PSYC 2314Lifespan Development

Chapter 15

Adolescence:

Cognitive Development

Adolescent Thought

• Advances in selective attention

• Growing knowledge base and memory skills

• Strengthened metacognition

Piaget’s Cognitive Development

• Formal Operational Thought– Hypothetical thought– Inductive reasoning– Deductive reasoning

Thinking About Oneself• Adolescent Egocentrism: a stage of development

in which young people typically regard themselves as much more socially significant than they actually are.

• Invincibility Fable: adolescents are somehow immune to common dangers

• Personable Fable: their lives are unique and heroic

• Imaginary Audience: allows them to fantasize about how others will react to their appearance and behavior.

Schools, Learning, and the Adolescent Mind

• Person-environment fit: the degree to which a particular environment is conducive to the growth of a particular individual.

• Volatile mismatch: the potentially explosive situation that arises when teenager’s individual needs—intellectual, emotional, and social—do not match the size, routine, and structure of their schools.

Schools, Learning, and the Adolescent Mind

• Competitive Learning– Grades are based solely on individual test

performance and students are ranked against each other

• Cooperative Learning– Accomplishing the learning task requires that

students assist rather than surpass their peers

Adolescent Decision Making

• Until adulthood, most people do not make major decisions on their own. They are more likely to be moved along by parents, teachers, cultural values, or stuck by inertia. However, when it comes to matters of personal lifestyle, decisions are made.

Youth and Employment

• Consequences:– Studying and grades suffer– Adults, who worked extensively as teens, may

be more likely to use drugs and less likely to feel connected to their families than those who did not work as much during adolescence.

Choosing Risky Sex

• Sexually active teenagers have higher rates of gonorrhea, genital herpes, syphilis, and chlamydia—the most common STDs—than any other age group.

• Teenage pregnancy– Consequences– Risks

The Need for Better Sex Education

• Many school systems are revising sex education programs to make them more practical, focused on social interaction.

• Parents as educators.