Cognitive Development - Piaget
Growth of mental abilities
Cognitive Development - Piaget I.
What is cognitive development? A. Definition of cognition B. The structural-functional approach C. The information processing approach II. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development A. Background B. Piaget’s theory 1. Cognitive equilibrium 2. Cognitive schemata a. Behavioral (sensorimotor) schemata b. Symbolic schemata c. Operational schemata 3. How do schema develop? a. Organization b. Adaptation: Assimilation and accomodation III. Piaget’s stages of cognitive development A. Properties of stages 1. Invariant developmental sequences 2. Hierarchical relations among stages B. Sensorimotor intgelligence 1. The six stages of sensorimotor intelligence 2. Imitation and object permanence C. Preoperational period 1. Preconceptual period a. Emergence of symbolic function b. Animism, transductive reasoning, and egocentrism 2. Intuitive period D. Concrete operational period E. Formal operational period
Definition of cognition Cognition: • Refers to act of knowing • Concerned with the mental processes by which knowledge is acquired, elaborated, stored, and retrieved • Attention to the world • Perception of the world • Learning, thinking, remembering, and so on Cognitive development: • Changes that occur in mental skills and abilities over time
Perspectives on Cognitive Development The structural-functional approach: • Emphasizes the biological functions and environmental influences that promote developmental changes in the organization and the structure of intelligence How is one's thinking structured and how does that change?
The information-processing approach: • Focuses on the growth of specific cognitive processing mechanisms, such as perception, attention, memory, and so on We look at all the different abilties individually
Developmental psychologist -philosopher, educator, more remarkable figure in contemporary behaviour science
Piaget’s Theory
Cognitive equilibrium: • What is intelligence? • Basic life force that helps one adapt to environment • Type of equilibrium towards which all cognitive structures tend • Produce balanced relation between Intellectual activity had 1 goal in mind: thought processes and environment • Balanced relation called “cognitive Children are extremely equilibrium” active and curioused • Children as constructivistsexplorers -they're actively taking The things that the children were acting on / changing:
role in changing how they view the world (they're constructing their own reality - this is the way they understand the world)
Cognitive schema (or schemata): • Cognitive structure • Pattern of thought or action (is similar to a concept / strategy) • Behavioral (sensorimotor) schemas • Organized pattern of behavivor used to represent (to understand, represent or respond to) understanding of objects is limited to the objects of experience Children's type of sensorimotor events that can be done with the objects • First psychological structures to appear • Symbolic schemas (2 years old) • Ability to think about objects/events without represent objects mentally; start actually having them present Can using mental symbols; can represent behaviour (mental representation of • Operational schemas (6-7 years) things in the world) • Cognitive operations applied to objects/events They can do things with the schemas - aside from being able to represent the schemas, they can operate the schemas. They can perform cognitive operations (mental activities that they can do that takes the place of doing these things physically) -reversibility (how much clay there is when the clay is flattened out) -allows formal education
Piaget’s Theory, con’t How do schema change? • Organization Children are constantly organizing their schemas into higher order structures • Combine existing schemas into new schema • Produceseg. atmore complex intellectual structures young age, the sensorimotor schemas are of gazing at something, grasping, etc. The child after a bit of experiences organizes and • Adaptation reaching, combines schemas into more complex visually-guided reaching Children are constantly • Two complementary processes: Assimilation and exposed to truly novel events... they accomodation have to be able to modify their schemas: adaptation • Assimilation • The process by which children attempt to interpret new experiences in relation to previous experiences • Fit new information with existing schemas • Accomodation • The process by which children modify their When events are too novel such that it doesn't fit into any of the existing cognitive structures to account for existing schemas new experiences • Existing schemas undergo change • Two processes always occur together • End result is cognitive equilibrium Every new experience involves assimilation and accomodation
Cognitive equilibrium - the child has produced a harmonious state between his or her knowledgeable world and the outside world
Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development
Viewed cognitive growth as growing through severeal stages of intellectual development
Properties of stage theories: timing can be switched around • Invariant developmental sequence The but the stage can't be reversed or completed in an alternate order • Constant, unchanging orderstrong biological component to these stages - the environment cannot change • No skipping of stages theageorder of stages (can only change the at which the stages occur) • Indicates strong maturational component • Hierarchical relations among stages • Structures of earlier stages not lost • Incorporated into achievements of later stages When you move to stage two, you don't necessary lose the abilities in stage 1. Instead, those abilites become transformed and incorporated into the later stages
Stages of development:
Period of sensorimotor stage: -reflex level of acting on the world -extremely coordinate: coordinates perception and sensorimotor functions to act on the world -6 substages
Period of Sensorimotor Intelligence Substages of the sensorimotor period:
