Describe the characteristics, age range, and behaviors displayed during Piaget's formal operational stage, and explain why scientists believe that formal thinking is based more on learning and culture than maturation
What will be an ideal response?
Answer will include that after about age 11, children begin to break away from concrete objects and specific examples. Thinking is based more on abstract principles, such as democracy, honor, or correlation. Children who reach this stage become self-reflective about their thoughts, and they become less egocentric. Older children and young adolescents also gradually become able to consider hypothetical possibilities. Full adult intellectual ability is attained during the stage of formal operations. Older adolescents are capable of inductive and deductive reasoning, and they can comprehend math, physics, philosophy, psychology, and other abstract systems. They can learn to test hypotheses in a scientific manner. However, not everyone reaches this level of thinking. In addition, many adults can think formally about some topics, but their thinking becomes concrete when the topic is unfamiliar, which implies that formal thinking may be more the result of culture and learning than maturation. After late adolescence, improvements in intellect are based on gaining specific knowledge, experience, and wisdom than on any leaps in basic thinking capacity.
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