Reading focus
Syllabus: What Changes During Adolescence?
Extend the unit to romantic and sexual development as learning and relationship formation. Examine the fit between biological models and diverse human experiences, including differences in gender, orientation, interest, and timing.
A question to consider. What would a study miss if it measured development only by first intercourse, rather than also asking about meanings, mutual consent, attraction, and relationships?
Why this reading
Romantic and sexual development involve learning, motivation, and relationships as well as physical maturation. This review asks what adolescent neuroscience misses when sexuality is treated chiefly as a source of risk.
Before you read
A sensitive period is a time of heightened responsiveness to particular experience. Hormonal changes, attraction, identity, and behavior are distinct. Animal models can investigate some biological processes but cannot reproduce the meanings of human relationships.
Read for
- Separate findings from hypotheses about puberty and experience-dependent learning.
- Examine what animal, adolescent, and adult studies can each contribute.
- Follow the authors’ discussion of diversity, social context, and limits of reproductive models.
Consider afterwards
- Design a measure of romantic development that allows differences in attraction, identity, behavior, and interest without imposing one expected trajectory.
Editorial context
This is a research agenda, not a universal timetable or a requirement to pursue sex, romance, or parenthood. The authors recognize limits of heterosexual animal frameworks. Their speculative questions about hormonal contraception are not demonstrated harms or clinical advice. Gender identity and sexual orientation require their own measures; neither follows automatically from hormone levels. A 2020 publisher correction records that an omitted declaration of interest was restored in April 2019. The accessible article declares no conflicts of interest; this notice concerns the disclosure statement.