• Stage 1: The use of reflexes (0 – 1 mo) • Stage 2: Primary circular reactions (1 – 4 mos) • Stage 3: Secondary circular reactions (4 – 8 • •
•
mos) Stage 4: Coordination of secondary schemas (8 – 12 mos) Stage 5: Tertiary circular reactions (12 – 18 mos) Stage 6: Invention of new means through mental combinations (18 – 24 mos)
Period of Sensorimotor Intelligence Specific developmental abilities in the sensorimotor period: Substage 4: coordination of secondary schemas - combining primary schemas into secondary schemas (intentionally putting together schemas to act on the world in certain ways)
• The development of intentional behavior • Piaget’s well-known object hiding task
Show baby a toy and hide it under a cover; baby will reach out, remove the cover and retrieve the toy -coordinate scheme to remove cover and scheme for toy retrieval -going through certain means to an intentional end (mean-end sequences); foundation for all problem-solving
• Object permanence
Being able to remove the cover and retrieving the toy means that child has an understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot see them (prior to this stage, it does not exist)
• The A-not-B Error
Two hiding positions - take the toy and hide it in front of the child (A location) Because the child has achieved obejct permanence, they are able to retrieve object from A location... Taking the same toy and put it in B location, baby will go out and search in A location... (The child can initially recover the toy in A, but once the toy is placed in B position, they cannot recover it) The child has no complete object permanence representation. (Object representation is not fully mature)
• The development of mental representations • Hidden displacements internal depictions of information that the mind can manipulate
• Imitation and deferred imitation
We can use mental images to retrace our steps if we get lost.... etc -by the end of sensorimotor period (18-24 months), children began to solve problems in a dramatic, sudden fashion (children will sit there and think about the problem and try to solve the problem)... they're actually manipulating the things on their mind (manipulating mental representations) -if one solution doesn't work, they will try another mental manipulation can help them solve various problems: hidden displacement: -they don't have to do trial and error in A-not-B error Imitation and deferred imitation: -children tend to imitate after they develop intentional behaviour (8-12 mths) -imitation is not exact / accurate (imitation of action but not precise imitation, which improves with age) -they can defer imitation of a behaviour - can show the behaviour and 24 hours, the baby sees the same model and imitate it (has a mental representation that the model did)
Preoperational Period By 2 years of age, moves into preoperational period. (spans 2-7 years) Most obvious change: increase in representational (symbolic) activity; symbolic activity blossoms
• Symbolic function and pretend play • Egocentrism • Animism • Conservation Tasks
Symbolic function: The ability to make one thing stand for something else -children begin to develop language (classic form of symbolic function; making words stand for object, conepts, events, people) -this is the stage where children begin to engage in pretend play (eg. pretend to be super heros); can exhibit make-belief activities (can extinguish between what's fantasy and what's real) Piaget was interested in the limitation of their understandings.... realized that children were not able to exhibit operations (cannot obey rules; were much more rigid in their thinking - children were limited to one aspect of a situation at any one time; usually only focused on how that thing looked like) Limitations: 1. egocentrism - children were egocentric; unable to take the viewpoint of another person eg. could not draw out how someone else saw the same set of 3 mountains from the other side
Children will only look at height of liquid (don't treat initial and final stage as different)
2. animism - tendency of children to attribute life like characteristics to inanimate objects 3. conservaton tasks certain characteristics of physical objects remain the same even when their outer appearances change eg. if asked (dots on top of diagram) which one has more, they will answer the left one.
Concrete Operational Period (7-11 years old) -the child acquired a whole range of cognitive operations (skills that they could apply when thinking about objects, situations, events, etc -the child's thinking was much more logical, much more flexible, and organized
• Conservation
were able to pass the conservation tasks. -can take into account multiple aspects of a task. -can mentally reverse a sequence of events and operations
• Classification
-children are now aware of how to classify objects (can focus on relations between things and form a hierarchy) -children does hierarachal classifications - starts collecting things
• Seriation -the ability to order items along a dimension (eg. place things in order of height) -can do seriation mentally (transitive inference - can mentally compare things; mental seriation)
• Conservation Tasks Spatial reasoning
Spatial reasoning - children can now understand space -can do mental reasoning of long scale maps and spaces -is limited to logical information only to concrete information (things that children can imagine to believe or believe that truly exists or see) -children still have problems with abstract objects or events
Formal Operational Period -11 years onwards -flexibility - children are no longer tied to observable / imaginable events (they can reason about abstract ideas) -can reason about hypothetical problems of the world
Piaget talked about development of creativity - people can generate and create unusual response to situations (whereas, before this, they couldn't)
Piaget - most elaborate attempt to talk about chains of thoughts and cognitive development in children
Cognitive Development - Piaget I.
