1. Cognitive Development
Child Development
Cognitive Development 1

2. Learning Objectives By the end of this lecture you should be able to:
Describe the main processes and stages associated with Piaget’s theory of cognitive development.
Identify the terminology associated with this topic.
Recognise and evaluate Piaget’s, Vygotsky’s and Bruner’s contribution to psychology. 2

3. Jean Piaget 1896 - 1980 Brilliant Swiss psychologist.
Probably conducted and stimulated more research into how thinking develops in children than anyone else.
He developed the process called cognition. 3

4. Piagets Schemas and Variant and Invariant functioning
Building of Mental Structures (Schemas)
Building of Operations
(Combination of Schemas)
Invariant Functioning
Variant Functioning 4

5. What are Schemas?
Schemas are repeatable patterns or organised ways of making sense of an experience. They change with age.
First schemas are reflexes.
Involuntary responses that are our first mental structures.
What reflexes are we born with? 5

6. Assimilation Accommodation
Understanding new information and new experiences using existing schemas.
Accommodation
Modifies existing schemas to explain new information, therefore adapting thinking to organise experiences 6

7. 7

8. Piaget’s Cognitive Development Stages
The Sensory Motor Stage - 0 to 2 years
The Pre Operations Stage – 2 to 7 years
The Concrete Operation Stage - 7 to 11 years
The Formal Operations Stage - 11 to 16 years 8

9. The Sensory-Motor Stage 0 to 2 years old
Newborns focus entirely on immediate sensory and motor experiences.
They are only aware of themselves.
They learn to combine two reflexes.
They learn object permanence between
8 and 12 months old.
They imitate others. 9

10. Exploring senses Jamie is banging a drum, the gross motor movements
he makes mean that his
sensory experience is
stimulating other areas
of development. 10

11. Exploring senses Jamie uses his senses to satisfy his innate
need to explore the
Environment. 11

12. The Pre-Operational Stage 2 to 7 years old
There are three features:
Symbolism
Egocentrism
Animism 12

13. Egocentrism Egocentrism limits the child's ability to reason
logically:
Believe everyone thinks the same way they do.
May offer sweet from their mouth because they are enjoying it.
When playing hide and seek, they assume that you can’t see their whole body if they can’t see you.
They cannot understand that what they see depends on where they are. 13

14. Animism This is the belief that everything that exists has some
kind of consciousness :
A car won’t start so the car is tired or ill.
A child hurts himself by colliding into a chair so the child will smack the naughty chair.
A child is still egocentric in that they can’t see things from any other point of view, and since they have emotions and can feel pain and pleasure so they believe everything else does too. 14

15. Symbolism
This is having the ability to think in ideas and use words to express those ideas.
A red light means stop and a thumbs up means ok - these are symbols that we know as adults.
Symbolism stimulates the child's imagination, as a child's knowledge of symbols expands so does the child's imagination, often seen through play. 15

16. Make believe play is used to create and express all kinds of mental images16

17. The Concrete Operation Stage 7 – 11 years old
Egocentrism and Animism decline.
Children now realise that things aren't always as they appear.
The ability to understand that even if something has changed shape or form, its other properties will remain the same.
Therefore understanding conservation. 17

18. The Formal Operation Stage 11 – 16 years old
A child is now able to work things out in their heads without the need of real objects.
Teenagers also start to think about moral and philosophical issues too.
They are able to manipulate thoughts including ideas like honesty, morality, freedom.
They can see other people’s points of view and can take reasons for behaviour into account - called decentring.
Piaget argued that the changeover from concrete to formal operations take several years to become fully established. Some recent research however shows that quite a number of adults never reach this stage. 18

19. Criticisms of Piaget
Piaget claimed that children do not use the rules of logic like most adults for the first ten years, however he was considering scientific issues when he was a child himself.
He believed conservation was understood from 7 years and up, however Bruner, a well known theorist, showed that children at 5 can be taught to conserve.
Another theorist, Bryant thought that some experiments were too complicated. Bryant simplified some, finding that children under 5 were capable of logical thought.
Some researchers such as behaviorists, suggest that development does not occur in stages but is continuous, this is something we will look at in future lessons. 19

20. More Criticisms
Like Freud, there is no firm evidence that Piaget’s concepts exist. He observed children, made assumptions about the organisation of mental function, which he then named.
Piaget concentrated on children's interactions with their environment when they were alone. However, more recent evidence suggests that children's social development with others has a great deal to do with their cognitive development. 20

21. One Final Criticism
There is one more stage after the Formal Operations.
This is the highest level of thinking, which is abstract and highly sophisticated.
Only the greatest thinkers reach this stage, including Einstein, Freud and of course Piaget himself, however, Piaget did not consider this stage. 21

22. Vygotsky (1962) Built on many of Piaget’s theories.
Vygotsky is well known for his “Zone of Proximal Development” – ZPD.
Early social interactions help to develop skills and concepts.
He viewed children as apprentices who learnt and gained understanding through being with others. 22

23. Zone of Proximal Development23

24. Zone of Proximal Development
With adult support these children are successful and are able to achieve their goals. 24

25. Zone of Proximal Development
Reading to children not only develops their language skills but can help children move into the Zone of Proximal Development by the use of open ended questions. 25

26. Bruner (1960)
Bruner’s theories were built up on and influenced by Vygotsky.
Three modes of thinking.
Children start with one mode and gradually develop the other two, therefore the age of development can vary. 26

27. Bruner's Three Modes Enactive mode - birth to approx 1 year.
Repeating physical movements to learn new skills.
Iconic mode -1 year to 7 years.
Building mental pictures of experiences and concepts.
Symbolic mode - 7 years and up.
Thinking changes significantly, use of symbols particularly in language development. 27

28. References
Davenport, G. C. (1994) An Introduction to Child Development, 2nd Edition, London:Collins Educational
Doherty, J. and Hughes, M. (2009), Child Development:Theory and Practice 0 -11, Harlow:Pearson Education
Johnson,.J. and Nahmad-Williams,.L. (2009) Early Childhood Studies, Harlow:Pearson Education Limited
Riddall – Leech, S. (2010) How Children Learn : Tutor Resource Pack, London: Practical Pre-school books