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Chapter2CognitiveTransitions.pptxAdolescence, 11e
Laurence Steinberg
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Chapter 2 –
Cognitive transitions
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1
Chapter 2 Overview
Changes in Cognition
Thinking about possibilities
Thinking about abstract concepts
Thinking about thinking
Thinking in multiple dimensions
Adolescent Relativism
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Chapter 2 Overview
Theoretical Perspectives on Adolescent Thinking
The Piagetian view of adolescent thinking
The information-processing view of adolescent thinking
The Adolescent Brain
How your brain works
The age of opportunity
What changes in adolescence?
Implications for adolescent behavior
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Chapter 2 Overview
Individual Differences in Intelligence in Adolescence
The measurement of IQ
Types of intelligence
Culture and intelligence
Adolescent Thinking in Context
Social cognition in adolescence
Adolescent risk taking
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Changes in Cognition (Thinking)
Compared to children, adolescents are more sophisticated in their ability to: (1) Think about possibilities. (2) Think about abstract concepts. (3) Think about thinking (metacognition). (4) Think in multiple dimensions. (5) See knowledge as relative (relativism).
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Thinking About Possibilities
Unlike adolescents, children don’t wonder about how their personalities might change in the future or how they might have been different had they grown up under different circumstances.
Adolescents are able to move easily between the specific and the abstract to generate alternative possibilities.
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Thinking About Possibilities
Deductive reasoning
A type of logical reasoning in which you draw logically necessary conclusions from a general set of premises, or givens.
Major intellectual accomplishment
Hypothetical thinking
“If-then” thinking
Need to be able to see beyond what is directly observable and apply logical reasoning to anticipate what might be possible.
Example: Playing devil’s advocate
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Thinking About Abstract Concepts
Ability to comprehend higher-order abstract logic:
Puns, proverbs, metaphors, and analogies
Improvements in social cognition during adolescence is directly related to improvements in the ability to think abstractly.
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Thinking About Thinking
Metacognition
Monitoring one’s own cognitive activity during thinking
Increased introspection: thinking about our own emotions.
Increased self-consciousness: thinking that others are thinking about us.
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Thinking About Thinking
Adolescent Egocentrism
Extreme self-absorption
Sometimes results in problems for young adolescents.
Imaginary audience
Believe that everyone is watching
Behavior is the focus of other’s concern
Personal fable
Experiences are unique
Nothing bad can happen to them because they are special.
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Thinking in Multiple Dimensions
Ability to view things from more than one aspect at a time
More sophisticated understanding of probability
Adolescents develop far more complicated self-conceptions and relationships.
Understand sarcasm
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Adolescent Relativism
Ability to see things as relative rather than as absolute.
Compared to children, adolescents are more likely to question others’ assertions and less likely to accept “facts” as absolute truths.
Difficulties can arise between teenagers and their parents.
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The Piagetian View of Adolescent thinking
According to Piaget, cognitive development proceeds through four stages.
| SENSORIMOTOR STAGE BIRTH TO 2 YEARS |
| PREOPERATIONAL 2 TO 6 YEARS |
| CONCRETE OPERATONAL 6 TO 11 YEARS |
| FORMAL OPERATIONS 11+ YEARS |
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13
The Piagetian View of Adolescent thinking
Cognitive-developmental view
Interaction between biological change and environmental stimulation leads to intellectual growth.
Each stage is characterized by a particular type of thought.
Adolescent thinking is thought to be qualitatively different from the type of thinking employed by children.
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The Piagetian View of Adolescent thinking
Abstract system of logical reasoning
Chief feature that differentiates adolescent thinking from that of children
Not all adolescents (or even adults) develop formal-operational thinking.
Framework on which to organize the range of possibilities, and the likelihood of outcomes for both concrete and abstract situations
Competence and performance
Important to differentiate between what can be done and what is done in daily life
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The Information-Processing View of Adolescent Thinking:
Question of interest:
What is it about the ways in which adolescents think about things that make them better problem solvers than children?
This question has been the focus of information-processing researchers.
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Adolescent Thinking: The Information-Processing View
Five areas of improvement:
Selective attention and divided attention
Working and long-term memory, autobiographical memories
Processing speed
Organization
Metacognition
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Adolescent Thinking: The Information-Processing View
Figure 1: Speed of information processing increases markedly between ages 5 and 15 and then begins to level off.
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Figure 1
The Adolescent Brain
Brain maturation is studied using noninvasive imaging techniques:
fMRI
DTI
EEG
Brain maturation in adolescence may be linked to behavioral, emotional, and cognitive development during this period.
However, correlation is not causation.
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The Adolescent Brain
Are male and female brains different?
Differences between the genders in brain structure and function are vey small and unlikely to explain differences between males and females in the way they behave or think.
Male brains are about 10% larger than female brains.
Prenatal hormones may explain some differences between male and female brains.
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How Your Brain Works
The brain functions by transmitting electrical signals across circuits that are composed of interconnected cells, called neurons.
Neurons
Cell body
Axon
Dendrites
Synapse
A tiny gap between the tip of one neuron’s axon and another neuron’s dendrite.
Neurotransmitters
Specialized chemicals that carry electrical impulses between neurons.
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How Your Brain Works
Gray matter
Soon after birth, unused and unnecessary synapses start to be eliminated, a process called synaptic pruning.