What is cognitive development? A. Definition of cognition B. The structural-functional approach C. The information processing approach II. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development A. Background B. Piaget’s theory 1. Cognitive equilibrium 2. Cognitive schemata a. Behavioral (sensorimotor) schemata b. Symbolic schemata c. Operational schemata 3. How do schema develop? a. Organization b. Adaptation: Assimilation and accomodation III. Piaget’s stages of cognitive development A. Properties of stages 1. Invariant developmental sequences 2. Hierarchical relations among stages B. Sensorimotor intgelligence 1. The six stages of sensorimotor intelligence 2. Imitation and object permanence C. Preoperational period 1. Preconceptual period a. Emergence of symbolic function b. Animism, transductive reasoning, and egocentrism 2. Intuitive period D. Concrete operational period E. Formal operational period
Definition of cognition Cognition: • Refers to act of knowing • Concerned with the mental processes by which knowledge is acquired, elaborated, stored, and retrieved • Attention to the world • Perception of the world • Learning, thinking, remembering, and so on Cognitive development: • Changes that occur in mental skills and abilities over time
Perspectives on Cognitive Development The structural-functional approach: • Emphasizes the biological functions and environmental influences that promote developmental changes in the organization and the structure of intelligence How is one's thinking structured and how does that change?
The information-processing approach: • Focuses on the growth of specific cognitive processing mechanisms, such as perception, attention, memory, and so on We look at all the different abilties individually
Developmental psychologist -philosopher, educator, more remarkable figure in contemporary behaviour science
Piaget’s Theory
Cognitive equilibrium: • What is intelligence? • Basic life force that helps one adapt to environment • Type of equilibrium towards which all cognitive structures tend • Produce balanced relation between Intellectual activity had 1 goal in mind: thought processes and environment • Balanced relation called “cognitive Children are extremely equilibrium” active and curioused • Children as constructivistsexplorers -they're actively taking The things that the children were acting on / changing:
role in changing how they view the world (they're constructing their own reality - this is the way they understand the world)
Cognitive schema (or schemata): • Cognitive structure • Pattern of thought or action (is similar to a concept / strategy) • Behavioral (sensorimotor) schemas • Organized pattern of behavivor used to represent (to understand, represent or respond to) understanding of objects is limited to the objects of experience Children's type of sensorimotor events that can be done with the objects • First psychological structures to appear • Symbolic schemas (2 years old) • Ability to think about objects/events without represent objects mentally; start actually having them present Can using mental symbols; can represent behaviour (mental representation of • Operational schemas (6-7 years) things in the world) • Cognitive operations applied to objects/events They can do things with the schemas - aside from being able to represent the schemas, they can operate the schemas. They can perform cognitive operations (mental activities that they can do that takes the place of doing these things physically) -reversibility (how much clay there is when the clay is flattened out) -allows formal education
Piaget’s Theory, con’t How do schema change? • Organization Children are constantly organizing their schemas into higher order structures • Combine existing schemas into new schema • Produceseg. atmore complex intellectual structures young age, the sensorimotor schemas are of gazing at something, grasping, etc. The child after a bit of experiences organizes and • Adaptation reaching, combines schemas into more complex visually-guided reaching Children are constantly • Two complementary processes: Assimilation and exposed to truly novel events... they accomodation have to be able to modify their schemas: adaptation • Assimilation • The process by which children attempt to interpret new experiences in relation to previous experiences • Fit new information with existing schemas • Accomodation • The process by which children modify their When events are too novel such that it doesn't fit into any of the existing cognitive structures to account for existing schemas new experiences • Existing schemas undergo change • Two processes always occur together • End result is cognitive equilibrium Every new experience involves assimilation and accomodation
Cognitive equilibrium - the child has produced a harmonious state between his or her knowledgeable world and the outside world
Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development
Viewed cognitive growth as growing through severeal stages of intellectual development
Properties of stage theories: timing can be switched around • Invariant developmental sequence The but the stage can't be reversed or completed in an alternate order • Constant, unchanging orderstrong biological component to these stages - the environment cannot change • No skipping of stages theageorder of stages (can only change the at which the stages occur) • Indicates strong maturational component • Hierarchical relations among stages • Structures of earlier stages not lost • Incorporated into achievements of later stages When you move to stage two, you don't necessary lose the abilities in stage 1. Instead, those abilites become transformed and incorporated into the later stages
Stages of development:
Period of sensorimotor stage: -reflex level of acting on the world -extremely coordinate: coordinates perception and sensorimotor functions to act on the world -6 substages
Period of Sensorimotor Intelligence Substages of the sensorimotor period:
