intellectual development in adolescence problem solving

Module 7: Adolescence

Cognitive development during adolescence, learning outcomes.

Explain Piaget’s theory on formal operational thought
Describe cognitive abilities and changes during adolescence

three adolescent boys look at a note together

Figure 1. Adolescents practice their developing abstract and hypothetical thinking skills, coming up with alternative interpretations of information.

Adolescence is a time of rapid cognitive development. Biological changes in brain structure and connectivity in the brain interact with increased experience, knowledge, and changing social demands to produce rapid cognitive growth. These changes generally begin at puberty or shortly thereafter, and some skills continue to develop as an adolescent ages. Development of executive functions, or cognitive skills that enable the control and coordination of thoughts and behavior, are generally associated with the prefrontal cortex area of the brain. The thoughts, ideas, and concepts developed at this period of life greatly influence one’s future life and play a major role in character and personality formation.

Perspectives and Advancements in Adolescent Thinking

There are two perspectives on adolescent thinking: constructivist and information-processing. The constructivist perspective , based on the work of Piaget, takes a quantitative, stage-theory approach. This view hypothesizes that adolescents’ cognitive improvement is relatively sudden and drastic. The information-processing perspective derives from the study of artificial intelligence and explains cognitive development in terms of the growth of specific components of the overall process of thinking.

Improvements in basic thinking abilities generally occur in five areas during adolescence:

Attention . Improvements are seen in selective attention (the process by which one focuses on one stimulus while tuning out another), as well as divided attention (the ability to pay attention to two or more stimuli at the same time).
Memory . Improvements are seen in working memory and long-term memory.
Processing Speed. Adolescents think more quickly than children. Processing speed improves sharply between age five and middle adolescence, levels off around age 15, and does not appear to change between late adolescence and adulthood.
Organization . Adolescents are more aware of their own thought processes and can use mnemonic devices and other strategies to think and remember information more efficiently.
Metacognition . Adolescents can think about thinking itself. This often involves monitoring one’s own cognitive activity during the thinking process. Metacognition provides the ability to plan ahead, see the future consequences of an action, and provide alternative explanations of events.

Formal Operational Thought

In the last of the Piagetian stages, a child becomes able to reason not only about tangible objects and events, but also about hypothetical or abstract ones. Hence it has the name formal operational stage—the period when the individual can “operate” on “forms” or representations. This allows an individual to think and reason with a wider perspective. This stage of cognitive development, termed by Piaget as formal operational thought , marks a movement from an ability to think and reason from concrete visible events to an ability to think hypothetically and entertain what-if possibilities about the world. An individual can solve problems through abstract concepts and utilize hypothetical and deductive reasoning. Adolescents use trial and error to solve problems, and the ability to systematically solve a problem in a logical and methodical way emerges.

This video explains some of the cognitive development consistent with formal operational thought.

You can view the transcript for “Formal operational stage – Intro to Psychology” here (opens in new window) .

Formal Operational Thinking in the Classroom

School is a main contributor in guiding students towards formal operational thought. With students at this level, the teacher can pose hypothetical (or contrary-to-fact) problems: “What if the world had never discovered oil?” or “What if the first European explorers had settled first in California instead of on the East Coast of the United States?” To answer such questions, students must use hypothetical reasoning , meaning that they must manipulate ideas that vary in several ways at once, and do so entirely in their minds.

The hypothetical reasoning that concerned Piaget primarily involved scientific problems. His studies of formal operational thinking therefore often look like problems that middle or high school teachers pose in science classes. In one problem, for example, a young person is presented with a simple pendulum, to which different amounts of weight can be hung (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958). The experimenter asks: “What determines how fast the pendulum swings: the length of the string holding it, the weight attached to it, or the distance that it is pulled to the side?” The young person is not allowed to solve this problem by trial-and-error with the materials themselves, but must reason a way to the solution mentally. To do so systematically, they must imagine varying each factor separately, while also imagining the other factors that are held constant. This kind of thinking requires facility at manipulating mental representations of the relevant objects and actions—precisely the skill that defines formal operations.

