Chapter 18
Emerging Adulthood:
Cognitive Development
Cognitive Development in Early
Adulthood
• Beginning in early adulthood, cognition may
change in quality, quantity, speed, efficiency and
depth.
• Thoughts are more practical, flexible, and
dialectical and they reflect new values, interests
and skills.
• These developments may constitute a fifth stage
of cognitive development following Piaget’s four
stages, known as postformal thought.
Postformal Thought
• Characterized by a more comprehensive
approach to problem solving along with
noting and anticipating variables and potential
outcomes in a given situation.
• Postformal thought is both more practical and
more creative than previous stages and
thereby allows the individual to become more
capable of combining multiple contradictory
elements into a comprehensive whole.
Postformal Thought vs.
Formal Thought
• Time management: adults are more likely to
be able to plan ahead and avoid
procrastination.
• However, all age groups have problems with
delay discounting; the tendency to
undervalue events in the future. (For example,
lottery winners choosing to accept half their
earnings immediately, rather than wait for a
full payout over time.)
Combining Subjective and Objective
Thought
• With the development of postformal thought individuals
are able to combine subjective and objective thought
processes in decision making.
• Subjective Thought: Thinking that is strongly influenced by
personal qualities of an individual, such as goals, past
experiences, and culture.
• Objective Thought: Thinking that is not influenced by
personal qualities but instead involves facts and numbers
that are considered universally true and valid.
• By combining these two types of thought, emerging adults
are able to avoid drifting to behavioral and cognitive
extremes and maintain a healthy balance between the two.
Cognitive Flexibility
• Cognitive Flexibility is the ability to restructure
knowledge in multiple ways depending on the
changing situational demands like the difficulty or
complexity of the situation.
• As an individual begins to develop their cognitive
flexibility, they are able to more easily come up with
alternative solutions to problems and work with others
to discover these solutions. Cognitive flexibility is also
essential in overcoming stereotypes, as an individual
often must change and move past child hood
assumptions on which many stereotypes are based.
Stereotypes
• Stereotype Threat
– The possibility that one’s appearance or behavior
will be misread to confirm another person’s
oversimplified, prejudice attitude.
– The mere possibility of being negatively
stereotyped arouses emotions that can disrupt
cognition as well as emotional regulation.
Stereotypes (Cont.)
• The threat of Bias
– If students fear that others expect them to do
poorly in school because of their ethnicity or
gender, they might not identify with academic
achievement and thus do worse on exams than
they otherwise would have.
Dialectical Thought
• Dialectical thought
– The most advanced cognitive process,
characterized by the ability to consider a thesis
and its antithesis simultaneously and thus to
arrive at a synthesis. Dialectical thought makes
possible an ongoing awareness of pros and cons,
advantages and disadvantages, possibilities and
limitations.
Stages of Dialectical Thought
• Thesis
– A proposition or statement of
belief.
• Antithesis
– A proposition or statement of
belief that opposes the thesis.
• Synthesis
– A new idea that integrates the
thesis and its antithesis, thus
representing a new and more
comprehensive level of truth.
Morals and Religion
• Adult responsibilities, experiences, and
education affect moral reasoning and religious
beliefs.
• Maturation of values first appears in emerging
adulthood and continues through middle age.
Dilemmas for Emerging Adults
• Emerging adults often experience dilemmas
that seem to raise moral issues. Most are no
longer bound by their parent’s or by their
childhood culture, but they are not yet
connected to a family of their own. As a result,
they must decide for themselves what to do
about sex, drugs, education, vocation, and
many other matters.
Gender Differences
• Girls are raised to develop a morality of care.
They give human needs and relationships the
highest priority.
• Boys develop a morality of justice; they are
taught to distinguish right from wrong.
Moral Growth
• Defining Issues Test
(DIT)
– A series of questions
developed by James
Rest and designed to
assess respondents’
level of moral
development by having
them rank possible
solutions to moral
dilemmas.
Emerging Adulthood
Stages of Faith
Cognitive Growth and Higher
Education
Stages of Faith
• Through emerging adulthood it can be
common that people have spiritual struggles.
• James Fowler- six stages of faith
• Stage 1- Intuitive-projective faith
– Ages 3 to 7
– Faith is magical
• Stage 2-Mythic-literal faith
– Ages 7 to 11
– The myths and stories of religion literally
• Stage 3-Synthetic-conventional faith
– Reflecting concern about other people
• Stage 4-Individual-reflective faith
– Faith is characterized by intellectual detachment
– Question authority of parents and other authority
figures
• Stage 5-Conjuctive faith
– Faith incorporates both powerful emotional ideas
and rational conscious values.
• Stage 6-Universalzing faith
– People at this stage have a powerful vision of
universal compassion, justice, and love that
compels them to then live their lives in a way
others may think is either saintly or foolish.
Cognitive Growth and Higher
Education
• Relationship between
college education and
cognition.
• College graduates
– Healthier and wealthier
than other adults
– Also deeper and more
flexible thinkers
Effects of College
• Students attend college to
– Secure better jobs
– To learn specific skills
– Secondary goal is for general education
• College can result in better health altogether
– College graduates
•
•
•
•
Smoke less
Eat better
Exercise more and
Live longer
• College graduates are also more likely to be
– Spouses
– Homeowners and
– Parents of healthy children
• Classic study by Perry- nine
levels of complexity over
the four years that lead to
a bachelor’s degree.
• Perry found that the
college experience causes a
progression because of the
professors, class
discussion, peers, and
books.
• Scientists find that social
interaction and intellectual
challenge advance
thinking.
Emerging Adulthood
• Changes in the college context
– Changes in the Students
– Changes in the Institutions
• Evaluating the Changes
– Diversity and Enrollment
– Graduates and Dropouts
Changes in Students
• College is no longer just for the
elite few.
• In the first half of the twentieth
century one out of every twenty
adults received a college degree.
• As of now, in developed nations
one in every two adults receives a
college degree.
Demographics
• Along with the
increase in numbers,
there has also been
an expansion in the
field of
demographics.
Student Goals
• Fewer Students today
seek out liberal arts
and more specialize in
business and the
professions
• Fewer seek general
education and more
seek financial
security.
Changes in the Institutions
• The U.S. currently has over
1,500 community colleges,
as from 275 approximately
fifty years ago.
• 12% of four-year colleges,
tuition (excluding room
and board) can cost
upwards of $30,000 per
year.
Colleges today offer
more career
programs and hire
more part-time
faculty, more
women, and more
minorities.
Enrollment
• There are more than
25,000 undergraduates
at each of 100 public
universities in the U.S.
• Private colleges still out
number public colleges
by a ratio of 3:2, however
75% of U.S. college
students attend a public
university.
Graduates and Dropouts
• A correlation
between college
education and future
income has become
stronger in current
times than it was a
few years ago.
When an 18-year-old
high school graduates
and proceeds directly
to a job rather than
going to college
immediately they tend
to achieve less and are
less satisfied by middle
age.