How Does Our Thinking Change With Age?
Chapter 6-
Theories of Cognitive Development
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?
Wouldn’t you love to know
what he’s thinking?
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
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
Piaget’s Three Basic Assumptions
1. Children’s constructive processes are generating hypotheses, performing
experiments, and drawing conclusions
‐ The child as a scientist
2. Children lean many important lessons on their own, rather than depending on instruction from adults or older children
3. Children are intrinsically motivated to learn and do not need rewards from adults to do so
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)
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.
Schema
Piaget believed that children
develop and modify schema or theory by two processes:
‐ Assimilation
‐ Accommodation
Assimilation incorporates 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.
Wait…I changed my mind!
Accommodation occurs 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
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?
Why is this process important?
As adaptation continues, the
child organizes his/her schemata into more complex mental
representations, linking one
schema with another.
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.
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
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
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
For example,
an infant might combine
grasping an object with sucking on it, or staring at something
with touch
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
Stages 1 and 2
Primary 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
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
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
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.
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.
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?
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?
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
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.
Click on the baby to view a
video on object permanence
Stage 5 and 6
Tertiary 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
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
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
Infants also have the
ability to use symbols and
engage in pretend play
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
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.
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.
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)
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
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)
Conservation Tasks
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.
At the latter end of the stage, Decentration
begins. This is a change
from a self-oriented view to recognizing the view of
others.
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”
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
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
Classifying Objects, Ideas and People
Children can also classify or divide things into different sets or subsets and consider their interrelationships.
Classification is the process of organizing things into groups according to some
property they have in common
‐ Children that can categorize can analyze
problems, derive correct solutions and ask follow- up questions
Concrete operations allow children to order objects in terms of more than one dimension.
‐ Example: size, shape, volume
Reversibility
The concrete operational child can
operate an action, and then go back to the original condition.
‐ 3 + 2 = 5 and 5 – 2 = 3
Reciprocity is another logical principle in which two things may change in
opposite ways, in order to balance each other out.
‐ 4x6 is the same as 2 x 12
This is relevant to the development of mathematical processes
Formal Operational Stage 12+
In this stage, the individual can think hypothetically, consider future
possibilities, and use deductive logic
‐ Children understand that reality is not the only possibility
‐ Capable of deductive reasoning
Do adolescents think like adults yet?
Teenagers have more skillful selective attention, expanded
memory, and ability to understand and learn more complex topics
The development of hypothetical
thought emerges during this period.
‐ This type of thought involves reasoning about imagined possibilities. Teenagers can ignore the “real” and think about what is possible. This is evidence of abstract thought.
More complex reasoning
During adolescence, teens are more able to
think hypothetically, which allows for deductive reasoning.
Deductive reason is the ability to draw appropriate conclusions from facts.
‐ Ex: “If it’s a duck, it will quack and waddle.”
In other words, from specific proven laws or
rules we can deduce certain truths. This is often displayed in principles of science and math.
Click on the picture to view a video on deductive logic (also available on text DVD)
The return of egocentrism!
We know adolescents can display very
logical thought, but are they characterized by the use of this logic?
NO…most teens who reach formal operational thought have a logic
detachment. They are worried about how others see them, they are constantly
consumed with conflicting feelings.
Analyzing private thoughts and feelings reflect the enhanced capacity for self-
centeredness, which characterizes this period of life.
What would you do?
Suppose that you were given a third eye and that you could
choose to place this eye
anywhere on your body. Where
would you put the extra eye and
why would you put it there?
What does your thinking say about
Concrete Operational Child (9-year-old)
you?
‐ All of these children placed their third eye on the forehead between their two natural eyes
Formal Operational Child (12-year-old)
‐ These children gave a wide variety of answers with imaginative rationales
‐ Some answered palm of the hand or inside the mouth and explained why.
Think and review on your own…
Piaget provided psychology with very important information on child
development. But what were some problems with his theory?
Review and analyze the weaknesses of Piaget’s theory.
Modern Theories of Cognitive Development
The Sociocultural Perspective:
Vygotsky’s Theory
Vygotsky’s Approach
In contrast to Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, Vygotsky believed that
children are the products of their culture.
Children are not boldly exploring alone, but rather are influenced by social interaction Vygotsky saw development as an
apprenticeship in which children advance when they collaborate with others who are more skilled.
Children are shaped by and are shaping their cultural contexts
‐ They are intertwined with other people who are eager to help them gain skills and understanding
Sociocultural theorists believe the social nature of cognitive
development is captured in the concept of
intersubjectivity
A shared, mutual understanding among participants in an activity
Guided Participation
A process in which more knowledgeable individuals organize situations in ways
that allow less knowledgeable individuals to learn
Often occurs in situations in which the explicit purpose is to achieve a practical goal – such as assembling a toy – but in which learning also occurs as by-product of the activity
Vygotsky’s ideas of so influential because they fill in the gaps of Piaget’s
work
Vygotsky three most important contributions are the concepts:
‐Zone of Proximal Development
‐Scaffolding
‐Private Speech
Zone of Proximal Development
The difference between the level of
performance a child can achieve when working independently and the higher level of performance that is possible when working under the guidance of more skilled adults or peers.
Range of tasks too difficult for children to master alone but which can be
learned with the guidance and
assistance of adults or more skilled children
Think of a preschool child who is asked to clean her
bedroom. She doesn’t know where to begin.
Think on your own…
How do you guide her?
Review the video clip from your text DVD!
By structuring the task for the child –
“start by putting away your books, then your toys, then your clothes” – an adult can help the child accomplish what she cannot do by herself.
Just as training wheels help children learn to ride a bike by allowing them to
concentrate on other aspects of bicycling
‐ collaborators help children perform
effectively by providing structure, hints, and reminders
Time
Developmental Gains
Zone of Proximal Development
Potential Development Actual Development
Scaffolding
Scaffolding is giving help but not more than is needed – this promotes learning
Providing instruction that matches the learner’s needs exactly – neither too much nor too little
‐ Early in learning a new task (when the child knows little), the teacher provides a lot of direct instruction
‐ When the child begins to catch on to the task, the teacher provides less instruction and only occasional reminders
A temporary framework that supports children’s thinking at a higher level than children could manage on their own
Vygotsky and Language
Children must use language to communicate with others before
they can focus inward on their own thoughts
Children must communicate
externally and use language for a long period of time before
transitioning from external to internal speech
Private Speech
Speech that is not directed as others but instead guides the child’s own behavior At first, children’s behavior is regulated by speech from other people that is
directed toward them
‐ When children first try to control their own behavior and thoughts, without others
present, they instruct themselves by speaking aloud
As children gain ever-greater skill, private speech becomes inner speech (thoughts)
Example…
A child working on a puzzle says to herself (out loud), “Start with the edges, look for pieces with straight sides.”
Vygotsky Piaget
Sociocultural
context Strong emphasis Little emphasis
Stages No general stages of development proposed
Strong emphasis on stages (sensorimotor, preoperational,
concrete operational, formal operational)
Key processes
Zone of proximal
development, scaffolding, private speech, tools of
the culture
Assimilation, accommodation, circular reactions (primary,
secondary, tertiary),
hypothetical-deductive reasoning
Role of language Major role, language plays important role in shaping
thought
Minimal role, cognition primarily directs language
View of education
Education plays a central role, helping children learn the tools of the
culture
Education merely refines the child’s cognitive skills that
already have emerged
