Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
- Describe the formal operational stage of cognitive development in adolescence
- Describe the information processing perspective on cognitive development in adolescence
- Explain influences that promote or inhibit cognitive development in adolescence
Anna is a seventeen-year-old student in twelfth grade in a public school. They recently sought counseling because they were having trouble dealing with the stress of senior year. Coming from a culture that places great importance on academic success, Anna faces intense parental pressure to achieve high grades and attend college. Anna does not want to let them down but is constantly feeling exhausted and anxious. They feel like they overthink everything they do, and after every interaction, Anna wonders how people might have perceived them or thought of their behavior, which gets tiring and stressful. This has led Anna to avoid social interactions with others as much as possible. What can Anna do to overcome unwanted thoughts and deal with academic stress?
Psychologists studying these types of development look to cognitive functioning and growth to understand the changes that occur to the brain during adolescence. Metaphorically, you might consider the brain as “hardware” and cognition as “software,” or perhaps a collection of apps with an operating system. During adolescence, there are many changes in the developing capabilities of the teen’s new “operating system.” These changes help us understand what is going on in Anna’s brain functioning that might be triggering anxiety around exams and their self-judgment during peer-to-peer social interactions.
Formal Operational Stage of Cognitive Development
Recalling Jean Piaget’s stages of cognitive development, adolescence is the period when individuals reach the final stage of formal operations. The term “formal” signifies that the adolescent has achieved the capability to reason using formal logical systems and symbols. In a larger sense, Piaget considered cognitive development complete during adolescence: the adolescent has achieved formal adult thinking capabilities.
One way to understand the key developments in adolescent cognition is to connect them to the concept of possibilities. Adolescents are able think about all the possibilities in a situation beforehand and then test them systematically (Crain, 2005). In contrast, while younger children can think in rather complex and logical ways, they are limited to reasoning about concrete, physical situations. Adolescents, in addition to increasing the complexity of their reasoning, gain the ability to think about all aspects of a situation, even a situation that doesn’t or can’t exist. For example, high school history teachers might ask their students to imagine they could go back in time to change just one event and write about the consequences. A school-aged child would struggle with this assignment and might indicate that time-travel isn’t possible or provide an example but discuss only immediate consequences, whereas a teenager would be able to think through the scenario and provide more nuanced ramifications for the historical change. For example, the school-aged child might focus on President Abraham Lincoln still being alive if he wasn’t assassinated, whereas a high-school student might develop additional policies that Lincoln could have enacted based on his political leanings, if he were able to remain alive and in power. Two major achievements of adolescent cognition are the ability to think about what is possible and to apply formal logic and reason.
Individuals derive many cognitive skills and developments from the ability to think about what might be possible. For example, people use hypothetical reasoning to predict what might occur given a set of circumstances: If a storm cloud is present and the air feels humid, it may rain soon. People use deductive reasoning to test propositions in a logical and orderly way. For example, let’s say a student believes that when people study together, they will do better in a class. Adolescents can test this belief by looking at the outcome of their next exam and comparing their performance before they attended the study group session and after. They are also capable of thinking about why the group session may have helped them, including potential ways they may have studied differently during the group session and how they might extend those study strategies to the next time they try to study on their own. Not only do adolescents gain the ability to think about all the possibilities and angles of a particular problem, but they achieve the mindset to systematically explore and test each one.
Among many other things, Piaget is also credited with developing a unique style of interviewing for testing aspects of his theory in children (Pramling, 2006; Sommer-Flanagan et al., 2015). Specifically in these structured interviews, researchers would pose a problem or scenario, and the child would have to solve it while verbalizing the logic behind their answers. The researcher would ask follow-up questions based on the child’s responses to further delve into the child’s logical reasoning. Piaget devised several scenarios to test aspects of his theory. One example is the pendulum problem he devised to test deductive reasoning. The problem asks which of four variables makes a pendulum swing faster: (1) the length of the string, (2) the height from which the weight on the string is dropped, (3) the amount of weight, or (4) the force of the initial push. What’s important to psychological research is not the participant having the correct answer, but how the participant goes about discovering it. While a younger child in the concrete operational stage (seven to eleven years old) might try out several different solutions seemingly at random and quickly come up with an answer, correct or not, an adolescent will be more likely to methodically plan and test many possible combinations of the four variables, having thought ahead about how to do so and how the four options might interact with one another.
