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While the data in Tables 69, 70, 71 indicate a definite correlation between the ages of adolescence and the frequency of sexual activity, it must not be concluded that a simple causal relationship exists. Such misinterpretations of correlations are too commonly made, both in popular thinking and in technical scientific experiment. In many cases, more basic factors are involved, and two sets of correlated phenomena may be simply end products of the same forces. In the present instance, several basic factors may be operating. It is possible that the fact that an early-adolescent individual becomes sexually mature and erotically responsive at an earlier age, is the significant item. This gives him more years to become conditioned toward sexual experience before he reaches the teen-ages where social restraints become more significant. To put the matter in another way, the boy who becomes adolescent at 10 or 11 has not had as many years to build up inhibitions against sexual activity as the boy who does not mature until 15 or later; and it is quite possible (but not specifically demonstrable from the available data) that the younger boy plunges into sexual activity with less restraint and with more enthusiasm than the boy who starts at a later date. Moreover, it is possible that the patterns which are established by the earliest sexual activity, meaning patterns of higher frequency for younger-maturing boys, and patterns of lower frequency for older-maturing boys, are the patterns by which the individual’s subsequent life is ordered. At least part of the long-time effects may depend upon psychologic learning and conditioning.

But it is also probable that there are physiologic bases for the differences. It is difficult to know just what these may be, for, unfortunately, there are next to no studies of physiologic capacities in relation to the age at which individuals become adolescent. There are studies of younger children, adolescents, and older adults which show correlations between their absolute ages and their physiologic performances (Robinson 1938, and the references therein). There is at least one study (Richey 1931) which shows that there is some correlation between age at the onset of adolescence and blood pressures (systolic, diastolic, and pulse), the heights and weights that are ultimately attained, and some anatomic developments. Most significantly, these characters distinguish the various adolescent groups as much as six years before the onset of adolescence, and for at least six years after the beginning of adolescence. Further investigation of a larger number of physiologic characters operating over a longer period of years seems not to have been made. On the psychologic side, Terman (1925), in his study of geniuses, found that the individuals with the highest IQ’s were more often those who became adolescent first. It can, therefore, be suggested that the frequency of sexual activity may, to some degree, be dependent upon a general metabolic level which the individual maintains through much of his life. One who functions at a higher level at one period in his life is likely to function at a higher level through most of his life, barring illness and physical accidents that produce permanent incapacities. Casual observation would suggest that such an individual is not worn down by his quicker and more frequent responses to everyday situations, and there would seem to be no more reason for his being exhausted by his frequent sexual responses. Moreover, it is possible that the factors accounting for these other evidences of high metabolic level also account for early adolescence. Whether this is the correct interpretation is a matter which will have to be investigated through extensive research on the physiologic qualities of sexually high and low rating individuals.

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