As you might suspect, students with an ability to think hypothetically have an advantage in many kinds of school work: by definition, they require relatively few “props” to solve problems. In this sense they can in principle be more self-directed than students who rely only on concrete operations—certainly a desirable quality in the opinion of most teachers. Note, though, that formal operational thinking is desirable but not sufficient for school success, and that it is far from being the only way that students achieve educational success. Formal thinking skills do not insure that a student is motivated or well-behaved, for example, nor does it guarantee other desirable skills. The fourth stage in Piaget’s theory is really about a particular kind of formal thinking, the kind needed to solve scientific problems and devise scientific experiments. Since many people do not normally deal with such problems in the normal course of their lives, it should be no surprise that research finds that many people never achieve or use formal thinking fully or consistently, or that they use it only in selected areas with which they are very familiar (Case & Okomato, 1996). For teachers, the limitations of Piaget’s ideas suggest a need for additional theories about development—ones that focus more directly on the social and interpersonal issues of childhood and adolescence.

Hypothetical and abstract thinking

One of the major premises of formal operational thought is the capacity to think of possibility, not just reality. Adolescents’ thinking is less bound to concrete events than that of children; they can contemplate possibilities outside the realm of what currently exists. One manifestation of the adolescent’s increased facility with thinking about possibilities is the improvement of skill in deductive reasoning (also called top-down reasoning), which leads to the development of hypothetical thinking . This provides the ability to plan ahead, see the future consequences of an action and to provide alternative explanations of events. It also makes adolescents more skilled debaters, as they can reason against a friend’s or parent’s assumptions. Adolescents also develop a more sophisticated understanding of probability.

This appearance of more systematic, abstract thinking allows adolescents to comprehend the sorts of higher-order abstract logic inherent in puns, proverbs, metaphors, and analogies. Their increased facility permits them to appreciate the ways in which language can be used to convey multiple messages, such as satire, metaphor, and sarcasm. (Children younger than age nine often cannot comprehend sarcasm at all). This also permits the application of advanced reasoning and logical processes to social and ideological matters such as interpersonal relationships, politics, philosophy, religion, morality, friendship, faith, fairness, and honesty.

Metacognition

Metacognition refers to “thinking about thinking.” It is relevant in social cognition as it results in increased introspection, self-consciousness, and intellectualization. Adolescents are much better able to understand that people do not have complete control over their mental activity. Being able to introspect may lead to forms of egocentrism, or self-focus, in adolescence. Adolescent egocentrism is a term that David Elkind used to describe the phenomenon of adolescents’ inability to distinguish between their perception of what others think about them and what people actually think in reality. Elkind’s theory on adolescent egocentrism is drawn from Piaget’s theory on cognitive developmental stages, which argues that formal operations enable adolescents to construct imaginary situations and abstract thinking.

Accordingly, adolescents are able to conceptualize their own thoughts and conceive of other people’s thoughts. However, Elkind pointed out that adolescents tend to focus mostly on their own perceptions, especially on their behaviors and appearance, because of the “physiological metamorphosis” they experience during this period. This leads to adolescents’ belief that other people are as attentive to their behaviors and appearance as they are of themselves. According to Elkind, adolescent egocentrism results in two distinct problems in thinking: the imaginary audience and the personal fable . These likely peak at age fifteen, along with self-consciousness in general.

Imaginary audience is a term that Elkind used to describe the phenomenon that an adolescent anticipates the reactions of other people to them in actual or impending social situations. Elkind argued that this kind of anticipation could be explained by the adolescent’s preoccupation that others are as admiring or as critical of them as they are of themselves. As a result, an audience is created, as the adolescent believes that they will be the focus of attention.