This planning and testing of options is a hallmark of scientific thinking—thinking that involves the systematic testing of possibilities to learn more about a topic. Scientific thinking also relies on the adolescent’s ability to reason using propositional logic—the ability to come to a conclusion based on imagining the proposed situation rather than observing an actual scenario. For example, teenagers, along with their recently conquered decentration from the previous concrete operational stage, are capable of simultaneously thinking about and combining different facets/variables about a problem in their mind, as they contemplate and evaluate the outcomes of each possibility (Roberge & Flexer, 1979), making them even better scientists. Taken together, these cognitive capabilities allow adolescents to discover complex relations and truths about the world.
Multidimensional Facets of Adolescent Thinking
Adolescent thought is characterized by several other tendencies that stem from teens’ new ability to think about what is possible. First is the ability to think in complex ways about abstract ideas. Adolescents become aware of the world of ideas that don’t necessarily exist in physical form, and concepts, like justice, equality, equity, and truth take on new and profound importance. A child in the concrete operations stage might be able to talk about respect in simple terms, such as the give and take of mutual benefits (i.e., respect is when you are kind and share your things (Malti et al., 2020). An adolescent’s description would be much more nuanced and might include a discussion of equality and fairness (another abstract yet real concept).
Adolescents are also able to think about multiple dimensions of a problem or situation and the way various factors combine to influence an observed outcome. For example, when faced with a dress code violation at school, a high school student might be able to see how the policy creates a standard against which all students are held, while also arguing against the lost class time that being sent home to change entails. Seeing the irony of such a situation is a hallmark of adolescent thinking and may lead to frustration and de-idealization of the adults who control their world. An appreciation of sarcasm, which relies on the ability to think in multiple dimensions and from multiple perspectives, also emerges in adolescence (Glenwright et al., 2017). Not only can adolescents begin to understand when sarcasm is being used, but they can begin to understand its functional use in public discourse. Questioning rules, especially rules that seem arbitrary, is another hallmark of the adolescent experience.
Because they can now think about possibilities, in both abstract ways and in multiple dimensions, adolescents also develop relativistic thinking, which is the belief that most truths and statements of fact are relative to the position of the observer (Chandler et al., 1990). Prior to this stage, children tend to think in absolutes (e.g., right versus wrong; good versus bad). Adolescents who have developed more relativistic thinking can simultaneously evaluate the possibility that both positions can exist, depending on whose perspective you are taking. For example, if two friends are discussing whose answer on a test was correct, a teenager would be able to see how both friends could be right given the context of their examples in the answer. They could then use this information to discuss with their instructor how to gain a better understanding of the material. When all things are possible and all perspectives can be considered, everyone can seem correct . . . and everyone can seem wrong. It’s a matter of perspective.
Intersections and Contexts
Adolescent Idealism and Changing the World
Where does idealism come from? The perspective of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development provides several relevant themes that combine to give adolescence this distinct characteristic. The new ability to think about possibilities opens the door for idealism to emerge in adolescence, as well as the ability to think logically about complex abstract concepts, even going so far as to test out hypotheses in one’s head. Adolescent theorist David Elkind was pivotal in exploring the consequences of these combined abilities (Elkind, 1998; Tyler, 2020). He noted that as adolescents grow in their analytical capabilities, it’s natural for them to become critical of the world around them. For example, teens may notice their parents exceeding the speed limit, a teacher with alcohol on his breath, or a police officer on her cell phone while driving. And turning on the TV or scanning social media shows a world that includes serious issues like hunger, war, homelessness, and political unrest.
Adolescents react to this perception of disorder and hypocrisy in a predictable way, according to Elkind (1967, 1978). Remember that adolescents are growing into adulthood, and the desire to take on adult responsibilities and roles adds to their determination to see the wrongs in the world and to do better. A search for solutions often becomes personal and emotionally charged. The not-quite-adult individual has the capacity to imagine a better world and wants to take immediate action.
