Psychology 4070 3 - Psychology 4070 Cognitive Development...

Psychology 4070
Cognitive Development in Piaget’s Formal Stage, Adolescent Thought, and Other Theories
- Formal operational intelligence = 12+ years old
- Can think logically about hypothetical/abstract things
- Think about the “form ” of statements and ideas – rather than the concrete things the words represent
- Concrete reasoners will try to solve many problems by trial-and-error
- Formal reasoners will hypothesize and mentally consider the results
- Formal reasoners will:
- 1.) Systematically generate hypotheses
- 2.) Test them
- 3.) Based upon the feedback from old hypotheses, generate new and better hypotheses
- Combination of Liquids or Four Beaker Problem
- The beaker on the right (X) contains one or a mixture of the chemicals 1-4
- When you add a few drops of “g” to (X), watch what happens
- Determine how each chemical affects the reaction (getting the yellow color)
- Do chemicals 1, 2, 3, or 4 cause, have no effect on, or stop the color change?
- Concrete reasoners are weak on a capacity called interpropositional thinking
- Concrete reasoners cannot compare several hypotheses to see if they are logically consistent with each other
- 20 Questions Game
- Concrete reasoners have difficulty generating and thinking about hypotheses
- To a concrete reasoner – reality is the only possibility
- To a formal reasoner – reality is one of many possibilities
- Late in life, Piaget moved away from a belief in rigid timelines – the necessity of the same changes always
occurring in the same order
- All adults are not formal reasoners
- Why not?
- Hypotheses are:
- 1.) Formal reasoning is environmentally dependent – nurture explanation
- 2.) Formal reasoning is a specific aptitude that only some people have – nature explanation
- The Branch or Branching Theory – development is related to branches on a tree
- Everyone makes it to the Sensorimotor, Preoperational, and Concrete Operational stages
- The environment determines whether or not someone makes it to the Formal Operational stage
- The person may always think concretely, sometimes think concretely and sometimes think
formally, or always think formally
- It’s a nurturing explanation
- Do they go to Junior High School or not?
- Formal operations are both:
- Good – thinking about what’s possible in one’s life, forming an identity and understanding others
- Bad – cause some of the painful aspects of adolescence; questioning everything, angry at inconsistencies
– rebel against – their parent’s and government’s priorities
- Piaget – adolescents are so focused on their thinking that they appear more egocentric
- David Elkind – two types of egocentrism in adolescents
- 1.) The Imaginary Audience – adolescent feels constantly on stage, everyone is watching and critical
- 2.) Personal Fable – a belief in the uniqueness of oneself and one’s thinking
- Elkind thought the “invincibility fable” might be part of the “personal fable”
- Invincibility fable – an adolescent’s supposed belief that though they engage in risky behavior
they can’t be harmed