HDF 371 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Abstraction, Deductive Reasoning, Social Cognition

• School: UT-Austin
• Department: Human Development and Family Sciences
• Course: HDF 371
• Professor: F Varner

Document Summary

Most people (cid:449)ould ag(cid:396)ee that adoles(cid:272)e(cid:374)ts a(cid:396)e (cid:862)s(cid:373)a(cid:396)te(cid:396)(cid:863) tha(cid:374) (cid:272)hild(cid:396)e(cid:374), (cid:271)ut the(cid:455) also thi(cid:374)k i(cid:374) more advanced ways. For a child, what is possible is what is real; for an adolescent, what is real is just a subset of what is possible. Child(cid:396)e(cid:374) do(cid:374)"t (cid:449)o(cid:396)(cid:396)(cid:455) as adoles(cid:272)e(cid:374)ts do a(cid:271)out how their personality might change as they grow older. Adolescents are able to move quickly and easily between the specific and the abstract, to generate alternative possibilities and explanations systematically and to compare what they actually observe with what they believe is possible. Deductive reasoning a type of logical reasoning in which one draws logically necessary conclusions from a general set of premises or givens. Adolescents are better able than children to recognize when a logical problem does not provide suffi(cid:272)ie(cid:374)t i(cid:374)fo(cid:396)(cid:373)atio(cid:374) a(cid:374)d to (cid:396)espo(cid:374)d (cid:271)(cid:455) sa(cid:455)i(cid:374)g that the (cid:395)uestio(cid:374) (cid:272)a(cid:374)"t (cid:271)e a(cid:374)s(cid:449)e(cid:396)ed (cid:449)ith a(cid:374)(cid:455) certainty.