Cognitive Development
Theories
Module 47
Cognition
• All the mental activities associated with
thinking, knowing, remembering &
communicating
• Children think differently than adults do
• Play “The Magic Years” (12:00)
– Segment #25 from Scientific American Frontiers
DVD
Jean Piaget (pee-ah-ZHAY)
• (1896–1980) Swiss psychologist who became
leading cognitive theorist in 1930’s
• Developmental psychologist who introduced a 4
stage theory of cognitive development
• Believed these stages were BIOLOGICAL and
occurred in same order but environment & culture
could change how fast we progress through them.
• Believed that children create their understanding
of the world by interacting with it.
• Minds show a quick spurt of change followed by
stability until they are biologically ready for the
next stage.
Piaget’s Theory of
Cognitive Development
• 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
Schemas
• Concepts or mental frameworks that people
use to organize and interpret information
• Sometimes called schemes
• A person’s “picture of the world”
Assimilation
• Taking new information or a new experience
and fitting it into an already existing schema
• The new experience is similar to other
previous experiences
Accommodation
• Changing existing schemas or creating new
schemas in order to fit new information
• The new experience is so new the person’s
schema must be changed to accommodate it
Assimilation/Accommodation
Assimilation/Accommodation
Assimilation/Accommodation
As children assimilate new information and
experiences, they eventually change their way of
thinking to accommodate new knowledge
See How Babies form Schemas for Faces (0:00-4:00)
Piaget’s Studies
• 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
Piaget’s 4 Cognitive
Developmental Stages
•
Each new stage represents a fundamental shift in
how the child thinks and understands the world
Sensorimotor Stage (birth – 2)
• Information is gained directly
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
gradually - the understanding that an
object continues to exist even if it
can’t be seen
Object Permanence
• The awareness that things continue to exist even when
they cannot be sensed
• Occurs gradually as babies gain experience with objects,
as their memory abilities improve, and as they develop
mental representations of the world, which Piaget called
schemas
• 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)
– “Out of sight, out of mind”
Object Permanence
See the different ways object
permanence is tested today
(0:00-7:24)
Object Permanence
• Play “Object Permanence”
– Video #15 from Worth’s Digital Media DVD
(2 min)
Click Here to
view in a
separate
window
Piaget Underestimated What
Young Children Know
• Baby Physics – Infants look longer at unexpected
events like a car passing through a solid object.
– (start video at 1 min)
– Also seen in The Baby Human DVD (16:40-21:20)
• Baby Math – When a baby is shown 2 figures and a
figure is visibly removed but there remains 2
figures, the baby stares longer as if “knowing”
something is wrong. (1 min)
– Also seen in The Baby Human DVD (21:20-25:00)
Preoperational Stage (2–7 years)
• The word operations refers to logical, mental activities; thus,
the preoperational stage is a prelogical stage
• Children can understand language but not logic
• Emergence of symbolic thought - ability to use words, images,
and symbols to represent the world.
• Centration - tendency to focus, or center, on only one aspect of
a situation, usually a perceptual aspect, and ignore other
relevant aspects of the situation
• Lack the concept of conservation - which holds that two equal
quantities remain equal even if the appearance of one is
changed, as long as nothing is added or subtracted
• Irreversibility - child cannot mentally reverse a sequence of
events or logical operations back to the starting point
• Egocentrism - inability to take another person’s
perspective or point of view
Conservation
• An understanding that quantity remains
constant despite changes in shape
• Can include mass, volume, and numbers.
• Children in the Preoperational Stage lack this
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.
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.
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.
Piaget’s Conservation Task
• Play “Piaget’s Conservation Task”
Video #18 from Worth’s Digital
Media Archive for Psychology
To view in a
separate
window click
here
Conservation
Conservation
Conservation
Types of Conservation Tasks
Want to try it with someone? Here are instructions
Egocentrism
• The child’s inability to take
another person’s point of
view
– Child on the phone says,
“See the picture I drew for
you Grandpa!” and shows
the picture to the phone.
• Curse of Knowledge – when we as adults assume something
that is clear to us will be clear to others
• Example: Joking sarcasm in a text message
Theory of Mind
• Ability to infer someone else’s mental state
• Begins to develop in preschoolers
• People with Autism Spectrum Disorder can
struggle with this
• Play “A Change of Mind” (12:00)
– Segment #26 from Scientific American Frontiers DVD
Concrete Operational Stage
(7–12 years)
• Ability to think logically about concrete
(actual) objects and situations they’ve
experienced before
• Child can now understand conservation & are
able to reverse operations easily
• Classification and categorization
• Less egocentric
• Inability to reason abstractly or hypothetically
Formal Operational Stage
(age 12 – adulthood)
• Ability to think logically about abstract principles
and hypothetical situations
• Hypothetico-deductive reasoning
– What if….? problems
• Adolescent egocentrism illustrated by the
phenomenon of personal fable and imaginary
audience
Assessing Piaget’s Theory
• Scientific research has supported Piaget’s most
fundamental idea: that infants, young children,
and older children use distinct cognitive abilities
to construct their understanding of the world
BUT…
• Piaget underestimated the child’s ability at
various ages.
• Piaget confused motor skill limitations with
cognitive limitations in assessing object
permanence during infancy.
• Piaget’s theory doesn’t take into account culture
and social differences.
• Evidence shows development is more continuous
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
• Renée Baillargeon used visual
tasks, rather than manual tasks, and
found that three-and-a-half-monthold infants could mentally represent
objects that had disappeared from
view
Vygotsky’s
Sociocultural Perspective
• Noted that children think in words by age 7
• Children learn best when interacting with others
– Piaget said they learn through interacting with their
environment
• Vygotsky believed language to be the foundation
for social interaction and thought
– Piaget believed language was a byproduct of thought
• Peer/Role Model helps a child move through one
development zone to the next
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Perspective
• Believed that cognitive development is strongly
influenced by social and cultural factors, such as the
support and guidance that children receive from parents,
other adults, and older children
• Children learn from interactions with other people
– Language is the building block of thinking
– Zone of proximal development—what a child can do
with the help of another person, but can’t do alone.
– Critical thinking based on dialogue with others who
challenge ideas