The Development Of Postformal Thinking In Aldulthood

The view of life-span development believes that the development of individual cognition is a process that runs through the whole life span.After entering adult period,the individual cognitive development is not stagnant or declining,but there is a kind of new thinking beyond the formal operational thinking,that is,the postformal thinking.The postformal thinkers can understand relative,non-absolute nature of knowledge and accept contradiction as basic aspect of reality.They can not only use dialectical thinking in which they synthesize contradictory thoughts,emotions and self-experiences,but also adopt contextual approach to problem solving and create new principles based on changing circumstances.In adulthood,individuals are faced with the problems which condition and answer are not clear,or ill-structural problems,especially the emotional and interpersonal conflict problems.The formal operational thinking with the logical rules to explain the thinking activities of adult individuals has shown great limitations,but the postformal thinking can properly describe and explain the development of complex thinking in adulthood.However,whether there is a qualitative difference between the postformal thinking and the formal operational thinking of the adolescent,whether the postformal thinking is beyond the formal operational thinking,these issues are still controversial.Moreover,some developmental theories of adult cognition believe that the postformal thinking is gradually developing in adulthood through the solution to the daily complex emotional,interpersonal conflict and other problems,and the integration of cognition,emotion and self.But there is still a lack of experimental research on how cognition,emotion and self interact with each other and integrate to resolve interpersonal conflicts and other problems.In this paper,we tried to systematically explore the developmental tendency and mechanism of the postformal thinking by using the scale,experimental method and technology fMRI of the cognitive neural science.Three studies including six experiments were conducted.The age tendency and the difference in gender and other variables were examined by using the SPBI scale in study 1.The results showed that:(1)The postformal thinking began to develop from the late period of adolescent,and continued development in early and mid period of adulthood,but began to decline in the late adulthood(60 years later).There were significant differences in the number of different age groups under the postformal thinking and the formal operational thinking.(2)There were no significant gender differences in the scores of postformal thinking and the formal operational thinking.There were no significant differences in the number of male and female who belonged to the two kinds of thinking.(3)There were no significant differences in the scores of postformal thinking and the formal operational thinking among the groups of educational levels,and there were no significant differences in the number of participants belonging to the two kinds of thinking among different groups of educational levels.(4)The postformal thinking was influenced by the individual's working experience.The participants with 20?29 years of working life had the highest score of the postformal thinking.The number of participants with different working years,who belonged to the two kinds of thinking,was significantly different.In study 2,we used the interpersonal conflict problem to test the interaction of cognitive and emotional factors(Experiment 2),the interaction of cognitive and self factors(Experiment 3),and the interaction of cognitive,emotional and self factors(Experiment 4).The results found that:(1)The problem solving score was influenced by the interaction of the emotional saliency and the cognitive stage.The score of the postformal thinkers was the higher than that of formal operational thinkers in solving the problems with high emotional saliency,however,the scores of two kinds of thinker were no significant difference in solving the problems with low emotional saliency.As to the postformal thinkers,there was no significant difference in the scores of the problem solving between the high level and the low level of emotional saliency.(2)The interaction of the self involvement and the cognitive stage has no significant effect on the problem solving scores.(3)The interaction of three factors,cognitive stage,self involvement and emotion inducing,was influence on the problem solving scores.Under the situation induced by negative emotion,the score of the postformal thinkers was the higher than that of formal operational thinkers with the high self involvement,and the scores of two kinds of thinker with the low self involvement were no significant difference.Study 3 was to find the behavioral differences(Experiment 5)and brain activation regions(Experiment 6)between the postformal thinkers and the formal operation thinkers in reasoning process of person theme and object theme.The results showed that:(1)The accuracy was significantly different between the postformal thinkers and the formal operational thinkers in reasoning of person theme and object theme.The formal operational thinkers had the lower accuracy than the postformal thinkers in reasoning of person theme,but they had the higher accuracy in reasoning of object theme.(2)On the two reasoning themes,the postformal thinkers both showed the more activation areas than the formal operational thinkers,whereas the formal operational thinkers did not show the more activation of brain regions than the postformal thinkers.Compared to the formal operational thinkers,the postformal thinkers activated the more part regions of MPFC,which reflect the "reflective mind",in reasoning of object theme.It showed a left hemisphere advantage.Furthermore,the postformal thinkers activated the more areas of OFC representing the "reflective mind",and PCC reflecting the "autonomous mind" in reasoning of person theme.These results provided a good proof of the three process model.Considering the results of the three studies,we draw the conclusion that the postformal thinking was a new thinking,and it was qualitative difference from the formal operational thinking and beyond it.