UNIT 3-COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

Aiswarya V R
Assistant professor
Department of psychology
Christ(deemed to be university
 PIAGET’S THEORY OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

PROCESSES OF DEVELOPMENT
Schemes
• In Piaget’s theory, actions or mental representations that organize
knowledge.
Assimilation-Piagetian concept in which children use existing
schemes to incorporate new information.
Accommodation - Piagetian concept of adjusting schemes to fit new
information and experience
 PIAGET’S THEORY OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

Organization
• Piagetian concept of grouping isolated behaviors and thoughts into a
higher-order, more smoothly functioning cognitive system.
 Equilibration
• A mechanism that Piaget proposed to explain how children shift from
one stage of thought to the next
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 PIAGET’S THEORY OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

STAGES
SENSORIMOTOR STAGE
• Lasts from birth to about 2 years of age.
• In this stage, infants construct an understanding of the world by coordinating
sensory experiences (such as seeing and hearing) with physical, motoric actions
—hence the term “sensorimotor.”
• By the end of the sensorimotor stage, 2-year-olds can produce complex
sensorimotor patterns and use primitive symbols
1. Simple reflexes-
• The first sensorimotor substage, corresponds to the first month after birth.
• Sensation and action are coordinated primarily through reflexive behaviors, such
as rooting and sucking.
• Soon the infant produces behaviors that resemble reflexes in the absence of the
usual stimulus for the reflex.
2. First habits and primary circular reactions –
• Develops between 1 and 4 months of age.
• Two types of schemes: habits and primary circular reactions.
• A habit is a scheme based on a reflex that has become completely separated from its eliciting
stimulus.
• A primary circular reaction is a scheme based on the attempt to reproduce an event that
initially occurred by chance
3. Secondary circular reactions
• Develops between 4 and 8 months of age.
• In this substage, the infant becomes more object oriented, moving beyond
preoccupation with the self.
• The infant’s schemes are not intentional or goal-directed, but they are repeated
because of their consequences
4. Coordination of secondary circular reactions
•Develops between 8 and 12 months of age.
•To progress into this substage, the infant must coordinate vision and touch, hand and
eye.
•Actions become more outwardly directed.
•Significant changes during this substage involve the coordination of schemes and
intentionality.
•Infants readily combine and recombine previously learned schemes in a coordinated
way.
•They might look at an object and grasp it simultaneously, or they might visually
inspect a toy, such as a rattle, and finger it simultaneously, exploring it tactilely.
5. Tertiary circular reactions-
• Develops between 12 and 18 months of age.
• In this substage, infants become intrigued by the many properties of objects and by the many
things that they can make happen to objects.
• The infant purposely explores new possibilities with objects, continually doing new things to
them and exploring the results.
• Piaget says that this stage marks the starting point for human curiosity and interest in novelty.
6. Internalization of schemes-
• Develops between 18 and 24 months of age.
• The infant develops the ability to use primitive symbols.
• For piaget, a symbol is an internalized sensory image or word that represents an
event.
• Primitive symbols permit the infant to think about concrete events without directly
acting them out or perceiving them. Moreover, symbols allow the infant to
manipulate and transform the represented events in simple ways.
STAGES
SENSORIMOTOR STAGE
• Object permanence -The Piagetian term for one of an infant’s most
important accomplishments: understanding that objects continue to
exist even when they cannot directly be seen, heard, or touched.
EVALUATING PIAGET’S SENSORIMOTOR STAGE

• A-not-b error -this error occurs when infants make the mistake of selecting the
familiar hiding place (A) of an object rather than its new hiding place (B) as they
progress into substage 4 in piaget’s sensorimotor stage.

