how do adolescents define depression? - cIRcle - University of ...

Chapter II: Literature Review
Rutter and Sroufe (2000) report that "...it makes no sense to ask what a word means. Rather, we
have to ask what is the concept or idea to which we wish to attach the descriptive term" (p. 265).
Piaget (1929) wrote "a word is always associated with its context until it comes to be regarded as
implying the whole context" (p. 84).
In order to identify the processes that underlie adolescents' conceptions of depression, it
is necessary to gain a better understanding of cognitive development. Conceptualizing is an
ongoing process that is being continually refined and upgraded by development, experience, and
education. Conceptualizing cannot go on without memory and learning. From early adolescence
onwards, cognition 4 tends to involve abstract, self-reflective, self-aware, and multidimensional
interpretations (Keating, 1990). Piaget's theory of cognitive development (Inhelder & Piaget,
1958) proposed that adolescence is a time when the individual is able to generate hypotheses and
possible solutions in terms of past and potential experiences. Cognitive processes are used for
interpreting, understanding, and evaluating one's environment, observations, and interactions
with others (Keating, 1990; Noam et al., 1995; Santrock, 1998). Hence, all developmental
changes and all learning come about through the modification of structures already present in the
individual as a result of one's interaction with the environment.
Exploring Piaget's Stages of Cognitive Development
Adolescents' conceptions of depression serve to codify certain formulated ideas (or
thoughts of depression). Those ideas, according to Piaget's stages of cognitive development
(Inhelder & Piaget, 1958), tend to be constructed during the formal-operational stage. For the
purposes of this discussion, the formal-operational stage of cognitive development is Piaget's
fourth and final level of thinking. In this stage, from age 11 to adulthood, as posited by Piaget,
adolescents are able to think and reason about their own thoughts as well as the thoughts of other
people. The formal operational thinkers can also conceptualize the real and the possible, be more
flexible and more abstract than individuals in the preceding stages (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958;
Keating, 1990).
4 Webster defines cognition as knowledge, the act or process of knowing, perception, the product of such a
process, something thus known, perceived (Random House, 1996).
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