Teachers, health-care professionals, and other adult mentors may provide opportunities for teens to explore the constructive power of idealism. Joining advocacy clubs at school, getting involved in community projects, and arguing with adults are all part of this newfound sense of what’s possible and what can be made right. Rather than seeing adolescents’ argumentativeness and passion as “acting out,” adults can recognize that their idealism—and the accompanying de-idealization of parents and other authority figures—is a normative part of the transition to adulthood, and they can work with adolescents to help them channel their interests and energy. For example, a parent might identify that when their teen argues with them, their teen is showing deep concern about issues of environmental sustainability. The parent might identify a local arbor club or relevant non-profit that the teen could get involved with so that they could foster their interests and enact positive change in their community.
In adolescent egocentrism, an adolescent has the tendency to believe that other people—sometimes called an imaginary audience—are as preoccupied with the teen’s appearance, body, and behavior as they are (Elkind, 1967). Teens may feel that everyone is watching them and have a strong need to impress others, though usually their peers are also consumed by what others think of them and don’t necessarily worry about what they think about others. According to Elkind, another aspect of adolescent egocentrism is the personal fable. That is, teenagers often believe they and their feelings are unique, and that no one else can feel suffering with such intensity (Elkind, 1967). Another feature of adolescent egocentrism is the invincibility fable, the adolescent belief that they cannot be harmed or defeated. Preoccupation with the personal fable and concerns about pleasing the imaginary audience likely peak around age fifteen years, along with self-consciousness in general.
For examples of the features of adolescent egocentrism, consider the scenario of Sage. Sage is a teenager who just had a dramatic breakup with his first romantic partner. Sage is recounting to his father, Justin, his immense heartbreak and self-doubt. Justin tries to comfort his son by saying that the wound will heal in time. Sage snaps back, “You can’t possibly understand what I’m feeling!” (personal fable). The next day, Sage walks into school and sees two of his classmates whisper something to each other. Sage confronts them about how they should mind their own business about the breakup only to be embarrassed to find out that his peers were talking about something completely different (imaginary audience). A week or two later, as Sage is trying to find new things to do with his free time, he gets the clever idea to become an influencer by doing more and more daring skate tricks confident that no harm will befall him (invincibility fable).
Social media can reinforce teens’ belief that they are unique (Houlihan, 2014). Online bullying is an apt example, given that adolescents feel they are invulnerable to the negative outcomes of their actions (Houlihan, 2014). Interestingly, this digital environment makes the “imaginary audience” of their life feel more real, increasing the likelihood of engaging in risky behavior, such as sharing one’s location on the internet (Cingel et al., 2015). These behaviors might open them up to further negative outcomes that they hadn’t predicted.
While Piaget’s theory of cognitive development offered a comprehensive accounting of children’s cognitive skills at various ages and explained how those skills develop, some aspects of this theory and its research have limitations. First, recall that Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is a stage theory. This means that children learn specific cognitive skills at different ages that map directly or indirectly to their brain maturation, such as the ability to focus on more than one aspect of a problem and a maturing frontal cortex. It turns out, however, that development doesn’t occur in a stepwise fashion implied by the term “stage theory.” The stage model also assumes that all individuals reach the same level of cognitive development at the same time, which we know isn’t true. Rather, cognitive abilities and mature thinking can occur in a continuous fashion, given proper guidance and scaffolding from others (e.g., formal schooling, peer interactions, adult caregivers). Moreover, Piaget’s focus on the role of nature and the brain’s physical maturation led to an underestimation of the significant roles that culture and social interaction and experience play in cognitive development (Franzoi, 2011; Lourenço, 2016). This connects with Lev Vygotsky’s research suggesting that children’s cognitive development occurs within a sociocultural environment and that cultural tools like language and counting systems have a significant influence on cognitive growth (Bernstein et al., 2008).
Second, Piaget’s research relied on an interview style that often heavily used children’s verbal descriptions of their thought processes (Ginsburg & Opper, 1988; Müller et al., 2009). This may work well for children who have a well-developed vocabulary and insight into their own thinking, but a child who lacks these skills may not be able to explain their actual understanding, and the Piagetian approach may mistakenly claim the child doesn’t understand the concept in question. The research technique was also prone to focus on what children of various ages were incapable of doing or simply got wrong. Later researchers have criticized the tendency to equate task performance with competency in Piaget’s initial studies (Lourenço, 2016). Ultimately, each research method be it interviewing the adolescent, surveying the adolescent, or interviewing teachers or caregivers, has various advantages and disadvantages. By combining various research techniques, we can form a more complete picture. The advantage to Piaget’s technique stands: hearing the adolescent’s perspective and thinking.