However, more often than not the audience is imaginary because in actual social situations individuals are not usually the sole focus of public attention. Elkind believed that the construction of imaginary audiences would partially account for a wide variety of typical adolescent behaviors and experiences; and imaginary audiences played a role in the self-consciousness that emerges in early adolescence. However, since the audience is usually the adolescent’s own construction, it is privy to their own knowledge of themselves. According to Elkind, the notion of imaginary audience helps to explain why adolescents usually seek privacy and feel reluctant to reveal themselves–it is a reaction to the feeling that one is always on stage and constantly under the critical scrutiny of others.

Elkind also addressed that adolescents have a complex set of beliefs that their own feelings are unique and they are special and immortal. Personal fable is the term Elkind created to describe this notion, which is the complement of the construction of imaginary audience. Since an adolescent usually fails to differentiate their own perceptions and those of others, they tend to believe that they are of importance to so many people (the imaginary audiences) that they come to regard their feelings as something special and unique. They may feel that only they have experienced strong and diverse emotions, and therefore others could never understand how they feel. This uniqueness in one’s emotional experiences reinforces the adolescent’s belief of invincibility, especially to death.

This adolescent belief in personal uniqueness and invincibility becomes an illusion that they can be above some of the rules, disciplines and laws that apply to other people; even consequences such as death (called the invincibility fable ) . This belief that one is invincible removes any impulse to control one’s behavior (Lin, 2016). [1] Therefore, adolescents will engage in risky behaviors, such as drinking and driving or unprotected sex, and feel they will not suffer any negative consequences.

Intuitive and Analytic Thinking

Piaget emphasized the sequence of thought throughout four stages. Others suggest that thinking does not develop in sequence, but instead, that advanced logic in adolescence may be influenced by intuition. Cognitive psychologists often refer to intuitive and analytic thought as the dual-process model ; the notion that humans have two distinct networks for processing information (Kuhn, 2013.) [2] Intuitive thought is automatic, unconscious, and fast, and it is more experiential and emotional.

In contrast, a nalytic thought is deliberate, conscious, and rational (logical). While these systems interact, they are distinct (Kuhn, 2013). Intuitive thought is easier, quicker, and more commonly used in everyday life. As discussed in the adolescent brain development section earlier in this module, the discrepancy between the maturation of the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex, may make teens more prone to emotional intuitive thinking than adults. As adolescents develop, they gain in logic/analytic thinking ability and sometimes regress, with social context, education, and experiences becoming major influences. Simply put, being “smarter” as measured by an intelligence test does not advance cognition as much as having more experience, in school and in life (Klaczynski & Felmban, 2014). [3]

Risk-taking

Because most injuries sustained by adolescents are related to risky behavior (alcohol consumption and drug use, reckless or distracted driving, and unprotected sex), a great deal of research has been done on the cognitive and emotional processes underlying adolescent risk-taking. In addressing this question, it is important to distinguish whether adolescents are more likely to engage in risky behaviors (prevalence), whether they make risk-related decisions similarly or differently than adults (cognitive processing perspective), or whether they use the same processes but value different things and thus arrive at different conclusions. The behavioral decision-making theory proposes that adolescents and adults both weigh the potential rewards and consequences of an action. However, research has shown that adolescents seem to give more weight to rewards, particularly social rewards, than do adults. Adolescents value social warmth and friendship, and their hormones and brains are more attuned to those values than to long-term consequences (Crone & Dahl, 2012). [4]

Four teenagers gathered around a table attempting to figure out a logic problem together.

Figure 2 . Teenage thinking is characterized by the ability to reason logically and solve hypothetical problems such as how to design, plan, and build a structure. (credit: U.S. Army RDECOM)

Some have argued that there may be evolutionary benefits to an increased propensity for risk-taking in adolescence. For example, without a willingness to take risks, teenagers would not have the motivation or confidence necessary to leave their family of origin. In addition, from a population perspective, there is an advantage to having a group of individuals willing to take more risks and try new methods, counterbalancing the more conservative elements more typical of the received knowledge held by older adults.

