The onset of adolescence is a time of profound changes in motivation, cognition, behavior, and social relationships. Existing neurodevelopmental models have integrated our current understanding of adolescent brain development; however, there has been surprisingly little focus on the importance of adolescence as a sensitive period for romantic and sexual development. As young people enter adolescence, one of their primary tasks is to gain knowledge and experience that will allow them to take on the social roles of adults, including engaging in romantic and sexual relationships. By reviewing the relevant human and animal neurodevelopmental literature, this paper highlights how we should move beyond thinking of puberty as simply a set of somatic changes that are critical for physical reproductive maturation. Rather, puberty also involves a set of neurobiological changes that are critical for the social, emotional, and cognitive maturation necessary for reproductive success. The primary goal of this paper is to broaden the research base and dialogue about adolescent romantic and sexual development, in hopes of advancing understanding of sex and romance as important developmental dimensions of health and well-being in adolescence.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 24. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 08 August 2026.
All research outputs
#2,046,430
of 34,350,842 outputs
Outputs from Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience
#138
of 1,236 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#26,333
of 335,563 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience
#3
of 15 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,350,842 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 94th percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,236 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 14.0. This one has done well, scoring higher than 88% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 335,563 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 92% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 15 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 80% of its contemporaries.
