Chapter 15

Cognitive Development in Teenagers

Caprice PaduanoChild Development

Chapter 15 Key Questions

• How does cognitive development proceed during adolescence?

• What aspects of cognitive development cause difficulties for adolescents?

• Through what stages does moral development progress during childhood and adolescence?

• What factors affect adolescent school performance?

Chapter 15 Key Questions

• Who attends college, and how is the college experience different for men and women?

• How do adolescents make career choices, and what influence do ethnicity and gender have on career opportunities?

Intellectual Development

• Adolescents develop the ability to think beyond the concrete, current situation to what might or could be.

• Adolescents are able to keep in their heads a variety of abstract possibilities, and they can see issues in relative, as opposed to absolute, terms.

Using Formal Operationsto Solve Problems

• Formal operational stage The stage at which people develop the ability to think abstractly

• Piaget suggested that people reach it at the start of adolescence, around the age of 12.

• Adolescents in the formal operational stage use hypotheticodeductive reasoning.

Using Formal Operationsto Solve Problems

• Adolescents also are able to employ propositional thought during the formal operational stage.

• According to Piaget, it is not until adolescents are around 15 years old that they are fully settled in the formal operational stage.

The Consequences of Adolescents’ Use of Formal Operations

• Adolescents’ ability to reason abstractly, embodied in their use of formal operations, leads to a change in their everyday behavior.

• In general, children in the adolescent stage become more argumentative.

• Coping with the increased critical abilities of adolescents can be challenging.

Evaluating Piaget’s Approach

• Criticisms and concerns regarding Piaget’s approach to cognitive development have considerable merit.

• On the other hand, Piaget’s theory has been the impetus for an enormous number of studies on the development of thinking capacities and processes, and it also spurred a good deal of classroom reform.

Information-Processing Perspectives: Gradual Transformations in Abilities

• Information-processing perspective The model that seeks to identify the way that individuals take in, use, and store information

• A number of progressive changes occur in the ways people organize their thinking about the world, develop strategies for dealing with new situations, sort facts, and achieve advances in memory capacity and perceptual abilities.

Information-Processing Perspectives: Gradual Transformations in Abilities

• Adolescents grow increasingly sophisticated in their understanding of problems, their ability to grasp abstract concepts and to think hypothetically, and their comprehension of the possibilities inherent in situations.

Information-Processing Perspectives: Gradual Transformations in Abilities

• Metacognition The knowledge that people have about their own thinking processes and their ability to monitor their cognition

• Although school-age children can use some metacognitive strategies, adolescents are much more adept at understanding their own mental processes.

• These new abilities also can make adolescents particularly introspective and self-conscious.

Egocentrism in Thinking: Adolescents’ Self-Absorption

• Adolescent egocentrism A state of self-absorption in which the world is viewed from one’s own point of view

• Imaginary audience Fictitious observers who pay as much attention to adolescents’ behavior as they do themselves

• Personal fables The view held by some adolescents that what happens to them is unique, exceptional, and shared by no one else

Moral Development

• According to Kohlberg, people’s responses to moral dilemmas reveal the stage of moral development they have attained—and yield information about their general level of cognitive development.

Kohlberg’s Approachto Moral Development

• Kohlberg suggests that moral development emerges in a three-level sequence, which is further subdivided into six stages (Table 15-1):– Preconventional morality– Conventional morality– Postconventional morality

• Although Kohlberg’s theory provides a good account of the development of moral judgments, the links with moral behavior are less strong, and aspects of the theory have proven problematic.

Kohlberg’s Sequenceof Moral Reasoning

Kohlberg’s Sequenceof Moral Reasoning, cont’d

Gilligan’s Approach to Moral Development: Gender and Morality

• Gilligan has suggested that differences in the ways boys and girls are raised in our society lead to basic distinctions in how men and women view moral behavior.

• Gilligan views morality as developing among females in a three-stage process (Table 15-2).

Gilligan’s Approach to Moral Development: Gender and Morality

• Gilligan’s sequence of stages is quite different from Kohlberg’s, and some developmentalists have suggested that her rejection of Kohlberg’s work is too sweeping.

Gilligan’s Three States

The Transition From Elementary School to Middle School

• The transition can be particularly difficult because of the physical, intellectual, and social changes that are occurring at about the same time.

• For most adolescents, middle schools provide a very different educational structure from the one they grew accustomed to in elementary school.

• Further, students enter an environment in which they suddenly find themselves at the bottom of the status hierarchy.

The Transition From Elementary School to Middle School

• A significant amount of research demonstrates quite clearly that students do better, both academically and psychologically, in smaller, less bureaucratic educational settings.

