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.'"

Comments

It depends...

[Farmer Tim]

For ordinary people or those of us on Slashdot?

Re:It depends...

[Farmer Tim]

That's because you don't really appreciate being 18 until you're 35.

Ouch, my arthritis!

Re:It depends...

[Ucklak]

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.

Re:It depends...

[Vellmont]

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.

Re:It depends...

[hey!]

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.

Re:It depends...

[Ucklak]

I'm quipping from personal experience.
Renter in suburbia (to me) implies someone who isn't mobile and is planted within the community with no intention of moving.
There are plenty of times when renting is a sound choice and I'm not knocking renting at all.

The 34 year old I mention is actually a 54 year old that has filed bankruptcy every 10 years, lost money on a house in a booming market because he didn't want to deal with a realtor or pay 6% or negotiate, falls for most 'get rich quick' schemes and has lost a substantial amount of money in one, has flat out told me "I don't know what the fuss is about real estate, you can't make money in it and you always have to pay"
When he did manage to get a house (after he lost money on his original house and rented for 5 years), he got a balloon mortgage and didn't plan for the end of the 5year term where the balloon payment was required so he foreclosed. He got the balloon mortgage becaue the payments were cheaper than a standard 30 year fixed. I guess he didn't know what the hell a balloon mortgage is.

This guy only knows price and not value and I call him a scam victim because he definitely isn't a scam artist even though he thinks he's clever by buying senior citizen movie tickets ans always returns food in a restaurant so he can get a free dessert.
My mortgage is $300 higher than his rent and he claims that he has the better deal because I'd have to pay for maintenance on the building, air conditioning and pay for water on top of a higher monthly payment.
He doesn't get it that I'd rather pay extra when I file for personal income tax than 'get money back' because we all know that that money you 'get back' is extra money that the government gives you.

Re:It depends...

[infinite9]

I've seen 10 year olds whose had a parent killed with more maturity than a 16 year old.

Indeed. My wife and I adopted two children from russia. Since then, we've done a lot of research into russian children who either spent most of their time in orphanages, or were taken from their russian* parents because of abuse or neglect. There are dozens of cases where a sibling group of three children or so, made up of, say, a 2 year old, 4 year old, and 6 year old, end up with the 6 year old going out and finding food for the younger children, even to the point where the oldest child is starving so that the younger ones can eat. Some of these sibling groups end up adopted by american families. When this happens, the oldest child can't seem to let go of this parental sense of responsability for the younger kids. It's almost like part of their childhood has been lost. So I agree. I think it has to do with the presence of responsability. Nothing makes you grow up faster than having to care for a child of your own.

* Not to single out the russians. I'm sure there are plenty of examples of this sort of bad situation in every other country including the US.

Re:It depends...

[Retric]

"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.

Re:It depends...

[Anonymous Coward]

Your 54 year old isn't immature, he's stupid. There's a difference.

Re:It depends...

[hey!]

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.

Bullshit study

[rylin]

You're only young once, but you can be immature forever.
God knows my colleagues agree!

Re:Bullshit study

[hey!]

You're only young once, but you can be immature forever.

Oh, that's wrong. It really should be: You're only young once, but you can be immature any time you want to be.

I guess it's the perspective age brings. Now go fetch Grampa his whiskey, and mind you he knows exactly how much should be in there.

Re:Bullshit study

[hey!]

hey Grampa, Grama's been dead for 15 years, so that whiskey ain't exactly gonna help you with your sex life.

No, but spending your inheritence will.

Maturity or additional Memories

[LiquidCoooled]

When moving away from home you encounter a hell of a lot of new experiences and theres so much to learn and take in.

For instance, embedding the location of the pub and distance to the nearest kebab shop are key.

Students who cannot manage this feat rarely last a week, you see them cold hungry and sober in lectures wishing they were back at home.

Of course your brain matures when you leave home though, you do have to adapt, because you just couldn't survive if you let your mummy do everything.

Re:Never!

[FinchWorld]

You're never going to get first post! Grow up!!!!!

30 year old here.

[fixinah]

And I would just like to say POOP! *giggle*

Re:30 year old here.

[Patrik_AKA_RedX]

I fail to see what's so funny about Professional Object Oriented Programming.

"Significant changes"

[user24]

From TA:

"During the first year of college .... significant changes took place in the brains of these individuals"

- yeah, because it's the first year of college - they're all busy pickling their brains with newly found alcohol and drugs.
duh.

The problem isn't measuring, it's defining

[MadFarmAnimalz]

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.

Re:The problem isn't measuring, it's defining

[01dbs]

How exactly is this worthless?

And more to the point, did you actually RTFA? Because the researchers DON'T use the word maturity; the Dartmouth Public Affairs office uses the word maturity. The researchers conclude that significant anatomical changes occur in the brain long after an age that's generally -- and legally -- accepted as "adulthood." This is an important conclusion, because it tells us something about how encountering new and more challenging circumstances has a significant and measurable effect on brain development. That's especially important knowledge, because it has implications for how we go about teaching young adults, whether its college instruction or training young soldiers or whatever.

