Chapter 15: Study Questions

Child-rearing style contribute to adolescents' academic achievement - Uninvolved

Low in both warmth and maturity demands. Predicts the poorest grades and worsening school performance over time

Good decision making steps

Identifying pros and cons of each alternative Assessing the likelihood of various outcomes Evaluating one's choice in terms of whether one's goals were met Learning from the mistake and making a better future decision

Specific mechanism that underlies changes in adolescence - Metacognition

(awareness of thought) expands. Leads to new insights into effective strategies for acquiring information and solving problems. Central to adolescent cognitive development.

hypothetico-deductive

. Piaget believed that at adolescence, young people first become capable of ________ reasoning.

Example of how peers contribute to adolescent achievement.

Academically motivated - generally choose friends who share those values. For example, when Sabrina began to make new friends in middle school, she often studied with her girlfriends. Each girl wanted to do well and reinforced this desire in the others. Of the diverse characteristics on which _______ resemble each other, grade point average has the strongest association with future adjustment.

Exaggerated sense of personal uniqueness - Way to handle the consequences of teenagers' new cognitive capacities.

Acknowledge the adolescent's unique characteristics. At opportune times, encourage a more balanced perspective by pointing out that you had similar feelings as a teenager.

propositional thought.

Adolescents' ability to evaluate the logic of propositions (verbal statements) without referring to real-world circumstances. In contrast, children can evaluate the logic of statements only by considering them against concrete evidence in the real world. In a study of _________ an adult showed children and adolescents a pile of poker chips and asked whether statements about the chips were true, false, or uncertain In one condition, the adult hid a chip in her hand and presented the following propositions: "Either the chip in my hand is green or it is not green." "The chip in my hand is green and it is not green."

imaginary audience - distorted image

Adolescents' belief that they are the focus of everyone else's attention and concern. Serve positive, protective functions. When asked why they worry about the opinions of others, adolescents responded that they do so because others' evaluations have important real consequences—for self-esteem, peer acceptance, and social support. The idea that others care about their appearance and behavior also has emotional value. - helping teenagers hold onto important relationships as they struggle to separate from parents and establish an independent sense of self

Summarize gains in adolescents' communication skills.

An improved capacity to adapt language style to social context. Greater skill at reflecting. Engage in cognitive self-regulation. Practice what they want to say in an expected situation. Review what they did say, and figure out how they could say it better. Use of slang.

Child-rearing style contribute to adolescents' academic achievement - Authoritarian & Permissive

Associated with lower grades

Information-processing theorists refer to seven specific mechanisms that underlie cognitive change in adolescence. List them.

Attention Inhibition Speed of thinking Strategies Knowledge Metacognition Cognitive self-regulation

Child-rearing practice - Environmental factor

Authoritative parenting Joint parent-adolescent decision-making Parent involvement in the adolescent's education

How can schools promote academic achievement among ethnic minority students?

Aware of oppression but believed in striving to alter their social position. Developed sense of agency. Through discussion and example that injustice should not be tolerated and that, together, African Americans could overcome it. Schools that build close networks of support with teachers and other students. Offer career-related curriculum (for example, health, medicine, and life sciences, another on computer technology). Smaller-school climate and focus on a common theme.

Specific mechanism that underlies changes in adolescence - Inhibition

Both of irrelevant stimuli and of well-learned responses in situations where they are inappropriate. Improves, supporting gains in attention and reasoning.

How does heredity contribute to the gender gap in mathematics?

Boys' advantage originates in two skill areas: - Rapid numerical memory, which permits them to devote more energy to complex mental operations. - Superior spatial reasoning, which enhances their mathematical problem solving.

