An Excerpt from the course on Lifespan Development

Emerging adulthood brings with it the consolidation of formal operational thought, and the continued integration of the parts of the brain that serve emotion, social processes, planning and problem-solving. As a result, rash decisions and risky behaviour decrease rapidly across early adulthood. Increases in epistemic cognition are also seen, as young adults’ meta-cognition, or thinking about thinking, continues to grow, especially in young adults who continue with their schooling.

Over the course of students’ college years, cognition tended to shift from dualism which is the absolute, black and white, right and wrong type of thinking to multiplicity or recognizing that some problems are solvable and some answers are not yet known to relativism which is understanding the importance of the specific context of knowledge—it’s all relative to other factors.

Due to continuous integration and focalization of brain functioning in early adulthood, this developmental period often represents a turning point, when young adults engage in risky behaviours such as gang involvement, substance abuse or an unfocused lifestyle seem to “wake up” and take ownership for their own development.