A fourth change in cognition is that thinking tends to become multidimensional, rather than limited to a single issue. Whereas children tend to think about things one aspect at a time, adolescents can see things through more complicated lenses. Adolescents describe themselves and others in more differentiated and complicated terms and find it easier to look at problems from multiple perspectives. Being able to understand that people’s personalities are not one-sided, or that social situations can have different interpretations, depending on one’s point of view, permits the adolescent to have far more sophisticated—and complicated—relationships with other people.
Finally, adolescents are more likely than children to see things as relative, rather than absolute. Children tend to see things in absolute terms—in black and white. Adolescents, in contrast, tend to see things as relative. They are more likely to question others’ assertions and less likely to accept “facts” as absolute truths. This increase in relativism can be particularly exasperating to parents, who may feel that their adolescent children question everything just for the sake of argument. Difficulties often arise, for example, when adolescents begin seeing their parents’ values as excessively relative.
Taken from : The Gale Encyclopedia Of Psychology 2ND Edition - Bonnie Strickland