Although
this might seem like no big deal, sleep deprivation can have serious
consequences. Tired teens can find it
difficult to concentrate and learn, or even stay
awake in class. Too little sleep also might contribute to mood
swings and behavioral
problems. Another
major concern is drowsy driving, which can lead to serious — even
deadly — accidents"
(Mayo Clinic, 2011).
Lack of sleep can inhibit information intake that in turn can leave gaps in
learning. The gaps can be stumbling blocks in the cognitive development future
of the person who allows games to keep them from sleeping enough.
The other issue, addiction,
can be just as, if not more, devastating in terms of cognitive development.
Like sleep deprivation, "Addiction of any kind limits life experience,
with the harm especially severe when the brain is still growing"
(Berger, 2011). Does the brain grow throughout
adolescence? It does continue to grow, and a quick glance at the physiological
aspects of brain development reinforce the warning of Berger, "The final
stage is synaptogenesis, or the formation of synapses. Although the process
(brain growth) begins before birth, it continues throughout life as neurons
form new synapses and discard old ones"
(Kalat,
2009). With limits on life experiences and improper brain functioning
(due to the fact the prefrontal cortex is not fully developed until a person is
in their early 20s), it would make cognitive development much more difficult at
best or non-existent at worse.
Leaving the negative side of
adolescence, can there be healthy ways to address cognitive development? Robert
J. Sternberg, in his resume that was posted on the Yale website recorded one of
the best short descriptions of, not only his study of intelligence, but a great
map to help understand how to maximize cognitive growth,
" My research is motivated primarily by a theory of successful
intelligence, which attempts to account for the intellectual sources of
individual differences that enable people to achieve success in their lives,
given the socio-cultural context in which they live. Successfully intelligent
people discern their strengths and weaknesses, and then figure out how to
capitalize on their strengths, and to compensate for or remediate their
weaknesses. Successfully intelligent individuals succeed in part because they
achieve a functional balance among a "triarchy" of abilities:
analytical abilities, which are used to analyze, evaluate, judge, compare and
contrast; creative abilities, which are used to create, invent, discover,
imagine; practical abilities, which are used to apply, utilize, implement, and
activate. Successfully intelligent people are not necessarily high in all three
of these abilities, but find a way effectively to exploit whatever pattern of
abilities they may have. Moreover, all of these abilities can be further
developed. A fundamental idea underlying this research is that conventional
notions of intelligence and tests of intelligence miss important kinds of
intellectual talent, and overweigh what are sometimes less important kinds of
intellectual talent"
(University of Oregon,
2001).
Sternberg is quite an intelligent man, and his contributions to the
inner-workings of cognitive functioning are very helpful. His insights can help
parents understand the role "true" intelligence plays in the life of
their teenager, and from there the parents should be able to help foster
cognitive growth in their teenager. Although intelligence and cognitive ability
are not exactly the same, they are inter-related and inter-twined to the point
that improvement in one should have a positive effect on the other. Cognitive ability
can be, in most people, improved (fluidly) to a mature point (of crystallized
intelligence). So, therefore a discussion of intelligence is relevant to the
overall idea of this paper. So, in transition to adulthood, find the words of
Sternberg from an audio transcript of an interview in which he "defines
intelligence" in a most interesting way,
"I prefer to refer to it
as "successful intelligence." And the reason is that the emphasis is
on the use of your intelligence to achieve
success in your life. So I define it as your skill
in achieving whatever it is you want to
attain in your life within your socio-cultural
context-Meaning
that people have different goals for themselves, and for some it's to get
very good grades in school and to do well on
tests, and for others it might be to become a
very
good basketball player or actress or musician. So, it's your skill in obtaining
what
you want in life within your
socio-cultural context [which] means that if you want to be
an axe murderer it wouldn't count--by
capitalizing on your strengths and compensating
for, or correcting, your weaknesses. And what that means is
that people differ in their
personal
profiles. Some people are good at one thing; some are good at another thing.