• On the other hand, the overall record of middle schools has been harshly criticized.

• The challenges faced by students in middle schools have led adolescents and their parents to seek alternatives.

Socioeconomic Status andSchool Performance: Individual Differences in Achievement

• It is very clear that certain groups have more educational advantages than others.

• One of the most telling indicators of this reality is the relationship between educational achievement and socioeconomic status (SES).

Socioeconomic Status andSchool Performance: Individual Differences in Achievement

• Middle- and high-SES students, on average, earn higher grades, score higher on standardized tests of achievement, and complete more years of schooling than do students from lower SES homes.

Ethnic and Racial Differences in School Achievement

• Achievement differences between ethnic and racial groups are significant, and they paint a troubling picture of American education.

• Because more African American and Hispanic families live in poverty, their economic disadvantage may be reflected in their school performance.

Ethnic and Racial Differences in School Achievement

• Ogbu argues that members of minority groups may conclude that hard work in school will have no eventual payoff.

• Concerns about the educational performance of students have led to considerable efforts to improve schooling.

Achievement Testing in High School: Will No Child Be Left Behind?

• The No Child Left Behind Act requires every U.S. state to design and administer achievement tests that students must pass in order to graduate from high school.

• Critics of the Act argue that a number of unintended negative consequences will result from implementation of the law.

Achievement Testing in High School: Will No Child Be Left Behind?

• Although there is disagreement over what constitutes proof of best educational practices, developmental and educational researchers have welcomed the emphasis on research.

Media and TechnologyUse by Adolescents

• Varied media play a number of significant functions in adolescents’ lives.

• Not only do media provide entertainment and information, but they also help adolescents cope with the stress of everyday life.

• In addition, the media provide models and a sense of norms that are operating among other adolescents.

Part-Time Work:Students on the Job

• In short, the consequences of high school students working are mixed.

• For some students, particularly those who work a limited number of hours each work, the advantages of working can be substantial.

• On the other hand, for those who work long hours, employment is likely to hinder academic performance.

Dropping Out of School

• Adolescents who leave school do so for a variety of reasons.

• Students from lower income households are three times more likely to drop out than are those from middle- and upper-income households.

• Because economic success is so dependent on education, dropping out often perpetuates a cycle of poverty.

College: Pursuing Higher Education

• Whether a student’s enrollment seems almost inevitable or signifies a triumph over the odds, attending college is a significant accomplishment.

• Although students already enrolled may feel that college attendance is nearly universal, this is not the case at all: Nationwide, only a minority of high school graduates enter college.

Who Goes to College?

• As in the U.S. population as a whole, U.S. college students are primarily White and middle class.

• The proportion of students who enter college but ultimately never graduate is substantial.

• The number of students traditionally classified as “minorities” attending college is rising dramatically, and ethnic and racial minorities make up an increasingly larger proportion of the college population.

Gender and College

• Prejudice and discrimination directed at women are still a fact of college life.

• The gender gap is also apparent when we look at college instructors.

• The different treatment of men and women in the classroom has led some educators to argue in favor of single-sex education for women.

Gender Bias in the Classroom

Gender Bias in the Classroom, cont’d

Academic Performanceand Stereotype Threat

• Because of the strength and pervasiveness of stereotypes, the performance of women seeking to achieve in nontraditional fields may be hindered.

• Women are vulnerable to expectations regarding their future success, whether the expectations come from societal stereotypes or from information about the prior performance of women on similar tasks.

Academic Performanceand Stereotype Threat

• More encouraging, the evidence suggests that if women can be convinced that others have been successful in given domains, they may overcome even longstanding societal stereotypes.

Ginzberg’s Three Periods

• Fantasy period According to Ginzberg, the period of life when career choices are made—and discarded—without regard to skills, abilities, or available job opportunities

• Tentative period The second stage of Ginzberg’s theory, spanning adolescence, in which people begin to think in pragmatic terms about the requirements of various jobs and how their own abilities might fit with those requirements

Ginzberg’s Three Periods

• Realistic period The stage in late adolescence and early adulthood during which people explore career options through job experience or training, narrow their choices, and eventually make a commitment to a career

Holland’s Six Personality Types

• Holland suggests that six personality types are important in career choice:

– Realistic– Intellectual– Social– Conventional– Enterprising

• Holland’s theory forms the foundation of several instruments designed to assess the occupational options for which a given person is particularly suited.

Gender and CareerChoices: Women’s Work

• Communal professions Occupations associated with relationships

• Agentic professions Occupations associated with getting things accomplished

• Despite status and pay that are often lower than men’s, more women are working outside the home than ever before.

• In addition, opportunities for women are in many ways considerably greater today than they were in earlier years.