Cognitive Transitions In Adolescence

In child development, adolescence is considered to be the second decade of a person's life starting from the age of 10 and lasting until 20.

Adolescence is the time for a child to grow up and move from childhood to adulthood. However, it is still a transition phase from childhood to adulthood.

Unfortunately there is no demarcation line that shows the end of childhood and beginning of adolescence. Rather, psychologists believe that when a child moves from childhood to adolescence, he gradually goes through a set of transitions that have an effect on his behavior, development and relationships. These phases of transitions are biological, cognitive, social and emotional.

This article is about cognitive transition in adolescence.

Cognitive Transition in Adolescence:

Cognitive transition is an important phase in child development. This is the phase where adolescents learn to think in a more advanced, efficient and complex manner compared to children. Initially, when a child moves into adolescence, he is able to think better. He is able to think about different possibilities rather than limiting himself to what is real like children do. In other words, an adolescent is able to think hypothetically.

Next adolescents develop the ability to think about abstract ideas. For instance, adolescents can understand the abstract meaning in puns, proverbs, metaphors and analogies. Since an adolescent can think about abstract things, it also allows him to apply advanced reasoning and logic to social and ideological issues. This is clearly visible when adolescents show interest in interpersonal relationships, politics, philosophy, religion, morality, friendship, faith, democracy, honesty and fairness.

The third phase in cognitive transition in adolescence is about the thinking process itself, also known as metacognition. It is because of this phase in cognitive transition that adolescents show more introspection and self consciousness. Metacognition offers adolescents intellectual advantages but it also affects them negatively. They tend to get more egocentric and are constantly occupied with themselves.

The other cognitive change that you see in adolescents is their ability to think about multiple things. Children can concentrate on one thing at a time while adolescents are able to see many perspectives and they interpret things in many different ways depending on what point of view they hold.

The final cognitive transition in adolescence is the ability to see things as relative. Children take everything at face value and the world is black and white to them. They do not see the shades of grey. Adolescents develop the ability to see the grey and that is why they are less likely to accept so-called facts as complete truths. They also learn to question parents and this can be quite irksome as it seems that adolescents question for the sake of start an argument.

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