Cognitive development
How children’s thinking
changes as they grow older.
Schemas
When a piece of
information is acquired,
it gets added and
stored (assimilation &
accommodation)
Is that a real
person?
No and it’s not
made from
chocolate either
Piaget’s Theory!!
• The child’s cognitive development is…..
Child goes through a set of
stages in development in a
FIXED ORDER!!!
Same for all children
everywhere!!
“Children are scientists” – children are actively interacting with the
environment, discovering and making sense of the world from birth.
There are 4 stages to my
cognitive development theory.
What are they?
The Sensori Motor Stage!!! (0-2)
BODY SCHEMAS – the
baby realises that it exists
and starts to be able to
recognise itself in the
mirror or in a photo
MOTOR COORDINATION –
infant learns to coordinate its
movements a bit, e.g. hand to
mouth for food
OBJECT PERMANANCE –
begins to know that an objects
still exists even when they can’t
see it, after 8 months they will
begin to look for hidden objects.
Pre Operational Stage (2-7)
ANIMISM – Children treat objects as
though they are alive!!!
REVERSIBILTY – can’t work
backwards, e.g. Ben Do you have a
sister? Yes – Frogmella. Does
Frogmella have a sister? Nope.
EGOCENTRISM – can’t see
someone else’s point of view. Three
mountains experiment.
Decentering – when egocentrism
stops and also means that a child http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OinqFgsIbh0
can recognise that an object has Watch the three mountains
more than one feature, e.g. big and
yellow.
Concrete operational stage (7-11)
Linguistic Humour – double meanings. A horse
walks into a bar, Barman says ‘why the long
face?’
Seriation – Ability to put things in rank order
Small – large, young to old
Conservation – don’t know that quantity stays
the same when you rearrange objects
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLj0IZFLKvg
The formal operational stage (11+)
Ability to solve
sophisticated
problems, reasoning
skills.
Too fixed
and rigid.
Children
reach
different
parts of
different
stages and
can go back
and forth!!!
NO how and why!!!!!
50% of adults
make to it the
formal
operational!!
Underestimate effect
of support
Ignored
different
types of
thinking
Cultural differences, thinking
doesn’t develop in same way
everywhere
Vygotsky!!
•
•
•
•
•
Innate by influenced by UPBRINGING
Cultural tools
Apprentice
Zone of Proximal development
Scaffolding
Cognitive bingo
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Piaget Vygotsky ZPD apprentice
Scientist
cultural tools scaffolding
Conservation
egocentrism
Linguistic humour seriation
animism
Preoperational
concrete operational
Formal operational
sensori motor
Invariant
universal
Core study: Conservation of
Number (1952)
Cross sectional study – compared children of different ages.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLj0IZFLKvg
Watch this video from 30seconds. The counter task only – this is the procedure
FINDINGS - Pre operational stage (2-7)children fail the task and
say there are more counters. Children in concrete operational
stage (7-11)pass the test and know that the counters are the same
just stretched out.
Limitations of Conservation Study
• Stupid question!!!
• Naughty teddy – 60%
• Sample size!!
Applications to real life!
Piaget
1. Readiness
2. Discovery
learning (teacher
is a facilitator)
3. Peer support
(helps
decentring)
Vygotsky
1. Role of teacher
(ZPD)
2. Spiral curriculum
3. Scaffolding