My Development
According to Piaget, around age 11 young people enter the formal operational stage in which they develop the capacity for abstract, systematic, scientific thinking. Whereas concrete operational children can operate on reality, formal operational adolescents can operate on operations. They no longer require concrete things or events as objects of thought. Instead they can come up with new, more general logical rules through internal reflection.
(Berk, 2013, p. 304)
During adolescence, I excelled in many of my science and math classes that required some degree of abstract, logical, and systematic thinking (scientific method). During adolescence, I was also extremely introspective and engaged in a lot of reflections about my life and my interactions with the world. It was at this time that I wrote in a diary to help manage and understand my thoughts and the thoughts of others. I also believe I engaged in formal operational thought in my sociology and psychology classes when trying to understand human emotions and the reasons behind why we do the things we do. Adolescence was a time for full exploration and when I started to become interested in psychology.
A life changing moment for me happened when I was reading Our Town, and I happened upon this line: Yes, now you know. Now you know! That's what it was to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those...of those about you. To spend and waste time as though you had a million years. To be always at the mercy of one self-centered passion, or another. Now you know — that's the happy existence you wanted to go back to. Ignorance and blindness.” It was at that moment that I found myself interested in trying to understand the motives of others.
The gains I remember most readily influencing me was metacognition and my awareness of thought. For roughly 3 years, I was very lost in my thoughts which was showcased through my diary/blog entries. At this time I was not only aware of my thoughts but also the thoughts of others and my influence on my own and others’ thoughts. Looking back, in about 9th grade there were large changes in my critical thinking skills, and I was about to notice and pick out themes and hidden meanings in stories. During adolescence, where music was an extremely important part of my life, I was able to start visualizing stories and put more feeling into the music that I was playing rather than just playing the notes (concrete to formal operational).
Information processing theorists refer to a variety of specific mechanisms, including diverse aspets fo executive function, as underlying cognitive gains in adolescence.
Gains in: Attention, Inhibition, Stratigies, Knowledge, Metacognition, Cogitive Self-Regulation, Speed of thinking.
(Berk, 2013, p. 30)
Information Processing
Cognitive Development
Self-Consciousness and Self-Focusing
My Development
Adolescents’ ability to reflect on their own thoughts, combined with physical and psychological changes, leads them to think more about themselves. Piaget’s followers identified two distorted images of the relationship between self and others that commonly appear.
Imaginary Audience: Adolescents’ belief that they are the focus of everyone else’s attention and concern
Personal Fable: Certain that others are observing and thinking about them, teenagers developed an inflated option of their own importance-a feeling that they are special and unique.
(Berk, 2013, p. 308)
I believe reading my blog posts alone showcases the distorted images I had of myself. For one, I often wrote about the mundane things I did ever day (like going to class) in a way that I believed that people would read it and care. I remember at the time being very self-conscious about what I wrote, and thinking that everyone would read it and judge me if what I wrote wasn’t perfect.
At this time, I was also very critical of myself and although I often thought that people were looking at me and thinking about me, I typically thought they were thinking negative things, particularly about the way I looked (specifically my weight). After quitting dance, I exercised 5 days a week to avoid gaining weight, and I also played on the tennis team.
My Development
Adolescence
