Cognition
• What is Cognition?
• Why Use Developmental Theories
to Understand Cognition?
• Issues with Stage Theories and what
they suggest
Jean Piaget
• Piaget was trained as a biologist and as
a philosopher
– Piaget’s view of the intellectual development
of the child reflected an interaction between
biology and experience
– Principles of knowledge:
• Seek the organization by which the child
understands the world
• Identify the functional significance of knowledge
(that is, knowledge allows a child to adapt to the
world)
© 1999 John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
Piaget’s Theory
•Why has it lasted?
Observations and descriptions of thinking at
different ages
Breadth
Thought-provoking observations to support the
theory
Nature/Nurture and Continuity/Discontinuity
•Piaget believed:
Children are constructivists
Children are intrinsically motivated to learn
Piaget and Developmental Themes
•Nature/Nurture
Organization
Adaptation
•Continuity
Assimilation
Accommodation
Equilibration
•Discontinuity
Qualitative changes
Broad application
Brief transitions
Invariant sequences
Stages
Sensorimotor
Preoperational
Concrete
operational
Formal
operational
Birth–2 years
2–7 years
7–12 years
12 years
onward
Understands
world
through
senses and
actions
Understands
world
through
language and
mental
images
Understands
world
through
logical
thinking and
categories
Understands
world
through
hypothetical
thinking and
scientific
reasoning
Sensorimotor Stage (Birth–2 years)
•Substage 1 (birth–1 month)
 Modify reflexes
 Centered on own body
•Substage 2 (1–4 months)
 Organize reflexes
 Integrate actions
•Substage 3 (4–8 months)
 Repetition of actions resulting in pleasurable or
interesting results
 Object Permanence
•Substage 4 (8–12 months)
•Begin searching for hidden objects
•Fragile mental representations
•A-Not-B Error
•Substage 5 (12–18 months)
•Active exploration of potential use of objects
•Substage 6 (18–24 months)
•Enduring mental representations
•Deferred Imitation
Infant Knowledge of Gravity
By age 6.5 months,
infants spend
longer time looking
at the impossible
event than the
possible event
(Figure reprinted with permission from “How Do Infants Learn About the
Physical World” from Current Directions in Psychological Science, vol. 3, (1994) p 134.)
Object Permanence
Assessment
Object permanence refers
to the knowledge that
objects exist when out of
sight.
Baillargeon used the
habituation procedure to
assess object
permanence.
Infants habituated to A, but
showed
long looking
times at C
(Figure adapted with permission from “Object Permanence in 3½- and 4 ½-Mo nth-Old Infants” by
R. Baillargeon, 1987, Developmental Psychology, 23, p 656. Copyright ©1987 by APA)
Preoperational Stage ( 2–7 years)
•Development in:
Symbolic Representation
•Weaknesses in:
Egocentrism
The 3 Mountain Task
Taking other people’s perspectives
Centration
Animism
Artificialism
Realism
Assessing Egocentrism:
The Three Mountain Problem
(Figure adapted with permission from The Child’s Conception of Space (p 211) by J. Paiget and B. Inhelder,
1956, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Copyright © 1956 by Routledge and Kegan Paul)
Piaget’s three-mountains task
When asked to choose the picture that shows what the doll sitting in the seat across
the table would see, most children below age 6 choose the picture showing how the
scene looks to them, illustrating their difficulty in separating their own perspective
from that of others.
Egocentrism
An example of young children’s egocentric conversations.
A 4-year-old’s drawing of a summer day
Note the use of simple artistic conventions, such as the V-shaped leaves on the flowers
(Dennis, 1992, p. 234).
Balance scale study by Case (1992)
When asked to predict which side of a balance scale, like the one shown above, would go
down if the arm were allowed to move, 5- and 6-year-olds almost always center their
attention on the amount of weight and ignore the distances of the weights from the
fulcrum. Thus, they would predict that the left side would go down, although the right
side actually would.
Piaget’s train problem
If two trains start and stop at the same time, but one stops farther up the track,
children below age 8 usually say that the train that stopped farther up the track
traveled for more time.
Assessing Conservation
© 1999 John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
Vasta, 3e Fig. 8.7
Concrete Operational Stage (7–12 years)
•Conservation
Phase I
Child sees 2 objects, agrees objects are identical in
number or quantity (dimension of interest)
Phase II
One object is transformed, but the dimension of
interest is not altered
Phase III
The child is asked whether the dimension of interest
is still equal
Formal Operational Stage (12 and onward)
•According to Piaget, this stage is not universal
•Characteristics:
Hypothetical Thinking
Truth, justice, morality
Systematic Reasoning of all possible outcomes
Scientific Method
•Positives
What Piaget Left
 A good overview of children’s thinking at different points
 Appealing perspective
 Broad spectrum of development and ages
 Fascinating observations
•Negatives
 Stage model depicts children’s thinking as being more
consistent than it is
 Infants and young children are more cognitively
competent than Piaget recognized
 Piaget’s theory understates the contribution of the social
world to cognitive development
 Piaget’s theory is vague about the cognitive processes that
give rise to children’s thinking and about the mechanisms
that produce cognitive growth
Information Processing Theories
•Features:
 Processes involved in children’s thinking
 Process occurs over time
 Metaphor of a computational system
 Continuous cognitive change
 Cognitive growth is not abrupt, but step-by-step
 Children are problem solvers
Determine goal obstacles
strategy goal
Planning
Develops over time
There are signs of planning as early as 12 months
Why don’t children plan?
 Want ends before the means, overoptimistic, high failure rate
Analogical Reasoning
The younger the child the more similar/parallel the problem needs
to be to make a connection
Developmental Issues
1. Basic Processes
•Encoding
•Speed of Processing
2. Strategies
•Rehearsal
•Selective Attention
•Utilization Deficiency
3. Content Knowledge
•Scripts
4. Cognitive
Processes
Work
Together
Other Information-Processing Theories
Connectionist Theories/Neural Network Approach
•The simultaneous activity of neurons, interconnected
processing units
•Sequential and parallel processing
Dynamic-System Theories
•How varied aspects of a child function as a single, integrated
whole
•For example, perception, attention, language, memory,
emotions, motor activity
Overlapping-Waves Theories
•Focus on the variability of children’s thinking
The overlapping-waves model
The overlapping waves model proposes that at any one age, children use multiple
strategies; that with age and experience, they rely increasingly on more strategies (the
ones with the higher numbers); and that development involves changes in use of
existing strategies as well as discovery of new approaches.
Core-Knowledge Theories
•Features:
Study areas important throughout human evolution
Children’s reasoning is more advanced than Piaget
believed
Children are active learners
Children are born with many specialized—not only
general—learning abilities
Domain Specific
Children make informal theories (biology,
psychology, physics)
Sociocultural Theories
•Features:
Cognitive development occurs through
interactions between child and other
Occurs within a broad cultural context
Children are teachers and learners
Children are products of their cultures
Change occurs through:
Guided Participation
Intersubjectivity (Joint Attention, Social
Referencing)
Social Scaffolding
Zone of Proximal Development