Ch 3: Brain and Cognitive Development Flashcards
The Formal Operations Stage
Last stage of cognitive development (according to Piaget)
Occurs during adolescence.
—Concrete operations: the stage before formal operations, what you’re in for most of childhood.
5 Characteristics of the Formal Operations Stage
1) Separating the real from the possible
—realizing that your way of living isn’t the ONLY way of living
2) Hypothetical-deductive logic
—following premise to conclusion
3) Combinational reasoning
—selecting the solution best for the problem
—being able to come up with lots of solutions
4) Abstract thought
—includes being able to generate imaginary scenarios and possible consequences of these scenarios
5) Thinking about thinking (metacognition)
—tracing the history of their thoughts/explain why they hold a particular thought
Consequences of Formal Operations
–Deduction of hypocrisy
–Pseudostupidity: result of generating too many solutions, can’t pick one.
–Egocentrism: extreme self-consciousness
Egocentrism includes which 2 phenomenons?
The Imaginary Audience: people are always watching, judging, evaluating you.
The Personal Fable: people who believe they are different than everyone else in some way/special and unique.
—-Personal Fable: leads to risk-taking behaviour and the illusion of invulnerability
Post-Formal Operational Thinking includes what 4 things?
1) Relativistic thinking
2) Emphasis on practicality and context
3) Understanding and acceptance of contradictions in the world (no universal good/bad)
4) Recognition that thoughts are impacted by emotions
The Need for Cognition
The tendency for adolescents to engage in and enjoy thinking
Some adolescents derive great satisfaction from thinking—this is linked to academic performance and overall life satisfaction
How does information processing change during adolescence?
Attention improves (in two ways):
1) Attention span increase
2) Selective attention
Speed of processing: info is processed faster during AD/early adulthood than at any other stage of development
How does memory change in adolescence?
The amount of information that can be stored in short-term memory increases during childhood and adolescence — increases up to 7 items
Automaticity
When skills are mastered, they become automatic (don’t require much processing or attention), freeing up space for other tasks.
Strategy Use
Adolescents are more aware of strategies to keep information in memory
Strategy use becomes “spontaneous” during adolescence (not told to do it)
Spontaneous Analogical Transfer
Using one problem to solve another, without the relevance of the earlier problem being pointed out to the solver.
How does intelligence change during AD?
–15% of AD show a slight drop of IQ rank during their teens (not IQ, IQ rank)
–Slight changes in IQ (generally happens because of struggles in formal operational thinking)
