Answers will vary. Before adolescence, children describe themselves primarily in terms of their physical characteristics and their actions. As they approach adolescence, children begin to incorporate psychological characteristics and social relationships into their self-descriptions. Adolescents' self-perceptions become more complex than those of younger children. According to Susan Harter's Self-Perception Profile of academically talented adolescents, many factors come into play. Adolescents may describe themselves as anxious or sarcastic with parents but as talkative and cheerful with friends. Such contradictions and conflicts in self-description reach their peak at about age 14 and then decline. The advanced formal-operational skills of older adolescents allow them to integrate contradictory aspects of the self. The older adolescent might say: "I'm very adaptable. When I'm around my friends, who think that what I say is important, I'm very talkative; but around my family, I'm quiet because they're not interested enough to really listen to me."

D

The autonomic nervous system seems to operate almost entirely out of range of conscious control; we have little awareness or direct control of it. The ANS consists of two anatomically distinct parts. The sympathetic branch consists of nerve fibres that emanate from the thoracic and lumbar regions of the spinal cord and make contact with a large number of body organs. These include the: heart, stomach and blood vessels. The parasympathetic branch consists of fibres emanating from the cranial and sacral regions of the spinal cord. The sympathetic system arouses the body for vigorous action. The parasympathetic system returns the body to a more quiescent state.

B

C

D

Those years are important because those are the years during which we typically are developing the competencies we will need to make a living in a complex society, learning to manage our emotions, moving through autonomy toward interdependence, developing mature interpersonal relationships, establishing our personal identity, developing and refining our sense of purpose, and developing a greater integration of who we are with what we say and do in all circumstances.

A

C