And if you look at
people who attain success by their own standards, they're generally
people who found something they do
really
well. And it can be very different things for
different people. For some, it's doing well on IQ tests, or
SATs. For others it might be
playing
basketball. For others it might be being a politician. So they
capitalize on their
strengths. And
the things that they don't do so well-They find ways either to
compensate, meaning that they
perhaps have someone else do the things they don't do
well, or they have them done by electronic means or whatever. Or
correcting their
weaknesses- They
make themselves
better at whatever it is they didn't do so well, by
adapting to, shaping and selecting
environments, which means that some of the time you
change yourself to fit the environment. That's adaptation. So if you
started a new job or a
new
relationship, part of the time you change yourself to fit the job or to fit the
relationship. And shaping means that
part of the time you change the environment that is.
So you might try to modify the job to make
it a better fit to you, or you might try to
change
the relationship to make it more what you hoped it would be. And
selection
means that sometimes
you just get out. Being successfully intelligent means knowing
when you're in the wrong place at the wrong
time--the wrong job, the wrong relationship,
the
wrong place to live---Um, through a combination of analytical, creative and
practical
abilities. You need
creative skills to come up with ideas; you need analytical abilities to
know whether they're good ideas-to evaluate
the ideas-and you need practical abilities to
make
your ideas work and to persuade other people that your ideas are worth
listening to.
So that's
the definition"
(Plucker, 2003).
Adult
Cognitive Development
Emerging Adults
Often defined in terms of
those who are ages 18-25 this period of life seems to have as much, if not
more, in terms of cognitive development potential. This is also the beginning
of the, "postformal thought" stage of life that, "originated
because several developmentalists agreed that Piaget's fourth stage, formal
operational thought, was inadequate to describe adult thinking"
(Berger, 2011). However, when discussing
cognitive development is there any real development? Do adults acquire
"new" intellectual capabilities? The answer could be no. If that is
the case then, "adulthood has no stages"
(Berger, 2011). Maybe, maybe not?
Emerging adulthood reveals
quite a bit of evidence for continued cognitive growth. One of the first things
one might notice is the ability to combine the subjective with the objective.
Subjectivity being emotionally driven based on the perceptions of life events,
and objectivity being the way things really are (intellectual and logical in
nature) sometimes need to be combined to make informed decisions in adulthood.
"Without this consolidation of intellect and emotion, behavioral
extremes...or cognitive extremes (such as believing that one is the best or the
worst person on Earth) are common"
(Berger,
2011).
The most important (as some
consider it) cognitive advancement usually comes into play during this stage of
life. The ability to, "consider a thesis and its antithesis simultaneously
and arrive at a synthesis"
(Berger, 2011)
is called dialectical thought, and it is often considered the pinnacle of all
cognitive development. There is one caveat to the synthesis arrived at
employing this type of thought process, sometimes one should not strive to
create a synthesis. Some things in life are separated into thesis/antithesis
for a reason. Truth and non-truth cannot be synthesized into something that has
objective meaning. If something is objectively true, it implies that anything
opposite (antithetical) to it is false, and no amount of synthesis can
blend the two. However, not to take the
discussion too deep, if I say chocolate ice cream is the best, and you say
vanilla ice cream is the best, I have formed a thesis and you have formed an
antithesis. Who is right? Dialectical thought would enable us to agree that
both are very good in spite of the fact that I prefer chocolate and you prefer
vanilla.
There are other areas that
come into play in emerging adult cognitive development. Gender differences tend
to become clearer based on how each processes role ideas. Faith also becomes
something to struggle with during this time for many people.
Middle Adulthood
Basic adulthood spans the ages
of 25-40 (or even up to 65 in some opinions). The references from Sternberg are
equally as applicable here as they were in the section on adolescence. IQ tends
to be the big focus of those who study cognitive development during these
years.
The most notable part of
cognitive development during these years is not the new information that these
people will acquire, but utilization of what they have learned. "People in
their forties and fifties are better at solving problems that require the use
of a store of practical knowledge"
(Davis,
2004). The reason for this is that, "when middle adulthood is reached,
considerable information concerning everyday problems and ways to solve them
has been accumulated"
(Davis, 2004).
It is often cited that as
people age their IQ declines. Nettleback and Rabbit (1992) suggested that,
"poorer performance on IQ tests may be the result of physical rather than
cognitive changes"
(Feldman, 2003).
Why was the decline determined to be physical and not cognitive? It was
suggested as such because of the slower reaction times present in people as
they age. So, just because some is older and slower does not necessarily mean
they have dropped in cognitive functioning.