The conclusions of the study -- and their potential benefits in practical circumstances -- hold regardless of any arbitrary definition of maturity.

Age

[Elitist_Phoenix]

Here is a link to and science program in Australia called Catalyst. I actually managed to watch this episode and this reminded me of it and I was bored enough to google for a link.

What it says is that the brain doesnt mature fully until the age of 25.

http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1424747.ht m

Areas of further study?

[Teiresias_UK]

I wonder what the effect of beer is on maturity and these areas of the brain known to integrate emotion and cognition?

I know after 12 pints I often lose the ability to speak, start dribbling, and crawl around on the floor like a 2 year old ...

Re:Areas of further study?

[CmdrGravy]

That's tragic ! After 12 pints I become extremely chatty, witty and insightful, gain the ability to dance like a sex god and become immeasurably more attractive to the ladies. I think, I rarely have any clear memories to back this up absolutely.

Think about why car insurance gets cheaper at 35

[aegilops]

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

Control group?

[nordelius]

Maybe I'm missing something, but wouldn't a suitable control group comprise 18 year olds who didn't go to college? As the experiment stands, you could argue either that:

a) going to college changes your brain
b) being 18 and full of hormones changes your brain
c) both to varying extents

If only that were true.

[raehl]

We all know that every single 18 year old, without exception, is an immature, boozing, sex-addict.

I've encountered more immature 18 year olds who are straight-edge sexaphobics than boozing sexaholics. There is a whole segment of our society devoted to making sure children are shielded from any sort of adult social behavior until at least after they graduate college. Are they safe until they finish college? I suppose. Are they prey after that? You betcha.

The problem with this post

[museumpeace]

is that NONE of us can RTFA. All that is posted here is the write-up by a Dartmouth PR person. The link to the journal article hits a roadblock unless you can toss it a Wiley Interscience license cookie...you may be lucky enough to be near a university library..you probably aren't. When I submitted this to the Agonist.org yesterday, I had such access. The paper is long, spends 2/3 of its pages clarifying and justifying its particular use of the somewhat controversialVBM technique and otherwise qualifying its results. The authors are fairly up front about distancing their work from claiming a universal result...how "average" could your findings be based only on 19 Dartmouth freshmen. [did they control for alcohol use?].

Even with all the disclaimers, they had two supportable contentions:

1. whatever change it is,[myelination was their pick] higly localized changes in brain areas that integrate emotion and decision ARE changeing.
2. their data do little to pick apart the nature vs nurture issues that may rule such changes...only supporting the conclusion that at 18 something is still rewiring your brain.

...and what is maturity exactly?

[master_p]

I've seen 20 year olds to drive carelessly, doing various wheelies and other tricks on the road, while at the same time many 40 year olds drive very carefully, respecting road signs etc.

Then again I have seen those 20 year olds voting for those politicians that really care about the environment and the world's state, while those 40 year olds voted for their 'connection' that promised them a better job, a bigger loan, more money, etc.

So who is mature after all?

Define It Fool

[aplusjimages]

How do you define or measure maturaty for a study? Is it when you stop laughing when someone farts or says penis? Penis.

Still tragic

[OneSmartFellow]

After 12 pints I am invisible - and Superman !

I am the first author

[benntop]

It is good to see a lot of thoughtful comments here regarding the paper.

If you have any questions for me specifically then please reply to this post and I will try to answer as directly as I can.

Best,
~Craig

Re:I am the first author

[benntop]

The linked Slashdot article is just the College Relations department press release. You can look at the full prepress PDF at the following address:

http://www.theteenbrain.com/about/publications/pdf s/2005-Bennett-VBM.pdf

Re:I am the first author

[benntop]

You couldn't be more correct about the press release.

The sample size of ~20 is small when compared to many other studies. Oddly enough though, it is above average for many MRI and fMRI experiments. Several of the studies we built off of have even smaller sample sizes. Gogtay et al., 2004*, a very good paper, had a sample size of 13! This doesn't justify the low number, but does give you an idea regarding normal study sizes.

We had wanted to end up with usuable data for 40 subjects. We scanned 50 subjects for our time1 acquisition, which we thought would be plenty to keep our numbers high after our time2 scan. In the end subject dropout, scanner breakdowns, and just plain old bad data conspired to limit the sample to 19.

* Gogtay, N. et al. Dynamic mapping of human cortical development during childhood through early adulthood. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 101, 8174-9 (2004).

I'm 27...

[odyaws]

...and I'm still waiting.

Forced Maturity

[SeanDuggan]

When this happens, the oldest child can't seem to let go of this parental sense of responsability for the younger kids. It's almost like part of their childhood has been lost. So I agree. I think it has to do with the presence of responsability. Nothing makes you grow up faster than having to care for a child of your own.
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.