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When Does Maturity Set In?
An anonymous reader writes "Two Dartmouth researchers claim that they are one step closer to discovering at what age human maturity sets in. From the article: 'For the study, Baird and graduate student Craig Bennett looked at the brains of nineteen 18-year-old Dartmouth students who had moved more than 100 miles to attend college. A control group of 17 older students, ranging in age from 25 to 35, were also studied for comparison. The results indicate that significant changes took place in the brains of these individuals. The changes were localized to regions of the brain known to integrate emotion and cognition. Specifically, these are areas that take information from our current body state and apply it for use in navigating the world.'"
You're only young once, but you can be immature forever.
God knows my colleagues agree!
Worthless research.
What constitutes maturity is not exactly well defined; these fellows just seem to have chosen a bunch of criteria (ability to navigate the world my ass) and proceeded on such basis.
The problem here isn't when people mature, that part's easy enough given an accepted definition of maturity. The problem is reaching that definition.
Do they allow people to do research now without the prerequisite of being able to distinguish between subjectivity and objectivity?
This research is like if I stated that the volume of an alarm clock is a good determinant of how likely one is to be a successful employee. There's just so much wrong with the premises it isn't even worth the few minutes to read.
Bad science has a home on slashdot, I see.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
What an almost pointless study.
Maturity sets in when responsibility is a requirement.
Environment plays a heavy in maturity.
Multiple siblings I'm sure plays a role vs that of an only child as well as a parental death or divorce.
Circle of friends plays a role and none of this is an age requirement.
I've seen 10 year olds whose had a parent killed with more maturity than a 16 year old. That 10 year old will be a more mature 16 year old than a 20 year old drinking it up in a small college town.
A 22 year old with a handle on debt will be more mature than a 34 year old that is a renter in suburbia that is adamant that you can't make money in real estate.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
There has to be a statistical reason why your car insurance is so absurdly high when you're a late teen, with a steady decrease before a significant reduction at the age of 35. Certainly your appetite for risk behind the wheel doesn't completely reflect your all round maturity in life, but I'd suggest a strong correlation.
Aegilops
a) going to college changes your brain
b) being 18 and full of hormones changes your brain
c) both to varying extents
-- "You never mentioned comets before, Mac. This opens up a whole new area of negotiation." - Gordon Urquart
I think we're talking about generalities here. When one particular person becomes "mature" is really irrelevent. If you were talking about height there's certainly 12 year olds that're taller than a 30 year old. That doesn't mean that there's not such a thing as growth spurts, and an age when most people are "full grown".
I also think there's a difference in brain maturity and being responsible. The researchers aren't studying "being responsible" as that would be quite hard to define and compare among different people in any kind of objective way. What they're studying is difference in brain structure, at different ages. What it sounds like they've found out is that generally speaking there is still brain development going on after age 18. To anyone that ever sees a lot of 18-20 year olds, compared to say anyone over 24 or 25 that really shouldn't be much of a surprise.
AccountKiller
Maturity sets in when responsibility is a requirement.
Seems to me you're exhibiting the same logical fallacy you're projecting on the study: confounding correlation with causation.
But before you can argue correlation or causation, you need to have data. As far as uselessness of the study, you're ignoring the importance of variation in the population as well. It's all well and good to say people get more mature as they get older, but it isn't always true, nor is always true in the same way. These variations are highly significant on a day to day basis, we're all aware of them, but in a very imprecise fashion.
Subjective impressions may do to be going on with, but precise and reproduceable data is more useful to the process. Normative data has to be the first step, even though it is of limited interest in itself. Once you have your baseline data, then you look at exceptional individuals and see what insight they give you into the process, for example the person who never moves out of his parent's house, or who never seems to learn no matter how many times he's burned.
Maybe at that future date you have complementary normative anatomical or neuroscience data to work with too showing precisely how a 34 year old brain functions differenly from an 18 year old one. This doesn't explain why 34 year olds are more mature.
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"nineteen 18-year-old Dartmouth students who had moved more than 100 miles to attend college" vs "A control group of 17..."
With a sample size that small you realy can't tell anything specific.
I don't know how they can try and publish a study where they look at such a small sample size, and assume the diffrence between the older and younger group's brain is based on maturity. Now if they had tracked 100 people from age 12 to 30 and compared brain scans with their behavior they could get good data but this study is worthless.
Your 54 year old isn't immature, he's stupid. There's a difference.
Oh, I agree. If you think about it, it's almost a social scientific scandal that there isn't better data. Getting data is expensive and difficult.
It's a bit of a vicious circle. Insufficient funding means weak data sets; weak data sets lead to conclusions that are heavy on speculation; overspeculative results lead to lost credibility; lost credibility means less funding.
But I do stand by this: it's not a good idea to dismiss the very idea of social scientific research because we are satisfied with our pet personal theories.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
...and I'm still waiting.
Still trying to think of a clever sig...
You can see the same thing in the children of alcoholics and the like. Forced to become the responsible adults in the family, they often have to give up on their childhood in the process. Major psychological pitfalls often lie ahead for them.
Personally, I feel every child should have the opportunity to be a child, without major care or responsibility. It's not always been the historical precedent (adolescence, and especially the teenage period are relatively recent inventions within the last century or two), but I think it's been established as something necessary in today's society. Not to say that you shouldn't instill a sense of maturity and responsibility within your kids, but it's more along the lines of keeping their rooms clean and budgeting their allowance, not having to keep up the house finances and ensure that mummy and daddy get tucked into bed after they drink themselves into an alcoholic stupor.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.