Chapter 6:Early Adulthood

Module 6.2Cognitive Development

in Early Adulthood

Intellectual Growth in Early Adulthood

Physical development slows down during early adulthood, but does cognitive development?• Piaget and others argued that by time the

teen years were finished, thinking stabilized.

• BUT increasing evidence suggests that this part of Piaget’s theory was incorrect!

Postformal Thought

• Developmentalist Giesela Labouvie-Vief suggests that nature of thinking changes qualitatively during early adulthood.

• Adults exhibit POSTFORMAL THOUGHT, thinking that goes beyond Piaget's formal operations. – Adult predicaments are sometimes solved by

relativistic thinking rather than pure logic– Postformal thought acknowledges that world

sometimes lacks purely right and wrong solutions so adults must draw upon prior experiences to solve problems

Intellectual Growth in Early Adulthood• K. Warner Schaie suggests that adults' thinking

follows set pattern of stages:.

– ACQUISITIVE STAGE - encompasses all of childhood and adolescence, main developmental task is to acquire information.

– ACHIEVING STAGE - point reached by young adults in which intelligence is applied to specific situations involving attainment of long-term goals regarding careers, family, and societal contributions.

– RESPONSIBLE STAGE - major concerns of middle-aged adults relate to their personal situations, including protecting and nourishing their spouses, families, and careers.

– EXECUTIVE STAGE - period in middle adulthood when people take broader perspective than earlier, including concerns about world.

– REINTEGRATIVE STAGE - period of late adulthood during which the focus is on tasks that have personal meaning.

How Information Is Used: Schaie’s Stages

Sternberg - TRIARCHIC THEORY OF INTELLIGENCE

• Three major components:

• Componential intelligence relates to the mental components involved in analyzing data, and in solving problems, especially problems involving rational behavior. (traditional IQ tests focus on this aspect)

• Experiential intelligence refers to the relationship between intelligence, people's prior experience, and their ability to cope with new situations.

• Contextual intelligence involves the degree of success people demonstrate in facing the demands of their everyday, real-world environments. – Sternberg contends that success in a career necessitates this

type of intelligence (contextual), also called PRACTICAL INTELLIGENCE, intelligence that is learned primarily by observing others and modeling their behavior.

Expanding on Sternberg’s Theory…

• Psychologist Seymour Epstein – Constructive thinking

• Form of practical intelligence• Underlies success in such areas as social

relationships and physical and emotional health

CreativityEarly adulthood:

– Peak of creativity– Many of professional

problems are novel– Willing to take risks– Creative people

develop and endorse ideas that are unfashionable or regarded as "wrong".

– Not all people reach their creative peak in early adulthood.

Life Events and Cognitive Development

• Major life events may lead to cognitive growth– Think about the world in novel, more complex,

sophisticated, and often less rigid ways– Apply postformal thought (Labouvie-Vief)

Higher Education• College is period of developmental growth that encompasses mastery not just of particular bodies of knowledge, but of ways of understanding world.

• Although you may believe that college attendance is commonplace, this is not case at all: Nationwide, high school graduates who enter college are actually in the minority.

College• Nationwide, a minority of high school graduates enter college.

• 40% of White Americans enter college. • 29% of African-Americans enter college. • 31% of Hispanic high school graduates enter college.

• Only about 40% of those who start will graduate from college in 4 years. • ½ will eventually finish.

• 70% of African-Americans drop out of college.• Minority students are an increasingly larger proportion of college

population. • African-American students have increased by 13%. • Hispanic students have increased by 22%. • White students have increased by 6%.

• These changes reflect differences in the racial and ethnic composition of U.S. and growing realization that higher education improves economic well-being.

• There are now more women than men enrolled in college, and by year 2007, women's enrollment is expected to increase 30% from 1995 compared to an increase of only 13% for men.

Who goes to college?• 40% of college students today are 25 years of age or

older• Average age of a community college student is 31• College degree is becoming increasingly important in

obtaining and keeping job

– Although nearly 69 percent of white high school graduates enter college, only 61% of African American and 47% of Hispanic graduates do so. Even more striking, although absolute number of minority students enrolled in college has increased, the overall proportion of the minority population that does enter college has decreased over the past decade—a decline that most education experts attribute to changes in the availability of financial aid.