Way schools can strengthen parent-school partnerships - Schools

Build bridges between minority home cultures and the culture of the school Tap into parents' talents to improve the quality of school programs. Have parents in school governance so they remain invested in school goals.

how do concrete operational children attempt to solve the pendulum problem

Cannot separate the effects of each variable They may test for the effect of string length without holding weight constant—comparing, for example, a short, light pendulum with a long, heavy one. Fail to notice variables that are not immediately suggested by the concrete materials of the task—for example, how high the object is raised or how forcefully it is released.

Environmental factors that support high academic achievement in adolescence.

Child-rearing practice Peer influences School characteristics Employment schedule

logical necessity

Children fail to grasp the _________ of propositional reasoning—that the accuracy of conclusions drawn from premises rests on the rules of logic, not real-world confirmation.

Examples illustrating that school-age children show signs of propositional thought but are not yet as competent at it as adolescents.

Children have great difficulty reasoning from premises that contradict reality or their own beliefs. Consider this set of statements: "If dogs are bigger than elephants, and elephants are bigger than mice, then dogs are bigger than mice." They automatically think of well-learned knowledge ("Elephants are larger than dogs") that casts doubt on the truthfulness of the premises. Children find it more difficult than adolescents to inhibit activation of such knowledge Partly for this reason, they fail to grasp the logical necessity of propositional reasoning—that the accuracy of conclusions drawn from premises rests on the rules of logic, not on real-world confirmation. Rarely think carefully about the major premise and, therefore, violate the most basic rules of logic Major premise: If Susan hits a tambourine, then she will make a noise. Second premise: Suppose that Susan does not hit a tambourine. Question: Did Susan make a noise? Wrong conclusion: No, Susan did not make a noise. Notice that the major premise did not state that Susan can make noise if, and only if, she hits a tambourine. Adolescents generally detect that Susan could make a noise in other ways, partly because they are better at searching their knowledge for examples that contradict wrong conclusions. Handle problems requiring increasingly complex sets of mental operations. Explain the logical rules on which it is based.

How do social pressures contribute to the gender gap in mathematics?

Children view it as a "masculine" subject. Parents think boys are better at it. Encourages girls to view themselves as having to work harder at it. Blame their errors on lack of ability. Consider math less useful for their future lives. Reduce girls' confidence and interest in it Undermines their performance and their willingness to consider _______-related careers. Stereotype threat causes females to do worse than their abilities.

Factors that decrease in motivation and cognitive self-regulation.

Classes lack warmth and supportiveness. Emphasizing competition Public comparison of students

Ways to increase in motivation and cognitive self-regulation

Classrooms high in teacher support, encouragement of student interaction about academic work, and promotion of mutual respect among classmates. Relationships with teachers as warm, trusting, and cooperative. VIewed classroom control as shared between teacher and students. Departmentalized teaching = subject can be taught by experts, who are more likely to encourage high-level thinking. Teach effective learning strategies. Emphasize content relevant to students' experiences.

Why is adult supervision important as adolescents refine their decision-making skills?

Cognitive-control system is affected by experience. "first-timers", do not have sufficient knowledge to consider pros and cons and predict potential outcomes. Engaging in risky behavior without negative consequences, teenagers rate its benefits higher and its risks lower. Increased number of decisions and often feel overwhelmed by their expanding range of options - their efforts to choose frequently break down, and they resort to habit, act on impulse, or postpone decision making. Learn from their successes and failures and gather information from others. School and community interventions can help them apply their capacity for metacognition - reflect on and monitor the decision process Need supervision and protection from high-risk experiences until their decision making improves.

Way schools can strengthen parent-school partnerships - Parents

Contact with the school send a message to their child about the value of education Model constructive solutions to academic problems promote wise educational decisions. Stronger home-school links can relieve some of stresses at home.

media multitasking

Engaging in two or more media activities at once, some or most of the time. Frequent type - listening to music while doing homework or communicating with friends. Or watching TV or using the Internet while studying. Fragments the attention span, greatly reducing learning.

Example of how peer support for high achievement depends on the overall climate of the peer culture.