Relativistic Thinking

Adolescents are more likely to engage in relativistic thinking —in other words, they are more likely to question others’ assertions and less likely to accept information as absolute truth. Through experience outside the family circle, they learn that rules they were taught as absolute are actually relativistic. They begin to differentiate between rules crafted from common sense (don’t touch a hot stove) and those that are based on culturally relative standards (codes of etiquette). This can lead to a period of questioning authority in all domains.

As we continue through this module, we will discuss how this influences moral reasoning, as well as psychosocial and emotional development. These more abstract developmental dimensions (cognitive, moral, emotional, and social dimensions) are not only more subtle and difficult to measure, but these developmental areas are also difficult to tease apart from one another due to the inter-relationships among them. For instance, our cognitive maturity will influence the way we understand a particular event or circumstance, which will in turn influence our moral judgments about it, and our emotional responses to it. Similarly, our moral code and emotional maturity influence the quality of our social relationships with others.

Candela Citations

Adolescent development; cognitive development. Authored by : Jennifer Lansford. Provided by : Duke University. Located at : http://nobaproject.com/modules/adolescent-development?r=LDE2MjU3 . Project : The Noba Project. License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
Stages of Development. Authored by : OpenStax College. Located at : http://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]:1/Psychology . License : CC BY: Attribution . License Terms : Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11629/latest/.
Adolescence. Provided by : Boundless. Located at : https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-psychology/chapter/adolescence/ . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
Adolescent egocentrism. Located at : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolescent_egocentrism#cite_note-Elkindeia-1 . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
adolescent boys. Authored by : An Min. Provided by : Pxhere. Located at : https://pxhere.com/en/photo/1515959 . License : CC0: No Rights Reserved
Adolescence. Provided by : Wikipedia. Located at : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolescence . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
Educational Psychology. Authored by : Kelvin Seifert. Provided by : OpenStax. Located at : https://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]:9u2dcFad@2/Cognitive-development-the-theory-of-Jean-Piaget . License : CC BY: Attribution . License Terms : Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/[email protected].
Formal operational stage - Intro to Psychology. Provided by : Udacity. Located at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvq7tq2fx1Y . License : Other . License Terms : Standard YouTube License
Linn, P. (2016). Risky behaviors: Integrating adolescent egocentrism with the theory of planned behavior. Review of General Psychology, 20 (4), 392-398. ↵
Kuhn, D. (2013). Reasoning. In Philip D. Zelazo (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of developmental psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 744-764). New York: NY: Oxford University Press. ↵
Klaczynski, P.A. & Felmban, W.S. (2014). Heuristics and biases during adolescence: Developmental reversals and individual differences. In Henry Markovitz (Ed.), The developmental psychology of reasoning and decision making (pp. 84-111). New York, NY: Psychology Press. ↵
Crone, E.A., & Dahl, R.E. (2012). Understanding adolescence as a period of social-affective engagement and goal flexibility. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 13 (9), 636-650. ↵

Understanding Cognitive Development In Adolescence

An adolescent reaches a new stage of cognitive development that moves them from the concrete mode of thinking as a child to more complex thinking processes. This maturity in cognition gives adolescents the ability to form their ideas and questions while considering multiple points of view.

While you may find your adolescent is behaving in ways that seem irrational or overly emotional, they are simply growing neurologically in amazing ways. With some basic knowledge of what cognitive development means in adolescence , you can gain more insight into their thinking, see things from their perspective, and find ways to support them even more as they grow.

Cognitive development in adolescence

A child's brain develops dramatically during the adolescent years. The prefrontal cortex matures rapidly during adolescence and these brain changes come with changes in cognition (or thinking). The prefrontal cortex is responsible for reasoning, impulse control, working memory, and rational decision-making. This part of the brain greatly impacts adolescent brain development and decision-making.

