HOMEMADE MODELS

[Note:  This posting is the second of a series of posting regarding adolescence.  The reader is invited to click on the previous posting – and any other postings – that leads to the content of this one.]

Probably most important, when one considers how secondary students – made up of adolescents – approach social studies and, more specifically, civics, is their ability to think abstractly at a much higher level as compared to younger children.  This, given the goals and aims of a federalist guided curriculum and given how this thinking operates is both good and bad.

Or better stated, it both allows instructors to pursue and explain the complexities of the social world to a high degree of sophistication but also deal with students who rely on any “theories” their thinking produces with a lack of questioning.  This two-faced challenge needs an explanation.

          As to the cognitive development of this change, knowledge of it in psychological literature can be traced to the work of Jean Piaget.  His and subsequent studies in the field identified that the ability of young people to think abstractly is highly dependent on them acquiring the facility to think deductively.[1]  In turn, once deduction is possible, a person can engage in planning the future, anticipate consequences to actions, and think of optional outcomes and explanations about what has happened or what will happen.

          Depending on how good they become at these mental skills, they can take effective roles in debates.  Suddenly parents find their adolescent off-springs questioning their, the parents’, assumptions or judgements concerning probabilities; for example, “if you don’t do what I tell you, you will suffer (blank) consequence.”  Well, “maybe not” can suddenly be the response. 

These young people discover figurative language – puns, metaphors, and analogies – and can decipher it.  They might even use sarcasm.  Language becomes more of a tool beyond just communicating observable facts or feelings.  With that tool, they can more readily apply higher level reasoning in which they can question social, political, and economic claims. 

They can also understand, appreciate, and support the use of values or ideological precepts.  But they are hindered by both a lack of experience in their attempts to make sense of the world and a lack of dispositional sentiments to learn from that experience.  That is, held beliefs or attitudes are not easily dismissed or changed.

One can deduct from these more general capabilities adolescents being able to form and test hypotheses.  If one thinks about it, a hypothesis demands a person to look at some problem, abstract from it those factors that either create, support, or accentuate the problem, and then test that judgement in a “if/then” supposition against reality.  And in this, one finds how central these skills are in students being able to inquire about civic problems or other social conditions of interest. 

But here is the rub; along with these skills, a youngster is subject to prejudicial thinking – the dispositional bias just mentioned.  And this possibility leads those who study cognitive development to various theoretical approaches.  In one approach[2] this duality is highlighted by pointing out the positive and negative turns these acquired capacities entail. 

In accordance to that approach, one can describe the above mental process as a mental simulation of reality.  And a lot goes into that thinking on the part of a subject including what one wants reality to be.  That is, one can call that simulation the function of biases in which one hypothesizes not to test a preference but to confirm a bias regardless of its veracity. 

This can undermine the validity of those mental processes.  This takes various forms depending on how formal the test of a hypothesis is.  Sometimes people test hypotheses very informally in day-to-day life; people just dismiss this as normal thinking or conversation.  In those cases, one readily sees biased thinking demonstrated by what people say about their dealings with common problems. 

But there are those who go about this quite formally – scientists and other scholars.  And yet, even with them one can find cases where biases are confirmed or assumed without enough grounds.  Or, as Jonathan St. B. T. Evans reports, they agree with a fallacious argument in their deductive reasoning. 

For example, ungrounded biases can infect statistical analysis at any stage in which statistics are used (in designing a study, in collecting the data, in analyzing the numbers, or in reporting the “findings”).[3]  Consequently, strict protocols are used to minimize the effects of any biases the scholar might bring to his/her efforts.  Apparently, the motive to find what one wants to find is a strong motivation indeed.

So, if that describes what professionals – who are paid to be objective and have acquired the education and training to perform objectively – worry about, what can one expect from adolescents?  One should remember that most of what young people know has come from experiences; what one can call heuristic – hands-on – experiences.  And reflecting upon this state, a reputable model is often cited in the literature.

