Chapter 7
Cognitive Development: Piaget’s Theory and Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Viewpoint
Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development
Jean Piaget (1896-1980) Swiss psychologist who became leading theorist in 1930’s
Primary method was to ask children to solve problems and to question them about the
reasoning behind their solutions
Discovered that children think in radically different ways than adults
Proposed that development occurs as a series of ‘stages’ differing in how the world is
understood
 Intelligence is viewed as a basic life function that helps in adapting to the
environment.
 Intelligence is a form of equilibrium, and the process of achieving it is called
equilibration.
 Children must construct knowledge.
 Cognitive schemes: The structure of intelligence
 Behavioral (or sensorimotor) schemes: Organized patterns of behavior that are used
to represent and respond to an object or experience
 Symbolic schemes: Experiences represented mentally
 Operational schemes: Internal mental activity performed to reach a logical
conclusion
Piaget believed that “children are active thinkers, constantly trying to construct more
advanced understandings of the world”
These “understandings” are in the form of structures he called schemas
Schemas are frameworks that develop to help organize knowledge
How We Gain Knowledge: Piaget's Cognitive Processes
 Organization is the process where existing schemes are combined into new and more
complex intellectual structures.
 Adaptation is the process of adjusting to the demands of the environment.
 Assimilation: The process of attempting to fit new experiences to existing schemes
 Accommodation: The process of modifying existing structures in order to account
for new experiences
Assimilation: a basic process that involves responding or interpreting new experiences in
terms of existing schemes--in terms of what the child already knows.
Example: an infant may respond to a washcloth using two existing schemes, grasping and
sucking. The infant grabs the washcloth, (an act of assimilation to the grasping scheme)
stuffs a corner of it in his mouth, and sucks on it, (an act of assimilation to the sucking
scheme).
In each case the infant has used an existing response and incorporated the washcloth into
his existing notion of scheme of graspable, suckable objects.
Accommodation: a process that involves modifying existing schemes in light of new
experiences. washcloth example-- the infant used an existing scheme in the process of
grasping the washcloth. However, because of the unique properties of the washcloth, the
response itself had to be modified (accommodated) and the child's scheme of graspable
objects modified (accommodated) to include washcloths.
Every adaptive act involves the complementary processes of assimilation and
accommodation. questionable whether sucking on washcloths is particularly adaptive they are sometimes soapy, etc. - accommodation in this case may involve the exclusion of
washcloths from the sucking scheme and creation of a new scheme of "things with which
to wash the face and body" (but not floors, cars, etc. unless they have become relegated to
the category of rags).
The Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to 2 Years):
Coordinating Sensory Inputs and Motor Capabilities
Information is gained through the senses and motor actions
In this stage child perceives and manipulates but does not reason
Symbols become internalized through language development
Object permanence is acquired
Development of problem-solving skills
 Reflex activity (First month of life): Infant's actions are based on reflexes
 Primary circular reactions (1 to 4 months): First nonreflexive schemes are simple
repetitive acts centered on their own bodies.
 Secondary circular reactions (4 to 8 months): Interest in external objects
 Coordination of secondary schemes (8 to 12 months): Coordination of two or more
actions to achieve simple objectives
 Tertiary circular reactions (12 to 18 months): Active curiosity and motivation to
learn about the way things work
 Symbolic problem solving (18 to 24 months): Behavioral schemes are internalized;
mental symbols are constructed which can be used to guide future behaviors.
 Development of deferred imitation begins at 18 to 24 months.
 Object permanence: Objects continue to exist when they are no longer visible or
detectable through the other senses
What is common to all three major acquisitions that mark the end of the sensorimotor
period: object permanence, deferred imitation, and inner problem solving.
Object permanence: the achievement of coming to behave as if objects and people have a
continued existence even when they are not in sight or in hand. Although recent research
indicates that the search behaviors Piaget required as evidence of understanding of an
object's permanence led to underestimation of actual understanding of object
permanence, evidence does indicate that it is not until 18-24 months that children show
that they can mentally represent invisible displacement of objects and inhibit the impulse
to search for hidden objects at locations they know are incorrect.