A final criticism of Piaget’s foundational research into children’s cognitive development is the view of formal operations and scientific thinking as a complete and fully attained state, the end-state for human cognitive development, which reflects the bias of historically WEIRD research in the discipline of lifespan development (1.4 Contexts and Settings of Development). Some societies and cultures have different perspectives on the ultimate goals of cognition, including a focus on artistic expression, wisdom represented in folklore, or practical success in everyday life (Lourenço, 2016; Martin et al., 2010). In some cultures, educational institutions don’t emphasize critical thinking, which is needed to reach Piaget’s formal operational stage. As a result, only about half of the people in these societies achieve this level of thinking skills (Bernstein et al., 2008). Additionally, some biological psychologists suggest that teenagers worldwide cannot handle complex calculations effectively until the age of twenty years because their brain activity is still developing (Cacioppo & Freyberg, 2013).
Information Processing Perspective on Cognitive Development
The information processing perspective on cognitive development retains several features of Piaget’s theory while adding a more contemporary focus on the biological supports for various thinking abilities or cognitive domains. These domains include processing and perceptual speed, metacognition, and other cognitive abilities such as reasoning and decision-making.
Adolescent brain growth and maturation lead to rapid increases in abilities across all the cognitive domains. Most of these increases continue into early adulthood before leveling off. One notable exception is perceptual speed, the ability to quickly recognize objects and other symbols, which peaks in late adolescence and then declines throughout the rest of life (Kail & Ferrer, 2007; Schaie, 1994). For example, a person in this age group would be faster and more accurate than their parent at finding and identifying hidden items in a picture. This enhanced perceptual speed has been shown to be associated with greater job performance (Mount et al., 2008), as well as school performance via increased creativity and intelligence (Rindermann & Neubauer, 2004). Specifically, when a person can quickly process and identify items in their surroundings, they tend to also be more creative and intelligent, which directly impacts their performance in school.
Metacognition, the ability to think about thinking, is another rapidly developing feature of adolescent thought that plateaus in adulthood and is a critical skill for complex problem-solving (Weil et al., 2013). Using metacognition, individuals can take a moment to pause and form a plan for approaching a problem, selectively choosing the strategy that might work, and monitoring progress toward a solution. They can also decide how much to rely on their own decisions and learning or the advice and learning of others (Paulus et al., 2013). For example, an adolescent’s ability to determine whether they will remember something at a later time is greatly improved, as well as the ability to predict someone else’s learning and memory of the material, especially if they’ve tried learning the same material already. The adolescent’s growing awareness and regulation of their own cognitive abilities and understanding of others’ thinking makes for a nearly mature thinker who begins to rely less on others’ input.
How often do adolescents use these capabilities in everyday life? A study noted that teens aim for greater autonomy in decision-making and can harness their emerging abilities to reject misleading advice but accept helpful guidance from others (Moses-Payne et al., 2021). In other words, adolescents are better able to decide whether someone else’s advice is worth following and, in turn, become more confident in their own decision-making. Furthermore, contrary to the popular stereotype of impulsive teenagers needlessly acting reckless, adolescents become better (reasoned) risk-takers due to their improved executive function rather than reactive risk-takers (Maslowsky et al., 2019; Romer et al., 2017).
Reasoned risk-taking involves careful planning and strategy, depending on improved cognitive control and a strong inclination for exploring new experiences, whereas teenagers are often stereotyped as impulsive and opportunistic risk-takers engaging in maladaptive behaviors due to a developmental deficit (Maslowsky et al., 2019). While both types of risk-taking occurs, researchers found that teenagers who engaged in more reasoned risk-taking also self-reported higher levels of sensation-seeking behaviors, better working memory, and a more positive focus on future planning (Maslowsky et al., 2019). These results show that teenagers, while more likely to engage in risky behaviors, are actually quite strategic in which risks they take.
Overall, as we consider the adolescent from the information processing perspective, we encounter individuals who are increasingly advanced across many cognitive domains, together with an ever more sophisticated ability to reason effectively using those skills. By and large, by the end of adolescence, a highly capable individual with the ability to think abstractly about multiple facets of a problem from multiple perspectives while contemplating the consequences of each aspect has emerged.
