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Science Technology

When Does Maturity Set In? 300

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the some-people-never-get-there dept.
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.'"
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When Does Maturity Set In? More

When Does Maturity Set In?

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  • It depends... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Farmer Tim ( 530755 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @06:24AM (#14658711) Journal
    For ordinary people or those of us on Slashdot?

  • Bullshit study (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rylin ( 688457 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @06:25AM (#14658713)
    You're only young once, but you can be immature forever.
    God knows my colleagues agree!
    • "What I look forward to is continued immaturity followed by death."

    • Re:Bullshit study (Score:4, Funny)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @06:59AM (#14658803) Homepage Journal
      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 (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 )
      I have noticed that the happiest people at work are the ones that are not mature.

      The Executive VP who is always serious and demands reverence is a sad sad man. yeah he get's to drive home in his $78,000.00 Mercedes but he is still sad.

      The engineers that happily throw nerf items at each other and typically kid around are very happy people.

      Maturity = sadness.

      Now before all the sitck in the mud serious mature people show up to poke holes in what I said. Maturity != responsibility.

      You can be a 13 year old PITA
      • My experience is that everybody is sad, just some people don't realise that they are sad. I find that it is my role in life to go and inform those happy but sad people how they really feel.

  • Never! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm never going to grow up! First post!!!!!

  • Maturity or additional Memories (Score:5, Funny)

    by LiquidCoooled ( 634315 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @06:30AM (#14658733) Homepage Journal
    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.

    • 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.

      And those who can manage it are seen pasty, sickly and smelly in lectures, wishing they were back at the pub.

      Dirty, noisy undergrads.

    • Ditto that. Those changes would set in at 15, if the study had included young men and women that were forced to care for themselves at that age. Maturity comes from experience, not some legislated atomically accurate age. For crying out loud, it should be obvious that you can nail people to a measuring stick!

    • 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...

      Aha, so it makes sense that TFA found development in "areas that take information from our current body state and apply it for use in navigating the world" ... students that didn't have this development didn't survive the Uni environm

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @06:30AM (#14658736)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • 30 year old here. (Score:5, Funny)

    by fixinah ( 809681 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @06:34AM (#14658746) Homepage
    And I would just like to say POOP! *giggle*

  • "Significant changes" (Score:5, Funny)

    by user24 ( 854467 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @06:35AM (#14658751)
    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 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MadFarmAnimalz ( 460972 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @06:39AM (#14658759) Homepage
    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.
    • ability to navigate the world my ass

      I agree. They moved to another state. That isn't halfway across the world. Now I know to some Americans, the concept of The World != America is a novel one. But being able to navigate to another state in America, doesn't constitute being able to navigate the world.

    • It's all a game of semantics, yes. The term "maturity" is a superbly dumb choice for a scientific study, since it has so many conflicting and unclear pop-science (and culture) meanings.

      Not that such a pesky fact will stop many on /. from arguing about it as if "maturity" means something concrete.

      Personally, I don't even think it's worthwhile to argue about a definition for maturity. Rather than argue about how to categorize, it seems a more fruitful path to directly study the types of psychological/me

      • No, it's not semantics. The human brain does not "mature", that is, cease it's major developments, until certain times in life. Yes Virginia, there is a bell curve associated with those times -- when the glands kick in, when the eyes develop, when the frontal lobes are fully functional -- but that doesn't negate the general idea that there is a time of maturity. And no, it's not "accurate" in the sense that you can set a watch by it, but that does not negate it's usefulness in psychological studies.
    • 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 ef

  • drugs and alchol? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by millahtime ( 710421 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @06:42AM (#14658768) Homepage Journal
    I have also read, but I can't remember where and it's to friggin early for me to take the time to look it up, that drugs and alchol (certain amounts like a lot) can affect the brains development as an organ keeping it in the state of a younger brain.

    This could be, and I think the study even said so, one of the reasons drunks and drug addicts act so immature if they have been doing it for a long time or started when they were kids.

    I wonder if the study took enviormental factors such as this into account in the study.

  • Age (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Elitist_Phoenix ( 808424 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @06:42AM (#14658769)
    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 [abc.net.au]
    • Oh great. Another excuse to raise the drinking age. When are the legislatures going to learn that it's experience that matures people. It's not set to some cosmological timer.

      • Re:Age (Score:3, Insightful)

        by aussie_a ( 778472 )
        I'd say when someone can die for their country, they can drink alcohol. But y'know, that's just crazy old me.

      • Re:Age (Score:2)

        by hey! ( 33014 )
        Oh great. Another excuse to raise the drinking age

        Age has it's compensations. Granted the compensations of age (money, pulling rank on young 'uns and telling 'em what they can and cannot do) suck next to the compensations of youth (sex,drugs, offensive music), but there you have it.
      • "When are the legislatures going to learn that it's experience that matures people."

        Because it's not. If that were so, people would learn from their mistakes. There are too many immature people who have arm-length DUI records and too many immature programmers who continue to perform badly with their team-mates for this to be true. People don't learn from experience if their brains aren't ready to. QED.

  • Areas of further study? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Teiresias_UK ( 413251 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @06:43AM (#14658772)

    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 ...

  • contorl group (Score:3, Insightful)

    by koekepeer ( 197127 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @06:48AM (#14658778)
    (read with tongue in cheeck)

    so ehm... they take a bunch of older students as the control group. is that a smart idea? i'd take a bunch of people already working for a while, who have been confronted with Real Life (tm) and have developed into Maturity

  • Use it or lose it? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by l0rd ( 52169 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @06:55AM (#14658798)
    I wonder if someone who doesn't move out before a certain age won't have certain brain development, just as someone who hasn't learnt to talk will never talk after a certain age.