Ethnic minority youths, is powerfully affected by the surrounding social order. School peer network predicted higher grades among Caucasians and Hispanics but not among Asians and African Americans. Asian cultural values stress respect for family and teacher expectations over close peer ties. African-American minority adolescents may observe that their ethnic group is worse off than the white majority in educational attainment, jobs, income, and housing. Discriminatory treatment by teachers and peers, often resulting from stereotypes that they are "not intelligent," triggers anger, anxiety, self-doubts.

Concerns about high-stakes testing

Evidence indicates that _________ often undermines, rather than upgrades, the quality of education. Teachers to spend large amounts of time on activities that closely resemble test items—typically, drill-based exercises. Classroom experiences and assignments that require high level reasoning, including extended writing and research projects, are de-emphasized, as are subjects not covered on the tests. Poorly achieving students, low-income and ethnic minority students are especially likely to be exposed to narrowly focused, regimented teaching. Promotes fear—a poor motivator for upgrading teaching and learning. Worry about losing funding and their jobs if students do poorly. Giving students answers Changing students' scores Offering students rewards (including money and expensive toys) for earning high scores Suspending or expelling students likely to perform poorly just before test administration.

Environmental factors that contribute to sex differences in spatial abilities.

Experience: Boys spend ore time than girls at these pursuits. - Engaging in manipulative activities, such as block play, model building, and carpentry, do better. - Video games enhances many cognitive processes. Performance on complex math problems Math self-confidence. Training in mental rotation strategies.

True or False: Adolescents who frequently engage in media multitasking are usually able to focus on a single task, such as studying for a test, if they work in an environment without any distractions.

False Media multitasking opposite.

True or False: Like Piaget, information-processing theorists maintain that scientific reasoning develops from an abrupt, stagewise change.

False Develops gradually out of many specific experiences that require children and adolescents to match theories against evidence and reflect on and evaluate their thinking.

True or False: Despite few opportunities to solve hypothetical problems, most people in tribal and village societies still master formal operational tasks.

False Individuals in tribal and village societies rarely do well on tasks typically used to assess formal operational reasoning. For example, people in nonliterate societies often refuse requests to engage in propositional thought.

True or False: Kuhn's research into the development of scientific reasoning indicates that children as young as third grade are able to alter their theories to reflect conflicting evidence.

False Instead of viewing evidence as separate from and bearing on a theory, children often blend the two into a single representation of "the way things are." Overlook evidence that does not match their prior beliefs when a causal variable is implausible. When task demands (number of variables to be evaluated) are high

Large number of low-SES minority students are assigned to noncollege tracks in high school. What effect does this have on student achievement?

Fixes the young person's future possibilities. See themselves as educational failures and drop out of high school.

Basic difference between concrete and formal operational reasoning.

Formal operational stage - develop the capacity for abstract, systematic, scientific thinking. Concrete operational children can "operate on reality," formal operational adolescents can "operate on operations."

Gender gap in verbal abilities exists, explain biological reason.

Girls - Earlier development of the left hemisphere of the cerebral cortex, where language is usually localized. Boys - Display more widespread activation—in addition to language areas, considerable activity in auditory and visual areas. Girls are more efficient language processors than boys, who rely heavily on sensory brain regions and process spoken and written words differently.

Gender gap in verbal abilities exists, explain environmental reasons.

Girls also receive more verbal stimulation - may contribute to their more efficient processing. Children view language arts as a "feminine" subject. Being taught in a regimented way— at odds with boys' higher activity level, assertiveness, and incidence of learning problems. Divorce and out-of-wedlock births - without the continuous presence of a father who models and encourages good work habits and skill at reading and writing. Homes in which fathers are warm, verbally communicative, and demanding of achievement.

Example of a sex difference in mathematical ability

Girls tend to be advantaged in arithmetic computation - better verbal skills and more methodical approach to problem solving. Math concepts become more abstract and spatial - boys outperform girls. Evident on tests of complex reasoning and geometry In science achievement - boys' advantage increases as problems become more difficult.

