Cognitive Development

Cognitive Development Evaluate theories of cognitive development.

Cognitive development • Cognitive development → refers to transitions in youngsters’ patterns of thinking, including reasoning, remembering and problem solving

Cognitive development • Constructivist approach→ says children are actively engaged with constructing their knowledge of the world rather than acting as passive receivers of information; cognitive development is dependent upon how the individual child interacts with the social and physical world • According to Swiss cognitive psychologist Jean Piaget, essence of knowing is activity and children come to know the world by physical or mental manipulation of objects • Said children are “little scientists” and use strategies in thinking and problem solving that reflect different stages of cognitive development

Cognitive development • Piaget began by observing his own children and used them to test his theories • Produced baby diaries based on careful observations of them • Used questions and observational strategies to develop a clinical interview (open-ended conversational technique that can provide insight into the child’s own judgments and explanations of what happens) • Piaget’s team was trained for a year before they could start collecting data • Criticized for lacking scientific rigor but allowed him to study long-term changes first hand in a loving, supportive environment

According to Piaget, knowledge consists of schemas • Schema → a concept or framework that organizes and interprets information; help order our thinking and act as mental shortcuts • Children are born with an innate range of schemas, such as those for sucking, reaching, grasping, which are modified as a result of experience • By adulthood we have built countless schemas ranging from cats and dogs or what a professor’s office looks like to our concept of love

Assimilation → involves interpreting new experiences in terms of existing mental structures without changing them Accommodation → involves changing existing mental structures to explain new experiences Adaptation→ modification of schemas as a result of experience

For instance, a child who has learned to call four-legged pets “puppies” may apply this scheme the first time she encounters a cat (assimilation), but she will eventually discover that puppies and cats are different types of animals and make adjustments to their mental schemes (accommodation).

Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

Infants are developing the ability to coordinate their sensory input with motor actions; symbolic thought gradually appears; child learns through movements and sensations *Object permanence- when a child recognizes that objects exist even when they are no longer visible- starts developing at around 8 months

Child learns to use language and becomes capable of thinking in symbolic terms-- they can form ideas, but can only focus on one aspect of an object or situation at a time and they cannot transfer knowledge from one situation to another. * Conservation * Centration * Irreversibility * Egocentrism * See reverse for definitions

Preoperational Stage (ages 2-7) of Cognitive Development • Conservation → Piaget’s term for the awareness that physical quantities remain constant in spite of changes in their shape or appearance ..\..\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Movies\Conversation of Mass ..\..\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Movies\Conservation task

Fig 11.12 – Piaget’s conservation task.After watching the transformation shown, a preoperational child will usually answer that the taller beaker contains more water. In contrast, the child in the concrete operations period tends to respond correctly, recognizing that the amount of water in beaker C remains the same as the amount in beaker A.

Fig 11.13 – The gradual mastery of conservation.Children master Piaget’s conservation problem during the concrete operations period, but their mastery is gradual. As outlined here, children usually master the conservation of numbers at age 6 or 7, but they may not understand the conservation of area until age 8 or 9.

Why are preoperational children unable to solve problems?It’s due to common errors into some basic problems in preoperational thinking: • Centration → the tendency to focus on just one feature of a problem, neglecting other important aspects • Irreversibility → the inability to envision reversing an action or a relationship • Egocentrism → thinking characterized by a limited ability to share another person’s viewpoint This stage is called preoperational because the ability to perform operations- internal transformations, manipulations and reorganizations of mental structures- doesn’t emerge until the next stage.

Research at the Preoperational Level • See Piaget and Inhelder (1956) • See Hughes (1975) Both studies are in your IBCC on p. 188

Research at the Preoperational Level • Li et al. (1999) tested 486 Chinese primary school children on the classic liquid conservation task. • Supported Piaget’s theory that the percentage of children who get the answer right increases with age • Also found children from schools with a better academic reputation generally achieved better results than children from less privileged schools. • Indicated that differences in cognitive development are not only related to brain maturation but to factors such as education as well. • Piaget did not include this in his theory.

Children start to use some of the rules of logic in problem solving, but only when dealing with concrete tasks; gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete (tangible or actual) events *Reversibility- permits a child to mentally undo an action *Decentration- allows the child to focus on more than one feature of the problem simultaneously *Leads to a decline in egocentricism and gradual mastery of conservation

Stage of cognitive development in which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts; capable of manipulating ideas, concepts or numbers and can think hypothetically * Further changes in thinking are changes in degree rather than fundamental changes in the nature of thinking

Strengths of Piaget’s Theory • First to suggest a comprehensive account of cognitive development and his theory has been influential, especially in primary schools • Suggests children learn best when teacher sets up situations where the child can discover ideas for themselves (child-centered learning)- has been used extensively around the world • Changed traditional views of children as passive, suggesting children are active in searching out knowledge and constructing mental representations of the world • Suggested inventive research methods to investigate the way children think • Many of his concepts have been empirically tested by others and research is still conducted based on his ideas

Limitations of Piaget’s Theory • Methodology • Too formal for children- when methods are changed to show more “human sense,” children often understand what is being asked of them and show cognitive ability outside of their age appropriate stage • Very small sample consisting mainly of his own children. • Questionable generizability • Problem of cultural bias

Limitations of Piaget’s Theory • Piaget failed to distinguish between competence (what a child is capable of doing) and performance (what a child can show when given a particular task). When tasks were altered performance (and therefore competence) was affected. • Many modern researchers have argued that Piaget underestimated children’s cognitive capabilities, which led to a view of children as deficient rather than competent thinkers • Some have demonstrated that cognitive capabilities emerge in children earlier than suggested by Piaget

Limitations of Piaget’s Theory • Underestimated the role of social learning, such as instruction by adults or other children • Studied individual children and did not pay much attention to the social and cultural context of cognitive development

Cognitive Development