Week 11 Post 1

While reading chapter eighteen, one of the sections that interested me the most was the section about postformal thought. Adults think in a more practical, more flexible, and more dialectical way than adolescents do. I was intrigued by the fact that postformal thought originated due to the fact that several developmentalists agreed that Piaget's stage of formal operational thought was inadequate to describe adult thinking. In postformal thought, the individual is more capable of combining contradictory elements into a comprehensive whole. If you are a postformal thinker, you will not wait for someone else to present a problem to solve. Instead, you will take a more flexible approach instead, considering various aspects of a situation beforehand, noting difficulties and anticipating problems, dealing with them rather than denying, avoiding, or procrastinating. Because of this postformal thought is more practical, creative, and imaginative than in previous stages. Adolescents can use the dual processing thinking process but combining them is difficult. This causes them to have difficulty in setting priorities and they prefer quick responses. Adolescents are very capable of analyzing situations; however, they may not anticipate the consequences of their actions. In adulthood, intellectual skills are harnessed to real educational, occupational, and interpersonal concerns. This allows them to accurately perceive conclusions and consequences and additionally, setting priorities by postponing some tasks in order to complete others.