Cognitive Development
Learning, Reasoning and
Language Development over
the Life Span
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Piaget’s Theory of
Cognitive Development
Jean Piaget (1896-1980) Swiss
psychologist who became leading
theorist in 1930’s
Piaget believed that “children are
active thinkers, constantly trying to
construct more advanced
understandings of the world”
These “understandings” are in the
form of structures he called schemas
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Development of Schemas
Schemas are frameworks that develop
to help organize knowledge
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
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Piaget’s approach
Primary method was to ask children to
solve problems and to question them
about the reasoning behind their
solutions
Discovered that children think in
radically different ways than adults
Proposed that development occurs as
a series of ‘stages’ differing in how the
world is understood
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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
Object permanence is acquired
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Object Permanence
The understanding that objects exist
independent of one’s actions or
perceptions of them
Before 6 months infants act as if
objects removed from sight cease to
exist
Can be surprised by disappearance /
reappearance of a face (peek-a-boo)
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Preoperational Stage
(2-7 years)
Emergence of symbolic thought
Centration
Egocentrism
Lack the concept of conservation
Animism
Artificialism
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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.
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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.
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Conservation
Substance
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.
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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
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Formal Operational Stage
(age 12 - adulthood)
Hypothetico-deductive reasoning
Adolescent egocentrism
illustrated by the phenomenon of
personal fable and imaginary
audience
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Piaget’s Theory
Challenged
 New studies indicate
infants do more than sense
and react
 One study had 1 month old
babies suck one of two
pacifiers without ever
seeing them
 When shown both pacifiers,
infants stared more at the
one they had felt in their
mouth
 This requires a sort of
reasoning
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Critique of Piaget’s Theory
Underestimates children’s abilities
Overestimates age differences in
thinking
Vagueness about the process of
change
Underestimates the role of the social
environment
Lack of evidence for qualitatively
different stages
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Information-Processing
Perspective
Focuses on the mind as a system,
analogous to a computer, for analyzing
information from the environment
Developmental improvements reflect
increased capacity of working memory
faster speed of processing
new algorithims (methods)
more stored knowledge
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Vygotsky’s
Sociocultural Perspective
Emphasized the child’s interaction
with the social world (other people) as
a cause of development
Vygotsky believed language to be the
foundation for social interaction and
thought
Piaget believed language was a
byproduct of thought
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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.
Critical thinking based on dialouge with
others who challenge ideas
Piaget - focused on children’s
interaction with the physical world
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Language Development
Preview
Universal Characteristics of Human
Language
Course of Development
Supports for Language Development
Language Learning among
Nonhuman Apes
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Universal Characteristics
of Human Language
Language development similar across
cultures. What are the common
elements?
Morphemes - smallest meaningful units
of language
 content morphemes (e.g., nouns, verbs,
adjectives, adverbs)
 grammatical morphemes (e.g., articles,
conjunctions, some prefixes and suffixes)
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Universal Characteristics
of Human Language
Phonemes - elementary vowel and
consonant sounds
Grammar - rules of language
 phonology - how phonemes can be
combined to make morphemes
 morphology -how morphemes can be
combined to make words
 syntax - how words can be combined to
make phrases and sentences
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Language Development
 Infant preference for human speech over
other sounds
before 6 months can hear differences used in all
languages
after 6 months begin to hear only differences used
in native language
 Cooing - vowel sounds produced 2-4 months
 Babbling - consonant/vowel sounds between
4 to 6 months
 Even deaf infants coo and babble
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Language Development
MONTH
2
4
10
12
24
24 +
Speech Characteristic
Cooing
vowel sounds
Babbling
consonant/vowel
Babbling
native language sounds
One-word stage
Two-word stage
Sentences
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Features of Young
Children’s Speech
Telegraphic
Overextension
Underextension
Mean length of utterance (MLU)
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Supports for
Language Development
Chomsky’s language-acquisition device
(LAD) - innate foundations for grammar
and learning the unique rules of a
culture’s language
Language-acquisition support system aspects of the social world that help infants
acquire language (e.g., parentese)
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Animal communication
Can animals learn language? Depends
on definition of language.
primate studies--because of articulatory
difficulties, many were taught sign
language
can acquire vocabulary with much effort, similar
to a child’s learning of first words
cannot acquire grammar
do not understand turn-taking in conversation
answer questions with words contained in the
questions
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