Slide 1
A Topical Approach to
LIFE-SPAN DEVELOPMENT
6
Cognitive Developmental
Approaches
John W. Santrock
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 2
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Processes of Development
• Piaget observed own 3 children;
believed six processes used in
constructing knowledge
– Schemes
– Organization
– Assimilation
– Equilibrium
– Accommodation
– Equilibration
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 3
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Schemes
• Actions or mental representations that
organize knowledge
– Behavioral schemes: physical activities
characterizing infancy
– Mental schemes: cognitive activities
develop in childhood
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 4
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Assimilation and Accommodation
• Both operate even in very young infants
• Assimilation — incorporate new information
into existing knowledge schemes
• Accommodation — adjust schemes to fit
new information and experiences
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 5
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Organization
• Children cognitively organize experiences
- Grouping isolated behaviors into a
higher-order, more smoothly functioning
cognitive system
- Grouping items into categories
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 6
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Equilibrium and Equilibration
• Mechanisms proposed to explain how children
shift from one stage of thought to the next
– Disequilibrium — shift occurs as children
experience cognitive conflict
– Equilibration — they resolve conflict through
assimilation and accommodation, to reach a new
balance or equilibrium of thought
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 7
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Stages of Development
• Piaget’s theory unifies experiences and
biology to explain cognitive development
– Motivation is internal search for equilibrium
– Four stages of development…progressively
advanced and qualitatively different
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 8
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Sensorimotor stage
• First of Piaget’s stages
– Birth to about 2 years
– Infants construct understanding of world by
coordinating sensory experiences with
motoric actions
– Contains six substages
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 9
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Sensorimotor Substages
1
Simple reflexes
Basic means of coordinating
sensation and action
through reflexive behaviors
2
First habits and
primary circular
reactions
Infants’ infant’s attempt to
reproduce interesting or
pleasurable event (1-4 mos)
Secondary
circular
reactions
Infant is more objectoriented moving beyond
preoccupation with the self
(4-8 months)
3
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 10
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Sensorimotor Substages
4
Coordination of
secondary
circular reactions
Significant changes in
coordination of schemes
and intentionality (8-12 mos)
5
Tertiary circular
reactions, novelty
and curiosity
Intrigued by objects’ many
properties; explores new
possibilities with them
(12-18 mos)
Internalization of
Schemes
Ability to use primitive
symbols; shift to mental
manipulation (18-24 mos)
6
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 11
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Object Permanence
• Understanding that objects and events
continue to exist even when they cannot
directly be seen, heard, or touched
– One of infant’s most important accomplishments
– Acquired in stages
– Violation of expectations testing
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 12
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Infant’s Understanding of Causality
(a)
(b)
(c)
Fig. 6.5
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Slide 13
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Evaluating Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage
• New research techniques suggest Piaget’s
theory needs to be modified
– Some abilities develop earlier
• Intermodal perception; substantiality and
permanence of objects
– Transitions not as clear-cut; AB error
– Objects seen as separate at much younger age;
possibly at birth or shortly after
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 14
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Preoperational Stage
• Second Piagetian developmental stage
– About 2 to 7 years of age; two substages
– Children begin to represent the world with
words, images, and drawings
• Not ready to perform Operations
– Internalized actions that allow children to do
mentally what before they only did physically
– Reversible mental actions
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 15
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
The Symbolic Function Substage
Symbolic
function
Egocentrism
Animism
First substage of preoperational
thought; young child gains ability
to represent mentally an object
that is not present (2-4 years)
Inability to distinguish between
one’s own and another’s view
Belief that inanimate objects have
lifelike qualities, capable of action
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 16
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
The Three Mountains Task
View 1
View 2
(d)
(c)
Child
seated
here
(d)
(b)
(a)
(a)
(c)
(b)
Child seated here
Fig. 6.6
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 17
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
The Symbolic Drawings of
Young Children
(a) A 31/2-year-old’s symbolic
drawing. Halfway into this
drawing, the 31/2-year-old
artist said it was “a pelican
kissing a seal.”
(b) This 11-year-old’s
drawing is neater and more
realistic but also less
inventive.
