Cognitive and Social-Emotional Development in Adolescence

Recent findings concerning cognitive, social-emotional, moral, political, and religious development in normal adolescents are reviewed. Unlike findings with standardized intelligence tests, Piagetian research supports the hypothesis of cognitive differentiation during development. Recent research on personality development tends to refute the previous consensus that adolescence is nonrutively a time of emotional stress or crisis and thus suggests that adolescent emotional problems be taken more seriously when they do appear. Similarly, considerable diversity exists among adolescents and research findings on cognition, morality, intergenerational relations and ideological development are often inconsistent with generally held, theoretically derived, views of modal adolescent functioning.