1. Recognize that in adolescence cognition changes in two ways: adolescents have more quantitative knowledge and think about their world in qualitatively different ways.
2. Understand that standardized tests and the IQ scores associated with them have been developed and widely used to quantitatively assess intelligence.
3. Recognize that there are wide-held debates about what psychological characteristics are actually measured by intelligence tests and what the bases of those debates are.
4. Recognize that variation in quantitative intelligence is influenced by the social domain and that qualitative features of cognition constitute a key dimension of cognitive development.
5. Recognize that academic achievement is a factor that influences cognitive competence and that academic achievement is itself affected by multiple levels of the context of human development.
6. Appreciate that the academic achievements of youth from different cultural backgrounds differ due, primarily, to socialization experiences beginning in childhood.
7. Understand that, in Piaget’s theory, cognitive development involves the relation between the person and the context and that the person-context relation involves two processes: assimilation and accommodation.
8. Understand that, to Piaget, the goal of cognitive development is to create an equilibration between assimilation and accommodation.
9. Understand the basis of egocentrism and recognize that overcoming the egocentrism prototypic of each stage leads the person to attain the cognitive development most central to that stage and that the cognitive attainment of one stage leads the person to the egocentrism of the next stage.
10. Understand the defining characteristics of formal operational thinking, especially the INRC group.
11. Understand characteristics of adolescent egocentrism such as the imaginary audience and the personal fable.
12. Recognize that, across the formal operational stage, social thought becomes less egocentric and more responsive to societal conventions and the particular social audience or context to which it is directed.
13. Recognize that across the formal operational stage, social thought is increasingly more reflective of abstract principles of social organization.
14. Recognize that it is through interaction with peers, elders, and, most importantly, with the assumption of adult roles and responsibilities, that the adolescent decenters and the egocentrism of this stage diminishes.

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