Link to Learning
Adriana Galván reveals the neurobiology behind typical teenage behaviors like risk-taking, exploration and thrill-seeking. Watch the video “Insight into the Teenage Brain” from TEDxYouth@Caltech to gain insights into the opportunities and vulnerabilities associated with the teen brain and behavior development, which can help shape policies, juvenile justice, and public health concerns that impact young people.
Contextual Influences on Cognitive Development
Both Piaget’s theory and the information processing perspective are fueled by a feedback loop between the individual’s maturing brain and the environmental inputs and supports for the brain’s further growth and development. An example is the U.S. school curricula across grade levels. The preschool curriculum takes advantage of the playful mindset of the preoperational child, while high school curricula leverage adolescents’ newfound abilities and appreciation for complex problem-solving, introducing abstract concepts. This back-and-forth interaction between the individual and the environment is an example of contexts that influence cognitive development in adolescents. These contexts include family and home environment, culture and language, and formal schooling (Figure 9.10). In cultures that don’t emphasize the development of scientific reasoning, Piaget’s stage of formal operations may not be reached, and the features associated with adolescent thought might not be readily observed (Cole, 2006; Nur et al., 2020).
Considering family dynamics and the home environment, the authoritative parenting style shows the most benefit for school performance and engagement if the development of formal operations is considered a goal of cognitive development (Steinberg et al., 1992). Authoritative parents set high expectations with high levels of warmth and nurturing. They explain the reasoning behind rules and encourage children to extract general principles from experiences and explore within boundaries. These parent–child interactions reinforce the reasoning fostered in formal schooling. Another way the family and home environment support cognitive development is by providing learning resources and opportunities for practice and exploration. Family activities such as games, reading, entertainment, and travel all offer opportunities to learn about the world and practice that understanding (Greenfield, 2014; Wu et al., 2021). There are clear socioeconomic differences in the amount and types of learning-relevant resources available in homes. Whereas clear socioeconomic differences in the amount and types of learning-relevant resources that are available in homes exist, caregivers can still foster cognitive development by providing a supportive environment and accessing community-based resources. However, that can still be resource demanding when families are struggling with limited access to resources.
A growing body of scientific literature shows that cultural factors can impact, at least partially, cognition and cognitive development (Kitayama & Uskul, 2011). For example, researchers have shown that some cultural differences, such as what a culture tends to emphasize in an environment, can influence our memory for that environment (Masuda & Nisbett, 2001). Specifically, the researchers suggest that individuals from East Asian cultures, including Japan, tended to interact with their environment in a more holistic or relational (big picture) way, whereas Westerners, including Americans, tended to focus heavily on objects in the environment and detach them from the surrounding context. When asked to remember items on a memory task, Japanese participants tended to do better than American participants when the background of the image matched the originally presented image, highlighting that the Japanese participants emphasized and encoded the item along with the background context. On the other hand, American participants tended to do better than Japanese participants when the item was presented with no background or a novel background, highlighting that the American participants were able to encode the item detached from the background. These results show how differences in cultural practices and perception could have an impact on cognitive processes.
Through the structure of language, culture can also support and propel learning and cognitive development. For example, in Chinese languages, fractions are represented simply as parts of a whole, so ¼ is said as “one out of four” instead of “one-fourth” (Xin & Liu, 2015). This simplicity and uniformity make learning and manipulating fractions easier and may contribute to observed cross-cultural differences in mathematics performance.
To the extent that a culture, or even an individual home environment, emphasizes the cognitive manipulation of visual symbols, such as icons, emojis, and other visual symbol systems, it is providing everyday practice for tests of fluid intelligence. Think for a moment how visual our current world is—people are constantly tapping, touching, or swiping various icons and symbols on screens, often with different fonts and abbreviations. This highly visual, nonverbal environment supports the development of our spatial and perceptual processing skills (Blazhenkova & Kozhevnikov, 2010; Williams, 1998). Our frequent interaction with icons and symbols in our digital world might be helping us develop the kind of thinking skills measured in fluid intelligence tests, which suggests a connection between technology and how our brains develop. Ultimately, the adolescent mind is a fascinating culmination of biological and contextual factors that, with experience and motivation, can notice, process, and interact with their environment in a multi-dimensional and less concrete way.
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