Cognitive development

The Information Processing Approach

 Cognitive Development
▸Cognitive development refers to the
development of thinking across the lifespan.
▸Defining thinking can be problematic, because
no clear boundaries separate thinking from other
mental activities

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Consider DeVries’s (1969) study of whether young children
understand the difference between appearance and reality
• he brought an unusually even-tempered cat named Maynard to a
psychology laboratory and allowed the 3- to 6-year-old participants in the
study to pet and play with him.
• De Vries then put a mask of a fierce dog on Maynard’s head, and asked
the children what Maynard was
• Despite all of the children having identified Maynard previously as a cat

3 years old 6 years old

said that he was a dog and the 6-year-olds weren’t fooled;
claimed that he had a dog’s they had no doubt that
bones and a dog’s stomach Maynard remained a cat

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 “
▸ From birth to adolescence a young person’s mind
changes dramatically in many important ways.

Children’s thinking changes in dramatic and surprising ways

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Thinking obviously involves the higher mental processes:

Problem-solving Conceptualizing
Reasoning Categorizing
Creating Remembering
Planning

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 Piaget’s Theory of
Cognitive
Development

Piaget did not believe that children think less than adults; instead, children
simply think differently. He believed that between birth and adolescence,
children move through four stages of cognitive development
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 1.
Piaget’s
Sensorimotor
Stage

0 to 2 years old
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 ▸
“
Piaget describes intelligence in
infancy as sensorimotor or based on
direct, physical contact. Infants taste,
feel, pound, push, hear, and move in
order to experience the world
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 Reflexive First Repetition
Action Adaptations (4th
(Birth to the through
through 1st Environment 8th
month) (1st through months)
New 4th month)
Adaptations Active
and Goal- Experimentati
on of Little
Directed
Scientists
Behavior (12th -18th
(8th -12th Mental months)
months) Representat
ions (18th
month to 2
6 sub-stages of years of
sensorimotor stage age)
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Reflexive Action
(Birth through 1st month)

• This active learning begins with automatic

movements or reflexes.
• A ball comes into contact with an infant’s
cheek and is automatically sucked on and
licked.
• But this is also what happens with a sour
lemon, much to the infant’s surprise
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First Adaptations to the Environment
(1st through 4th month)
• the infant begins to discriminate between objects and
adjust responses accordingly as reflexes are replaced
with voluntary movements.
• An infant may accidentally engage in a behavior and
find it interesting such as making a vocalization.
• This interest motivates trying to do it again and helps
the infant learn a new behavior that originally
occurred by chance.
• At first, most actions have to do with the body, but in
months to come, will be directed more toward objects.
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Repetition
(4th through 8th months)

• the infant becomes more and more actively

engaged in the outside world and takes delight
in being able to make things happen.
• Repeated motion brings particular interest as
the infant is able to bang two lids together from
the cupboard when seated on the kitchen floor.

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 New Adaptations and Goal-Directed Behavior
(8th -12th months)
• Now the infant can engage in behaviors that others
perform and anticipate upcoming events.
• Perhaps because of continued maturation of the prefrontal
cortex, the infant becomes capable of having a thought
and carrying out a planned, goal-directed activity, such as
seeking a toy that has rolled under the couch.
• The object continues to exist in the infant’s mind even
when out of sight and the infant now is capable of making
attempts to retrieve it.
• This is an example of a lack of object permanence.
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 Active Experimentation of Little Scientists
(12th -18th months)
• more actively engage in experimentation to learn about the physical world.
• Gravity is learned by pouring water from a cup or pushing bowls from high chairs.
• The caregiver tries to help the child by picking it up again and placing it on the
tray.
• And what happens? Another experiment!
• The child pushes it off the tray again causing it to fall and the caregiver to pick it
up again!
• A closer examination of this stage causes us to really appreciate how much
learning is going on at this time and how many things we come to take for
granted must actually be learned.
• This is a wonderful and messy time of experimentation and most learning occurs
by trial and error.

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Mental Representations
(18th month to 2 years of age)
• The child is now able to solve problems using mental strategies, to remember
something heard days before and repeat it, to engage in pretend play, and to
find objects that have been moved even when out of sight.
• Take for instance, the child who is upstairs in a room with the door closed,
supposedly taking a nap. The doorknob has a safety device on it that makes it
impossible for the child to turn the knob. After trying several times in vain to
push the door or turn the doorknob, the child carries out a mental strategy to
get the door opened-he knocks on the door!
• Obviously, this is a technique learned from the past experience of hearing a
knock on the door and observing someone opening the door.
• The child is now better equipped with mental strategies for problem-solving.
• This initial movement from the “hands-on” approach to knowing about the
world to the more mental world of stage six marked the transition to
preoperational thinking.
• Achieving object permanence marks this transition.
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 2.
Piaget’s
Preoperational
Stage

2 to 7 years old
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 Piaget’s stage that coincides with early
childhood is the preoperational stage.
The word operational means logical, so
these children were thought to be
illogical. However, they were learning to
use language or to think of the world
symbolically
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT DURING
PREOPERATIONAL STAGE

Pretend
Egocentrism Syncretism
Play

Classification Conservation
Animism Errors Errors

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Pretend Play

▸ Piaget believed that children’s pretend play

helped children solidify new schemes they
were developing cognitively. This play, then,
reflected changes in their conceptions or
thoughts. However, children also learn as
they pretend and experiment. Their play does
not simply represent what they have learned
(Berk, 2007).
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Egocentrism

▸ Egocentrism in early childhood refers to the

tendency of young children to think that
everyone sees things in the same way as
the child
▸ This indicates some awareness of the views
of others.

