.com.au

Interestingly, this appears to be followed by a split pathway with some

It is always worth thinking about the biological and evolutionary

Andrew Fuller inyahead@satlink.com.au

The brain at this time is re-structuring to become cleverer and more

Re-structuring and the frontal lobes

Andrew Fuller inyahead@satlink.com.au

So if the early adolescents frontal lobes have essentially gone missing in

Parents need to be their teenage children’s frontal lobes. Asking an

It’s almost as if teenagers at this stage have a very powerful, juiced up

A couple of other interesting things are happening in the adolescent brain.

This is why it is absolutely pointless arguing with teenagers. I like to think

• the ability to reproduce;

Of these we could argue that the establishment of an identity that is

Is the teaching of 'subjects' that obliges each secondary teacher to try to

Andrew Fuller inyahead@satlink.com.au

Another thing that is happening in adolescents’ brains is myelination. Myelin

Andrew Fuller inyahead@satlink.com.au

Obviously it is important to help young people to become as self-reliant as

Increased affiliation with Peers

As Linda Spear points out, most species show an alteration in social

During an average week, adolescents have been reported to spend close to

The interest in peers may have traditionally helped the dispersal of

Imitations are tried out and if successful become patterns or habits.

Approximately 99% of the information that comes into your awareness is

The amount of learning we can do directly relates to our ability to

Concentration is a bit like a bouncer at a disco. It rapidly inspects

Extensive practice allows for the development of pathways of concentration.

Andrew Fuller inyahead@satlink.com.au

The Happy Wanderers

Adolescents are harder to motivate and are motivated by different things

Synaptic pruning may be associated with a major decline in the amount of

As children get older their attitude to school deteriorates and adolescents'

Andrew Fuller inyahead@satlink.com.au

Spark group work puzzles computers rewards

intrigue novelty quizzes presentation format

Meaningfulness importance relevance Cater to interests

Engage heart & head “just in time” learning.

Continuous feedback loops Optimism feelings of authenticity

As suggested by Pat Wolfe some guidelines are:

Don’t sleep with a computer or TV flickering in the room,

The decision making ability of adolescents may be more vulnerable to

Adolescents are often sleep deprived which may in turn increase

Adolescents may have more negative life experiences ( friendship changes,

Adolescent's Mind

Adolescent's Mind