Cognitive Development

1. Cognitive Development

2. Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development • Jean Piaget (1896-1980) Swiss psychologist who became leading theorist in 1930’s • These “understandings” are in the form of structures he called schemas

3. Development of Schemas • Assimilation - process of taking new information or a new experience and fitting it into an already existing schema • Accommodation - process by which existing schemas are changed or new schemas are created in order to fit new information

4. Piaget’s approach • Methods- • Discovered that children think in radically different ways than adults • Stage Theorist

5. Sensorimotor Stage (birth - 2) • Information is gained through the senses and motor actions • In this stage child perceives and manipulates but does not reason • Symbols become internalized through language development

6. Object Permanence • The understanding that objects exist independent of one’s actions or perceptions of them • Acquired by 6 months • Can be surprised by disappearance / reappearance of a face (peek-a-boo)

7. Preoperational Stage (2-7 years) • Emergence of symbolic thought • Egocentrism- “ Does your sister have a sister” • Lack the concept of conservation • Animism

8. Conservation • Number In conservation of number tests, two equivalent rows of coins are placed side by side and the child says that there is the same number in each row. Then one row is spread apart and the child is again asked if there is the same number in each.

9. Conservation • Length In conservation of length tests, two same-length sticks are placed side by side and the child says that they are the same length. Then one is moved and the child is again asked if they are the same length.

10. Conservation • Substance mass In conservation of substance tests, two identical amounts of clay are rolled into similar-appearing balls and the child says that they both have the same amount of clay. Then one ball is rolled out and the child is again asked if they have the same amount.

11. Concrete Operational Stage (7-12 years) • Understanding of mental operations leading to increasingly logical thought • Classification and categorization • Less egocentric • Inability to reason abstractly or hypothetically

12. Formal Operational Stage (age 12 - adulthood) • Hypothetical-deductive reasoning • Adolescent egocentrism illustrated by the phenomenon of personal fable and imaginary audience

13. Critique of Piaget’s Theory • Underestimates children’s abilities • Underestimates the role of the social environment • Lack of evidence for qualitatively different stages

14. Information-Processing Perspective • Focuses on the mind as a system, analogous to a computer, for analyzing information from the environment • Developmental improvements reflect • increased memory, processing • new methods, knowledge

15. Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Perspective • Emphasized the child’s interaction with the social world (other people) as a cause of development • language was foundation for social interaction and thought • Piaget believed language was a byproduct of thought

16. Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Perspective • Vygotsky - children learn from interactions with other people • Zone of proximal development - what a child can do by interacting with another person, but can’t do alone.