1. Theories of Development

2. Jean Piaget Cognitive Development

4. Piaget’s Cognitive Development Stages
Sensorimotor stage (birth to 2 years)
Babies start exploring the world strictly through their senses.
Then, they start developing their first cognitive schemas (linked mental images that describe the world.
Ex. object permanence
We know objects still exist even though I can’t see them.
Piaget thought that babies learned object permanence at 9 months, but newer research suggests that babies may understand the concept as early as 10 weeks.

5. Piaget’s Cognitive Development Stages
Preoperational stage (2-7 years)
Start to use symbols to represent real-world objects.
Increase in playing and pretending.
That’s not a broom, it’s a horse!!!
Most important development in this stage is language.
We are still limited in our ability to think about the characteristics of objects and their relationships to each other.
Children do NOT yet understand concepts of conservation
Also, we are self-centered and egocentric, meaning we can only see the world from our own point of view.

6. Piaget’s Cognitive Development Stages
Concrete Operations (8-12 years)
Learn to think logically about characteristics of objects and how they relate to each other.
Ex. My dog is a golden retriever. A golden retriever is a dog. A dog is an animal.
Demonstrate knowledge of concepts of conservation
properties of objects stay the same even when their arrangement changes.
Properties like: volume, area, number
Concepts of conservation - To you eight ounces of water in a short fat cup is the same as eight ounces in a tall thin cup- to this child the amounts are different.  Or if I took two pizzas, one dived into 8 slices, one into 4.  A child in the preoperational stage would thing that the pizza with 8 slices is more (you should know by now that it makes little difference).  But I do notice that when there is a chocolate cake around I tend to take many small pieces instead of one huge one- somehow thinking that I am saving calories.

7. Piaget’s Cognitive Development Stages
Formal Operations (12 yrs- Adulthood)
According to Piaget, not all of us reach this stage of adult reasoning.
Abstract reasoning.
This is the first stage in which we could be good at playing the game 20 questions.
Hypothetical thinking
We understand things we have never experienced, which helps us to see the “big picture”.
Also, in this stage we can learn to think about the way we think
Known as metacognition
Before this stage, kids play 20 questions by limiting their questions to the specifics. If correct answer was some kind of animal, a concrete operational kid might ask “Is it a dog?” or “Is it a monkey?”. A formal operational thinker might ask “Does it fly?” or “Does it have hair?” before moving to more specific questions.

8. Criticisms of Piaget
Many children advance faster than Piaget hypothesized.
Some theorists believe cognitive development is more continuous than Piaget depicts.
The information-processing model is a more continuous alternative to Piaget’s stage theory.
This model points out that our thinking abilities gradually develop.
Our attention span gradually increases as we get older.
Maybe children don't understand things like the laws of conservation not because they are unable to do so but rather because they cannot pay attention long enough to learn it .
The biggest reason Piaget’s studies underestimated kids abilities was that they may not know how to express their mental abilities through language. When you have kids, teach them how to do this by playing counting games, like when setting the table, count out each fork that is placed down.
Maybe our cognitive skills do not develop in stages, but rather continuously throughout our lifetimes- thus we have information-processing model-
This model basically says that we increase our ability to learn gradually over time.  It has been shown that our attention span increases as we get older, and maybe children don't understand things like the laws of conservation not because they are unable to do so (as Piaget would have you think) but rather because they cannot pay attention long enough to learn it.  Neither Piaget or the information processing model is perfect - well nothing is ever really perfect- except my wife (who will probably read this- hi honey).  That is the reading for today unless you want to move ahead to

9. Lev Vygotsky Sociocultural or Social Development Theory (1920s)
Children acquire most of their culture’s cognitive skills and problem solving strategies through collaborative dialogues with more experienced members of their society. (Weiten, p 437)
Zone of proximal development- the gap between what the learner can accomplish alone and what can be achieved with guidance from a skilled partner.
Scaffolding – when assistance provided to a child is adjusted as learning progresses

10. Lev Vygotsky Intro 4 mins 3 mins on ZPD scaffolding
Differs from Piaget
More emphasis on culture
More emphasis on social factors
More emphasis on the role of language

11. Current Application of Vygotsky
“Reciprocal teaching” improves students’ ability to learn
Teachers and students collaborate in learning and practicing four key skills
Summarizing
Questioning
Clarifying
Predicting
Do you see this method in your schooling?

