Cluster 2

Anita Woolfolk’s Educational Psychology

OVERVIEW:
Development
Piaget
Stages of Cognitive Development
Vygotsky
Language
 Development
• Types of development?
– Physical
– Personal
– Social
– Cognitive
– Maturation
• Principles of Development
– different rates
– orderly
– gradual
 The Brain and Cognitive Development
QUIZ
• Identify the areas of the brain that are responsible for the following
functions.

a. left hemisphere b. right hemisphere c. Wernick’s area

d. Broca’s area e. auditory cortex f. visual cortex
g. motor cortex

1. _____ receiving language/sound

2. _____ processing language
3. _____ connecting meaning with particular words
4. _____ receiving visual signals
5. _____ setting up grammatically correct ways of expressing an idea
6. _____ processing spatial-visual information
7. _____ handling emotions (non-verbal information)
8. _____ movement on the righ side of the body
 Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

Thinking processes change radically from birth through

maturity as we are constantly striving to make sense of the
world through 3 basic factors:
1. Biological maturation
2. Activity
3. Social Experience

How do we respond to this?

1. Organization
2. Adaptation-assimilation and accommodation

Equilibration is a balance among organization, assimilation and

accommodation
Disequilibration is a failure of a scheme to produce a satisfying result—
search will then continue through assimilation and accommodation
Piaget cont…
Piaget’s 4 Stages of Cognitive Development

1. Infancy (0-2)

2. Early Childhood to Elementary (2-7)

3. Later Elementary to Middle School Years (7-11)

4. Junior and Senior High (11-15)

Criteria: Order is fixed

Stage theory not age theory
Old becomes new through modification and expansion
End of one stage is the starting point for the next
 PIAGET’S
Stage 1-Infancy: The Sensorimotor Stage
• Age-0-2
• Thinking involves everything gained through senses
and body movements
• Object permanence is lacking
• Goal-directed actions

Stage 2- Early Childhood to Elementary Years: Preoperational Stage

• 2-7 years
•Difficulty with use of operations-reversible thinking
•Formation and use of symbols
•Semiotic functions
•Collective Monologue
•Due to lack of reversibility
•egocentric
•not able to decenter, calssify. conserve, and
seriate
Stage 3-Later Elementary to Middle School:
Concrete Operational Stage
• 7-11 years
• Complete and logical system of thinking
• Capable of concrete problem solving and reversibility of operations
– “Hands-on” thinking
– conserve matter
– seriate
– classify
– decenter
– identity
– compensation
Stage 4-Junior and Senior High: Formal Operational Stage
Age 11-15 (not all reach this stage)
•Hypothetico-deductive and inductive reasoning
•Systematically generate possibilities for given situation
•consider alternatives
•adolescent egocentrism
•not all reach this stage, not necessary for survival
 Lev Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Perspective
Sociocultural Theory
Children watch interactions among people in their world, interact with
others and make use of these interactions in their own development.

What Vygotsky believed:

-development accomplishments depend as much on the influence
of the social and other environments as they do on sheer
maturation
-Language is essential for cognitive development
a. through social interaction, language gives learners access
to knowledge others already have
b. language provides learners with cognitive tools that allow
them to think about the world and solve problems
c. language gives us a means to for regulating and reflecting
on our own thinking
Vygotsky cont…

• Cultural Tools
• Language and Private Speech
– allows younger children to guide behavior and thinking
– Transitions to private speech-help solve problems
– Children using private speech are communicating with themselves
– Self-regulation
Parent tells child “NO” when in danger
Child says no to another child in the same predicament
Child says no to self
Use of quiet-inner speech to self regulate

Implications of Vygotsky’s Theory for Teachers:

1. Assisted Learning
2. Scaffolding
3. Zone of Proximal Development
4. Collaborative Learning
 Language Development in the School Years

• Pronunciation- distinctive sounds of a language

– by first grade most phonemes mastered
– Intonation-word emphasis may still be problematic
• Syntax- order of words in sentences/phrases
– early elementary school years
– elementary-complex grammatical structures first understood, then used
• Vocabulary and meaning
– first word spoken, adds up quickly to 10. 20-months approximately 50
words, first sentences can begin at 18 mos., between ages of 2 and 4
children double vocabulary every 6 months
– average 6 year old has vocabulary of 8,000-14,000 words, 9-11 years,
5000 words added
 Key Differences Among Piaget and Vygotsky

• Piaget • Vygotsky
– development precedes – development and
learning learning influence
– person must be in a each other
certain stage to grasp – cognitive development
certain concepts progresses as children
– development is due learn
primarily to biological – emphasized
growth and efforts to importance of social
make sense of the interaction and child’s
world culture