(Boys / Girls) score higher than (boys / girls) on tests of verbal ability throughout childhood and adolescence.

Girls/boys

School experiences of academically marginal students who drop out.

Grade retention, which marks them as academic failures; large impersonal schools classes with unsupportive teachers few opportunities for active participation. Rule breaking is common and often results in suspension. Teaching tends to be the least stimulating

Factors that support adolescents' skill at coordinating theory with evidence.

Greater working-memory capacity. Exposure to increasingly complex problems Iinstruction that highlights critical features of scientific reasoning. Sophisticated metacognitive understanding Experiment with various strategies, reflect on and revise them, and gradually become aware of the nature of logic. Apply their appreciation of logic to an increasingly wide range of situations. The ability to think about theories, deliberately isolate variables, and actively seek disconfirming evidence. Metacognitive capacity to evaluate one's objectivity—to be fair-minded rather than self-serving.

Advances in reasoning during adolescence that illustrate their ability to apply logic.

Handle problems requiring increasingly complex sets of mental operations. Move from giving a concrete example to explaining the logical rules on which it is based.

Changes that promote favorable adjustment after a school transition.

Homeroom that provides academic and personal counseling and work closely with parents. Assigning students to classes with several familiar peers or a constant group of new peers strengthens emotional security and social support.

Explain how the U.S. No Child Left Behind Act broadens high-stakes testing.

Identification of "passing" and "failing" schools. The law mandates that each state evaluate every public school's performance through annual achievement testing and publicize the results. Schools that consistently perform poorly must give parents options for upgrading their children's education, such as transfers to nearby, higher-performing schools or enrollment in remedial classes .Some states teward for high scores, including official praise and financial bonuses to school staff. Penalties imposed for low scores include withdrawal of accreditation, state takeover, and closure.

Example of how the development of idealism leads adolescents to become overly critical.

Imagine alternative family, religious, political, and moral systems, and they want to explore them. Construct grand visions of a world with no injustice, discrimination, or tasteless behavior. The disparity creates tension between parent and child. Envisioning a perfect family against which their parents and siblings fall short, adolescents become fault-finding critics.

Changes in adolescents' vocabularies

Improved capacity for reflective thought and abstraction, which enhances their metalinguistic awareness Aability to think about language as a system. Add a variety of abstract words to their vocabularies. Master sarcasm Irony Grasp of figurative language. Reading proficiency fosters understanding of proverbs. Enables ______ to appreciate adult literary works. Elaborate grammatical constructions.

Specific mechanism that underlies changes in adolescence - Cognitive self-regulation

Improves Yelding better moment-by-moment monitoring Evaluation Redirection of thinking.

Remedial instruction and counseling that offer personalized attention - Dropout prevention strategy

Intensive remedial instruction in small classes that permit warm, caring teacher-student relationships to form. In one successful approach, at-risk students are matched with retired adults, who serve as tutors, mentors, and role models.

Benefits of high-stakes testing.

Introduces greater rigor into classroom teaching Improves student motivation and achievement Turns around poor-performing school Protects students from being trapped in them

Employment schedule

Job commitment limited to less than 15 hours per week High-quality vocational education for non-college-bound adolescents

How do parent-school partnerships foster academic achievement?

Keep tabs on their child's progress Communicate with teachers Ensure child is enrolled in challenging, well-taught classes. Prevent school personnel from placing a bright student who is not working up to potential in unstimulating classes.

SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY CHARACTERISTICS

Large, unstimulating classes Lack of opportunity to form personal relationships with teachers Curriculum irrelevant to student interests and needs School authority structure that emphasizes the teacher and discourages student input Large student body School located in low-SES racially or ethnically segregated neighborhood Availability of work that requires only on-the-job training

Reasons why adolescents' grades decline with the transition to secondary school.