Results in a decrease in the amount of gray matter in the brain.
“More is not better.”
Synaptic pruning makes the brain more efficient.
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How Your Brain Works
White matter
Provide support and protection for neurons and compose a fatty substance, called myelin, that surrounds the axons of certain neurons.
Myelination
The process through which the brain circuits are insulated with myelin, which improves the efficiency of information processing.
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The Age of Opportunity
Some areas of the brain may be especially malleable, or “plastic,” in adolescence.
Plasticity
The capacity of the brain to change in response to experience.
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The Age of Opportunity
Why it’s hard for old dogs to learn new tricks
Developmental plasticity
The malleability of the brain during periods in which the brain is being build, when its anatomy is still changing in profound ways, as in the case of adolescence.
Adult plasticity
Relatively minor changes in brain circuits as a result of experiences during adulthood, after the brain has matured.
Environment, experience is critical.
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What Changes in Adolescence?
Adolescent brain is “remodeled” through synaptic pruning and myelination in particular brain regions.
Prefrontal cortex
Limbic system
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Changes in Brain Function During Adolescence
Two important changes in brain function involving the prefrontal cortex:
Patterns of activation within PFC generally become more focused.
Activity in the PFC becomes increasingly coordinated with activity in other parts of the brain.
Changes lead to greater efficiency in information processing.
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Changes in Limbic System
Changes in how the brain is affected by certain neurotransmitters
Dopamine (role in experience of reward)
Serotonin (role in experience of different moods)
Changes may make individuals:
More emotional.
More responsive to stress.
More likely to engage in reward-seeking and sensation-seeking behavior.
More vulnerable to substance abuse, depression, and other mental health problems.
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What Changes in Adolescence?
Figure 2: Synaptic pruning (reflected in the thickening of the cortex) and myelination (reflected in increases in white matter) take place in many brain regions during adolescence, including the parietal, temporal, and frontal lobes.
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Figure 2
What Changes in Adolescence?
Figure 3: Performance on measures of advanced thinking, or “executive function,” improves steadily during the first part of adolescence.
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Figure 3
Changes in Brain Function During Adolescence
Figure 4: The maturation of functional connectivity is more or less complete by age 22.
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Figure 4
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Changes in Brain Function During Adolescence
Figure 5: The age onset of most common psychiatric disorders is somewhere between the ages of 10 and 20. New research on adolescent brain development helps explain why this is the case.
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Figure 5
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Changes in Brain Function During Adolescence
Figure 6: Changes in the social brain during adolescence have both costs and benefits. One downside is that people become more self-conscious. Adolescents report feeling embarrassed more often than either children or adults.
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Figure 5
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Implications for Adolescent Behavior
Correlation is not causation
Adolescents’ behavior affects their brain development (e.g., the effects of alcohol and other drugs on the brain).
Research indicates that more sophisticated cognitive abilities are still developing after individuals are in their 20s.
However, more basic abilities are often well-developed in the teenage years.
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The Measurement of IQ
Today, the most widely used measures to assess intelligence are intelligence tests.
Intelligence quotient
A score of 100 is average.
Mental abilities assessed by traditional IQ tests increase dramatically through childhood and adolescence.
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Types of Intelligence
Sternberg’s “Triarchic” Theory of Intelligence
Componential (school smarts)
Experiential (creativity)
Contextual (street smarts)
Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences
Seven types of intelligences
Verbal, mathematical, spatial, kinesthetic, self-reflective, interpersonal, musical
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Culture and Intelligence
Vygotsky emphasized context in which intellectual development occurs.
Zone of Proximal Development
Scaffolding
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Adolescent Thinking in Context:
Social cognition:
Involves such cognitive activities as thinking about people, social relationships, and social institutions.
Adolescents’ conceptions of interpersonal relationships become more mature.
Understanding of human behavior is more advanced.
Ideas about social institutions and organizations are more complex.
Ability to figure out what other people think is more accurate.
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Adolescent Thinking in Context
Research on social cognition in adolescence falls
into four categories:
Theory of mind
Thinking about social relationships
Understanding social conventions
Conceptions of laws, civil liberties, and rights
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Adolescent Risk Taking
Risk taking is common in adolescence.
The main problems of adolescence are the result of behaviors that can be prevented.
Adolescents take more risks than adults.
More than 40% of teen drivers report having texted while driving, one-fifth had ridden with an intoxicated driver, and one-tenth themselves have driven after drinking.
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Adolescent Risk Taking
Behavioral decision theory
Decision making is rational and individuals try to maximize benefits of alternative courses of action and minimize costs.
However, adolescents are aware of risks but engage in these behaviors anyway.
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Adolescent Risk Taking
Figure 7: Adolescence is a time of heightened sensation seeking and still developing self-control, especially among males.
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Figure 7
Adolescent Risk Taking
Please insert Figure 8: Although adolescents on average are riskier drivers than adults, who is in the car makes a big difference. Teens drive more recklessly when they are alone or with peers than he they have adult passengers.
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Figure 9
Adolescent Risk Taking
Age differences in values and priorities
Adolescents and adults evaluate the desirability of possible consequences differently.
Adolescents are more attuned to the potential rewards than adults are.
Might be more beneficial to convince adolescents that the rewards of a risky activity are small than to persuade them the costs are large.
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