• Stage 1: The use of reflexes (0 – 1 mo) • Stage 2: Primary circular reactions (1 – 4 mos) • Stage 3: Secondary circular reactions (4 – 8 • •
•
mos) Stage 4: Coordination of secondary schemas (8 – 12 mos) Stage 5: Tertiary circular reactions (12 – 18 mos) Stage 6: Invention of new means through mental combinations (18 – 24 mos)
Period of Sensorimotor Intelligence Specific developmental abilities in the sensorimotor period: Substage 4: coordination of secondary schemas - combining primary schemas into secondary schemas (intentionally putting together schemas to act on the world in certain ways)
• The development of intentional behavior • Piaget’s well-known object hiding task
Show baby a toy and hide it under a cover; baby will reach out, remove the cover and retrieve the toy -coordinate scheme to remove cover and scheme for toy retrieval -going through certain means to an intentional end (mean-end sequences); foundation for all problem-solving
• Object permanence
Being able to remove the cover and retrieving the toy means that child has an understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot see them (prior to this stage, it does not exist)
• The A-not-B Error
Two hiding positions - take the toy and hide it in front of the child (A location) Because the child has achieved obejct permanence, they are able to retrieve object from A location... Taking the same toy and put it in B location, baby will go out and search in A location... (The child can initially recover the toy in A, but once the toy is placed in B position, they cannot recover it) The child has no complete object permanence representation. (Object representation is not fully mature)
• The development of mental representations • Hidden displacements internal depictions of information that the mind can manipulate
• Imitation and deferred imitation
We can use mental images to retrace our steps if we get lost.... etc -by the end of sensorimotor period (18-24 months), children began to solve problems in a dramatic, sudden fashion (children will sit there and think about the problem and try to solve the problem)... they're actually manipulating the things on their mind (manipulating mental representations) -if one solution doesn't work, they will try another mental manipulation can help them solve various problems: hidden displacement: -they don't have to do trial and error in A-not-B error Imitation and deferred imitation: -children tend to imitate after they develop intentional behaviour (8-12 mths) -imitation is not exact / accurate (imitation of action but not precise imitation, which improves with age) -they can defer imitation of a behaviour - can show the behaviour and 24 hours, the baby sees the same model and imitate it (has a mental representation that the model did)
Preoperational Period By 2 years of age, moves into preoperational period. (spans 2-7 years) Most obvious change: increase in representational (symbolic) activity; symbolic activity blossoms
• Symbolic function and pretend play • Egocentrism • Animism • Conservation Tasks
Symbolic function: The ability to make one thing stand for something else -children begin to develop language (classic form of symbolic function; making words stand for object, conepts, events, people) -this is the stage where children begin to engage in pretend play (eg. pretend to be super heros); can exhibit make-belief activities (can extinguish between what's fantasy and what's real) Piaget was interested in the limitation of their understandings.... realized that children were not able to exhibit operations (cannot obey rules; were much more rigid in their thinking - children were limited to one aspect of a situation at any one time; usually only focused on how that thing looked like) Limitations: 1. egocentrism - children were egocentric; unable to take the viewpoint of another person eg. could not draw out how someone else saw the same set of 3 mountains from the other side
Children will only look at height of liquid (don't treat initial and final stage as different)
2. animism - tendency of children to attribute life like characteristics to inanimate objects 3. conservaton tasks certain characteristics of physical objects remain the same even when their outer appearances change eg. if asked (dots on top of diagram) which one has more, they will answer the left one.
Concrete Operational Period (7-11 years old) -the child acquired a whole range of cognitive operations (skills that they could apply when thinking about objects, situations, events, etc -the child's thinking was much more logical, much more flexible, and organized
• Conservation
were able to pass the conservation tasks. -can take into account multiple aspects of a task. -can mentally reverse a sequence of events and operations
• Classification
-children are now aware of how to classify objects (can focus on relations between things and form a hierarchy) -children does hierarachal classifications - starts collecting things
• Seriation -the ability to order items along a dimension (eg. place things in order of height) -can do seriation mentally (transitive inference - can mentally compare things; mental seriation)
• Conservation Tasks Spatial reasoning
Spatial reasoning - children can now understand space -can do mental reasoning of long scale maps and spaces -is limited to logical information only to concrete information (things that children can imagine to believe or believe that truly exists or see) -children still have problems with abstract objects or events
Formal Operational Period -11 years onwards -flexibility - children are no longer tied to observable / imaginable events (they can reason about abstract ideas) -can reason about hypothetical problems of the world
Piaget talked about development of creativity - people can generate and create unusual response to situations (whereas, before this, they couldn't)
Piaget - most elaborate attempt to talk about chains of thoughts and cognitive development in children
