Why Teens Think Differently
Why Teens Think Differently
The Developing Mind of Teenagers
In this newsletter, we provide you with notes on Why Your Teen Thinks Differently, an episode of Talking To Teens: Expert Tips for Parenting Teenagers.
Hosted by Andy Earle, a researcher, and writer who focuses on adolescent risk behaviors and parent-teen communication. Joined by, Chantel Prat, the author of The Neuroscience of You, a cognitive neuroscientist, internationally renowned speaker, and a professor at the University of Washington.
Save time and read our notes on how each person’s brain operates in a unique way.
Topics Covered in this Summary
Left Brain vs Right Brain: What's the Difference?
The Pros and Cons of Brain Specialization
Why Do Teens Think Differently?
Left Brain vs Right Brain: What's the Difference?
The brain consists of twin halves, a left hemisphere alongside a nearly symmetrical right hemisphere. Both hemispheres are functionally different and certain mental processes and behaviors are mainly controlled by one hemisphere rather than the other.
The left hemisphere controls the right-hand side of the body and receives information from the right visual field controlling speech, language, and recognition of words, letters, and numbers.
The right hemisphere controls the left-hand side of the body and receives information from the left visual field controlling creativity, context, and recognition of faces, places, and objects.
The Pros and Cons of Brain Specialization
To better understand the pros and cons of having either a more ‘lopsided’ or balanced brain design, imagine that your brain is a team made up of two people.
If both members of your team are well-rounded and have comparable skill sets, it would be easier to distribute tasks between them randomly.
On the other hand, if one member of your team has strong verbal skills, while the other is an excellent graphic designer, your team would perform better as a whole if the tasks were assigned to the individual best qualified for the job.
The Pros
If everything else were equal, many people would rather have a talented graphic designer on their team rather than one with average skills, and that person will develop a more specialized structure that allows them to perform tasks even better.
As soon as the two hemispheres start to differ, an opportunity is created for one hemisphere to be better suited for certain types of jobs than for others.
The Cons
If the graphic designer is bad at everything else, that team member will become worse suited for other jobs.
That part of the brain then becomes less and less well-suited for doing other things.
Why Do Teens Think Differently?
Parents of teens may be surprised at how long they can spend pondering their own feelings. This is partly because teens haven't yet learned how to interpret them and they might just have a completely different understanding of the world based on the way their brain works.
In fact, recent research has found that adult and teen brains work differently. Adults think with the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s rational part. This is the part of the brain that responds to situations with good judgment and an awareness of long-term consequences. Whereas, teens process information with the amygdala, the emotional part of the brain.
In teens’ brains, the connections between the emotional part of the brain and the decision-making center are still developing and not always at the same rate. That’s why when teens have overwhelming emotional input, they can’t explain later what they were thinking. They weren’t thinking as much as they were feeling.
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