ng their family and assuming responsibility for themselves and others. Therefore, a task of late adolescence is to plan for the future.
As a result of new levels of independence and as part of adolescent exploration and even rebellion, the adolescent has a much greater opportunity than before to engage in deviant behavior. A final task, or more accurately, a final problem, results from this situation. The adolescent is confronted with adult pressure to conform to rules while also having to deal with peer and perhaps internal pressure to violate those rules. The adolescent may choose to strive for academic success or instead to engage in problematic or delinquent behavior in the school setting.
Pubertal change is both a biological and a social phenomenon. While Western society has no ceremonies triggered solely by onset of puberty, pubertal change still serves as a visible signal that the child has reached a new period in the life course. However, the entry into adolescentce is ambiguous, because actual age, personal maturity, and physical maturity do not coincide in the same way for all youth. Youngsters of the same age vary greatly in their level of pubertal development. Since puberty is both a physical and social set of events, several alternate hypotheses have been proposed linking pubertal change and social-psychological reactions. The first hypothesis is that pubertal change will have negative consequences. The major reason for expecting a negative impact is that change itself is viewed as inherently stressful. In this case, the internal endocrine canges as well as dramatic alterations in physical appearance are seen as major stressors. According to this theory, the negative impact of pubertal change should be relatively immediate and short-lived, diminishing as the adolescent adjusts to his or her new physiology and self-image. No predictions are made about any longer lasting effects of being an early versu...