Less personal attention, more whole-class instruction. Less chance to participate in classroom decision making. Report: teachers care less about them, are less friendly, offer less support, grade less fairly, and stress competition more. Less academically competent Motivation decline

Child-rearing style contribute to adolescents' academic achievement - Authoritative

Linked to higher grades in school among adolescents varying widely in SES. . Linked with adolescents' academic competence. Adjust their expectations to children's capacity to take responsibility for their own behavior. Parents engage in joint decision making, gradually permitting more autonomy with age. Warmth, open discussion, firmness, and monitoring of adolescents' whereabouts and activities make young people feel cared about and valued, encourage reflective thinking and self-regulation, and increase awareness of the importance of doing well in school. Mastery-oriented attributions, effort, achievement, and high educational expectations.

Example illustrating gains in grammatical development during the teenage years.

Longer sentences consisting of a greater number of subordinate clauses. Persuasive speaking and writing - draw on adolescents' advanced perspective-taking skill. Contains many more connecting words, such as "although," "moreover," and "on the other hand" .

Consequences of dropping out of high school

Lower literacy scores Lack the skills valued by employers in today's knowledge-based economy. Lower employment rates than high school graduates. Far more likely to remain in menial, low-paid jobs and to be out of work from time to time.

How does combining parental warmth with moderate to high control promote school success?

Make young people feel cared about and valued.e Encourages reflective thinking Self-regulation Increase awareness of the importance of doing well in school.

spatial task - spatial perception

Males do considerably better. Determine spatial relationships by considering the orientation of the surrounding environment.

Specific mechanism that underlies changes in adolescence - Strategies

More effective, Improves storage, representation, and retrieval of information.

Specific mechanism that underlies changes in adolescence - Attention

More selective (focused on relevant information). Better-adapted to the changing demands of tasks.

Ways that parents, teachers, and peers can ease the strain of school transitions.

Parental involvement, monitoring, gradual autonomy granting, and emphasis on mastery rather than merely good grades. Adolescents with close friends - increases social integration and academic motivation. Forming smaller units within large schools promotes closer relations with both teachers and peers along with greater extracurricular involvement. "Critical mass" of same-ethnicity peers—helps teenagers feel socially accepted and reduces fear of outgroup hostility

FAMILY CHARACTERISTICS

Parents who do not support or emphasize achievement Parents who were high school dropouts Parents who are uninvolved in the adolescent's education Parents who react with anger and punishment to the adolescent's low grades Single-parent household Low income Frequent school changes

Example of how media multitasking reduces the efficiency of learning

Participants were given two tasks: learning to predict the weather in two different cities using colored shapes as cues and keeping a mental tally of how many high-pitched beeps they heard through headphones. Half the sample performed the tasks simultaneously, the other half separately. Both groups learned to predict the weather in the two-city situation. Multitaskers were unable to apply their learning to new weather problems.

STUDENT CHARACTERISTICS

Poor school attendance Inattentiveness in class School discipline problems, especially aggressive behavior Inability to get along with teachers 1 to 2 years behind in grade level Low academic achievement A sharp drop in achievement after school transition Dislike of school Enrollment in a general education or vocational track Low educational aspirations Low self-esteem, especially academic self-esteem Friendships with peers who have left school Low involvement in extracurricular activities Drug use Law-breaking behavior Adolescent parenthood

Characteristics of an adolescent whose school performance remains low or drops sharply after school transition.

Poor self-esteem, motivation, and achievement. "Multiple-problem" youths (academic and mental health problem).

Biological factors that may contribute to sex differences in spatial abilities.

Prenatal exposure to androgen hormones - enhances right-hemispheric functioning. Evolutionary - Cognitive abilities of males became adapted for hunting, which required generating mental representations of large-scale spaces to find one's way.

Explain why overt grammar instruction in U.S. schools is making a comeback.

