Childhood and adolescence - Essay Example

Attraction topic with developmental psychology as disciplineChildhood and adolescenceIntroduction The research was designed to confirm a previous hypothesis on the development of an individual’s self-conception from childhood to adolescence. By use of research questions on self-concept development, I used a hypothesis that during the preoperational stage, children hold more actual self-conceptions compared to those in Formal Operational stage and Concrete Operational stage, whose self-conceptions tend to be more abstract.

Four subjects were used, being five years, eleven, sixteen years, and twenty years of age to evidently notice the change of self-conceptions development in Preoperational stage, Concrete Operational stage, and Formal Operational stages (Montemayor & Eisen, 2009). Every participant was required to answer the quiz, “Who am I,” while responses were recorded accurately. The study confirmed the results that self-conceptions become more theoretical after a child attains eight years and become less alert on physical features, which manifest themselves as the child get into adolescence and afterward adulthood.

Summary of the studyChildren between eighteen months and six years belong to the preoperational phase of cognitive development, where they concentrate much on object appearance and are egocentric. Those between six and twelve years belong to the concrete operational stage, where they focus less on appearances and begin thinking abstractly whenever there is real logic to back it up. This shows that children in this phase develop more theoretical conceptions of themselves and those that are not founded mainly on physical appearance.

The final development stage is the formal operational stage, which is between twelve years to adulthood. Here, adolescents start thinking abstractly and hypothetically and are able to concurrently take various perspectives from their own (Inhelder & Piaget, 2007).ConclusionFrom the hypothesis, we note that children give more intangible self-conceptions as per their age. There is a change from physical and behavioral descriptions to more ideological, psychological, and belief descriptions with the increase in years.

ReferencesInhelder, B., and Piaget, J. (2007). The Growth of Logical Thinking from Childhood to Adolescence. New York: Basic Books, Inc.Montemayor, R., and Eisen, M. (2009). The Development of Self-Conceptions from Childhood to Adolescence: Developmental Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge university press.