Abstract
Since postformal thought is related to wisdom within my theory, I expected that mature adults generally would display more elements of it than younger adults would. I expected that in general, older adults would more often be “wiser” in postformal terms. With this expectation in mind, I began looking at age differences in postformal operations and in the related problem-solving processes in the information-processing traditions that were discussed in Chapter 9. This chapter describes some of the differences that were hypothesized and found. Differences that will be discussed include differences in the use of formal operations, in the use of postformal operations, in the use of steps to solution of potentially postformal problems and crucial errors during the solution process, and in the style of problem-solving steps as evident during thinking aloud problem solving. Age was also significantly correlated with several “noncognitive” factors such as use of emotion, factors that were elements in the problem-solving process. These noncognitive factors will be discussed in Chapter 11.
There is only one history of importance and it is the history of what you once believed in and the history of what you came to believe in.
Kay Boyle
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1998 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Sinnott, J.D. (1998). Age Differences in Processes. In: The Development of Logic in Adulthood. The Springer Series in Adult Development and Aging. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-2911-5_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-2911-5_10
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-3286-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-4757-2911-5
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive