How Does Our Thinking Change With Age?

1. How Does Our Thinking Change With Age? Chapter 6- Theories of Cognitive Development

2. MODULE OBJECTIVES: How does thinking change as children develop? What are Piaget’s 4 stages Cognitive Development? What is Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive Development?

3. Wouldn’t you love to know what he’s thinking?

4. It was once accepted that because babies cannot speak, then they must not think. Jean Piaget questioned this concept and examined the development of thought in children, beginning in infancy

5. How does thought develop? • Piaget’s theory focuses on how people think rather than what they think. • Piaget believed that children play an active role in their cognitive development. • Piaget’s theories emphasized biology, which allow them to be applied to any culture

6. Piaget’s Three Basic Assumptions • Children’s constructive processes are generating hypotheses, performing experiments, and drawing conclusions • The child as a scientist • Children lean many important lessons on their own, rather than depending on instruction from adults or older children • Children are intrinsically motivated to learn and do not need rewards from adults to do so

7. Piagetian Approach • Piaget proposed a “stage approach” to development and he claimed that all children pass through a series of four universal stages in a fixed order from birth through adolescence • Sensorimotor (birth to 2 years) • Preoperational (2 to 7 years) • Concrete operational (7 to 12 years) • Formal operational (12 years and beyond)

9. How do we make sense of the world? • Piaget believed that infants spend a LOT of time trying to make sense of the world. • A schema (theory) is a mental structure, a way of organizing and categorizing thoughts and experiences. • Schemas allow children to make comparable generalizations.

10. Schema • Piaget believed that children develop and modify schema or theory by two processes: • Assimilation • Accommodation

11. Assimilationincorporates new experiences into existing mental structures and behaviors • Example: a baby who is familiar with grasping will soon discover that the grasping works for toys as well as blocks, balls, and other small objects.

12. Wait…I changed my mind! • Accommodationoccurs when a child’s theories are modified based on an experience • Example- The baby with a theory of dogs is surprised the first time she sees a cat- it resembles a dog, but meows instead of barks and rubs up against her rather thank licking • The baby must REVISE her previous theory to include this new kind of animal

13. John has a dog…his schemata for dog is an animal with four legs and a tail. John’s theory of dogs also includes the concept that dogs are friendly and like to lick people’s faces. One day John is bitten by a neighbor’s dog- Think on your own….how could his theory change to accommodate this new info?

14. Why is this process important? • As adaptation continues, the child organizes his/her schemata into more complex mental representations, linking one schema with another.

15. Assimilation and accommodation are usually in balance (equilibrium), but periodically the balance is upset which results in disequilibrium Children find that their theories are not adequate because they spend so much more time accommodating than assimilating. Children restore equilibrium by replacing obsolete theories with new more advanced theory.

17. Sensorimotor thinking involves adapting to the environment, understanding objects, and becoming able to use symbols. This form of thought begins with the infant experiencing the world through their reflexes

18. Sensorimotor Intelligence • The intelligence of infants during the first period of cognitive development when babies think by using their senses and motor skills • Piaget proposed that these rapidly changing perceptual and motor skills in this first 2 years of life form the Sensorimotor Stage • Piaget believed that in this stage, the infant progresses from simple reflex actions to symbolic processing

19. Simple Reflexes • During the first month of life, the various reflexes that determine the infant’s interactions with the world are at the center of its cognitive life • As infant uses his/her reflexes – the reflexes become more coordinated • Infants begin to modify their reflexes to make them more adaptive and reflexes become modified by experience • Example – thumb sucking

20. For example,an infant might combine grasping an object with sucking on it, or staring at something with touch

21. This 2 year period of rapid change is divided into 6 sub-stages Stages 1 and 2:-Primary circular reactions Stages 3 and 4:-Secondary circular reactions Stage 5 and 6-Tertiary circular reactions

22. Stages 1 and 2Primary circular reactions • Stage 1- (Birth to 1 month) • The focus in this stage is learning to interact with their own body • Everything that occurs in this stage is reflexive • Sucking, grasping, staring • Stage 2- (1-4 months) • Infants accidentally produce a pleasing event and then try to recreate it. • Assimilation and coordination of reflexes • Example: Grabbing a bottle to suck it or thumb sucking

23. Stages 3 and 4:Secondary circular reactions • Secondary Circular Reactions are novel actions that are repeated. These actions represent the infant’s attempt to learn about objects in their environment. • Stage 3 occurs during 4-8 months in age infants switch from interacting with their own body to interacting with an object or a person. • The infant is responsive to other people and to toys and other objects that can be manipulated

24. Infants begin to interact with people and objects to produce exciting experiences For example, realizing that a rattle makes noise-they shake their arms and laugh whenever someone puts a rattle in their hand

25. Stages 3 and 4:Secondary circular reactions • Stage 4 (8 months-1yr) • Babies think about a goal and understand how to reach it • Much more sophisticated way of thinking that occurs, infants become more purposeful in responding to people.