Cognitive development refers to the changing thought processes that occur as we mature. It begins as soon as we are born (if not before) and continues into adulthood. What cognitive development means in adolescence is specifically bringing about important changes that allow us to transition from childhood to adulthood successfully. In this section, the many different aspects of this development are explored.

The “stage of formal operations”

Jean Piaget's work on cognitive development was a seminal contribution to adolescent psychology . He describes adolescence as the stage of life when an individual's ideas begin to take on more abstract forms and egocentric thoughts recede. This enables an individual to think and reason from a broader perspective.

Piaget broke down the cognitive progress of childhood into four different stages:

Sensory motor - From birth to 2 years old learning is largely sensory-based, the child explores the world through movement and sensation.

Pre-operational - Between the ages of 2 and 7, imagination play begins. A child can transform objects based on the needs of their narrative. For example, a broom can become a horse.

Concrete operations - In this stage, older children begin to understand logical operations, and gain sufficient maturity to operate through parental rules as well as societal rules.

Formal operations. Typically begun in early adolescence, in this stage the individual will begin to explore less self-centered concepts, debate ideas, understand more global concepts, and form their code for living. This is the stage we will discuss here.

Piaget used the term "Stage of Formal Operations" to describe the stage of adolescent cognitive development. In this stage, children gain the ability to abstract thinking and hypotheticals. They begin to use their imaginations in more practical ways. While young children may use their imaginations in play, adolescents use their imaginations to understand people and subjects more completely, allowing them to form new ideas about life.

Abstract thought

In early childhood, concrete thinking is the norm. Unlike younger children, adolescents can demonstrate abstract thinking skills. Here is an example of the difference:

A 5-year-old might learn to subtract by manipulating concrete objects. They may find two pencils on one side of their desk and six pencils on the other side of their desk. Then they may put them all in one pile and count them to find out that there are eight pencils in total. This type of cognition is called concrete operations.

On the other hand, an adolescent doesn't need to think of pencils or any other visual representation to know that 2 + 6 = 8. They can solve much more complex math problems without referring to physical objects of any kind.

Hypotheticals

Adolescents also develop the ability to imagine hypothetical situations. This might be a social situation, a subject they are learning about, or a challenge they are considering. They can imagine how it will go and make decisions about whether or how to approach the situation based on their abstract and hypothetical reasoning.

Information processing and decision making in adolescence

The way we process information affects the types of knowledge we can acquire and how well we can work with it once we have it.

During adolescence, young people begin to process information in the following ways:

Increased ability in formal logical operations such as deductive reasoning

Improved decision-making skills

Increased working memory capacity

Increased ability for memory retrieval

Increased ability for autonomous learning and choice

A child's knowledge increases as they move into and through adolescence. However, this does not happen just because they have had more time to pile on facts. Their ability to acquire new knowledge also increases. Some of the relevant changes you can expect in your child include:

Increases In Declarative Knowledge: When you say, "I know that…," you're talking about declarative knowledge, which includes facts, concepts, and formulae.

Increases In Procedural Knowledge: When you say, "I know how to…," you're talking about procedural knowledge. With this knowledge, adolescents can acquire new skills and techniques more easily than they might have when they were younger, although this is not always the case. For example, language learning is easier for a preschooler than a high school student.

Increases In Conceptual Knowledge: Conceptual knowledge, the "I know why" type of knowledge, typically increases at a dramatic clip during adolescence. This leads adolescents to form new ideas around a large variety of topics. You may begin to see their new complex thinking focused on more global concepts. With their newfound ability to think abstractly, the "whys" of life become not only more understandable but also more fascinating as well.

Seeing multiple parts of one problem

As children go through adolescence, they gain the ability to see one problem from many different perspectives. They can even see diverse parts of the problem that may or may not be relevant to the decision at hand. Until they get used to seeing the complexity of life's problems, they can appear unfocused. Rather, they are gaining experience with seeing things from a new perspective and are learning how to make well-thought-out decisions.

