PY 352 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Cognitive Development, Imaginary Audience, Deductive Reasoning

• School: University of Alabama
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PY 352
• Professor: Carolyn Gibson

Document Summary

Formal operational stage: abstract thought and concepts, love, politics, religion, formulate and test hypotheses deductive logic, systematic testing, scientific experiments, able to think about many viewpoints at once. Adolescent egocentrism: consequence of cognitive changes in adolescence, self-consciousness. Imaginary audience the focus of everyone"s attention; everyone is watching me : pimples, glasses, stains on clothes, personal fable inflated opinion of their own importance, uniqueness, people want to know what you"re thinking. Idealism and criticism: decision-making, better than children, more sensitive to immediate rewards and less sensitive to risks/punishments when compared to adults. Testing piaget: follow-up research: formal operations may not be universal, domain-specific, training, schooling, context all contribute to formal operational thought, 40-60% of college students fail formal operations tasks, one third of adults reach the formal operations stage. Area of expertise: researchers gave college students the pendulum problem, a political problem and a literary criticisms problem, results differed based on major.