12. Jerome Bruner Elaborated on Piaget and Vygotsky’s ideas
Like Vygotsky, stressed social interaction in development
Unlike Piaget (who thought language was a tool which reflects our cognitive structures), believed that language can speed up cognitive development
Modes of representation- a way of thinking about knowledge at different ages

13. Jerome Bruner Bruner 2:30 Impact of Bruner's thinking
According to Jerome Bruner, instructors should try to encourage students to discover principles by themselves.
Instructors and students should engage in active dialog.
Instructors should try to translate information to be learned into a format appropriate to the learner’s current state of understanding.
Spiral manner- curriculum presented in a manner where students build on what they have learned (spiraling)

14. Kohlberg’s Moral Development Stages
Lawrence Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development
Kohlberg wanted to describe how our moral reasoning changes over the course of our lives.
Kohlberg developed his theory by asking a people of different ages to think about specific moral situations.
Ex. Heinz dilemma – a man named Heinz making a moral choice about whether to steal a drug he cannot afford in order to save his wife’s life.
Ok, this is what Kohlberg did:  He asked people of different ages to read the famous Heinz Dilemma asked them what they would do and more importantly why.
Heinz Dilemma
In Europe, a woman was near death from cancer.  One drug might save her, a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered.  The druggist was charging $2000, ten times what the drug had cost him to make.  The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could get together only about half of what it should cost.  He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or to let him pay later.  But the druggist said no.  The husband got desperate and broke into the man's store to steal the drug for his wife.  Should the husband have done that?  Why?

15. Level
Age
Stage
Preconventional
Infancy
Stage 1: Obedience and punishments
Pre-school
Stage 2: Self-Interest
Conventional
School Age
Stage 3: Conformity
Stage 4: Authority and social order
Postconventional
Teens
Stage 5: Social contract
Adulthood
Stage 6: Universal principles

16. Kohlberg’s Moral Development Stages
Preconventional (Young children)
Make decisions that will avoid punishment or receive a reward.
Moral reasoning is limited to how their choice affects themselves.
If you do not cheat on the the AP Exam because you are afraid that you will get caught and punished you are using preconventional morality.
The same morality is used when my 2 year old cleans his toys because he will get a fruit roll up snack. He is cleaning not because he feels some internal sense of moral goodness to clean- but rather, he wants the reward.
If you think Heinz is wrong to steal the drug because he could get punished (caught and thrown in jail) you are using preconventional morality.  If you think Heinz was right to steal the drug because he will be rewarded with his wife's life, then you are still using preconventional morality.  It is not about the decision, but rather how you go about reasoning it.

17. Kohlberg’s Moral Development Stages
Conventional (Older children)
Most common for teenagers
Develop ability to look at moral choice through others’ eyes.
Your morality is based on how you think people will view you. 
Children learn conventional standards from those around them (parents, peers, media) and make choices based on those standards so that other people may see them as good.
If you choose not to cheat on the AP exam because if you get caught your friends will think you are a cheater, you have used conventional morality.
Thus we have the huge cheating problem we face in our educational system today.  Most of you (teenagers) emphasis conventional morality because you REALLY care what your peers think of you.  Cheating is not looked at as the horrific act it once was- thus many of you would not think any less of a cheater- reinforcing people to cheat even more.  If cheating was look at as a "Scarlet Letter", teenagers would rarely cheat.
Heinz should steal the drug because then he could save his wife and people would think of him as a hero.

18. Kohlberg’s Moral Development Stages
Postconventional
Highest level of morality.
You believe that there is an absolute right and wrong.
For the first time, the morality of societal rules is examined rather than blindly accepted.
You morally reason through each situation, weighing the good and bad of each possible decision.
So you would cheat or not cheat on the AP Exam depending on what your own personal set of ethics are.
Might say Heinz should steal b/c his wife’s right to life outweighs the store owner’s right to personal property.

19. Kohlberg’s Moral Development Theory
Criticisms of Kohlberg
Carol Gilligan is well known for her critiques of Kohlberg's theory. 
She basically said that Kohlberg focused only on boys in his study and did not look to separate by gender. 
She argues that boys have a more absolute perspective of morality, while girls tend to look at the situation and relationships of the people involved before making a decision.

20. Attachment Theories: Harlow
Harry Harlow
Harlow raised baby monkeys with two artificial wire frame figures made to resemble mother monkeys.
One mother figure had a bottle the infant could eat from
The other mother was wrapped in soft material.
Who do you think the baby monkeys chose to spend most of their time with?
Harry Harlow Attachment Study
He separated them from their mothers and used a wire mother- covered in soft cloth- with a nipple with milk- as a mother substitute for the baby. 
One day a baby monkey took a poop on the fake mother and Harlow had to wash the cloth.  The baby monkey freaked out with the wire monkey without the soft cloth.  So Harlow wanted to see if the cloth was really that important.   He put baby monkeys into cages with two mothers- one with a soft cloth and no food, one a hard wire mesh with a nipple that provided food. What happened?

