Adolescent development HC3

Adolescent development HC 4


Cognitive development and risky decision making

Lecture outline
 Adolescent cognitive development
o Piagetian perspectives
o Information processing capacities
o Beyond formal operations
 Models of adolescent risk taking
 Adolescent risky decision making and the legal system

Learning objectives
 Describe the cognitive changes that occur during adolescence
 Describe and understand different models concerning adolescent risk taking
 Describe and understand adolescent brain development and cognitive abilities in
relation to issues of treating adolescents as adults in the legal system

If this is White Hall, then this is a class in adolescent development.
 This is White Hall.
 Is this a class in adolescent development?
 Example of conditional reasoning – propositional logic
 Classic modus ponens (MP) inference: if p, then q.
o Being able to think about thinking  abstract thinking

If this is White Hall, then this is not a class in adolescent development.
 This is White Hall.
 Is this a class in adolescent development?
 If p then not q.

If this is White Hall, then this is a class in adolescent development.
 This is not White Hall.
 Is this a class in adolescent development?
 ?

If this is White Hall, then this is a class in adolescent development.
 This is a class in adolescent development.
 Is this White Hall?
 Logically you can say not necessarily but many say yes.
 Mistake: affirmation of the consequent (AC).

What is cognition?
 Cognition = aspects of mind related to the acquisition, modification, and manipulation
of knowledge in particular contexts (Bjorklund, 1999)
 Cognitive development = changes in how an individual thinks, solves problems, and
changes in memory, attention and information processing

Cognitive development during adolescence: a Piagetian perspective
 Jean Piaget (1896‐1980)  Swiss cognitive psychologist
 Stage theory of cognitive development (individuals in different stages think qualitively
differently)

, Adolescent development HC 4




Cognitive development during adolescence: a Piagetian perspective
 Formal operations – final stage
o Concrete – discuss world as it is
o Formal – as it might be
 Increased abstraction (abstract thinking) and speculation
 Allows an individual to place their lives in a personal and societal perspective
 Needed to: achieve identity, form goals, select an occupation

Adolescent cognitive abilities (cold cognitive tests)
 Understand impact of: past on present, present on future
 How one thing relates to another
 Greater capacity to evaluate immediate and long range costs and benefits
 World as might be, ought to be
o “If your partner’s parents saw you buying condoms at Etos, what would you
do?”
o “How would our lives be different if the drinking age is raised to 21 years?”

Base line: central executive is developing and works fine, but if we are aroused, our limbic
system takes over

Formal operations: 4 overlapping logical abilities
 Inductive reasoning
 Hypothetical-deductive reasoning
 Reflective-recursive thinking
 Inter‐propositional logic (also considered a subset of deductive reasoning)

Formal operations: 4 overlapping logical abilities

1. Inductive reasoning
 Reasoning from specific experiences or observations to a general rule
 Examples – rule – induction (ERI)
 “I enjoy watching Grey’s Anatomy, ER, and House… so I must like medical dramas.”