Fig. 6.7
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 18
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
The Intuitive Thought Substage
• Children begin using primitive reasoning
and want to know answers to all sorts of
questions (4-7 years)
– Why? questions exhaust adults
– Centration — focusing attention on one
characteristic to exclusion of others
– Conservation — object’s amount stays
same regardless of changing appearance;
lacking in preoperational stage
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 19
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Piaget’s Conservation Task
Fig. 6.8
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 20
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Some Dimensions of Conservation:
Number, Matter, and Length
Fig. 6.9
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Slide 21
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Piaget’s Concrete Operational Stage
• Piaget’s third stage (7-11 years)
• Children can perform concrete
operations
• Logical reasoning replaces intuitive
reasoning if applied to specific,
concrete examples
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 22
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Classification Skills
• Concrete operations child understands one
person can be father, brother, and grandson
• Seriation — involves stimuli along
quantitative dimension (e.g. length)
• Transitivity — if relation holds between first
and second object, and holds between the
second and third object, then it holds between
first and third object
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 23
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Classification: An Important Ability in
Concrete Operational Thought
Fig. 6.10
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 24
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Formal Operational Stage
• Individuals move beyond concrete operations
and think in more abstract and logical ways
(11-15 years)
• Abstract, Idealistic, and Logical Thinking
– Verbal problem-solving ability increases
– Increased ability to think about thought itself
– Thought is full of idealism and possibilities
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 25
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Formal Operational Stage
• Children solve problems by trial-and-error
• Adolescents think more like scientists
• Assimilation dominates initial development
• Hypothetical-deductive reasoning
– Have cognitive ability to develop hypotheses, or
best guesses, and systematically deduce the best
path to follow in solving a problem
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 26
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Adolescent Egocentrism
• Heightened adolescents’ self-consciousness
• Imaginary audience
– Belief that others are as interested in them as
they are
– Involves attention-getting behavior motivated by
desire to be noticed, visible, and “on stage”
• Personal fable — adolescent’s sense of
uniqueness and invincibility
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 27
Applying and Evaluating Piaget’s Theory
Piaget and Education
• Take a constructivist approach
• Facilitate rather than direct learning
• Consider child’s knowledge, level of thinking
• Use ongoing assessment
• Promote the student’s intellectual health
• Turn classroom into setting of exploration
and discovery
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 28
Applying and Evaluating Piaget’s Theory
Evaluating Piaget’s Theory
• Contributions
– New way of looking at children as active thinkers
• Criticisms
– Some estimates of children’s competence is
inaccurate
– Development not uniformly stage-like
– Effects of training
– Culture and education influence development
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 29
Applying and Evaluating Piaget’s Theory
Neo-Piagetians
• Argue Piaget got some things right, but
theory needs revision
• More emphasis to memory, attention,
information-processing strategies, and
processing speed
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Slide 30
Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive
Development
• Social contexts; minds are shaped by
cultural context in which they live
• Tools are provided by society
• Children actively construct their knowledge
and understanding through social
interactions
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Slide 31
The Zone of Proximal Development
• Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
– Tasks too difficult for children to master alone
but that can be mastered with guidance and
assistance from more-skilled person
• Scaffolding
– Changing level of support over course of a
teaching session to fit child’s current
performance level
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Slide 32
Vygotsky’s Zone of
Proximal Development
Fig. 6.11
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Slide 33
Vygotsky: Language and Thought
• Believed young children use language to
plan, guide, and monitor behavior
• Language and thought initially develop
independently, then merge
• Private speech: language of self-regulation
– Self talk (3 to 7 years of age)
– Inner talk: child’s thoughts
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Slide 34
Teaching Strategies based on
Vygotsky’s Theory
• Successfully applied to education
– Use child’s ZPD
– Use more-skilled peers as teachers
– Monitor and encourage private speech
– Effectively assess child’s ZPD
– Instruction in meaningful context
– Transform classroom
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Slide 35
Guided Participation
• Widely used around the world
• Culture may differ in goals of development
• Child’s responsibilities revised as skill and
knowledge are gained
– Chewa of Zambia
– Maya of Guatemala
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Slide 36
Evaluating Vygotsky’s Theory
• Social constructivist approach — emphasize
social contexts of learning and construction of
knowledge through social interaction
– Shift from individual to collaborative learning
– Teachers facilitate and guide, not direct and mold
– May overemphasize language’s role in thinking
– Facilitators may help too much; make child lazy
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 37
Cognitive Changes in Adulthood
Piaget’s View of Adult Cognition
• Thinking qualitatively in formal operations
same as adolescents
• Adults have more knowledge
• Research shows:
– Many don’t reach highest level until adulthood
– Many adults don’t use formal operational thinking
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 38
Cognitive Changes in Adulthood
• Thinking of young adults is beyond formal
operational stage of adolescents. It is…
– Realistic — Idealism decreases in face of real
world constraints
– Pragmatic — Switch from acquiring knowledge
to applying it
– Reflective and Relativistic — Move away
from absolutist thinking of adolescence
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 39
Cognitive Changes in Adulthood
Is There A Fifth, Postformal Stage?
• Postformal thought is
– Reflective, relativistic, and contextual
– Provisional
– Realistic
– Open to emotions and subjective
• More research needed
• Another possible stage may be wisdom
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 40
6
The End
© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.