PSY 230 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Myelin, Imaginary Audience, Teenage Life
Document Summary
Formal operational thinking: abstract reasoning at its peak. Formal operational stage - at around age 12, this ability to think abstractly takes a quantitative leap. Teenagers are able to reason logically in the realm of pure thought. Children in concrete operations can look beyond the way objects immediately appear. Adolescents can think logically about connects and hypothetical possibilities. During adolescent, we first become capable of logically manipulating concepts in our minds. Adolescents in formal operations have no problem tackling that challenge because once our thinking is liberated from concrete objects, we are comfortable reasoning about concepts that may not be real. When our thinking occurs on an abstract plane, we can approach problems in a systematic way, devising a strategy to scientifically prove that something is true. Not all adolescents reach formal operations, rather than being universal, formal operational reasoning only occurs in scientifically oriented western cultures. Most people don"t make it to piaget"s final stage.
