Question

Adolescence is a time of rapid physical and cognitive changes. Brain development during adolescence begins in the back of the brain and moves forward to the pre-frontal cortex. This area of the brain is responsible for our higher level thinking, decision making, judgement, and problem solving.

Discuss how cognitive development (according to Piaget) may limit an adolescent's ability to make good decisions and how this may impact risk-taking and risky behaviors. Be specific as you can by using examples to illustrate your points.

Your response should be 4-5 paragraphs in length. Be mindful of using proper grammar and spelling. Please be specific in your example.

Answer 1

Piaget was a Swiss psychologist according to his cognitive development theory the development of the child goes on throughout his adulthood through the process of biological maturation and environmental interaction.

According to his theory, the development of children is different from adults. The children are born with unique characteristics and mental structures on which their knowledge developed by adding to and substituting old knowledge through adaptation and accommodation.

Adolescence is the transitional period from childhood to adulthood according to WHO the adolescent is in the 10-19 year age group. The adolescent development stage is divided into early (11-14), middle (15-17), and late (18-22). This is the period when the child goes through physical, emotional, and psychological changes due to the secretion of LH and FSH hormones in the bloodstream that brings chemical changes in the brain and the child becomes impulsive and becomes more risk-taking. The children at this stage lack critical thinking they learn through experience.

Schemas: This is the process that helps the child gain knowledge and perceives it as; per his ability.

Assimilation; this is the process when the child learns new knowledge to the old existing knowledge.

Adaptation and accommodation: through this process, the child changes the existing schemas through his newly learned knowledge and experience.

Equilibrium: This is the stage when the child tries to balance his existing knowledge by alteration and modification.

These are the process through which the growing child acquires knowledge. Their cognitive development ability is based on stages and it is age-wise the adolescent is the stage between 11-19 years that means he is in the Formal Operational Stage, he has already passed through Sensorimotor Stage (birth to 18 to 24 months), Preoperational Stage (2 to 7 Years), Concrete Operational Stage (7 to 11 Years) at this stage the child enters the adolescent age he starts thinking logically and in an organized way.,

The Formal Operational Stage (12 and Up) is where physical emotional and psychological changes take place.

The changes in the brain continue till adulthood the prefrontal cortex that is situated at the front of the frontal lobe is still developing in adolescents thus they rely on the amygdale the pleasure hormone. The prefrontal cortex mostly contributes to personality development. Amygdale is a pleasure hormone thus due to chemical changes in the brain adolescent are impulsive and take action without thinking of the consequences. As they grow they learn through schemas that help them in gaining knowledge, and through assimilation, the new knowledge is added, these are the knowledge they learn through their behavior and environment. If they are impulsive and consequences are bad they learn that their actions will lead them to disaster, as they already develop the ability to think logically.

The middle adolescent period that (15-17) is the most impulsive stage where the children do more risk-taking activities, and this is the period of cognitive development as well when the child starts realizing the ill effect of this behavior due to his formal operational stage where he can realize the consequences due to his abstract thinking ability. They try reasoning out the problems hypothetically and start settling down and take interest in politics, social, philosophical, and other issues, and use logic to reason out the problems and its solutions. By the time they enter the late adolescent (18-22), they understand that they have to pay more attention to education as they are becoming legally adult and responsible for their actions.

If the child does not develop the ability of abstract thinking and does see the consequences of his impulsive behavior due to lack of understanding during the formal operational stage it limits an adolescent's ability to make good decisions and risk-taking behavior.