The Developing Person Through the Life Span

The Developing Person Through the Life Span Emerging Adulthood: Cognitive Development

Postformal Thought • A proposed stage of cognitive development, after Piaget’s 4 stages • Extends adolescent thinking by being more practical, flexible, and dialectical • Characterized by “problem finding” • Person is more open with ideas and less concerned with absolute right and wrong Formal-operational thinking is absolute, and involves making decisions based on personal experience and logic. Post-formal thinking is more complex, and involves making decisions based on situational constraints and circumstances, and integrating emotion with logic to form context-dependent principles.

Time Management • A struggle for emerging adults but usually mastered as cognition matures • Delay discounting • Tendency to undervalue, or ignore, future consequences and rewards in favor of immediate gratification • i.e. going to the beach instead of studying for a final

Really a Stage? • Piaget’s theory of child cognition and post-formal thought stage is controversial • Prefrontal cortex is not mature until one’s early 20’s • Most cultures describe adult thought as qualitatively different from adolescent thought

Really a Stage? Informed by Experience • Labouvie-Vief investigated age differences in self-descriptions. • These were categorized as: • protective (high in self-involvement, low in self-doubt) • dysregulated (fragmented, overwhelmed by emotions or problems) • complex (valuing openness and independence above all) • integrated (able to regulate emotions and logic)

Really a Stage?

Combining Subjective and Objective Thought • Subjective thought • Thinking that is based on personal qualities of the individual thinker (i.e. experiences, culture, goals) • Objective thought • Thinking that is not based on thinker’s personal qualities but instead based valid facts and numbers

Cognitive Flexibility • Helps people deal with unforeseen events • Helps avoid retreating into emotions or intellect • A hallmark of postformal cognition • A characteristic more common in emerging adults than younger people • Listening to others and considering diverse opinions

Countering Stereotypes Stereotype Threat • The possibility that one’s appearance or behavior will be misread to confirm another’s oversimplified, prejudiced attitudes. • The mere possibility of being negatively stereotyped arouses anxiety that can disrupt cognition and distort emotional regulation. • Makes people of all ages doubt their ability, which reduces learning if their anxiety interferes with cognition.

Dialectical Thought • The most advanced cognitive process • Ability to consider a thesis and its antithesis and arrive at a synthesis • Being able to see the pros and cons, advantages and disadvantages, possibilities and limitations • Dialectical thinking is rare in adolescents, more often found in middle-aged people

Dialectical Thought • Thesis • A statement of belief • Antithesis • A statement of belief that opposes the thesis • Synthesis • A new idea that integrates the thesis and its antithesis, thus representing a new and more comprehensive level of truth

DBT means Dialectical Behavior Therapy, which could also be referred to as becoming more open minded. A dialectic is a dialogue between opposites. Dialectical therapy seeks the ability to tolerate opposites and to see truth in more than one perspective. DBT is an offshoot of CBT, or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. This branch of psychology is aimed at helping you understand your thinking and behavior choices so they are more effective for your life and happiness.

Morals and Religion • Adult responsibilities, experiences, and education affect moral reasoning and religious beliefs. • Maturation of values appears first in emerging adulthood • Moral decisions are least likely in early adolescence

Which Era? What Place? • Culture determines whether or not a particular issue is a moral one. • The power of culture makes it difficult to assess whether adult morality changes with age because changing opinions can be judged as improvements or declines. • The process of moral thinking improves with age.

Which Era? What Place?

Dilemmas for Emerging Adults Gender differences • Morality of care (Gilligan) • The tendency of females to be reluctant to judge right and wrong in absolute terms due to socialization • Morality of justice (Kohlberg) • The tendency of males to emphasize justice over compassion and judging right and wrong in absolute terms

Dilemmas for Emerging Adults Measuring Moral Growth Defining Issues Test (DIT) • A way to measure moral thinking by having the test takers rank possible solutions to moral dilemmas • Developed by James Rest The Defining Issues Test (hereafter the DIT) was first developed in the early 1970s (Rest, Cooper, Coder, Masanz and Anderson, 1974). Originally the measure was described as a paper and pencil alternative to Lawrence Kohlberg’s (1969) semi-structured interview measure of moral judgment development (Rest, 1979). As such, the primary focus of the measure was an assessment of the understanding and interpretation of moral issues. Consistent with the Kohlbergian model, Rest viewed moral judgment development as a social and cognitive construct that progressed from a self-focused view of moral issues, through a group-based moral perspective, to a reliance on post-conventional moral principles. Also consistent with Kohlberg, Rest viewed moral judgments as primarily cognitive and a primary factor in the understanding of moral actions and emotions. In short and during the 70s the DIT was viewed as a measure designed to test Kohlberg’s developmental sequence and contribute to the development of moral judgment theory in adolescent and adult populations.

James Fowler's Stages of Faith 1: Intuitive-projective, ages 3-7 2: Mythic-literal, ages 7-11, some adults 3: Synthetic-conventional, conformist 4: Individual-reflective, active commitment 5: Conjunctive: postformal way of thinking, rarely achieved before middle-age 6: Universalizing: transforming experience may cause this, rarely achieved

Cognitive Growth and Higher Education The Effects of College • Most contemporary students attend college primarily to secure their vocational and financial future. • College also correlates with better health - graduates everywhere smoke less, eat better, exercise more, and live longer. • There is no doubt that tertiary education improves verbal and quantitative abilities, knowledge of specific subject areas, skills in various professions, reasoning, and reflection.

Changes in the College Context Changes in the Students • No longer for elite few • Rates of college grads worldwide is up • In most developed nations, there are more females than males in college • Fewer students major in liberal arts, more in business and professions (e.g. law and medicine)

Changes in the Students

Changes in the College Context Changes in Institutions • The U.S. has twice as many colleges as it did 50 years ago. • More career programs • Hire more part time faculty, more women and minorities • Income most important reason on whether an emerging adult will go to college or not

Evaluating the Changes Diversity and enrollment • The increased diversity of the student body is more likely to encourage than discourage learning. Graduates and dropouts • A correlation between college ed. and later income is stronger now than before due to the loss of unskilled jobs.

Graduates and Dropouts

The End

The Developing Person Through the Life Span