Q.What is adolescence? Explain the concept of egocentrism.

Adolescence is the transitional stage between childhood and adulthood, beginning at puberty, marked by an intense self-focus (egocentrism) built around two specific beliefs — an imaginary audience and a personal fable. …

Adolescence is the term for the transitional period in a person's life that lies between childhood and adulthood. The word itself comes from the Latin adolescere, meaning 'to grow into maturity,' and adolescence is commonly defined as the stage of life that begins at the onset of puberty, when sexual maturity, or the ability to reproduce, is attained. It is generally understood as a period of rapid change, both biologically and psychologically; while the physical changes of puberty are broadly universal across cultures, the social and psychological dimensions of what it actually feels like to be an adolescent depend a great deal on the surrounding cultural context — in cultures where the adolescent years are viewed as problematic or confusing, an adolescent's experience will be quite different from that of someone in a culture where adolescence is viewed as the start of responsible adult behaviour. So although most societies recognise at least a brief period of adolescence, the experience itself is not identical or universal across cultures.

During adolescence, thought becomes markedly more abstract and idealistic (Piaget's formal operational stage), and this new cognitive capacity gives rise to a distinctive kind of self-focus that David Elkind called adolescent egocentrism, made up of two related components.

The imaginary audience is the adolescent's belief that other people are just as preoccupied with them as they are with themselves — adolescents imagine that others are constantly noticing and evaluating every detail of their appearance and behaviour. Classic examples include a boy who is convinced everyone will notice an ink spot on his shirt, or a girl with a pimple who feels certain that everyone around her is judging how bad her skin looks. It is this imagined, ever-watching audience that makes adolescents so intensely self-conscious about how they look and act in public. …