Cognitive Development

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Cognitive Development

• Chapter 7

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• Does the child reason and remember the same way
  that you do? How do you know?
• If the answer to the first question is no, make
  a list of some of the specific differences
  between the way that you think and the way that
  the child thinks

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• Cognition refers to the inner processes and
  products of the mind that lead to knowing
• Three main approaches to cognitive development
• Piagets cognitive developmental theory
• Vygotskys sociocultural theory
• Information processing

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• Imagine
• You are playing with a six-month-old infant and
  suddenly leave the room to answer the telephone.
• You take a four-year-old childs small cup of
  juice and empty it into a larger cup.
• While trying to settle a fight over the TV
  between a seven-year-old and a 12-year-old, you
  flip a coin. The seven-year-old loses.

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Piagets Cognitive Developmental Theory

• Genetic epistemology
• What is intelligence?
• helps an organism adapt
• Cognitive equilibrium

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Piagets Cognitive Developmental Theory

• Gaining Knowledge Schemes and Processes
• Schemes mental patterns (thought/action)
• Constructivist approach

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Piagets Cognitive Developmental Theory

• Adaptation
• Assimilation
• Accommodation
• Equilibration
• Organization

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Piagets Cognitive Developmental Theory

• Stage theory
• Invariant and Universal
• Order is genetically determined, but many factors
  affect the speed
• May not reach highest level
• Qualitatively different representational and
  reasoning abilities

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Piagets Cognitive Developmental Theory

• The Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to 2 years)
• Coordinate sensory inputs and motor skills
• Transition from being reflexive to reflective

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Piagets Cognitive Developmental Theory

• Sensorimotor Stage
• Development of Object Permanence
• Objects continue to exist when they are no longer
  visible/detectable
• Appears by 8-12 months of age
• A-not-B error search in the last place found,
  not where it was last seen
• Complete by 18-24 months

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• You are playing with a six-month-old infant and
  suddenly leave the room to answer the telephone.

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Piagets Cognitive Developmental Theory

• Two important features of mature thought
• symbolic/mental representation
• Intentionality
• Visual displacements
• Invisible displacements
• Defer imitation
• Make believe play

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Identifying Substages

• Juan accidentally pushes his stuffed toy and it
  makes a noise as it is squeezed. Juan laughs and
  does it again, and again, and again.
• Linnea is sitting in her highchair. She holds
  her right arm high above her head and drops her
  spoon on the floor. Her mother giggles, picks it
  up, and hands it to her. Linnea then holds her
  right arm straight out from her body and drops
  her spoon. After her mother retrieves it, she
  holds her arm straight out in front of her and
  drops her spoon.

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• Noelle wants to go outside to play. She is
  carrying her cup of water in one hand and her
  doll (it goes everywhere with her) in the other.
  She realizes that she cannot push the door open
  because both of her hands are full.
  Consequently, she places her doll under her arm
  and uses her free hand to open the door.
• Lionel is watching his new little sister, Sybil,
  sleep. He notices that her burp cloth has fallen
  off the changing table and is near her face. He
  reaches down to remove the burp cloth and in
  doing so, the burp cloth gently brushes Sybils
  face. Sybil turns her head towards the burp
  cloth and opens her mouth.

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• Kendall and her mother play a game where they
  touch each others noses and giggle. Kendalls
  mother touches her nose and then Kendall touches
  her mothers nose. One time, Kendalls mother
  places a handkerchief between her face and
  Kendalls face. Kendall swipes the handkerchief
  away with one hand and touches her mothers face
  with the other.
• Isaac and his mother are playing a game of
  hide-and-seek. Isaacs mother places his toy car
  under a pillow and Isaac giggles as he retrieves
  it. One time Isaacs mother pretends to place
  the toy car under the pillow but instead places
  it under the blanket. Isaac picks up the pillow
  and becomes upset when he realizes that the car
  isnt there.

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• Phil is just lying on his back when he manages to
  grasp his foot. He smiles and lets go. His
  mother watches as he wiggles around until he
  manages to grasp his foot again.

