Piaget Cognitive Development Swiss psychologist During 1920’s employed to write children’s intelligence tests, intrigued by children’s wrong answers Before Piaget, theory that children were simply incompetent adults Development is nature & nurture 1

2 Building Blocks of Development Schema: organize past experiences into “folders” in your brain Example: all animals that fly are birds

3 Assimilation –Interpreting new experiences based on our schemas. A toddler sees a cardinal and assimilates it into their bird schema. Schema: All animals that fly are birds!

So, what happens when a toddler sees a butterfly? They may mistakenly assimilate it into their “bird” schema. 4 Guiding the development of schemas

5 Accommodation When the toddler realizes that a butterfly is not a bird, they accommodate their “bird” schema to include two kinds of flying animals – birds & butterflies Accommodation When the existing schema does not work Schema needs to change or new schema is formed

6 Developmental Stages Sensorimotor –Birth to about age 2 Preoperational –Age 2 to about 6 Concrete Operations –Age 7 to about 11 Formal Operations –12 through adulthood

7 Sensorimotor Stage Birth to about age 2 Understand the world through senses –Looking, touching, mouthing, grasping –Why do babies put everything in their mouth? Object permanence: Awareness that objects continue to exist when not perceived –Younger than 8 months do not have object permanence Out of sight, out of mind – –

8 Sensorimotor Stage Birth to about age 2 Scale Error: months old, fail to take into account the size of an object when trying to perform a task –Stranger Anxiety: fear of strangers starting at 8 months – begin to have schemas for familiar faces – (1:40) 30 seconds

Piaget was late! By 4 months, babies stare at impossible objects longer than possible By 5 months, babies stare at incorrect math problems 9

10 Preoperational Stage About 2 years old to 6/7 Use intuitive thinking rather than logical reasoning Fantasy Play – Egocentrism: difficulty perceiving another’s point of view –Do you have a brother or sister? –Sometimes adults, text recipient will “hear” are sarcasm – Language Development: –Representing ideas with words Lack concepts of Conservation –redistributing material does not affect its volume, number or mass –

Preoperational Stage About 2 years old to 6/7 11

12 Concrete Operational About 6/7 to 11 years old Mastering conservation Understand the world around them based in concrete evidence Begin to understand math logic –Mr. Jones went into a restaurant and ordered a whole pizza. When the waiter asked if he wanted it cut into 6 or 8 pieces, Mr. Jones said, “Oh, you’d better make it 6, I could never eat 8 pieces.” They reason about what is, but not yet about what is possible (no hypothetical thinking)

13 Formal Operational About 12 through adulthood Metacognition: gain the ability to think about the way we think Ability to solve abstract problems in a logical manner Able to hypothesize before the experiment