Formal Reasoning among Pre- and Late Adolescents

Abstract

KUHN, DEANNA; Ho, VICTORIA; and ADAMS, CATHERINE. Formal Reasoning among Preand Late Adolescents. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1979, 50, 1128-1135. The purpose of this study was to explore the sense in which older adolescents and adults may, as earlier research has suggested, lack the competence to reason at a formal operational level. 2 groups of subjects were isolated who showed no evidence of formal reasoning on isolation-of-variables assessment problems. 1 group consisted of preadolescents and the other first-year college students. Despite the initial matching of the 2 groups, when subjects were (a) administered additional kinds of assessment problems and (b) presented repeated problems over a period of months most of the college subjects showed immediate and substantial formal reasoning, while the preadolescents made only gradual, modest gains. It was concluded that the 2 groups were not at all nonformaloperational in an equivalent sense. The possibility was considered that the absence of a formal operational level of performance on the part of many older adolescents or adults may to a large extent reflect cognitive processing difficulties in dealing with the problem formats, rather than absence of underlying reasoning competencies.