Deferred imitation refers to the ability to reproduce behavior observed in another - in the
absence of the model. Deferred imitation requires the use of a stored memory of the
modeled behavior to guide/mediate recreation of the modeled sequence. Although recent
research suggests that infants show some evidence of deferred imitation before the latter
half of the second year, few can reenact complex behavioral sequences until 18-24
months.
Inner problem solving refers to the ability to arrive at a solution to a problem mentally
without having to resort to overt trial-and-error activities. Both deferred imitation and
inner problem solving represent remarkable advances over the exercising and
accommodation of inborn reflexes of the newborn, allowing for rapid expansion of the
behavior repertoire.
Common to all three acquisitions is the utilization of internal images, language, or other
means of symbolic representation to guide or mediate behavior
Challenges to Piaget's Account of Sensorimotor Development: Neo-Nativism and
"Theory" Theories
 Neo-nativism
 Infants are born with substantial knowledge about the nature of the physical world.
 Knowledge does not have to be constructed.
 Infants are also symbolic beings.
 “Theory” theories
 Infants are prepared from birth to make sense of certain classes of information.
 Such innate knowledge is incomplete and requires substantial experience for
infants to construct reality.
 Infants devise ideas or "theories" about how the world works and then test and
modify their theories.
The Preconceptual Period (2 to 4 Years of Age) of the Preoperational Stage
 Emergence of symbolic thought and play
 Representational insight is in place by 2.5 years.
 Dual representation (ability to think about an object in two different ways at the same
time) is in place by 3 years of age.
 Preconceptual reasoning is primitive by adult standards.
Centration
Egocentrism
Lack the concept of conservation
Animism/ Artificialism
 Children display animism (a willingness to attribute life and life-like qualities to
inanimate objects)
 Children display egocentrism (a tendency to view the world from one's own
perspective and to have difficulty recognizing another person's point of view)
 Children not yet proficient at dual encoding
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The Intuitive Period (4 to 7 Years of Age)
Intuitive thought is an extension of preconceptual thought.
Children now somewhat less egocentric
Children now more proficient at classifying objects on the basis of shared perceptual
attributes
Children still incapable of conservation
Did Piaget Underestimate the Preoperational Child?
 New evidence on egocentrism shows that children are less egocentric when provided
with less complicated visual displays.
 Another look at children’s causal reasoning shows that 3-year-olds do not routinely
attribute life or lifelike qualities to inanimate objects.
 Preoperational children can conserve with training.
The Concrete-Operational Stage (7 to 11 Years)
Understanding of mental operations leading to increasingly logical thought
Classification and categorization
Less egocentric
Inability to reason abstractly or hypothetically
Hypothetico-deductive reasoning
Adolescent egocentrism illustrated by the phenomenon of personal fable and imaginary
audience
 Some examples of concrete-operational thought
 Conservation by decentering and using reversibility
 Relational logic using mental seriation (the ability to mentally arrange items along
a quantifiable dimension such as height or weight) and transitivity (the necessary
relations among elements in a series)
 The sequencing of concrete operations
 Horizontal decalage: Some forms of conservation are understood much sooner than
others.
The Formal-Operational Stage (11 to 12 Years and Beyond)
 Hypothetico-deductive reasoning
 Thinking like a scientist
 Personal and social implications of formal thought
 Paves the way for thinking about what is possible in one's life
 Questioning begins about everything from parental authority to government
spending
 Formal operational thought is reached very slowly, if at all.
An Evaluation of Piaget's Theory
 Piaget's contributions
 Founded the field of cognitive development
 Convinced us that children are curious, active explorers of their environment
 First to try to explain and not just describe the process of development
 Challenges to Piaget
 Piaget failed to distinguish competence from performance.
 Still a hotly debated topic: Does cognitive development really occur in stages?
 Does Piaget "explain" cognitive development? His explanations raise more
questions than they answer.
 Piaget devoted too little attention to social and cultural influences.