• Perceptual development and expectations

• The nature-nurture issue
STAGES
PREOPERATIONAL STAGE
• Lasts from approximately 2 to 7 years of age.
• Children begin to represent the world with words, images, and drawings.
• They form stable concepts and begin to reason.
• At the same time, the young child’s cognitive world is dominated by egocentrism and magical beliefs.
• Operations are reversible mental actions that allow children to do mentally what before they had done
only physically
• Preoperational thought is the beginning of the ability to reconstruct in thought what has been
established in behavior.
• It can be divided into two substages: the symbolic function substage and the intuitive thought
substage
 STAGES
PREOPERATIONAL STAGE

Symbolic function substage

• Occurring roughly between the ages of 2 and 4.
• The young child gains the ability to represent mentally an object that is not present.
• Egocentrism the inability to distinguish between one’s own and someone else’s
perspective
• Animism A facet of preoperational thought— the belief that inanimate objects have
lifelike qualities and are capable of action.
 PIAGET’S THEORY OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

PREOPERATIONAL STAGE

Intuitive thought substage

• occurring between approximately 4 and 7 years of age.
• Children begin to use primitive reasoning and want to know the answers to all sorts of
questions.
• Centration focusing attention on one characteristic to the exclusion of all others.
• Conservation the awareness that altering the appearance of an object or a substance does
not change its basic properties.
 PIAGET’S THEORY OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

CONCRETE OPERATIONAL STAGE

• Lasts from approximately 7 to 11 years of age.
• Children can perform concrete operations, and logical reasoning
• Seriation -the concrete operation that involves ordering stimuli along a
quantitative dimension (such as length).
• Transitivity- the ability to logically combine relations to understand certain
conclusions. Piaget argued that an understanding of transitivity is
characteristic of concrete operational thought.
FORMAL OPERATIONAL STAGE
• Appears between the ages of 11 and 15; individuals move beyond concrete experiences and
think in more abstract and logical ways.
• A = b and b = c, then a = c, the formal operational thinker can solve this problem merely
through verbal presentation
• Hypothetical-deductive reasoning - Piaget’s formal operational concept that adolescents have
the cognitive ability to develop hypotheses about ways to solve problems and can
systematically deduce which is the best path to follow in solving the problem.
 PIAGET’S THEORY OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

FORMAL OPERATIONAL STAGE

• Adolescent egocentrism -the heightened self-consciousness of adolescents,
which is reflected in adolescents’ beliefs that others are as interested in them as
they are themselves, and in adolescents’ sense of personal uniqueness and
invincibility.
• Imaginary audience - involves feeling that one is the center of attention and
sensing that one is on stage.
• Personal fable - the part of adolescent egocentrism that involves an adolescent’s
sense of personal uniqueness and invincibility
ARE SOCIAL MEDIA AN AMPLIFICATION TOOL FOR
ADOLESCENT EGOCENTRISM?
 PIAGET’S THEORY OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
PIAGET AND EDUCATION
• Take a constructivist approach.
• Facilitate rather than direct learning.
• Consider the child’s knowledge and level of thinking.
• Promote the student’s intellectual health.
• Turn the classroom into a setting of exploration and discovery
 PIAGET’S THEORY OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
EVALUATING PIAGET’S THEORY
Piaget’s contributions
Criticisms of Piaget’s theory
• Estimates of children’s competence
• Stages
• Effects of training
• Culture and education
• An alternative view
 VYGOTSKY’S THEORY OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

The zone of proximal development

• Term for tasks that are too difficult for children to master alone but can
be mastered with guidance and assistance from adults or more-skilled
children.
• Lower limit
• Upper limit
Scaffolding
• In cognitive development, a term Vygotsky used to describe the
changing level of support over the course of a teaching session, with
the more-skilled person adjusting guidance to fit the child’s current
performance level.
• Dialogue
VYGOTSKY’S THEORY OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

Language and thought

• Private speech
• Inner speech
• Social speech
VYGOTSKY AND EDUCATION
• Use the child’s ZPD in teaching
• Use more-skilled peers as teachers
• Monitor and encourage children’s use of private speech
• Place instruction in a meaningful context.
• Transform the classroom with Vygotskian ideas.
EVALUATING VYGOTSKY’S THEORY
• Social constructivist approach
• Not specific enough about age-related changes.
• Not adequately describing how changes in socioemotional capabilities
contribute to cognitive development.
• The overemphasized the role of language in thinking.
 COMPARISON OF VYGOTSKY’S AND PIAGET’S THEORIES
VYGOTSKY PIAGET
Sociocultural Strong emphasis Little emphasis
Context
Constructivism Social constructivist Cognitive constructivist

