1. Module 5.2 Cognitive Development in Adolescence
Chapter 5: Adolescence
Module 5.2
Cognitive Development in Adolescence

2. COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

3. Cognitive Development
Approaches
Piaget
Information processing
Adolescent egocentrism
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4. Piagetian Perspective
Fixed sequence of qualitatively different stages
Fundamentally different than child thinking
Utilized in variety of settings and situations
Incorporates new, more advanced, and more adaptive form of reasoning
Occurs when biological readiness and increasingly complex environmental demands create cognitive disequilibrium
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5. Piagetian Stages Related to Youth Development
Concrete operations
6-11 years
Mastery of logic
Development of rational thinking
Formal operations
11+ years
Development of abstract and hypothetical reasoning
Development of propositional logic
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6. Developmental of Formal Operations
Emergent
Early adolescence
Variable usage depends on conditions surrounding assessment
Established
Late adolescence
Consolidated and integrated into general approach to reasoning
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7. Piaget…Pros and Cons Cons Pros Fails to prove
Stage like fashion of cognition
FO is adolescent cognitive stage
Fails to account for variability
Between children
Within child
Within specific situations
Pros
Catalyst for much research
Accounts for many changes observed during adolescence
Helps explain
Developmental differences
Multidimensionality
Metacognition
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8. Information Processing View
Study of cognitive development in component processes
Incorporates same techniques to understanding human reasoning that computer scientists employ in writing programs
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9. Changes in Information Processing
Gains during adolescence help to explain developmental differences in abstract, multidimensional, and hypothetical thinking
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10. Changes Include five basic areas: Attention Memory
Information processing speed
Organizational strategies
Metacognition
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11. Thinking about Thinking…
Metacognition improves during adolescence
Thinks about own thoughts self-consciousness
Monitors own learning processes more efficiently
Paces own studying
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12. Adolescent Egocentrism
Imaginary audience
Personal fables
Assessment methodology
Imaginary audience
Belief that one is center of everyone else's concern and attention
Personal fables
Egocentric belief that one’s experiences are unique
Assessment methodology
May be right about existence of adolescent egocentrism but wrong about underlying processes
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13. How do adolescents connect using technology?s
Instant messages (IMs)
Web logs (blogs)
Websites
Chat rooms
Cell phones
Camcorders
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14. Review and Apply REVIEW
Adolescence corresponds to Piaget’s formal operations period, a stage characterized by abstract reasoning and an experimental approach to problems.
According to the information processing perspective, the cognitive advances of adolescence are quantitative and gradual, involving improvements in many aspects of thinking and memory. Improved metacognition enables the monitoring of thought processes and of mental capacities.
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15. Review and Apply REVIEW
Adolescents are susceptible to adolescent egocentrism and the perception that an imaginary audience is constantly observing their behavior. They also construct personal fables that stress their uniqueness and immunity to harm.
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16. School Performance

17. True or False?
Grades awarded to high school students have shifted upward in the last decade.
True
The mean grade point average for college-bound seniors was 3.3 (out of a scale of 4), compared with 3.1 a decade ago. More than 40 percent of seniors reported average grades of A+, A, or A- (College Board, 2005).
Independent measures of achievement, such as SAT scores, have not risen. Consequently, a more likely explanation for the higher grades is the phenomenon of grade inflation. According to this view, it is not that students have changed. Instead, instructors have become more lenient awarding higher grades for the same performance.
Ask: What consequences does this have (potentially) for college-bound students?

18. Socioeconomic Status and School Performance
Individual Differences in Achievement
Children living in poverty lack many advantages
Later school success builds heavily on basic skills presumably learned or not learned early in school
There are several reasons. For one thing, children living in poverty lack many of the advantages enjoyed by other children. Their nutrition and health may be less adequate. Often living in crowded conditions and attending inadequate schools, they may have few places to do homework. Their homes may lack the books and computers commonplace in more economically advantaged households.
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19. Ethnic and Racial Differences in School Achievement
Significant achievement differences between ethnic and racial groups
On average, African American and Hispanic students tend to perform at lower levels, receive lower grades, and score lower on standardized tests of achievement than Caucasian students
Asian American students tend to receive higher grades than Caucasian students
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20. What is the source of such ethnic and racial differences in academic achievement?
Ask: What do you think?
Much of the difference is due to socioeconomic factors.
More African American and Hispanic families live in poverty so their economic disadvantage may be reflected in their school performance.
Members of certain minority groups may perceive school success as relatively unimportant: may believe that societal prejudice in workplace will dictate that they will not succeed, no matter how much effort they expend.
Attributions effect.
Beliefs about the consequences of not doing well in school.
Process of involuntary immigration apparently leaves lasting scars, reducing the motivation to succeed in subsequent generations.

21. Cyberspace: Adolescents Online
See: Adolescents in Cyberspace: Exploring a New Social Universe (
Widespread availability of Internet and World Wide Web is producing significant changes in lives of many adolescents.
Educational promise of Internet is significant. It is not yet obvious how this will change education or whether impact will be uniformly positive.
Ask: What do YOU think? Why?
To obtain the full benefits of Internet, then, students must obtain ability to search, choose, and integrate information to create new knowledge.
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22. The Downside of Click Objectionable material available
Growing problem of Internet gambling
Safety
Digital divide
Poorer adolescents and members of minority groups have less access to computers than more affluent adolescents and members of socially-advantaged groups—a phenomenon known as the digital divide.
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23. Dropping Out of School Incidence Causes Consequences 285
Most students complete high school, but as we have said, some half million students each year drop out prior to graduating. The consequences of dropping out are severe. High school dropouts earn 42 percent less than high school graduates, and the unemployment rate for dropouts is 50 percent.
Adolescents who leave school do so for a variety of reasons. Some leave because of pregnancy or problems with the English language. Some must leave for economic reasons, needing to support themselves or their families.
Dropout rates differ according to gender and ethnicity.
Poverty plays a large role in determining whether a student completes high school. Students from lower-income households are three times more likely to drop out than middle- and upper-income households. Because economic success is so dependent on education, dropping out often perpetuates a cycle of poverty.
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24. Review and Apply REVIEW
Academic performance is linked in complex ways to socioeconomic status and to race and ethnicity.
Both gender and ethnicity affect the incidence of dropping out.
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25. Review and Apply REVIEW
The educational benefits of the Internet are many, but it also introduces adolescents to objectionable material and online gambling.
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26. Review and Apply
APPLY
What sorts of external factors (i.e. not attributable to the students) might negatively affect the performance of U.S. students on international achievement tests?
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