Cognitive Development in Adolescence
- According to Piaget, the formal operational stage is the stage at which people develop the ability to think abstractly. Adolescents in the formal operational stage use hypothetico-deductive reasoning and prepositional thought. Some evidence suggests that many people attain formal operations at a later age than Piaget suggested or not at all.
- People who live in isolated, scientifically unsophisticated communities or who have little formal education are less likely to perform at the formal operational level. The scientific reasoning that characterizes formal operations is not equally valued in all societies.
- Adolescents' increased abstract reasoning abilities may lead them to question their parents and other authority figures far more strenuously, to be more idealistic, and to be impatient with imperfections in institutions. Adolescents also become more argumentative and they are acutely sensitive to parents' and teachers' perceived shortcomings.
- People do not perform uniformly well at particular stages and many developmentalists argue that cognitive development proceeds in a more continuous manner than suggested by Piaget. Piaget's theory is better at describing behavior than explaining why the shift from one stage to the next occurs and Piaget underestimated the age at which certain capabilities emerge. Piaget had a narrow view of what is meant by thinking and knowing and some developmentalists argue that formal operations is not the epitome of thinking. However, Piaget was a brilliant observer of behavior and his work has had a lasting impact on the way we view children and their cognitive abilities including impacts on research and classrooms.
- According to the information-processing perspective, general intelligence remains stable during adolescence, but dramatic improvements evolve in the specific mental abilities that underlie intelligence. Verbal, mathematical, and spatial abilities increase, memory capacity grows, and adolescents are more adept at dividing their attention. In addition, their abstract and hypothetical thought grows, they know more about the world, and their store of knowledge increases.
- According to the information-processing perspective, the growth of metacognition is one of the most important reasons for the growth in mental abilities.
- Adolescent egocentrism is a state of self-absorption in which the world is viewed from one's own point of view. The imaginary audience is fictitious, observers who pay as much attention to the adolescents' behavior as adolescents do themselves. Adolescents develop personal fables, the view that what happens to them is unique, exceptional, and shared by no one else.
- Kohlberg suggests that people's responses to moral dilemmas reveal the stage of moral development they have attained. He contends that people pass through a series of 6 stages in a three-level sequence in the evolution of their sense of justice and in the kind of reasoning they use to make moral judgments. The three levels are preconventional morality, conventional morality, and postconventional morality.
- Although Kohlberg's theory provides a good account of the development of moral judgments, it is less adequate in predicting moral behavior. In addition, Kohlberg's theory has not been as useful in explaining girls' moral judgments. However, research suggests that some aspects of moral conduct are related to Kohlberg's levels of moral reasoning, although the results are complex and not easy to interpret.
- Carol Gilligan has suggested that boys view morality primarily in terms of broad principles such as fairness or justice, while girls see it in terms of responsibility towards individuals and a willingness to sacrifice themselves to help specific individuals within the context of particular relationships. Gilligan's three stages of moral development are "orientation toward individual survival," "goodness as self-sacrifice," and "morality of nonviolence."
- Gilligan's sequence of stages is quite different from that of Kohlberg and some researchers have suggested that her rejection of his work is too sweeping and that gender differences are not as pronounced as first thought.
- On average, while students are demonstrating greater competence, students' grades decline during schooling, partly because teachers grade older adolescents more stringently than younger ones. Over the past four decades, the U.S. high school graduation rate has slipped from first place to 24th and performance in math and science is poor when compared to students in other countries. Less time spent in classes and less intensive instruction may contribute to the gap in achievement.
- On average, middle- and high-SES students earn higher grades, score higher on achievement tests, and complete more years of schooling than students from lower-SES homes. Several environmental factors explain this discrepancy including less adequate nutrition and health, crowded conditions, attending inadequate schools, fewer places to do homework, a lack of books and computers. In addition, parents living in poverty are less likely to be involved in their children's schooling.
- On average, African American and Hispanic students tend to perform at lower levels, receive lower grades, and score lower on achievement tests, than Caucasian students, while Asian American students tend to receive higher grades than Caucasian students.
- When socioeconomic status is controlled for, achievement differences diminish. John Ogbu argues that members of certain minority groups may perceive school success as relatively unimportant because it will have no eventual payoff. The process of involuntary immigration also apparently reduces motivation to succeed in subsequent generations.
- Asian cultures tend to view achievement as the consequence of temporary situational factors, such as hard work, while African American students are more apt to view success as the result of external causes, such as luck or societal biases. Students who believe effort will lead to success and expend that effort will be more likely to do better in school than students who believe effort makes less of a difference. In addition, it may be that African American and Hispanic students tend to believe that they can succeed despite poor school performance, which may cause them to put less effort into their studies.
- The educational promise of the Internet is significant however schools must change their curricula to include specific instruction in learning to sort through huge bodies of information. Cyberspace also makes available material that many parents find objectionable. Whites are significantly more likely than African Americans to have a home computer.
- Approximately 500,000 students drop out of school each year for reasons such as pregnancy, problems with English, or economic reasons. Hispanic and African American students are more likely to drop out than Caucasian students and Asians drop out at a lower rate than Caucasians. Twenty-three percent of students who live in households with the lowest 20 percent of income level drop out. Because economic success is so dependent on education, dropping out often perpetuates a cycle of poverty.
- U.S. college students are primarily white and middle class. The overall proportion of the minority population has decreased although minority students make up an increasingly larger proportion of the college population. The national drop out rate for African American students is 70 percent.
- Although men and women attend college in roughly equal proportions, there is significant variation in the classes they take. Women who start out in mathematics, engineering, and the physical sciences are more likely than men to drop out reflecting gender stereotypes. Men are more likely than women to think of themselves as above average in overall academic and mathematical ability, competitiveness, and emotional health. Both male and female college professors treat men and women differently in their classes.
- The rate of participation and ultimately the success of women in the sciences is greater for graduates of women's colleges and women who attend same-sex colleges may show higher self-esteem. This may be because they receive more attention, tend to have more female professors as role models, and they receive more encouragement for participation in nontraditional subjects.
- Claude Steele suggests that because of the stereotype that some subjects are more appropriate for women than others, the performance of women in nontraditional fields may be hindered by worries about the failure that society predicts from them. However, if women can be convinced that the stereotypes are false, their performance might improve. Members of minority groups are also vulnerable to stereotypes about academic success.
- Ginzberg suggested that people move through three stages when choosing a career: the fantasy period, the tentative period, and the realistic period.
- According to John Holland, certain personality types match with certain careers. He suggested six personality types: realistic, intellectual, social, conventional, enterprising, and artistic.
- Traditionally women were considered appropriate for communal professions and men were considered appropriate for agentic professions. Women expect to earn less than men and minority women do even worse. More women are working outside of the home than ever before. The glass ceiling is an invisible barrier within an organization that prevents individuals from being promoted beyond a certain level because of discrimination.
- When choosing a career, systematically evaluate a variety of choices, know yourself, create a sheet listing the potential gains and losses that you will incur form a particular profession, try out different careers, and remember it is always possible to change careers.