Chapter 18 Emerging Adulthood Cognitive Development Cognitive Development

Chapter 18 Emerging Adulthood: Cognitive Development

Cognitive Development in Early Adulthood • Beginning in early adulthood, cognition may change in quality, quantity, speed, efficiency and depth. • Thoughts are more practical, flexible, and dialectical and they reflect new values, interests and skills. • These developments may constitute a fifth stage of cognitive development following Piaget’s four stages, known as postformal thought.

Postformal Thought • Characterized by a more comprehensive approach to problem solving along with noting and anticipating variables and potential outcomes in a given situation. • Postformal thought is both more practical and more creative than previous stages and thereby allows the individual to become more capable of combining multiple contradictory elements into a comprehensive whole.

Postformal Thought vs. Formal Thought • Time management: adults are more likely to be able to plan ahead and avoid procrastination. • However, all age groups have problems with delay discounting; the tendency to undervalue events in the future. (For example, lottery winners choosing to accept half their earnings immediately, rather than wait for a full payout over time. )

Combining Subjective and Objective Thought • With the development of postformal thought individuals are able to combine subjective and objective thought processes in decision making. • Subjective Thought: Thinking that is strongly influenced by personal qualities of an individual, such as goals, past experiences, and culture. • Objective Thought: Thinking that is not influenced by personal qualities but instead involves facts and numbers that are considered universally true and valid. • By combining these two types of thought, emerging adults are able to avoid drifting to behavioral and cognitive extremes and maintain a healthy balance between the two.

Cognitive Flexibility • Cognitive Flexibility is the ability to restructure knowledge in multiple ways depending on the changing situational demands like the difficulty or complexity of the situation. • As an individual begins to develop their cognitive flexibility, they are able to more easily come up with alternative solutions to problems and work with others to discover these solutions. Cognitive flexibility is also essential in overcoming stereotypes, as an individual often must change and move past child hood assumptions on which many stereotypes are based.

Stereotypes • Stereotype Threat – The possibility that one’s appearance or behavior will be misread to confirm another person’s oversimplified, prejudice attitude. – The mere possibility of being negatively stereotyped arouses emotions that can disrupt cognition as well as emotional regulation.

Stereotypes (Cont. ) • The threat of Bias – If students fear that others expect them to do poorly in school because of their ethnicity or gender, they might not identify with academic achievement and thus do worse on exams than they otherwise would have.

Dialectical Thought • Dialectical thought – The most advanced cognitive process, characterized by the ability to consider a thesis and its antithesis simultaneously and thus to arrive at a synthesis. Dialectical thought makes possible an ongoing awareness of pros and cons, advantages and disadvantages, possibilities and limitations.

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

Morals and Religion • Adult responsibilities, experiences, and education affect moral reasoning and religious beliefs. • Maturation of values first appears in emerging adulthood and continues through middle age.

Dilemmas for Emerging Adults • Emerging adults often experience dilemmas that seem to raise moral issues. Most are no longer bound by their parent’s or by their childhood culture, but they are not yet connected to a family of their own. As a result, they must decide for themselves what to do about sex, drugs, education, vocation, and many other matters.

Gender Differences • Girls are raised to develop a morality of care. They give human needs and relationships the highest priority. • Boys develop a morality of justice; they are taught to distinguish right from wrong.

Moral Growth • Defining Issues Test (DIT) – A series of questions developed by James Rest and designed to assess respondents’ level of moral development by having them rank possible solutions to moral dilemmas.

Emerging Adulthood Stages of Faith Cognitive Growth and Higher Education

Stages of Faith • Through emerging adulthood it can be common that people have spiritual struggles. • James Fowler- six stages of faith • Stage 1 - Intuitive-projective faith – Ages 3 to 7 – Faith is magical

• Stage 2 -Mythic-literal faith – Ages 7 to 11 – The myths and stories of religion literally • Stage 3 -Synthetic-conventional faith – Reflecting concern about other people • Stage 4 -Individual-reflective faith – Faith is characterized by intellectual detachment – Question authority of parents and other authority figures

• Stage 5 -Conjuctive faith – Faith incorporates both powerful emotional ideas and rational conscious values. • Stage 6 -Universalzing faith – People at this stage have a powerful vision of universal compassion, justice, and love that compels them to then live their lives in a way others may think is either saintly or foolish.

Cognitive Growth and Higher Education • Relationship between college education and cognition. • College graduates – Healthier and wealthier than other adults – Also deeper and more flexible thinkers

Effects of College • Students attend college to – Secure better jobs – To learn specific skills – Secondary goal is for general education

• College can result in better health altogether – College graduates • • Smoke less Eat better Exercise more and Live longer • College graduates are also more likely to be – Spouses – Homeowners and – Parents of healthy children

• Classic study by Perry- nine levels of complexity over the four years that lead to a bachelor’s degree. • Perry found that the college experience causes a progression because of the professors, class discussion, peers, and books. • Scientists find that social interaction and intellectual challenge advance thinking.

Emerging Adulthood • Changes in the college context – Changes in the Students – Changes in the Institutions • Evaluating the Changes – Diversity and Enrollment – Graduates and Dropouts

Changes in Students • College is no longer just for the elite few. • In the first half of the twentieth century one out of every twenty adults received a college degree. • As of now, in developed nations one in every two adults receives a college degree.

Demographics • Along with the increase in numbers, there has also been an expansion in the field of demographics.

Student Goals • Fewer Students today seek out liberal arts and more specialize in business and the professions • Fewer seek general education and more seek financial security.

Changes in the Institutions • The U. S. currently has over 1, 500 community colleges, as from 275 approximately fifty years ago. • 12% of four-year colleges, tuition (excluding room and board) can cost upwards of $30, 000 per year.

Colleges today offer more career programs and hire more part-time faculty, more women, and more minorities.

Enrollment • There are more than 25, 000 undergraduates at each of 100 public universities in the U. S. • Private colleges still out number public colleges by a ratio of 3: 2, however 75% of U. S. college students attend a public university.

Graduates and Dropouts • A correlation between college education and future income has become stronger in current times than it was a few years ago.

When an 18 -year-old high school graduates and proceeds directly to a job rather than going to college immediately they tend to achieve less and are less satisfied by middle age.