Cognitive Development

1. Cognitive Development

2. Basic Principles of Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development • Schemes (Schemas, Schemata) • Assimilation • Accomodation • Equilibrium /Disequilibrium • Organization • Symbolic Capacity • Operations

4. Sensorimotor Period ( birth to 18/24 months) • Gain knowledge of the world through developing sensory and motor activity. • Object permanence.

5. Preoperational Period (ages 2-7) • Begins to use mental representations of their world, although not always logical or well organized. Includes development of: • Egocentrism • Centration • Magical Thinking • Animism • Appearance is Reality • Irreversibility

6. Concrete Operational Stage (age 7-11) • Thought is more logical, flexible, and organized when dealing with concrete, tangible information.

7. Concrete Operational Stage (age 7-11) • Reversibility • Decentration • Mental Rotations • Seriation

8. Concrete Operational Stage (age 7-11) • Class Inclusion • Transitive Inference (Transitivity) • Conservation • Horizontal Decalage • Number, length, liquid quantity, mass, weight, volume • Spatial Skills increase

9. Role of Play in Cognitive Development • Functional Play • Constructive Play • Pretend Play • Formal Games w/ Rules

10. Formal Operations • Abstract / Hypothetical Thinking

11. How is your thinking different today from what it was like as a high school student?

12. Elkind’s Immature Characteristics of Adolescent Thought • Immaturity of thinking manifests itself through: • Idealism and Criticalness • Apparent Hypocrisy • Argumentativeness • Indecisiveness

13. Elkind’s Immature Characteristics of Adolescent Thought • Adolescent Egocentrism • Self-consciousness • Imaginary audience • Specialness and Invulnerability • Personal fable • (Illusion of invulnerability)

14. Post Formal Thought • A willingness to shift gears or take a different approach depending on a specific problem • Can easily shift between abstract and concrete thought • Ability to draw on personal knowledge and experience to find the best possible solution from multiple possibilities (pragmatism)

15. Post Formal Thought • An awareness of the contradictions of life • Willingness to try to include conflicting or contradictory thoughts, emotions, or information • A flexible integration of cognition and emotion • An enthusiasm for seeking new questions, problems, and framework for understanding experience

16. Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive Development • Saw cognitive development as an apprenticeship in which children advance by interaction with others more mature. • Zone of Proximal Development • Private Speech

18. Information Processing • Human thinking is understood along a computer model. • Mental Hardware • Mental Software

19. Information Processing • Memory • Our ability to encode, store, and retrieve information • Children as young as 2 1/2 months old seem to have memory, forget, then remember with cues. • Develop autobiographical memory for significant events. • Childhood (Infantile) Amnesia

20. Information Processing • Attention • Begins early • Habituation occurs to familiar stimuli. • Dishabituation occursafter a change in stimulus.

21. Information Processing • Attention increases and changes during childhood: • Length of attention • Increase in selective attention. • Cognitive inhibition

22. Information Processing • Planning improves • Able to adapt their attention to the temporary requirements of different situations. • Decisions about how to proceed with projects from start to finish. • Cognitive regulation still lacks. • Ability to multitask increases

23. Information Processing:Middle Childhood • Systematic attention • Ability to plan and carry out systematic perceptual searches (attention to detail)

24. Information Processing • Four hypotheses as to why changes occur: 1. Changes in basic capacities • Increased knowledge base about the world - Crystallized Intelligence

25. Information Processing 3. Changes in memory strategies: • Rehearsal • Elaboration • Imagery • Mnemonics • Chunking • Deep Processing

26. Information Processing 4. Increased knowledge about memory • Metacognition (knowledge of human mind and the range of cognitive processes) • Metamemory (understanding of our own memory) (A reversal of these contribute to decline of information processing in old age)

27. Information Processing During Adolescence • Increase in Content Knowledge • Metacognition continues to expand • Metamemory increases with more effective use of memory strategies • Cognitive Self Regulation improves • Information processing ability increases (although it may not be used)

28. Cognitive Development in Adulthood • Development is multidirectional • Patterns of change vary between people. • Abilities show plasticity in that they may be modified during any point in adulthood, under the right conditions.

