What happens to someone missing teenage years of development?

Question

Hypothetically, let's say a person were to fall into a coma as an adolescent for several years, until they were a physical adult. Would that person, assuming the brain was still fully functional upon awakening, still maintain the immaturity and impulsiveness of a teenager, and if so, could it be corrected by just trying to emulate adult life (effectively skipping teenage years of development), or are the experiences of a teenager still necessary to progress to an adult state of mind (aka, they would still need to have those experiences now in order to mature emotionally/mentally/etc.)?

Answer 1

A little of both. Development, physical and cognitive, do follow independent paths, but they build off of and enhance each other. They progress largely by experience, or 'input'. Therefore, a person whose brain is still physically growing but isn't receiving any sensory information would be missing a huge chunk of what it would need to continue to develop normally, but it would be more slowed rather than stopped. Like, the wheels on the cart (physical maturation) are still operational, but now it's trying to go through mud (hindered mental maturation). It will be slower. Same if you removed the wheels (impaired physical growth) but still provided the rich psychological stimulation needed for mental growth, (dragging the cart down the road).

For example, according to Paiget, a teenager would be in the Formal Operational stage, learning abstract thinking (understanding an idea like 'justice'). This hinges on experiencing things in life that challenge their idea of something and the cognitive thoughts that follow (like writing an essay on if the death penalty is ethical). This kind of processing couldn't happen if the person was in a coma.

On the other hand, your prefrontal cortex is still physically developing into your early twenties, causing teenagers to make less rational decisions despite any amount of input.

So, if a person went into a coma at 10, most mental development would be put on pause. Then if they woke up at 25, there would be some level of maturation due to the literal physical changes in their brain which could speed mental development. But they'd still have to go through those stages like everyone else. They would most likely be able to catch up eventually.