Late Adulthood
From a cognitive point of
view, at this stage of life, "fluid intelligence begins a gradual
decline...whereas crystallized intelligence continues to increase
gradually"
(Davis, 2004). Why is
this the case when people reach late adulthood? The evidence suggests, "as
we grow older, we begin to experience difficulties in successfully encoding new
material"
(Davis, 2004). More recent
studies show that there is a decline in memory as well as encoding. Mather and
Carstensen (2005) suggests if there is a motivating cognitive factor present it
will often have a positive effect on attention and memory. They begin the study
by confirming how control over cognitive processes declines with age,
"Perhaps the most widely
acknowledged psychological change with age is the decline in
cognitive processes, especially memory.
However, not all cognitive processes decline
with
age – not even all types of memory. One general characterization is that older
adults
have impaired cognitive control
that is associated with deterioration in prefrontal brain
regions. Thus, older adults show
deficits on attention and memory tasks that require the
generation and maintenance of internal strategies rather than
just reliance on external
cues. For
example, explicit recall of words studied a few minutes previously was shown
to decline across a four-year period whereas
implicit memory of recently studied words
did
not show a decline with age"
(Mather &
Laura, 2005).
The up-side to this study was that older adults improve in the area of
emotional control, "In contrast with the declines seen in cognitive
control, age does not impair emotional control.
Compared with younger adults, older adults report that they focus more on self-control
of
their emotions and rate their emotion regulation skills as better"
(Mather & Laura, 2005).
The down-side to the whole
discussion of aging and cognitive ability consists in the ailments that arise
as people age. The most common issue older adults deal with is depression that
is usually brought about by the, "death of spouses and friends...declining
health...which may rob older people of their sense of control"
(Feldman, 2003).
Other cognitive bearing issues
that arise at this stage of life are dementia "the most common mental
disorder of the elderly"
(Feldman, 2003),
and Alzheimer's disease, "a progressive brain disorder that produces loss
of memory and confusion"
(Feldman, 2003).
It has been published that, "almost 50% of people over the age of 85 are
affected by Alzheimer's disease"
(Feldman,
2003).
Cognitive is fleeting thing as
we age. No matter what type of spin the researchers might put on it cognitive
development builds from birth to middle adulthood and then begins its decent.
Does life really matter after age 85? If we pass 85yrs old will we be cognizant
enough to know or even care? The moral of the cognitive process is for each
person to maximize their abilities while they have the ability to do so.
At this point, the words of
Solomon seem apropos,
1 Remember also your
Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near when you will say, “I
have no delight in them”; 2 before the
sun and the light, the moon and the
stars are darkened, and clouds return after the rain; 3 in
the day that the watchmen of the
house tremble, and mighty men stoop, the grinding ones stand idle because they are few, and those who look
through [a]windows
grow dim; 4 and the doors on the street are shut as the
sound of the grinding mill is low, and one will arise at the sound of the bird, and all the daughters
of song will [b]sing
softly. 5 Furthermore, [c]men are
afraid of a high place and of terrors on the road; the almond tree blossoms,
the grasshopper drags himself along,
and the caperberry is ineffective. For man goes to his eternal home while mourners go about in the street. 6 Remember Him before the silver cord is [d]broken and
the golden bowl is crushed, the pitcher by the well is shattered and the wheel at the cistern is crushed; 7 then the dust will return to the earth as it was,
and the [e] spirit
will return to God who gave it. 8 “
Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher, “all is vanity!” (Ecclesiastes
12:1-8, NASB).
Conclusion
Application of the information
contained within this paper is and will be useful in any endeavor. For me this
information is useful in my current situation as someone who teaches, shares,
preaches, and sings about the Good News of Jesus Christ. How, you may ask? It
is very simple to explain how it is useful. When it comes to helping others
come to know Jesus Christ I have wisdom in the words of the man I consider to
be the "last great theologian,"
" Every generation of Christians has this problem of learning how
to speak meaningfully to its own age. It cannot be solved without an
understanding of the changing existential situation which it faces. If we are
to communicate the Christian faith effectively, therefore, we must know and
understand the thought forms of our own generation. These will differ slightly
from place to place, and more so from nation to nation. Nevertheless there are
characteristics of an age such as ours which are the same wherever we happen to
be"
(Schaeffer, 1968).
