Chinese Culture In The Context Of Adult Definition Of The Differences Between The Different Age Groups

Developmental psychologists think that development means a series of sequential changes experienced during one's life span and included many aspects such as physical, psychology, society, etc.. According to the level and the statement of biological, cognitive and social development, life span could be divided into 3 major stages: childhood, adolescence and adulthood. However, there is division on definition between the latter two. The cause of the division lies in the different definition standards, which varies in variant subjects and variant theory schools. For instance, the law tells adults from pre-adults if the individuals have proper intelligence and physical maturity level and ability to bear legal responsibilities, when people from various countries come of age at 18-21. Puberty rites in folklore ,which often come when adolescents own their sexual maturities, establishes the manhood of the individual. After the puberty rite, an individual achieves a conversion of his role, and radicates his role and position as an adult in the society. This way of division seems to stand upon the statement of physiological maturity, but in fact, it emphasize some social import. In the fields of physiology and P.E., the division is completely a physiological one. In psychology, S. Hall's recapiyulation theory, S. Freud's phsychosexual development etc. emphasize the influences which biological factors deliver to the psychological development of an individual; J. Piaget's cognitive development theory, E. Erikson's psycho-social theory of human development emphasize psychological factors; A . H . JIeoHtbeB takes the all sorts of children-dominated actions as the standards to divide the stages, and his method expresses some societal criteria.Many foreign psychologists, especially American psychologists, have done a great amount of research on this subject and gained a lot. The mainstream of modernAmerican culture on the definition of an adult underwent several stages-gettingmarried and the establishment of family, then, fulfilling one's study and being economically independent, after that, emphasizing on living out of home, till present,stressing the formation of individual's characteristics, above all, it's the trend. But there are differences among different groups. Otherwise, foreign researchers havemade two main orientations on this subject-some people think the standard ofbeing an adult is just one or more symbolic events, such as graduation, marriage or something like these. Whereas, another orientation is to seek a multi-dimensional and comprehensive standard, which displays the transition from adolescent to adult is not only a biological process, but also social and cultural transformation. Due to the different orientation and respective criteria of the research, the determined age of being an adult is controversial. Some declare that it's just an age point, and the end of adolescence can mean the start of adulthood, which others assert there is a period of transition between the two, which is represented by the western concept of "beginning to adulthood".As for China, actually evincive researches into the definition of an adult is still nearly blank up to date. Acquired offshore researchers uncover that there are remarkable differences in the choices to the transition standard of adulthood period against various cultural background. Consequently, this research prone to discuss the following problems: 1. To search after the viewpoint of the people against the Chinese cultural background at the starting criteria of adulthood period and eventually work out relevant questionnaire. 2. To investigate into the common grounds and differences in the cognition assess on the various factors of adulthood criteria in different colonies. 3. To point out our opinions at the age division between adolescence and adult on the basis of the proceeding researches. With the above researches, on one hand, we want to acquaint ourselves with opinions of people against the Chinese cultural background at this problem and contrast them to the offsho...