Children and adults think differently. Children stay in the here and now, believing exactly what they see, hear or touch. They are literal, concrete through-processors. Children constantly think and act by doing several things simultaneously.
For example, picking up a book, a child will make a mental image of the smell, the letters and pictures, the sound of someone talking, all at the same time.
A child’s point of view is positive, curious, creative, ambiguous, open-minded and naïve. Childish behavior is egocentric, but comfort and security enable a child to understand another’s point of view.
A child’s cognitive style may be independent or independent, passive or impulsive, and may be heavily influenced by personality traits.
Adolescents and though processes involve having private thoughts. Adult thinking is dominated by visual (and then auditory) imagery, constructing thoughts on the basis of familiarity and past experience.
The majority of adults are left-brain (the verbal analytical portion of the brain) dominant, and are less flexible than children in solving simple problems because they look for one right answer, rather than taking several perspectives. They tend to be indirective thinkers, over generalizing up in their dialogue and communication skills.
Adults are critical thought-processors, and are capable of abstract reasoning. They can apply principals of logic, causality, conversation, temporal means, deduction, intuition and conscience to situations and relationships. Personality traits are not generally reflected in the intellectual capacity of adults.
Both children and adults change their action and thoughts continuously throughout their lifetime. There are biological and evolutionary growth and development patterns that predispose humans to become social, intellectual, and communicative, in order to survive.
The essence of being human is to form healthy human relationships that enable human beings, adult or child, to develop from in-utero to maturity and to be driven through motivation to achieve their potential.
Imagine how 10 preschoolers would respond to the command to line up, and compare that to your impression of how adults would respond. The differences between adult and child thought in this one situation are:
