Cognitive Development through the Life Span

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Cognitive Development through the Life Span

• Jean Piaget understanding how the mind develops

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What is Cognitive Development?

• Cognitive Development describes how our ability
  to think changes over time.
• Adults are able to think in more complex ways
  than children, but how much more complex?
• What do kids at different ages know?

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Jean Piaget

• Swiss Psychologist - worked at measuring
  intelligence of kids.
• Noticed that the answers of children of the same
  age were very similar.
• The mind of a child is not just a mini-adult
  mind. Kids do not just know less than adults,
  they think differently.

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Schemas

• Piaget believed children are active thinkers -
  trying to make sense of the world.
• Schema a concept or framework that organizes and
  interprets information.

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Assimilation
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Accommodation
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Stages of Development
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Sensorimotor Stage (age 0-2)

• Babies take in the world through their sensory
  and motor interactions with objects - looking,
  hearing, grasping.

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Object Permanence
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Scale Errors
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Preoperational Stage (age 2-7)

• Kids at this age are still too young to perform
  mental operations.

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Egocentrism

• In the preoperational stage children are
  egocentric - they have difficulty perceiving
  things from anothers POV.

• Do you have a brother?
• Yes
• Whats his name?
• Jim
• Does Jim have a brother?
• No

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Theory of Mind

• Preschoolers start to develop the ability to
  infer the mental states of others (what others
  are thinking and feeling).
• Why do kids talk to themselves so much?

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Concrete Operational (age 7-11) vs. Formal
Operational (age 11 and up)

• Concrete Operational
• Children are able to understand concrete concepts
  - like conservation.
• 8 4 ?
• 12 - 4 ?

• Formal Operational
• Reasoning expands beyond the concrete to
  encompass abstract reasoning.
• Hypotheticals and Deduction.

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• French divers recently found a large cave along
  the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The cave is
  accessible only through an underwater tunnel. The
  interior of the cave is completely filled with
  seawater and contains numerous large stalagmites,
  which are stony pillars that form when drops of
  water fall repeatedly on a single spot on a cave
  floor, leaving behind mineral deposits that
  accumulate over time.
• The information above most strongly supports
• which one of the following?
• (A) The Mediterranean Sea was at a higher level
  in the past than it is now.
• (B) The water level within the cave is higher now
  than it once was.
• (C) The French divers were the first people who
  knew that the tunnel leading to the cave existed.
  
• (D) There was once an entrance to the cave
  besides the underwater tunnel.
• (E) Seawater in the Mediterranean has a lower
  mineral content now than it had when stalagmites
  were being formed.