    In other words, do the experiences of moving out change you or does the brain change naturally?

    Also are the effects of alchol and drugs on brain development also taken into account, seeing as these are college freshmen ;)
    • yup. The conclusions at the end of the paper [I can see the Wiley Interscience via my library site license] implies that the changes in brain activity they measured are the result of both nature and nurture...the old debate can rage on.

  • Simle Answer (Score:3, Interesting)

    by joel8x ( 324102 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @07:04AM (#14658815) Homepage
    Once you stop drinking like a fish, you start to mature. People who keep hardcore drinking after their college-era stay at ~18 years old in their maturity.

    • Once you stop drinking like a fish, you start to mature. People who keep hardcore drinking after their college-era stay at ~18 years old in their maturity.

      Of course. Alcohol's a preservative. Think "Pickled BrainZ".

      I disagree about them staying ~18 in their level of maturity, though - it seems that, as time goes on, they act less and less mature, until they're acting just like a baby - spitting up their food, drooling, puking wherever they want, and pissing themselves. How they think this constitutes a

  • Think about why car insurance gets cheaper at 35 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by aegilops ( 307943 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @07:12AM (#14658843) Homepage
    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? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nordelius ( 947186 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @07:16AM (#14658866) Homepage Journal
    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

    • Seconded.

      This an experiment which has only a positive control group. There is no negative control group which means that this is not a scientific observation but a boatload of blah blah blah.

  • Or as they say, "Too soon old, too late smart".

    One of the best reasons for life extension.
    • Or as they say, "Too soon old, too late smart".

      One of the best reasons for life extension.

      I don't know, I kind of agree with Ivanova in Babylon 5.

      Ivanova: It wouldn't matter. Even if we lived two hundred years, we'd still be human. We'd still make the same mistakes.
      Franklin: You're a pessimist.
      Ivanova: I'm Russian, doctor. We understand these things.

    • Nonsense, you're only mature when you're old enough for Ultra Porn.

  • The problem with this post (Score:5, Informative)

    by museumpeace ( 735109 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @07:26AM (#14658905) Journal
    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 controversial [wikibooks.org]VBM 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? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by master_p ( 608214 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @07:43AM (#14658960)
    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?
    • If you vote Republican before you are 20, you have no heart. If you vote Democrat after you are 20, you have no brain.

      All you are noting is that many people, somewhere along the line, realize that idealism doesn't actually work.
      • Can work the other way too. You can be conservative when you're young because you think your destiny is in your own hands, and that people who fail are lazy and/or stupid. As you get older, your realize that much of our success is luck and that it makes sense for us to have the government help out those who are less fortunate.
    • You see 20 year olds voting for those politicians who CLAIM to care really care about the environment and the world's state. In other words those 20 year olds were young enough to be had.

      The only thing that a politician cares about is power. A firm pre-requisite for power is staying in office and that means votes. There is a reason why writing your senator or congressman makes a difference, and why they're VERY, VERY interested in whether you're a registered voter when you do. It is why they employ team

  • Define It Fool (Score:3, Funny)

    by aplusjimages ( 939458 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @07:48AM (#14658974) Journal
    How do you define or measure maturaty for a study? Is it when you stop laughing when someone farts or says penis? Penis.
  • I myself expierienced this after moving on to third level education. I can't exactly describe why now, but at the time, about six months after starting university, I was keenly aware that my mind had "changed" somehow. I was viewing the world very differently. I put this down as a consequence of moving from an enviornment where permission had to be given in order to urinate, to a place where no one really cared whether I turned up for class or not.

    This occurred again after I moved out of the barent's baseme
  • In some ways I was very mature early on. In other ways I was a "late bloomer". Guess in which.
  • I don't think I felt 'grown up' until I hit 42. Living a peaceful existence with low physical and emotional stress compared to hunter gatherers, farmers, soldiers etc may have something to do with it.
  • I'm a Toys R' Us kid.
    A million toys to choose from, that I can play with.
    From bikes to trikes and video games, its the biggest toy store there is. GEE WIZ! I don't wanna grow up, cuz baby if I did....I wouldn't be a Toys R' Us kid!

    *Sorry, couldn't help myself. Whenever someone tells me to grow up that song kicks in*
  • Maturity is really a process, not a destination. I know some pretty rash, immature seniors (i.e. 60+) and some very level-headed tweens (i.e., 20-30). After they figure out when maturity sets in, I believe we should find out how green is green and how far is up. Then we'll be getting somewhere.
  • Or a little after, maybe.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @08:52AM (#14659229)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • I am the first author (Score:5, Informative)

    by benntop ( 449447 ) <(craigo) (at) (gmail.com)> on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @08:56AM (#14659254) Homepage Journal
    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

  • I'm 27... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by odyaws ( 943577 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @09:57AM (#14659618)
    ...and I'm still waiting.

  • From experience... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by catdevnull ( 531283 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @11:12AM (#14660192)
    I would say that most people mature into more stable and "mature" people between 25 and 30. Not that younger people can't make mature decisions, it's just that the consistency starts to set in. Women tend to mature a bit earlier while men hold on to the "crazy" years a bit longer.

    Why do you think there's "SpikeTV?"

  • Real maturity... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by thewiz ( 24994 ) * on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @01:07PM (#14661186)
    doesn't set in until an individual is willing to take responsibility for ALL of their actions, good or bad. I've met young children who are very mature and senior citizens that refuse to take responsibility for anything in their lives.

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