CHAPTER 5 Infancy: Cognitive Development. Cognitive Development: Jean Piaget.
Cognitive development
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Transcript of Cognitive development
DEVELOPMENT
• MATURATION – the unfolding of behaviours
that are genetically programmed
• LEARNING – systematic changes in behaviour,
thoughts and feelings as a result of
experiences
What is the most important
factor in development?
GENETIC PREDISPOSITIONor
ENVIROMENT
Nature or nurture
Life Span Development
Stage Approximate Age
Prenatal Conception to birthInfancy Birth to 18 monthsEarly childhood 18 mo. to 6 yearsMiddle childhood 6-12 yearsAdolescence 12-20 yearsYoung adulthood 20-45 yearsMiddle adulthood 45-60 yearsLater adulthood from 60 years
Research methodologies in developmental psychology
Research methodologies
in developmental psychology
Limitations of longitudinal reserach:
•Time-consuming
•Participants may leave the study
Limitations of cross-sectional research
•We can’t be absolutely sure that the differences found are
not due to participant variables
• Acording to Piaget children
are „little scientist” –
who come to know about
world by physical and
mental manipulation of
objects.
JEAN PIAGET’S THEORY OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
• SCHEMAS – mental representation of how to deal with the world.
Schemas may develop or change. Child’s experiences are based on
limited innate repertoire of schemas: sucking, reaching, grasping
which are modified as a resulat of experience – this is
ADAPTATION.
• ADAPTATION:
• ASSIMILATION – new information can be integrated into existing
cognitive schemas.
• ACCOMODATION – existing cognitive schemas have to be altered
because they no longer match new experiences.
Try to draw the shape, which you will see for a while. You have 30 seconds to look at it.
ASSIMILATION
MAMMALSZEBRA
ASSIMILATION
MAMMALS
ZEBRA IS A MAMMAL
ACCOMMODATION
HORSES
ACCOMMODATION
THIS IS ZEBRA
ACCOMMODATION
HORSES ZEBRA
• Work in pairs. Choose the person with whom you’ve never
work with.
• Give examples of two processes of adaptation: assimilation
and accomodation.
• Create a story (if you create unusual, surprising and even
overdraw story you will never forget those two processes :)
Piaget claimed that:
1. children’s intelligence progresses through a series of
cognitive stages
2. Each stage different in quality from the next
3. Each stage is described as changes in logic of thinking
PIAGET'S STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
• THE SENSORIMOTOR STAGE
• THE PREOPERATIONAL STAGE
• THE CONCRETE OPERATIONAL STAGE
• THE FORMAL OPERATIONAL STAGE
THE SENSORIMOTOR STAGE (AGE 0-2 YEARS)
• Newborn baby relies on innate reflexes
• Knowledge of the world is gain by sensory perceptions and
motor activities
• Behaviors are limited to simple motor responses
caused by sensory stimulation
• Children use skills and abilities they were born
with, such as looking, sucking, grasping, and
listening, to learn more about the environment
Object permanence
• Object permanence develop at
around 8 months old
• This is an idea that object exist even
when they can no longer be seen
• 4 months old will not look for an
object if it is hidden
• 8 – 12 months child will keep looking
for the object in the place where he
or she found it the last time
THE PREOPERATIONAL STAGE (AGE 2 – 7 YEARS)
• Child learns to speak
• Child become capable of thinking in symbolic
terms – they can form ideas but they can only
focus on one aspect of object, they can’t
transform knowledge from one situation to
another
• EGOCENTRISM – children can’t understand
that others might have another point of view,
they see world only from their own point of
view – this is a cognitive limitation
The three-mountain task
(Piaget and Inhelder 1956)
• Classic demontration of
egocentrism
• From around nine years
children can adopt the
doll’s perspectiv
Hughes’ task (1975)
• Children are able to take another
person perspective if material is
more familiar
• Nearly all children from age
of three and a half to five
could perform the task
(more meanigful and interesting)
THE PREOPERATIONAL STAGE (AGE 2 – 7 YEARS)
• Children can not understand the concept
of CONSERVATION – that is, that physical
properties remain the same even if the
object’s appearance is changed.