Prompted by the mediocre writing skills of many adolescents. One-fourth of U.S. high school seniors scored at a "proficient" level or above in writing achievement. Traditional instruction (such as diagramming sentences) has no impact on students' writing skills.. Best learned in the context of writing. Improves when teachers: - show how to write for different purposes - give them many opportunities to write - help them critique and improve their compositions

High-quality vocational education - Dropout prevention strategy

Real-life nature of vocational education is more comfortable and effective. Must carefully integrate academic and job-related instruction so students connect learning to their future goals.

Difficulty making everyday decisions - Ways to handle the consequences of teenagers' new cognitive capacities.

Refrain from deciding for the adolescent. Model effective decision making, and offer diplomatic suggestions about the pros and cons of alternatives, the likelihood of various outcomes, and learning from poor choices.

Sensitivity to public criticism - Way to handle the consequences of teenagers' new cognitive capacities.

Refrain from finding fault with the adolescent in front of others. Wait until you can speak to the teenager alone.

Strategies to prevent school dropout

Remedial instruction and counseling that offer personalized attention. High-quality vocational education Participation in extracurricular activities Address factors in students' lives related to leaving.

Idealism and criticism

Respond patiently to the adolescent's grand expectations and critical remarks. Point out positive features of targets, helping the teenager see that all societies and people are blends of virtues and imperfections.

Example illustrating that school-age children show signs of hypothetico-deductive reasoning but are not yet as competent at it as adolescents.

School-age children show the glimmerings of __________ although they are less competent at it than adolescents. In simplified situations—ones involving no more than two possible causal variables—6-year-olds understand that hypotheses must be confirmed by appropriate evidence. They also realize that once a hypothesis is supported, it shapes predictions about what might happen in the future; Cannot sort out evidence that bears on three or more variables at once. Difficulty explaining why a pattern of observations supports a hypothesis, even when they recognize the connection between the two.

How are idealism and criticism advantageous to teenagers?

See other people as having both strengths and weaknesses, they have a much greater capacity to work constructively for social change and to form positive and lasting relationships. Parents can help teenagers forge a better balance between the ideal and the real by tolerating their criticism while reminding them that all people are blends of virtues and imperfections.

Ways to handle the consequences of teenagers' new cognitive capacities.

Sensitivity to public criticism Exaggerated sense of personal uniqueness Difficulty making everyday decisions Idealism and criticism

spatial task - spatial visualization

Sex differences on __________. Analysis of complex visual forms, are weak or nonexistent. Many strategies can be used to solve these tasks, both sexes may come up with effective procedures.

Explain why so many adults are not fully formal operational.

Show a self-serving bias, applying logic more effectively to ideas they doubt than to ideas they favor.

Explain social function of teenage slang.

Sign of group belonging. To distinguish themselves from adults. Seek a temporary self-definition in the peer group.

Address factors in students' lives related to leaving - Dropout prevention strategy

Strengthen parent involvement Offer flexible work-study arrangements Provide on-site child care for teenage mothers

The number of years that a child spends in school has a (weak / strong) influence on the development of scientific reasoning

Strong

Explain how tracking in the United States differs from that in Japan, China, and many Western European nations, and note the impact of these differences on student outcomes.

Students' placement is determined by their performance on a national exam. Quality of education and academic achievement are greater in the United States than in most other industrialized countries . United States has a higher percentage of young people who see themselves as educational failures and drop out of high school

personal fable - distorted image

Teenagers' belief that they are special and unique. Self-esteem and overall positive adjustment. Help young people cope with challenges of adolescence. Modestly associated with depression and suicidal thinking May interfere with forming close, rewarding relationships, which provide social support in stressful times. Contributes to adolescent risk taking by reducing teenagers' sense of vulnerability. (combine sensation seeking). Take more sexual risks, more often use drugs, and commit more delinquent acts.

Boys/ low-SES ethnic minority

The U.S. dropout rate is higher among (boys / girls) and is particularly high among (low-SES ethnic minority / learning-disabled) students.