21. Attachment Theories: Harlow
When frightened, stressed, or surprised the baby monkeys ran to the cloth monkey for comfort and protection!!!
What does this tell us about attachment between a human mother and child?
A child clings to its mother for comfort, not just for survival (breast milk)!!!
Babies should be held as much as possible by their caregivers.
Further studies: Orphanage
To everyone's astonishment, the baby stayed with the cloth mother all day and ignored the one with food.  Even when hungry the baby would quickly reach across, take some food, but run back to the soft mother. 
Harry Harlow proved to us that touch is critical for higher level mammals (like most of you) to develop attachment. 
Thus, it was discovered that soft touch is critical for monkeys to develop attachment.  
Further studies have been done with humans in orphanages.  Some orphans were touched daily (good touch not bad touch), with some stroking on the head, while other orphans were fed but never touched.  The ones that were never touched became socially isolated and when tested 12 years later, had lower IQs than the ones that were touched.  Yes, this was a cruel experiment.
Years later, psychologist Mary Ainsworth, labeled the various types of attachments humans can have with their parents.

22. Attachment Theories: Ainsworth
Mary Ainsworth
Researched children’s attachment to their parents by placing human infants in strange situations.
Infants were placed in an unfamiliar room
Their parents were told to leave them alone for a period of time and then return.
Ainsworth Strange Situation Study
Infants become attached to adults who are sensitive and responsive in social interactions with the infant, and who remain as consistent caregivers for some months during the period from about six months to two years of age. During the later part of this period, children begin to use attachment figures (familiar people) as a secure base to explore from and return to. Parental responses lead to the development of patterns of attachment which in turn lead to internal working models which will guide the individual's feelings, thoughts, and expectations in later relationships. Separation anxiety or grief following serious loss are normal and natural responses in an attached infant.

23. Attachment Theories: Ainsworth
Ainsworth divided the infants’ reactions into THREE categories:
Infants with secure attachments (66%)
Children exhibit distress when separated from caregivers and are happy when their caregiver returns.
Secure attachment parent - Responds appropriately, promptly and consistently to needs.
Kids studied were most popular, least isolated, most likely to empathize with others, least likely to bully or be bullied.
Avoidant attachment parent - Little or no response to distressed child. Discourages crying and encourages independence.
Kids were most likely to be bullies.

24. Attachment Theories: Ainsworth
Infants with anxious-avoidant attachments (21%)
Tend to avoid parents or caregivers.
When offered a choice, these children will show no preference between a caregiver and a complete stranger.
Research has suggested that this attachment style might be a result of abusive or neglectful caregivers.
Children who are punished for relying on a caregiver will learn to avoid seeking help in the future.

25. Attachment Theories: Ainsworth
Infants with anxious-ambivalent attachments (AKA resistant attachments, 12%)
Children usually become very distressed when a parent leaves and show little to no comfort when the caregiver comes returns.
Research suggests that ambivalent attachment is a result of poor maternal availability.
These children cannot depend on their mother (or caregiver) to be there when the child is in need.
Ambivalent attachment parent - Inconsistent between appropriate and neglectful responses.
Kids were most likely to get bullied.

26. Parenting Styles Baumrind’s Parenting Styles
How does parents’ interaction with their kids influences development?
Parenting styles have been shown to have a positive correlation with a child’s self-concept
Baumrind named three distinct types of parenting styles
Authoritarian
Permissive
Authoritative
Self Concept - A sense of one’s identity and self-worth.

27. Baumrind’s Parenting Styles
Authoritarian parents
set strict standards and apply punishments for violations of these rules.
Ex. You show up 15 minutes past curfew, and you might be grounded for a month without explanation or “because I said so.”

28. Baumrind’s Parenting Styles
Permissive parents
do not set clear guidelines for their children.
Ex. You show up 15 minutes past curfew, and it is unpredictable what your parents will do.
The rules are constantly being changed, and it creates a feeling that you can get away with anything.  Your parents are unpredictable- you come home two hours late and one day they will not care, but the next they may ground you for a week.

29. Baumrind’s Parenting Styles
Authoritative parents
have set consistent standards for their children’s behavior, but standards are reasonable and explained.
They encourage independence but not past the point of violating rules that have been discussed.
They praise as often as they punish.
Ex. You show up 15 minutes past curfew, you know what the consequence will be and why because it has already been explained when the curfew was put into place.
Now most of our parents do not fall exactly in one single category.  They may be permissive about watching TV, but authoritarian about dating.  In general, children of Authoritative parents have been shown to have more success in school.  But is that because authoritative parenting helps with academic success or the child is doing well in school, so the parent acts authoritative?

30. Grief (Death) Stages
Psychiatrist Elizabeth Kubler-Ross said we go through 5 stages before dying
Denial: no freakin way this is happening to me
Anger: How dare god let this happen- this is BS!!!
Bargaining: Just let me live to see my son get married.
Depression: I cannot deal with this, what is my family going to do without me.
Acceptance:  I am ready, I do not want to fight this anymore.
(unless you fall into a tree shredder and death happens way to quick to think about.)

31. Also referred to as Stages of Grief