Theories of Cognitive Development How Children Develop (3rd ed.) Siegler, DeLoache & Eisenberg Chapter 4 Part 1

Today’s Learning Objectives Describe and critique key theoretical perspectives on child development. Describe, compare and contrast key changes in the cognitive characteristics across childhood. Relate our discussions to “real-life” experiences.

Overview I. Piaget’s Theory

Questions Addressed by Theories of Cognitive Development

I. Piaget’s Theory A. View of Children’s Nature B. Central Development Issues C. Developmental Stages D. Piaget’s Legacy

A. View of Children’s Nature Jean Piaget’s theory remains the standard against which all other theories are judged. Often labeled constructivist because it depicts children as constructing knowledge for themselves. Children are seen as Active Learning many important lessons on their own Intrinsically motivated to learn

B. Central Developmental Issues 1. Nature and Nurture Piaget believed that nature and nurture interact to yield cognitive development. Adaptation: the tendency to respond to the demands of the environment to meet one’s goals Organization: the tendency to integrate particular observations into coherent knowledge

2. Sources of Continuity Three processes work together from birth to propel development forward. Assimilation: the process by which people translate incoming information into a form they can understand Accommodation: the process by which people adapt current knowledge structures in response to new experiences Equilibration: the process by which people balance assimilation and accommodation to create stable understanding

Piaget: Learning Equilibration AssimilationAccommodation

3. Sources of Discontinuity The discontinuous aspects of Piaget’s theory are distinct, hierarchical stages. Central properties of Piaget’s stage theory: Qualitative change Broad applicability across topics and contexts Brief transitions Invariant sequence Hypothesized that children progress through four stages of cognitive development, each building on the previous one

Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development Sensori- motor Birth to 2 years Infants know the world through their senses and through their actions. For example, they learn what dogs look like and what petting them feels like. Preopera- tional years Toddlers and young children acquire the ability to internally represent the world through language and mental imagery. They also begin to be able to see the world from other people’s perspectives, not just from their own.

Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development Concrete Operational years Children become able to think logically, not just intuitively. They now can classify objects into coherent categories and understand that events are often influenced by multiple factors, not just one. Formal Operational 12+ years Adolescents can think systematically and reason about what might be as well as what is. This allows them to understand politics, ethics, and science fiction, as well as to engage in scientific reasoning.

C. Sensorimotor Stage Over the course of the first two years, infants’ sensorimotor intelligence develops tremendously.

Sensorimotor Substages SubAgeDescription 1 Birth – 1 month Infants begin to modify the reflexes with which they are born to make them more adaptive. 2 1 – 4 months Infants begin to organize separate reflexes into larger behaviors, most of which are centered on their own bodies.

Sensorimotor Substages SubAgeDescription 3 4 – 8 months Infants becoming increasingly interested in the world around them. By the end of this substage, object permanence, the knowledge that objects continue to exist even when they are out of view, typically emerges. 4 8 – 12 months During this substage, children make the A-Not-B error, the tendency to reach to where objects have been found before, rather than to where they were last hidden.

Piaget’s A-Not-B Task

Sensorimotor Substages SubAgeDescription 5 12 – 18 months Toddlers begin to actively and avidly explore the potential uses to which objects can be put – 24 months Infants become able to form enduring mental representations. The first sign of this capacity is deferred imitation, the repetition of other people’s behavior a substantial time after it occurred.

D. Preoperational Stage A mix of impressive cognitive acquisitions and equally impressive limitations A notable acquisition is symbolic representation, the use of one object to stand for another, which makes a variety of new behaviors possible. One major limitation is egocentrism, the tendency to perceive the world solely from one’s own point of view. A related limitation is centration, the tendency to focus on a single, perceptually striking feature of an object or event. Preoperational children also lack of understanding of the conservation concept, the idea that merely changing the appearance of objects does not change their key properties.

Piaget’s Three-Mountain Task

Egocentric Conversations

The Balance Scale: An Example of Centration

Procedures Used to Test Conservation

E. Concrete Operations Stage Children begin to reason logically about the world. They can solve conservation problems, but their successful reasoning is largely limited to concrete situations. Thinking systematically remains difficult.

Inhelder and Piaget’s Pendulum Problem The task is to compare the motions of longer and shorter strings, with lighter and heavier weights attached, in order to determine the influence of weight, string length, and dropping point on the time it takes for the pendulum to swing back and forth. Children below age 12 usually perform unsystematic experiments and draw incorrect conclusions.

F. Formal Operations Stage Cognitive development culminates in the ability to think abstractly and to reason hypothetically. Individuals can imagine alternative worlds and reason systematically about all possible outcomes of a situation. Piaget believed that the attainment of the formal operations stage, in contrast to the other stages, is not universal.

G. Piaget’s Legacy Although Piaget’s theory remains highly influential, some weaknesses are now apparent. The stage model depicts children’s thinking as being more consistent than it is. Infants and young children are more cognitively competent than Piaget recognized. Piaget’s theory understates the contribution of the social world to cognitive development. Piaget’s theory is vague about the cognitive processes that give rise to children’s thinking and about the mechanisms that produce cognitive growth.

Implications for Education Piaget’s view of children’s cognitive development suggests that children’s distinctive ways of thinking at different ages need to be considered in deciding how best to teach them. In addition, because children learn by mentally and physically interacting with the environment, relevant physical activities, accompanied by questions that call attention to the lessons of the activities, are important in educational practice.

Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

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