Considers the period of adolescence and describes how cognitive-developmental concerns might apply to the understanding of adolescent problems in interpersonal and affective adaptation. Also investigates ways in which intervention practices with adolescents might be placed within a cognitive-developmental context. (PCB)

This paper reviews some literature on the emergence of formal reasoning and reports a study of reasoning performance of 213 middle grade students in relationship to grade level and chronological age. While a number of large-scale studies have indicated that formal reasoning emerges in a regular progression across age ranges and grade levels, few…