Again, citing Evans,[4] one can utilize a heuristic-analytic theory or reasoning.  That model identifies three principles.  The first is that a person, in his/her reasoning and accompanying judgements, relies on epistemic (degree of validation) mental models.  They reflect take-aways from singular experiences a person encounters.  They affect a person’s thinking process at a preconscious mental level.  They function to contextualize subsequent relevant challenges. 

How?  These mental biases heighten simultaneously felt goals.  This is the second principle.  Yes, the individual can evaluate a held model or explanation, but he/she is prone to accept it and defend it to him/herself and to others even when it is being challenged.  It reminds one of how parents protect their own; that is, he/she gave “birth” to the biased explanation.

But then there are experiences that more seriously challenge the held model and if the immediate realities are sufficiently incongruent with the model, the person can potentially reject it.  This judgmental process constitutes principle three.  These challenging events can simply present themselves to a person or they can be programed by others such as teachers and their planned lesson experiences.  Of course, this can be of varying degrees of importance to a student. 

This writer can report he has gone through two major, life-changing (transforming) experiences or set of events in his life – the first when he was nineteen.  They can be monumental to one’s sense of self and can prove to be quite the determining factor in subsequent decisions as to how one defines personal relationships or job/career seeking decisions.  Sometimes they prove to be beneficial, sometimes they don’t.

So, the three principles are the singularity principle (from where models are generated), the relevancy principle (the relation to personal goals), and the satisficing principle (the judgement over a model’s functionality).  Evan’s abstract states,

At a minimum, analytic processing of models is required so as to generate inferences or judgements relevant to the task instructions, but more active intervention may result in modification or replacement of default models generated by the heuristic system.  Evidence for this theory is provided by a review of a wide range of literature on thinking and reasoning.[5]

All this indicates that adolescents are open to instruction that can call on students to recognize the mental models they have formulated, evaluate those models, and either modify or reject those models.  This in not to say that they are predisposed to do so; they harbor allegiance to the models they have created.

          At a more practical level, one should not see these models as totally dysfunctional.  They do serve as “advance organizers” that assist the young person – or anyone – to categorize and be able to place in priority stimuli as they become apparent.  At a very basic level, this is essential.  The question becomes:  can one dislodge harmful advanced organizers?[6]  Apparently, they, the students, can and that, when one reflects, is a basic aim of education, and, when the topic is social, is the aim of social studies.

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[1] Gertrude G. Zeinstra, Maria A. Koelen, Frnas J. Kok, and Cees deGraaf, “Cognitive Development and Children’s Perception of Fruit and Vegetables; A Qualitative Study, International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, 4, 30 (2007), online version accessed January 8, 2020, https://ijbnpa.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1479-5868-4-30 AND Kendra Cherry, The Formal Operational Stage of Cognitive Development, Very Well Mind, June 24, 2019, accessed January 8, 2020, https://www.verywellmind.com/formal-operational-stage-of-cognitive-development-2795459 .  This latter cite is a popular version of the former.

[2] In regards to the effect of biases on hypothesis testing see Jonathan S. B. T. Evans, “Hypothetical Thinking:  Dual Processes in Reasoning and Judgement,”  Psychology Press, 2007, abstract accessed January 8, 2020, https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2007-02337-000 .

[3] In regards to the effect of biases on hypothesis testing see Jonathan S. B. T. Evans, “Hypothetical Thinking:  Dual Processes in Reasoning and Judgement,”  Psychology Press, 2007, abstract accessed January 8, 2020, https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2007-02337-000 .

[4] Jonathan S. B. T. Evans, “The Heuristic-Analytic Theory of Reasoning:  Extension and Evaluation,” Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 13, 2006, 378-395, abstract accessed January 9, 2020, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6746428_The_Heuristic-Analytic_Theory_of_Reasoning_Extension_and_Evaluation .

[5] Ibid.

[6] A subsequent important question is:  what constitutes harm?