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Four Postformal Stages

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Handbook of Adult Development

Abstract

The term “postformal” has come to refer to various stage characterizations of behavior that are more complex than those behaviors found in Piaget’s last stage—formal operations—and generally seen only in adults. Commons and Richards (1984a, 1894b) and Fischer (1980), among others, posited that such behaviors follow a single sequence, no matter the domain of the task, for example, social, interpersonal, moral, political, scientific, and so on.

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Commons, M.L., Richards, F.A. (2002). Four Postformal Stages. In: Demick, J., Andreoletti, C. (eds) Handbook of Adult Development. The Springer Series in Adult Development and Aging. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-0617-1_11

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