As outlined by Jean Piaget, the formal operational stage of cognitive development considers children from the age of 12 years and above. It involves the process of increase in a child’s life, which enhances the ability of a child to understand an abstract of ideas and use logic, as well as its ability to practice deductive reasoning. According to Piaget, when a child is around 12 years old, their young life or adolescence stage commences. They begin to see and experience things differently and have diverse perceptive (Santrock, 2019). The children start to deliberate abstractly, and they attempt to use reasoning when handling theoretical and mathematical problems in life as they can easily find solutions and share them with others.
In my transition from childhood to adolescence, there were several changes in my perspective of things and life in general. This includes being more reasonable and having more capabilities to think outside the box. I was able to think more critically, and when given a mathematical problem, I could think of all the possible solutions or technics to solve the problem. This is because I understood that for every given hypothetical or mathematical problem, there exists a solution (Santrock, 2019). I also found it easy to share my thoughts and my absolute reasonings with other children as I listened to their views.
This made it easier for me and my colleagues to solve various problems and interact with others to share and acquire knowledge. This is because most of us started to feel more comfortable sharing our knowledge and change the feeling of possessing special knowledge as I found out others are also unique in their own ways. Due to these facts, I can affirm that Piaget’s description of the fourth stage of cognitive development, formal operational thinking, is very accurate and valid.
Reference
Santrock, J.W. (2019). Life-span development (17th ed.) McGraw-Hill. McGraw-Hill Education.