cops

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Fri Jul 5 12:51:21 PDT 2002


joanna bujes wrote:
>
>
> On some subjects Wojtek is quite rational...but male/adolescent violence is
> not one of those.

I don't have a citation for this just now, but there is a body of fairly recent neurological research to suggest that the part of the brain which connects actions to consequences is one of the last parts of the brain to develop. (This research is part of the larger body of research over the past few years that has refuted the old assumption that the brain never generates new neurons.) That development occurs during the years 18-24. This would be one of the reasons that punishment tends to be counter-productive in the case of teenagers. (I don't remember now whether this research is gender-specific or not.)

Carrol



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