ConsequencesProportion of students who enter college but ultimately

never graduate is substantial!

Gender Gap in College Attendance• More women than men attend college and the

proportion of women, relative to men, is increasing.

• There already are more women than men enrolled in college, with women receiving 133 bachelor’s degrees for every 100 men receive.

• The gender gap is even more evident for minority students, with 166 African-American women attending college for every 100 African-American men.

• Women often have better high school academic records may be admitted to college at greater rates.

Never Too Late to Go to College

• According to Sherry Willis, adults return to college for several reasons:

– To understand their own aging– To keep up with rapid technological and

cultural advances– To combat obsolescence on the job– To acquire new vocational skills – To broaden their intellectual skills

College Adjustment

• First year adjustment reaction:– is a cluster of psychological symptoms,

including loneliness, anxiety, and depression, relating to the college experience.

– Particularly affects unusually successful students in high school

– Passes for most as friends made and integration into college life occurs

– Serious psychological consequences for few

When Do College Students Need Professional Help with Their Problems?

• Psychological distress that lingers and interferes with a person’s sense of well-being and ability to function

• Feelings that one is unable to cope effectively with the stress

• Hopeless or depressed feelings• Inability to build close relationships with others• Physical symptoms

Depression in College Students

•Surveys find that almost half of college students report having at least one significant psychological issue.

•Other research finds that more than 40 percent of students who visited a college counseling center, reported being depressed.

•These figures include only those students who sought help from the counseling center and not those that did not seek treatment. •Figures are not representative of the entire college population.

Gender and College Performance• Prejudice and discrimination directed at

women is still a fact of college life:• Hostile sexism (overtly harmful treatment).• Benevolent sexism (a form of sexism in which women are

placed in stereotyped & restrictive roles that may appear positive):

• Complimenting a student on appearance.• Offering an easier research project so a student won’t have to work so hard.• Message may be that the woman is not taken seriously, and competence is undermined. Differences exist in

gender distribution in classes and attrition rates.

• Classes in engineering, the physical sciences, and mathematics tend to have more men than women.

• Women earn just 22% of the bachelor degrees in science and 13% of the doctorates.

• Women are more likely to drop out of math, engineering, and physical science classes.

Stereotype Threat“African Americans don’t do well in academic pursuits.”“Women lack ability in math and science.” • So say erroneous, damaging, and yet persistent stereotypes about

African Americans and women.

• These stereotypes play out in vicious ways:• When African Americans start elementary school, their standardized test

scores are only slightly lower than those of Caucasian students, and yet a 2-year gap emerges by the sixth grade.

• Even though more African American high school graduates are enrolling in college, the increase has not been as large as for other groups.

• Even though boys and girls perform virtually identically on standardized math tests in elementary school and middle school, this changes when they reach high school. At that level, and even more so in college, men tend to do better in math than women.

• In fact, when women take college math, science, and engineering

courses, they are more likely to do poorly than men who enter college with the same level of preparation and identical SAT scores.

Stereotype Threat• Stereotype threat hypothesis - expectation based

on stereotype leads to outcomes:– Males receive more extra help and more positive

reinforcement for their comments than women do.– Women expect to earn less than men.– Women expect to do worse in some academic areas

than men.

• Although not entirely consistent, some research shows that women who attend same-sex colleges show higher self-esteem than those attending coeducational colleges. • They receive more attention. • More professors are women. • They receive more encouragement in science and math.

• Women and African Americans perform less well in college

• Psychologist Claude Steele found that the reason both women and African Americans perform less well in college is academic disidentification - a lack of personal identification with an academic domain.

• More understanding of this effect is needed!

• May be connected to high school drop out rates as well!

Stereotype Threat

Gender Differences

During 1st year of college, men are more likely to view themselves as above average in several

academic areas.