29. Cognitive Development in Adulthood • Schaie suggests that in early adulthood, individuals: • switch from acquiring knowledge (what I need to know), • to applying knowledge (how to use what I know), • to a search for meaning and purpose, (why I should know) especially as they enter their careers.

30. Cognitive Development in Adulthood • Slower processing speed makes it harder for middle-aged individuals to multi-task. • Cognitive inhibition becomes more difficult, at times promoting greater distractibility.

31. Cognitive Development in Adulthood • Less information is retained in working memory. • Largely due to a decline in use of memory strategies. • Onset of cognitive debilitating diseases such as Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease

32. Cognitive Development in Adulthood • Speed of cognitive processing slows with age. Two views: • The neural network view says that as neurons in the brain die, breaks in the neural network occur. • The brain adapts by forming bypasses which go around the breaks but are less efficient.

33. Cognitive Development in Adulthood • The information loss view suggests that older adults experience greater loss of information.

34. Theory of Mind • A child’s awareness of his/her mental processes and the processes of others • By age 2 to 3 • Realizes people see what is in front of them not what is in front of the child (perceptions) • Knows that if someone wants something they will try to get it (desires) • Can distinguish between positive and negative emotions

35. Theory of Mind • 4 to 5 years of age • Realization that people can have false beliefs • Understand that the mind can represent objects and events accurately or inaccurately

36. Intelligence • The ability to solve problems and to adapt and learn from experience • IQ tests • Dynamic Testing

37. Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences • Verbal skills • Mathematical Skills • Spatial Skills • Bodily-kinesthetic Skills • Musical Skills • Interpersonal Skills • Intrapersonal Skills • Naturalistic Skills

38. Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Intelligence • Componential Intelligence • information processing (analytical) • Experiential Intelligence • Problem solving and creativity • Divergent thinking • Convergent thinking • Contextual Intelligence • “street smarts” • ability to adapt

40. Emotional Intelligence • The ability to • Perceive and express emotion accurately and adaptively • (taking the perspectives of others) • Understand emotion and emotional knowledge • (role emotions play in friendship and knowledge) • Feelings to facilitate thought • (role of mood and decision making or creativity) • Mange emotions in oneself and others • (being able to control one’s anger)

41. Does Intelligence Increase or Decrease? • Fluid Intelligence • The ability to actively think and reason (abstractly) • Crystallized Intelligence • Knowledge base

42. Extremes of Intelligence • Giftedness • IQ of 130 or above • Usually show special abilities in areas valued in society such as math, performing or visual arts, or leadership • Often identifiable by age 18 months due to advanced language skills

43. Extremes of Intelligence • Mental Retardation • Significantly below average intellectual functioning with limitations in areas of adaptive behavior such as self-care and social skills • Must occur before age 18 to be diagnosed • 4 levels • Mild (50 – 70) 85% • Moderate ( 35 – 49) 10% • Severe (20 – 34) 4% • Profound ( 19 and below) 1%

45. Language Development • Crying • Cooing (vowel like sounds)begins at 1 to 2 months. • Babbling (strings of consonant sounds) begins around 6 months • Intonation (changes in pitch) and gestures start between 8 and 12 months. (Evident in both hearing and deaf)

46. Language Development • Around 1 year, children use their first words, usually consonant-vowel pairs such as dada or wawa. • 13 months: understand about 50 words but cannot say • 18 months: • vocabulary spurt • Begin using holophrases: single words which convey a sentence worth of meaning

47. Language Development • 2 years: • vocabulary of around a few hundred words • telegraphic speech : two word combinations • Between ages 2 and 3: • transition from simple sentences expressing a single proposition to complex sentences. • By age 6: • know around 10 to 15 thousand words

49. Theories of Language Development • Learning Perspective • Language development is the result of: • Observational Learning • Modeling • Imitation • Reinforcement

50. Theories of Language Development • Nativist (Biological) Perspective • Emphasizes the biological side of language development • Chomsky believes that children are born with a Language Acquisition Device (LAD)