26. Example: 10 month-old girl who enjoys baths- may crawl into the bath tub with a bar of soap and remove all her clothes to communicate to Mom that she wants a bath.

27. Why is peek-a-boo fun for babies? The game loses its excitement once we know the person hiding their face has not really disappeared. How do you know an object still exists when you can’t see it? This is a cognitive milestone that develops in the sensorimotor stage called Object Permanence Why ISN’T it fun for adults?

28. Out of Sight, Out of Mind… • Object Permanence allows infants to now recognize that objects continue to exist even when they are out of sight. -This usually develops around 8 months • Think on your own… five month-old Jack is playing with your car keys, but now you want to leave. You distract the infant and take your keys. How does the infant react?

29. The infant responds by doing NOTHING. The infant will not even look for the keys. They will act as though the keys do not even exist anymore- because they DO NOT have object permanence

30. For this 5-month-old, “out of sight” is literally out of mind. The infant looks at the toy monkey (top), but when his view of the monkey is blocked (bottom), he does not search for it.

31. Click on the baby to view a video on object permanence

32. Stage 5 and 6Tertiary circular reactions • Stage 5 (12-18 months) is defined by “active experimentation” which is a way to learn about the world • (when babies get into everything) • Infants explore a wide range of activities. They take on the role of the “Little scientist”- who experiments in order to see • What else can I do with this thing? • Scientific method of trial and error

33. Tertiary circular reactions • Stage 6 –(18-24 months) • Rather than just repeated enjoyable activities as in substage 4, infants appear to carry out miniature experiments to observe the consequences • Example: • A child will drop a toy repeatedly, varying the position from which he drops it, carefully observing each time to see where it falls • Toddlers begin to anticipate and solve simple problems by using mental combinations

34. They try out various actions mentally before performing them and think about the consequences of their actions They hesitating before yanking a cat’s tail or dropping an egg on the floor

36. Infants also have the ability to use symbols and engage in pretend play

38. Preoperational Period (2-7years) • The period in which children become able to represent their experiences in language, mental imagery, and symbolic thought • Preschool children gradually become proficient at using common symbols – such as words, gestures, graphs, maps, and models • The development of egocentrism and centration are milestones in this period

39. Development of Symbolic Representation • The ability to use scale models develops early and by age 3 it has developed. • If young children watch an adult hide a toy in a full size room, then try to find the toy in a scale-model of the room that contains the same features as the full-size room  3-year-olds can find the toy but 2.5-year-olds cannot.

40. Me, Me, Me…. • A key element in the preoperational stage is egocentrism, which is the inability to perceive a situation from another’s point of view. • Children in this stage, cannot put themselves in another person’s position and are unable to understand that the world does not exist to meet their needs. • Over the course of the preoperational period, egocentric speech becomes less common.

41. Example of Egocentrism • Three-year-old Jamila loves talking to Grandma Powell on the telephone. When Grandma Powell asks a question, Jamila often replies by nodding her head. Jamila’s dad has explained that Grandma Powell can’t see her nodding, that she needs to say “yes” or “no.” But, no luck. Jamila invariably returns to head-nodding. Click on picture to watch egocentrism video (also included in the text DVD)

42. Centration • Preoperational children have the tendency to narrowly focus on a single, perceptually striking feature of an object or event. • The psychological equivalent of tunnel vision • For example, a three-year old may choose a nickel over the dime because the nickel is bigger

43. Concrete Operational Stage • A milestone of this stage is understanding Conservation • This ability allows children to recognize that objects can be transformed visually or physically, yet still be the same in number, weight, substance, or volume Click on picture to view a video on conservation (available on text DVD)

44. Conservation Tasks

45. Appearance as Reality • Preoperational children cannot distinguish between appearance and reality. Preschool children believe an object’s appearance tells what the object is really like. • They think if people look happy, they are really happy.

46. At the latter end of the stage, Decentration begins. This is a change from a self-oriented view to recognizing the view of others.

47. Test Your Knowledge • A child in this stage saw a classmate crying and someone asked, “why is Marcus crying?” What is the child displaying? • The child responds by saying, “I don’t know…I’m OK.” • With the same scenario, a child responds, “Marcus is sad”

48. Did You Get It? • A child in this stage saw a classmate crying and someone asked, “why is Marcus crying?” What is the child displaying? • The child responds by saying, “I don’t know…I’m OK.” • With the same scenario, a child responds, “Marcus is sad” Egocentrism Decentration

50. Concrete Operational Period • The period in which children become able to reason logically about concrete objects and events. • They become more adultlike and less childlike • Children first use mental operations to solve and to reason • Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division are familiar arithmetic operations that concrete operational children use