The relationship between somatic growth and psychological development in Turkish adolescents

The relationship between somatic and psychological development, such as intellectual capacity, introversion--extroversion, neuroticism and anxiety, has been investigated with the aid of 148 Turkish adolescents and preadolescents from a middle-level school in Istanbul. The results revealed no relationship between the rate of somatic growth and psychological development. The level of parental cultural environment seemed to have a certain influence upon the degree of intellectual capacity to the disadvantage of those originating from lower levels. The present findings obtained from this study lead to the conclusion that the variations of psychological characteristics in adolescents may not be accepted as only due to factors within the organism, such as the tempo and degree of somatic development independent of cultural, environmental effects, but that a more intensive investigation of also the external, social-environmental factors is necessary.