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Syncretism

▸ Syncretism refers to a tendency to

think that if two events occur
simultaneously, one caused the other.
▸ Example: One parent remember her
daughter asking that if she put on her
bathing suit whether it would turn to
summer.
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Animism
▸ Animism refers to attributing life-like qualities to
objects.
▸ The cup is alive, the chair that falls down and hits
the child’s ankle is mean, and the toys need to stay
home because they are tired.
▸ Cartoons frequently show objects that appear alive
and take on lifelike qualities.
▸ Young children do seem to think that objects that
move may be alive but after age 3, they seldom
refer to objects as being alive (Berk, 2007).
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Classification Errors
▸ Preoperational children have difficulty
understanding that an object can be classified in
more than one way.
▸ For example, if shown three white buttons and four
black buttons and asked whether there are more
black buttons or white buttons, the child is likely to
respond that there are more black buttons.
▸ As the child’s vocabulary improves and more
schemas are developed, the ability to classify
objects improves
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Conservation Errors
▸ Conservation refers to the ability to
recognize that moving or rearranging matter
does not change the quantity.
▸ Imagine a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old
eating lunch. The 4-year-old has a whole
peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He
notices, however, that his younger sister’s
sandwich is cut in half and protests,
“She has more!”
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 3.
Piaget’s
Concrete
operational
Stage
7 to 11 years old
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• This involves mastering the use of logic in concrete
ways.
• The child can use logic to solve problems tied to their
own direct experience but has trouble solving
hypothetical problems or considering more abstract
problems.
• The child uses inductive reasoning which means
thinking that the world reflects one’s own personal
experience.
• For example, a child has one friend who is rude,
another friend who is also rude, and the same is true
for a third friend. The child may conclude that friends
are rude.
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• The word concrete refers to that which is
tangible; that which can be seen or touched or
experienced directly.
• The concrete operational child is able to make
use of logical principles in solving problems
involving the physical world.
• For example, the child can understand principles
of cause and effect, size, and distance. As
children’s experiences and vocabularies grow,
they build schema and are able to classify
objects in many different ways.
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▸ Identity ▸ Reversibility
One feature of
concrete operational
thought is the
understanding that
objects have an
identity or qualities
that do not change
even if the object is
altered in some way.
For instance, mass of
an object does not
change by
rearranging it. A piece
of chalk is still chalk
even when the piece
is broken in two.
▸ Reciprocity
The child learns that Concrete operational
some things that children can understand the
have been changed concept of reciprocity, which
can be returned to means that changing one
their original state. quality (in this example,
height or water level) can be
Water can be frozen compensated for by
and then thawed to changes in another quality
become liquid again. (width). So there is the same
amount of water in each
Arithmetic container although one is
operations are taller and narrower and the
other is shorter and wider.
reversible as well: 2
These new cognitive skills
+ 3 = 5 and 5 – 3 =
increase the child’s
2 understanding of the
physical world
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 4.
Piaget’s
Formal
Operational
Stage
11 years old and onwards
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In the formal operations stage, children
attain the reasoning power of mature
adults, which allows them to solve the
pendulum problem and a wide range of
other problems. However, this formal
operations stage tends not to occur
without exposure to formal education in
scientific reasoning
aspects of formal thinking
Abstract Thinking

Adolescents become better able to think about

abstract concepts. Unlike young children, whose
thinking is more bound to observable events,
concrete objects, and their own (or their friends’)
experiences, adolescents begin to recognize that
certain concepts are intangible and can’t be
quantified or measured

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aspects of formal thinking
Thinking about Possibilities

Adolescents become better able to think about

what’s possible, instead of limiting thought to
what’s real. They can reason about chance and
probability and can envision and evaluate
alternatives

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aspects of formal thinking
Thinking about Things in Different Ways

Adolescents develop the ability to think about

things in multiple ways at the same time and can
approach problems with more sophisticated
lenses.
They can imagine multiple perspectives, consider
different dimensions, and weigh those dimensions
before taking a course of action

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aspects of formal thinking
Thinking about Thinking

Thinking about thinking is referred to as

metacognition. Adolescents become more
reflective and show signs of increased
introspection and self-consciousness.
They can understand complex relationships
between ideas and people

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aspects of formal thinking
Abstract vs. Concrete Thinking

There’s often a difference between what young people are

capable of thinking and how thought influences behavior.
These cognitive capacities progressively become part of the
young person’s repertoire. But adolescents don’t use these
new abilities consistently over time or over a variety of
situations. Teens may have mature thought processes
sometimes, but not all the time. As teens mature, their
decision-making skills increase

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When dealing with concrete thinkers , parents and
teachers should:

▸ Understand that, to them, pregnancy is an abstract

concept.
▸ Walk them through the process of complex decision-
making.
▸ Use concrete, realistic examples in which they can “see”
themselves when talking about the future.
▸ Be more aware that alternatives and consequences may
make it difficult for them to make decisions.
▸ Allow them the time they need to process their thoughts.
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When dealing with abstract thinkers , parents and
teachers should:

▸ Be aware that abstract thinking skills may still be

inconsistent.
▸ Be more aware that alternatives and consequences may
make it difficult for them to make decisions.
▸ Allow them the time they need to process their thoughts.

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aspects of formal thinking
Risk-Taking Behaviors

Some characteristics of adolescent thinking can interfere

with teens’ ability to use “adult-like” thinking and planning on
a consistent basis, increasing the likelihood of taking risks
and engaging in unsafe behavior:
Focused on The Present (focus more on the present
and are less able to think about the future)
Feelings of Invulnerability (teenagers think they are
invincible and can’t get hurt)
Seeking Novel and Varied Experiences (trying
something different)
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