Stages No general stages of development proposed Strong emphasis on stages (sensorimotor

preoperational, concrete operational, and
formal operational)
Key Processes Zone of proximal development, language, Schema, assimilation, accommodation
dialogue, tools of the culture operations, conservation, classification
Role of Language A major role; language plays a powerful role in Language has a minimal role; cognition
shaping thought primarily directs language
View on Education Education plays a central role, helping children Education merely refines the child’s
learn the tools of the culture cognitive skills that have already emerged
Teaching Teacher is a facilitator and guide, not a director; Also views teacher as a facilitator and
Implications establish many opportunities for children to learn guide, not a director; provide support fo
with the teacher and more-skilled peers children to explore their world and discove
knowledge
 COGNITIVE CHANGES IN ADULTHOOD
• Realistic and pragmatic thinking- the idealism of Piaget’s formal operational stage
declines in young adults, being replaced by more realistic, pragmatic thinking.
• Reflective and relativistic thinking adolescents often engage in dualistic, absolutist
thinking, whereas young adults are more likely to think reflectively and relativistic
ally.
• Cognition and emotion- emerging and young adults become more aware that
emotions influence their thinking.
• Postformal stage- a fifth, postformal stage that has been proposed is postformal
thought, which is reflective, relativistic, and contextual; provisional; realistic; and
influenced by emotions.
 ARE THERE COGNITIVE STAGES IN MIDDLE AND LATE
ADULTHOOD?
• Fluid and crystallized intelligence.
• Cognitive mechanics and cognitive pragmatics
 LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

• Language A form of communication, whether spoken, written, or

signed, that is based on a system of symbols.
• Infinite generativity the ability to produce and comprehend an endless
number of meaningful sentences using a finite set of words and rules.
 LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
LANGUAGE’S RULE SYSTEMS
• Phonology the sound system of a language—includes the sounds used
and how they may be combined.
• Morphology units of meaning involved in word formation.
• Syntax the ways words are combined to form acceptable phrases and
sentences.
• Semantics the meanings of words and sentences.
• Pragmatics the appropriate use of language in different contexts
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 LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
• INFANCY
Birth Crying

2 to 4 months Cooing begins

5 months Understands first word

6 months Babbling begins

7 to 11 months Change from universal linguist to language specific

listener
8 to 12 months Uses gestures, such as showing and pointing
Comprehension of words appear
13 months First word spoken

8 months Vocabulary spurt starts

18 to 24 months Uses two-word utterances Rapid expansion of

understanding of words
 LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

EARLY CHILDHOOD
• Understanding phonology and morphology
• Changes in syntax and semantics
• Advances in pragmatics
 LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
MIDDLE AND LATE CHILDHOOD
• Vocabulary, grammar, and metalinguistic awareness
• Reading: whole language Approach or Phonic Approach
• Writing
• Second language learning and bilingualism
 LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
ADOLESCENCE
• Metaphor
• Satire
• Dialect
ADULTHOOD AND AGING
 LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

BIOLOGICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES

Biological influences
• Broca’s area- an area of the brain’s left frontal lobe that is involved in producing
words.
• Wernicke’s area -an area of the brain’s left hemisphere that is involved in language
comprehension.
• Chomsky’s language acquisition device (LAD)-chomsky’s term that describes a
biological endowment that enables the child to detect certain features and rules of
language, including phonology, syntax, and semantics.
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 LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES
• Language represents nothing more than chains of responses acquired
through reinforcement –behaviorist view
• Social cues play an important role in infant language
• Child-directed speech
• Recasting
• Expanding
• Labelling
 LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

An interactionist view of language

• Both biology and experience contribute to language development