Self-reflection

Adolescents spend a lot of time thinking about themselves. This may seem selfish if you are thinking like a mature adult. Yet, they need to have opportunities to explore self-centered concepts about their lives and their world without harsh judgment from parents or teachers. If done at appropriate times, self-reflection leads to a stronger sense of their own identity and what they want from life.

Thoughts of their future

Cognitive development in adolescence serves another purpose as well. It prepares them for future careers and relationships. During adolescence, children begin thinking about what they want to do when they grow into adulthood. Futuristic concerns are especially common during the middle adolescence stage, which occurs between the ages of 14-17. This is often where making career decisions begins. They compare themselves to ideals and explore different career paths during this period. Many experiencing middle adolescence may also begin to make different life choices than they see their caregivers making. At this time, it is healthy for them to form their plans and set important goals for the end of their adolescence and their entrance into adult society.

Understanding others’ psychological characteristics

In addition to gaining the ability to think more abstractly, adolescents also want to understand the psychological characteristics of their peers and others. They make guesses about how others think. Then, they use the resulting assumptions to decide how to interact with that person or whether to interact with them at all.

Adolescents usually base their friendships on similarities between their psychological characteristics and those of others. For example, someone in this age group who sees himself as extroverted may choose another extrovert as a friend. Similarly, an adolescent who sees herself as honest may also choose friends who appear to be open and authentic.

How to support your adolescent

Adolescents need to develop healthy cognitive growth and move through life in their way if they are to become mentally healthy adults. Understanding this process can help you be a better parent and can also help you cope with what can sometimes be a trying time.

Recognizing the abilities and frustrations of adolescents

No one wants others to discount their abilities, and this is especially true of adolescents. To have a healthy relationship with your child, it is important to acknowledge their level of cognitive development. Give them credit for understanding concepts and abstractions better than they did as a young child. Anything else insults their intelligence and can drive a wedge between them.

During adolescence, children are at a stage where they are conflicted between wanting to be on their own and wanting to be taken care of by someone more capable. They are trying to form their thoughts about authority and societal standards. If you do not understand their level of cognitive development, it is unlikely that you can provide them with positive emotional support through these difficult years. Instead, you may find that you miss the mark as you try to help without truly understanding.

Guiding them through decision making

Adolescents are busy gaining autonomy, so when difficult problems arise, they may feel inclined to try to manage them independently. Certain problems may require cognitive skills they are just now developing. If you know how far they are in cognitive development, you can better provide the appropriate level of support as they try to navigate the difficulties of personal decision-making in adolescent life.

Helping them succeed in school

Of course, school is one of the most important parts of life for your adolescent. It takes up a lot of their time and prepares them for what lies ahead. Your child's teacher will almost certainly have an opinion about their level of cognitive development, and they might impart that information to you, especially if your child is having learning or behavior problems.

However, there is no need to take the educator's view as absolute truth without assessing the situation from your viewpoint as a parent. You have contact to information about your child that their teacher might not have, and you know your child in a way their teacher does not.

As you take an interest in your child's cognitive development, you can discover where they need additional help and be proactive in getting it for them. You can also see where they might be coming up shy of their potential. If so, you can encourage them to try new things or work harder. You can also provide them with appropriate learning opportunities for their stage of development.

How online therapy can help parents and adolescents

There is a large amount of evidence suggesting that online therapy programs can help parents better understand their children’s thoughts and behaviors. In a study published in Behaviour Research and Therapy , researchers examined the effectiveness of an online parenting program for those with children who exhibit signs of behavioral issues. After treatment, participants reported that there was less stress, anger, and conflict due to parenting. Researchers concluded that online programs have the potential to help create better parenting styles and foster significant positive behavioral changes in children. These findings are consistent with those from several similar studies showing that online therapy can provide useful tools to address varied mental health issues.