Chapter 7: Middle Adulthood

Module 7.2Cognitive Development

in Middle Adulthood

Cognitive Development

• Cross-sectional studies clearly showed that older subjects scored less well than younger subjects on traditional IQ tests– Intelligence peaks at 18, stays steady until

mid-20s, and declines till end of life

• Longitudinal studies, revealed different developmental patterns in intelligence– Stable and even increasing IQ scores until

mid-30s and some to mid-50s, then declined

Kinds of Intelligence• FLUID INTELLIGENCE is the ability to deal with new

problems and situations.– Fluid intelligence is inductive reasoning, spatial orientation,

perceptual speed, and verbal memory.– Fluid intelligence does decline with age.

CRYSTALLIZED INTELLIGENCE is the store of information, skills, and strategies that people have acquired through education and prior experiences, and through their previous use of fluid intelligence.

– Crystallized intelligence includes numerical and verbal abilities, such as solving a crossword puzzle or a mathematical problem.

– Crystallized intelligence holds steady or increases with age.Even though scores on IQ tests decline with age, middle-aged people show no decline in general cognitive competence.

Relationship Between Fluid and Crystal Intelligence

Continuing Competence versus Growing Decline

Salthouse suggests four reasons why this discrepancy exists:

1. Typical measures of cognitive skills tap a different type of cognition than what is required to be successful in particular occupations

2. Measures of practical intelligence rather than traditional IQ tests to assess intelligence may yield little discrepancy

3. People can be quite successful professionally and still be on the decline in certain kinds of cognitive abilities

4. Older people may be successful because they have developed specific kinds of expertise and particular competencies

Success in Middle Adulthood• Highly successful middle-aged people may

not be representative of all middle-aged people.

• Professional success may not rely exclusively on cognitive ability.

• Older, successful people may have developed expertise in their particular occupational area or SELECTIVE OPTIMIZATION, the process by which people concentrate on particular skill areas to compensate for losses in other areas.

The Development of Expertise: Separating Experts from Novices

• EXPERTISE, the acquisition of skill or knowledge in a particular area, develops as people devote attention and practice– Expert = rely on experience and intuition, process

information automatically, use different neural pathways to solve problems

– Novice = strictly follow formal rules and procedures, use better strategies and better problem-solving

Memory in Middle Adulthood• According to research on memory changes in

adulthood– Most people show only minimal losses– Many exhibit no memory loss in middle adulthood

• Memory is viewed in terms of three sequential components:

– Sensory memory is an initial, momentary storage of information that lasts only an instant.

• No decline in middle age.– Short-term memory holds information for 15 to 25 seconds.

• No decline in middle age.– Long-term memory holds information that is rehearsed for a relatively permanent

time.• Some decline in middle age.• Storage is less efficient.• A reduction in efficiency of memory retrieval.

Effective Strategies for Remembering• Mnemonics (pronounced “nee-MON-iks”) are formal strategies for

organizing material in ways that make it more likely to be remembered.

• Get organized. For people who have trouble keeping track of where they left their keys or remembering appointments, the simplest approach is for them to become more organized. Using an appointment book, hanging one’s keys on a hook, or using Post-It notes can help jog one’s memory.

• Pay attention. You can improve your recall by initially paying attention when you are exposed to new information, and by purposefully thinking that you wish to recall it in the future. If you are particularly concerned about remembering something, such as where you parked your car, pay particular attention at the moment you park the car, and remind yourself that you really want to remember.

Effective Strategies for Remembering• Use the encoding specificity phenomenon. According to the

encoding specificity phenomenon, people are most likely to recall information in environments that are similar to those in which they initially learned (“encoded”) it (Tulving & Thompson, 1973). For instance, people are best able to recall information on a test if the test is held in the room in which they studied.

• Visualize. Making mental images of ideas can help you recall them later. For example, if you want to remember that global warming may lead to rising oceans, think of yourself on a beach on a hot day, with the waves coming closer and closer to where you’ve set out your beach blanket.

• Rehearse. In the realm of memory, practice makes perfect, or if not perfect, at least better. Adults of all ages can improve their memories if they expend more effort in rehearsing what they want to remember. By practicing what they wish to recall, people can substantially improve their recall of the material.