• Children can not mentally reverse the
operation, they focus on the most visible
change – they cannot conserve the
property of liquid by mentally reversing
the pouring.
Li et al. (1999)
• Tested 486 Chinese primary children on the classic liquid
conservation task
• Resercher found that children from schools with a good
academic reputation generally achieved better results than
those less privileged schools
Diffrences in cognitive development
are not only related to brain maturation,
but also to quality of education
Piaget didn’t include this in his theory
1. Look critically at Piaget’s three mountain task. Can you
imagine countries where such a task would be difficult to
deal with? Why?
2. To what extent does a study like Li et al. (1999), using
Chinese children in primary school, contradict the claim of
cultural bias?
THE CONCRETE OPERATIONAL STAGE (AGE 7-12 YEARS)
• Children begin school education
• They start to use some rules of logic in problem solving – but
only on concrete task
• Task: „House A is more expensive than House B. Hause C is
more expensive than House A. Which is the most expensive?”
– to solve this problem, children need some images
• Understanding of CONSERVATION
THE FORMAL OPERATIONAL STAGE (FROM AGE 12)
• Ability to use abstract reasoning and logic
• People can mentally manipulate ideas, concepts and numbers
• Hypothetical thinking
EVALUATION of PIAGET’S THEORY
• Very comprehensive
• Very influential (expecially in primary schools)
• Child-centered learning – children learn best when the
teacher sets up situations where the child can discover ideas
for themselves
• Children are active in searching out knowledge
• Piaget suggested research methods to investigate the way
children think
EVALUATION of PIAGET’S THEORY
• Piaget’s sample was small – his own children
• Cultural bias
• Piaget’s underestimated children’s cognitive capabilities
• Baillargeon and DeVos (1991) argue that object permanence appears in
three month babies – children are aware that objects they cannot see
continue to exist
• Infants look longer at the „impossible event”
• Piaget underestimated the role of social learning, he didn’t pay to much
attention to the social and cultural context of cognitive development
Baillargeon and DeVos (1991)
argue that object permanence appears in three-month babies
Лев Семёнович Выготский,
17 November 1896 - 10 June 1934
VYGOTSKY SOCIOCULTURAL THEORY
• It`s not possible to describe the process by
which children acquire knowledge without
taking into account the child`s social
enviroment or culture.
• Culture teaches WHAT and HOW to think .
Child`s cognitive development is based on:
• INTERACTION WITH OTHER PEOPLE
• CULTURAL TOOLS
• Knowledge is transfered via imitation, instruction or
collaborative learning
• Language is the primary form of interaction that adults use
to transmit the knowledge that exist in the culture,
• and as the child grows older, language is the most
important tool of learning
VYGOTSKY SOCIOCULTURAL THEORY
• An important elemnt in sociocultural theory is ZONE
OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT , which refres to
differences between what a child can do on his/her
own and what he/she can accomplish with help.
• SCAFFOLDING - a child can increase in competence if
he/she receive assitance to perform task that is just
slightly beyond her/his current ability
ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT
WHAT I CAN NOT DO
WHAT I CAN DO WITH HELP
WHAT I CAN DO
ZONE OF
PROXIMAL
DEVELOPMENT
Vygotski versus Piaget
• They both agreed that children actively construct
knowledge and children learn best if new knowlegde is
related to existing knowledge and abilities.
• Wygotski claimed that most of what children learn
comes from the culture in which they live, so it is wrong
to focus on the child in isolation – he suggested
COOPERATIVE LEARNING instead of child – centered
learning.
SKILL DEVELOPMENT OFTEN OCCURES BEST WHEN
CHILDREN COLLABORATE WITH MORE SKILLED
OTHERS
Consider following:
1. How could a culture influence what a child should learn?
2. Give some exemples from your own culture of „tools” you
need to learn to use. Why is that and what does this say
about your culture?
3. Do people need to go to school to learn what is necessery
in their culture? Why or why not?