As mentioned above, if your child is struggling or if you need support as a parent, you might want to talk to an online therapist to understand more about your child and your relationship with them. A licensed counselor with BetterHelp can help you and your family better understand how your child’s mind works. Below are some reviews of BetterHelp counselors from parents of teenagers.

During adolescent development, the brain goes through significant changes as abstract thinking skills, emotional development, and other information-processing skills mature. Cognitive development during adolescence may contribute to adolescent egocentrism; adolescents are developing their own perceptions, but have not yet learned to differentiate them from others. In the long term, this adolescent cognitive growth is necessary to develop adult thinking skills.

As a parent, you can learn a lot about your child's cognitive development. Still, there may be times when you are unable to understand why your child thinks or acts the way they do. Often, this is simply because change can happen rapidly during adolescence. Even an expert might not have all the answers, but they can certainly help you figure out how to make your child's adolescence go more smoothly. All you need are the right tools and the right support. Take the first step today.

What are the cognitive developmental milestones of adolescents?

Cognitive development is a marker of developing executive functions—a set of complex thinking processes including planning, making thought-out decisions, and multitasking—from early to late adolescence.

Some of the milestones of cognitive development include:

Assimilation and accommodation: Young children develop cognitive abilities to take in new, more complex, information
Intuitive thinking processes: Relying on intuition and perceptions to navigate a variety of topics in early adolescence
Theory of mind: Social recognition and appropriate responses

What is self-reflection in cognitive development?

One skill developed throughout adolescence (and adulthood) is self-reflection, which helps adolescents in the long-term to identify their strengths and weaknesses and focus their energy more successfully.

How does cognitive development occur throughout a lifetime?

Cognitive development starts in infanthood and extends throughout life. There is a field of study, called lifespan development , dedicated to the development and changes of cognition, physiology, and social skills throughout the life of a human being. For example, compare the behavior, reasoning, and friendships that might differ between a 5-year-old, a 17-year-old, and a 57-year-old.

There are different schools of thought about whether cognitive development occurs continuously over a lifespan, or discontinuously (in stages). But, either way, cognitive development is a complex process that evolves as we interact with the world.

What cognitive stage is typically reached during adolescence?

According to Jean Piaget, a cognitive development researcher, there are four stages of cognitive development:

Sensorimotor stage: Birth to 2 years old
Preoperational stage: 2 to 7 years old
Concrete operational stage: 7 to 11 years old
Formal operational stage: 12 and older

Based on this timeline, children typically enter adolescence in the concrete operational stage, and reach the formal operational stage before adulthood.

What is an example of cognitive development in adolescence?

Examples of cognitive development signs include when a teen is able to recall and use information more efficiently (this is called improved processing speed), when an infant imitates their parents’ words or behaviors, or when toddlers begin to follow directions or sort items.

Why is it important for adolescents to improve cognitive development?

Cognitive development encompasses knowledge, problem-solving, and skills learned from infancy through adolescence. It enables connections with others, language development, and more complex problem-solving.

Reaching cognitive development milestones can help children learn to solve complex problems, make social connections, and focus.

What is a real life example of cognitive processes?

Cognitive processes include getting and processing information, and then storing it as a memory for later recall. Cognition relies on things like attention, perception, memory, and language. Examples of cognitive processes include learning a concept in algebra class and using that information to solve math problems on an exam.

How does cognitive development affect individual thoughts?

As cognitive development progresses thought processes become more complex and typically veer away from more self-centered thinking. For example, people in later stages of development may think increasingly about issues beyond their immediate reality, such as politics, injustice, or history.

How do you use cognitive processes in your life as a student?

There are many times in which cognitive processes are used in school. Examples include paying attention during class, processing lesson information, applying information to solve complex problems, reading textbooks, completing homework, and collaborating with peers.

How can we help cognitive learners?

Parents, teachers, and other people can do things to provide cognitive learning opportunities. For example, parents can provide their child with opportunities to play with blocks, sing songs together, work on puzzles, and read stories.