Essay Sample on Formal Operational Thought

One aspect of my life that I believe I have been using formal operational thinking is attributed to my experience during my childhood. During my childhood, my father had installed CCTV cameras all over our home. I think that this experience is closely related to formal operational thinking as Piaget argued. As a kid, I did not know the use of the cameras that were set all over our house. After my father had left for his workplace, I decided one afternoon to show my friends how the surveillance cameras worked. In the end, we had to pull off one of the cameras and see what it entailed. From this incidence, we realized that whatever we had pulled down wasn't working as we thought from the very beginning on how it will be. As a child, I only relied on my perspective that I was to pull down the camera to see how it worked, but I did not ask myself whether after doing so, how will it work again.

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As from Piaget's theory, a person who thinks critically has the knowledge of destroying and restoring. So we used trial and error in my incidence. In our thinking, we need to have conservation. Through this, we can be able to solve the problem while looking at the outcome whether it will be positive or negative. We ought to ask ourselves the question 'what if.' This makes us have good critical thinking to solve life issues (Harveycohen.net, 2019).

After my childhood, I had already started doing things in a different perspective. At 15 years old, one can see something and know the outcome so he or she can change the way of doing something to prevent an unwanted outcome. As children change and grow to be teens, they do things in a very different perspective (Cherry, 2018). For instance, now I can pull off one of the cameras bearing in mind that a certain cable is to fix with this and I will finally fix it. At this age as from Paget's theory dealing with thinking, a teen can have the capability of analyzing what may be the outcome before doing something.

In conclusion, teens have the hypothetical value detection of what may happen. Indeed my experience with dogs made me realize the one situation in my life where I do not use formal operational thinking. For instance, each time I come close to dogs, I encounter constant running nose. This experience made me conclude that I am allergic to dogs and that I should not be close to them. Ideally, formal operational thoughts do not require one to relate to any object so as to make rational reasoning unlike the concrete operational stage where a child need an object to make conclusions.

References

Cherry, K. (2018, February 13). Characteristics of Concrete Operational Stage in Cognitive Development. Retrieved from https://www.verywellmind.com/concrete-operational-stage-of-cognitive-development-2795458

Harveycohen.net. (2019). Heuristics and the Growth of Intelligence. Retrieved from http://harveycohen.net/dragons/epistemology/HeuristicGrowth.htm