adolescents. How did you think of yourself at the beginning of puberty? Adolescents are preoccupied with what they are like and develop individual images of what they look like. Another important developmental task during adolescence is accepting one’s physical self/ maturity.
Adolescents need to develop a realistic image of their physical appearance, which is acceptable to them. It is important to keep in mind that puberty also involves cognitive and social changes along with physical changes. Cognitive Developmental Changes : Adolescents’ thought becomes more abstract, logical, and idealistic; they become more capable of examining their own thoughts, others’ thoughts, and what others are thinking about them. Adolescents’ developing ability to reason gives them a new level of cognitive and social awareness.
Piaget believed that formal operational thought appears between the age of and . During this stage adolescent thinking expands beyond actual concrete experiences and they begin to think more in abstract terms and reason about them. In addition to being abstract, adolescent thought is also idealistic. Adolescents begin to think about ideal characteristics for themselves and others and compare themselves and others with these ideal standards.
For example, they may think what an ideal parent is like and compare their parents with these ideal standards. This may at times make adolescents wonder which of the new-found ideal standards they should adopt. In contrast to trial and error approach used by children in earlier stages of development, adolescent thinking becomes more systematic in solving problems — they think of possible courses of action, why something is happening the way it is, and systematically seek solutions. Piaget called this type of logical thinking — hypothetical deductive reasoning .
Logical thought also influences the development of moral reasoning. Social rules are not considered as absolute standards and moral thinking shows some flexibility. The adolescent recognises alternative moral courses, explores options, and then decides on a personal moral code. For example, should I smoke as everyone I know does?
Is it ethical to copy answers in the examinations? This also lends the possibility of adolescents not following society’s norms if they