Human Development (PS)

Jean Piaget dedicated his life to a search for the origins of intelligence and the factors that lead to changes in knowledge over the life span. Although his theory turned out to be incomplete, and in some respects incorrect, his agenda for cognitive reasearch in cognitive development is still being pursued He proposed that cognitive development proceeds in a series of distinct stages, or periods. He believed that all children’s thinking goes through the same stages, in the same order, without skipping – building on previous stages, then moving progressivelo to highter ones.

Building Blocks of Development Schemas: the basic units of knowledge. They are mental images or generalizations that form as people experience the world. They organize past experiences and provide a framework for understanding future experiences. –Assimilation: infants and children take in information about new objects by trying out the existing schemas and finding schemas that the new objects will fit. They assimilate the new information into their existing schemas. –Accomodation: sometimes people distort information to make it fit their existing schemas. When squeezing won’t work, people are forced to change, or accomodate their schemas to the new objects. The person tries out familiar schemas on new objects, finds that schemmas cannot be made to fit the object, and changes the schema so that it will fit.

Piaget’s Periods of Cognitive Development Sensorimotor Birth – 2 years Preoperational 2-4 years 4-7 years Concrete-operational 7-11 years

Sensorimotor Use sensory impressions, motor activities and coordination to discover aspects of the world. They differentiate themselves from the world. Gain appreciation of cause and effect. Assimilation + accomodation  new schemas Object permanence

Preoperational Children cannot manipulate and transform information in logical ways, but they can thin in images and symbols They become able to represent something with something else, acquire a language, and play games of pretend. Intelligence is said to be intuitive, because children cannot make general, logical statements. Children’s thinking is dominated by what tehy can see and touch for themselves, they also do not realize that something is the same if its appearance is changed (conservation)

Concrete-operational Children can understand logical principles that apply to concrete external objects They can appreciate that certain properties of remain the same, despite changes in appearance, and sort objects into categories. They can appreciate the perspective of other viewers, and think about two concepts at the same time.

Cognitive Development in Infancy and Childhood 3-4 months: maturation of senses, voluntary movement months: mental representations, object permanence months: symbolic thought 4 years: intuitive thought 6-7 years: concrete operations, conservation 7-8 years: information processing

Information Processing during Childhood As children get older, their information- processing skills gradually get better. Children take in information and shift their attention from one task to another more rapidly. Children’s cognitive abilities improve dramatically when they are dealing with familiar rather than unfamiliar material.

Individual Variations in Cognitive Development The Case of Genie Asian-American families

Infancy and Childhood: Social and Emotional Development Individual temperament (easy and difficult babies) Attachment (avoidant, ambivalent, desorganized)