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Piagets Cognitive Developmental Theory

• Challenges to Piagets Sensorimotor Stage
• Neo-nativism
• Innate knowledge
• Require less time/experience
• Object permanence, memory
• Baillargeon
• Object permanence

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Piagets Cognitive Developmental Theory

• Theory theories
• Combination of neo-nativist and Piagetian
  perspective
• Infants are prepared at birth to make sense of
  some information
• Beyond this, Piagets constructivist approach is
  generally accurate

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Piagets Cognitive Developmental Theory

• Preoperational Stage (2-7 years)
• Characterized more by what children cant do
• Operation
• Now mental what was once physical

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Piagets Cognitive Developmental Theory

• Preoperational Stage (cont)
• Symbolic/ representational activity
• Make-believe play
• Thinking is rigid

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Piagets Cognitive Developmental Theory

• Preoperational Stage (cont)
• Illogical schemes transductive reasoning
• Egocentrism

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Piagets Cognitive Developmental Theory

• Preoperational Stage (cont)
• Animism
• Four characteristics of thought
• Centered
• Perception bound
• Irreversibility
• Focus on states rather than transformations

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Piagets Cognitive Developmental Theory

• Preoperational Stage (cont)
• You take a four-year-old childs small cup of
  juice and empty it into a larger cup.
• What do you think will happen? Why?
• Hierarchical classification
• Class inclusion problem

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Piagets Cognitive Developmental Theory

• Preoperational Stage (cont)
• Challenges to the Preoperational Stage
• Egocentrism
• Flavell
• Existence
• Need
• Inference
• Two levels of perspective taking
• Level 1
• Level 2

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Piagets Cognitive Developmental Theory

• Preoperational Stage (cont)
• Challenges
• Conservation
• Animism
• Categorization

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A Brief Vacation from Piaget

• Theory of Mind
• children begin to understand that the same world
  can be experienced in different ways by different
  people

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A Brief Vacation from Piaget

• Theory of Mind (cont)
• the ability to infer mental states in others is
  proof that children have a theory of mind which
  is a coherent understanding of their own and
  others mental lives
• Research with 2 y/o

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A Brief Vacation from Piaget

• Theory of mind (cont)
• Henry Wellman (1990)
• False belief tasks

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A Brief Vacation from Piaget

• Theory of Mind (cont)
• Harris (1989) suggests that the acquisition of a
  theory of mind involves three major developments
• self-awareness
• the capacity for pretense
• the ability to distinguish reality from pretense

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Back to Piaget

• Concrete Operational Stage (7-11 years)
• logical, rule-bound, and integrated
• limited to tangible things
• Piaget regarded conservation as the single most
  important achievement of the concrete operational
  stage because it provides clear evidence of
  operations
• Decentration
• Reversibility

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Piagets Cognitive Developmental Theory

• Concrete Operational Stage (cont)
• Horizontal decalage
• More adept at Classification
• Mental seriation
• Challenges experience

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Piagets Cognitive Developmental Theory

• Formal Operational Stage (11)
• no longer earthbound and concrete
• abstract and speculative
• While trying to settle a fight over the TV
  between a seven-year-old and a 12-year-old, you
  flip a coin. The seven-year-old loses.
• can now evaluate short and long range
  consequences
• necessary for achieving identity, formulating
  ideological goals, and for selecting an occupation

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Piagets Cognitive Developmental Theory

• Formal Operational Stage (cont)
• Hypothetico-deductive reasoning
• Reflective thinking
• Interpropositional logic

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Piagets Cognitive Developmental Theory

• Formal Operational Stage (cont)
• Limitations to Formal Operational Thought
• Adolescent Egocentrism
• Imaginary audience
• Personal fable

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Challenges to Piagets Theory

• Underestimated childrens capabilities
• Failed to distinguish competence from performance
• Does cognitive development occur in stages?
• Does Piaget explain cognitive development?
• Little attention to social and cultural influences

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Strengths of Piagets Theory

• Vivid and detailed description of cognitive
  development
• Highlight interactive nature of cognition and
  environment
• Children are active constructors of knowledge

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Vygotsky

• the child and the environment work together to
  shape cognition in culturally adaptive ways
• development proceeds through social interaction
  and entails gradual internalization of cultural
  knowledge and processes for manipulating thought

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Vygotskys Sociocultural Perspective

• Language
• Piaget ? egocentric speech
• Vygotsky ? self-guidance and self-direction
• Private speech ? inner speech

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Vygotskys Sociocultural Perspective

• Zone of proximal development
• Two important characteristics
• Intersubjectivity
• Scaffolding

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Vygotskys Sociocultural Perspective

• Evidence for social origins of cognitive
  development?

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Vygotsky vs. Piaget?

• Agreed children are active constructors of
  knowledge
• Vygotskys ? wide variation of cognitive skills
  across cultures
• Piaget ? universal cognitive change

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Vygotsky vs. Piaget?

• Vygotskys theory doesnt give us everything
• Vygotsky placed a huge emphasis on language

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