Major changes in scientific reasoning from childhood into adolescence and adulthood

The ability to distinguish theory from evidence Use logical rules to examine their relationship in complex, multivariable situations

spatial task - mental rotation

The gender gap favoring males is large for __________. Must rotate a three-dimensional figure rapidly and accurately inside their heads.

Peer influences - Environmental factor

The valuing of and support for high achievement

Why do Girls tend to have more difficulty with school transitions and experience a greater drop in self-esteem?

Transition coincides with other life changes: the onset of puberty and dating. Feel lonelier and more anxious

True or False: Even though Piaget did not view language as playing a central role in young children's cognitive development, he acknowledged its importance in adolescence.

True Formal operations require language-based and other symbolic systems that do not stand for real things, such as those in higher mathematics. Secondary school students use such systems in algebra and geometry. Formal operational thought also involves verbal reasoning about abstract concepts.

True or False: Teenagers struggle with planning and decision making because they find it difficult to think rationally and inhibit their emotions.

True Teenagers struggle with planning and decision making because they find it difficult to think rationally and inhibit their emotions.

True or False: The gap in reading and writing achievement between young men and women is believed to be a major factor in the changing gender demographic of college campuses in the United States.

True Thirty years ago, males accounted for 60 percent of U.S. undergraduate students; today, they are in the minority, at 42 percent

Strategies used to promote girls' interest in and confidence at math and science.

Value gender equality. Intervention - taught that mental abilities are not fixed but can be improved. Kindergarten Curriculum teach how to spatial strategies. Successful women as role models.

Explain how advances in metacognitive understanding promote adolescents' cognitive development.

Vital for scientific reasoning. Capacity to evaluate one's objectivity—to be fair-minded rather than self-serving. Flexible, open-minded approach assists young people greatly in forming an identity and developing morally.

Example of hypothetico-deductive reasoning.

When faced with a problem: - start with a hypothesis, or prediction about variables that might affect an outcome, from which they deduce logical, testable inferences. -systematically isolate and combine variables to see which of these inferences are confirmed in the real world. Piaget's famous pendulum problem - Strings of different lengths - Objects of different weights to attach to the strings - Bar from which to hang the strings.T hen we ask each of them to figure out what influences the speed with which a pendulum swings through its arc.

Specific mechanism that underlies changes in adolescence - Speed of thinking

________ and processing capacity increase. More information can be held at once in working memory and combined into increasingly complex, efficient representations, "opening possibilities for growth". Improving as a result of gains in capacities

School characteristics - Environmental factor

eachers who are warm and supportive, develop personal relationships with parents, and show them how to support their teenager's learning Learning activities that encourage high-level thinking Active student participation in learning activities and classroom decision-making

How do forrmal operational adolescents hypothesize?

hypothesize that four variables might be influential: (1) the length of the string (2) the weight of the object hung on it (3) how high the object is raised before it is released (4) how forcefully the object is pushed. By varying one factor at a time while holding the other three constant, they test each variable separately and, if necessary, also in combination. Eventually they discover that only string length makes a difference.

Distorted images of the relationship between self and other appear in adolescence.

imaginary audience personal fable Do not result from egocentrism, as Piaget suggested. They are partly an outgrowth of advances in perspective taking. Which cause young teenagers to be more concerned with what others think.

Specific mechanism that underlies changes in adolescence - Knowledge

increases. Eases strategy use.

Spatial tasks on which individuals evidence a notable sex difference in performance

mental rotation tasks spatial perception tasks Differences persist throughout the lifespan

When making decisions, adolescents often emphasize (short-term / long-term) goals.

short-term In the heat of the moment, when making a good decision depends on inhibiting "feel-good" behavior. Possibility of immediate rewards. Brain's emotional/social network tends to prevail. adolescents are Far more likely than adults to emphasize short-term over long-term goals.