Lev Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory
 Cognitive activities reflect cultural context
 Culture provides tools for adaptation
Development is socially-mediated
The Role of Culture in Intellectual Development
 Vygotsky's four interrelated levels of analysis
 Microgenetic: Refers to changes that occur over relatively brief periods
of time
 Ontogenetic: Development of an individual over his or her lifetime
 Phylogenetic: Changes over evolutionary time
 Sociohistorical: Changes that have occurred in one's culture, and the
values, norms, and technologies generated throughout history
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Infants are born with the following tools of intellectual adaptation
 Attention
 Sensation
 Perception
 Memory
The Social Origins of Early Cognitive Competencies and the Zone of
Proximal Development
Culture and societies influence cognitive development
Cognition proceeds because of social interactions where partners
jointly work to solve problems. Learning occurs within the context of
cooperative, or collaborative, dialogues between a skillful tutor and a novice
pupil.
This partnership is determined by cultural and societal factors
Emphasized the child’s interaction with the social world (other people) as a
cause of development
Cognitive abilities increase when information provided within: The Zone
of Proximal Development (ZPD) The difference between what a learner
can accomplish independently and what he or she can accomplish with the
guidance and encouragement of a more skilled partner
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 peers.
This concept underscores Vygotsky’s emphasis on the importance of
social influences on children’s cognitive development.
Scaffolding means changing the level of support. "Scaffolding" is the
tendency of more expert participants to carefully tailor the support they
provide to the novice learner's current situation.
Over the course of a teaching session, more skilled person (teacher or more
advanced peer) adjusts the amount of guidance to fit the student’s current
performance level.
Dialogue is an important part of scaffolding in the zone of proximal
development. Through interaction, children’s concepts become more
systemic, logical and rational.
Apprenticeship in thinking and guided participation
Children's cognitions are shaped as they take part, alongside adults or
other more skillful associates, in everyday culturally relevant
experiences.
Our culture encourages context-independent learning (learning and
discussing things that have no immediate relevance).
The Role of Language in Cognitive Development
Vygotsky believed language to be the foundation for social interaction and
thought
Piaget believed language was a byproduct of thought
Piaget's theory of language and thought
 Egocentric, self-directed speech merely reflects the child's ongoing
mental activity and does not play a role in a child's cognitive
development.
Piaget - focused on children’s interaction with the physical world
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Vygotsky's theory of language and thought
 Nonsocial utterances illustrate the transition from prelinguistic to
verbal reasoning.
 Self-directed monologues occur more during problem solving.
 Private speech helps young children plan strategies and regulate their
behavior.
Language is necessary for thought
Critical thinking based on dialogue with others who challenge ideas
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Language and Thought
Language allows children to have social communication, and to plan,
guide, and monitor their behavior in a self-regulatory fashion.
Language used for self-regulation is called inner speech or private
speech.
Vygotsky thought private speech was an important tool for cognitive
development, whereas Piaget thought it was egocentric and immature.
Researchers have found support for the positive role of private speech in
children’s development.
Evaluating and Comparing Vygotsky’s and Piaget’s Theories
 Vygotsky’s theory has played an important role in evaluating contextual
factors in learning.
 Some critics say Vygotsky overemphasized the role of language in
thinking.
 Vygotsky’s theory is considered to be a social constructivist approach
because it emphasizes the social contexts of learning and that knowledge
is mutually built and constructed.
 Piaget’s theory did not emphasize the social aspect of knowledge
construction.
 There is a conceptual shift from Piaget to Vygotsky that involves a shift
from the individual to collaboration, social interaction, and sociocultural
activity.
Implications for Education
Teaching Strategies Based on Vygotsky’s Theory
 Use the child’s zone of proximal development in teaching.
 Use scaffolding.
 Use more skilled peers as teachers.
 Monitor and encourage children’s use of private speech.
 Assess the child’s zone of proximal development, not IQ.
 Transform the classroom with Vygotskian ideas.
 Active learning in the classroom
 Cooperative learning exercises