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Piaget and Cognitive Development
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Opener
 Briefly
Summarize Each of These Concepts
 Schema
 Disequilibrium
 Assimilation
 Accommodation
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First - Some Ideas About Learning
 Romantic


Ideology: Predisposed to Knowledge
Plato and older philosophers: The mind exists somewhere
else first
Children are just mini-adults that just haven’t had the same
experiences as adults
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Ideas About Learning
Cultural Transmission
 Aristotle
- Tabula Rasa
- John Locke
 Society and Adults can impress
anything they want onto a child (at any
time too)
 All development from the environment
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Progressive Ideology
 Humans
are go through stages of
intellectual ability - these are genetic
 From
experiencing the world, humans gain
an understanding of it
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Important Concepts of Piaget’s
Stages of Cognitive Development
These
are important to understand for
Piaget’s theory!
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Active Construction
 Cognitive
 Children
 They
ability is not simply taught
must actively explore the world
must actively construct their own
understanding through assimilation and
accommodation
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Qualitative Differences (vs.
Quantity)
 What
do you think this means?
 It
is not a limit on how much a child can
learn!
 It
is the type of understanding; the way that
children are able to understand the world
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Universal
 These
stages are the same for every
child, regardless of their culture
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Invariant Sequence
A
child cannot jump past stages.
The
stages must progress in order
1-3-2-4
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Age Does Not Equal Stage
 Just
because a child is a certain age, it does
not mean that they have reached the
corresponding stage.
 Just
because a child is a certain age, does
not mean they cannot progress to the next
stage.


THE AGES ARE APPROXIMATE AND AVERAGES
(“Typical Children”)
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Stage Mixture
 There
is no solid boundary between stages
 Cognitive
development is a progression,
and some cognitive abilities mix through
each stage
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Object Permanence
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Conservation - Number
 Look
 Is
at each row of Jelly Beans
there more in the top row?
 Is there less in the top row?
 Are they the same amount?
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Conservation - Area

Which cow has more grass to eat?
A
B
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Hypothetical-Deductive Reasoning
 1 Volunteer
Please
 John
is taller than Sam
 Sam
is taller than Anne
 Who
is taller: Anne or John?
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Hypothetical-Deductive Reasoning

RULE: If you hit a glass with a piece of paper, the glass will
break

Mr. Zika hit a glass with a piece of paper:

What happened to the glass?
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Scientific-Inductive Reasoning

Three strings are hung from a bar. String #1 and #3 are of
equal length. String #2 is longer. Charlie attached a 5 unit
weight at the end of sting #2 and #3, and a 10 unit weight to
#1.

Charlie wants to find out if the length of the string has an
effect on the amount of time it takes the string to swing
back and forth.
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Conservation: Liquid
 Which
glass has more water?
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Reversibility
 Which
order will the balls come out in?
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Sensory-Motor Stage
0-2 Years old
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Reflex
0-1 Month
Reflex - Sucking
Reflex - Grasping
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Reflex
0-1 Month
 No
Causality
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First Differentiations
1-4 Months
 Differentiation
of Objects
Baby will reject object if it’s not what they want
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First Differentiations
1-4 Months

No Special Behavior Regarding Vanishing Objects

Change in Perspective Seen as Change in Objects

No Connection Between Movement of Self and Objects
(Intentionality)
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Reproduction
4-8 Months
 Reproduction
 Anticipates
of Interesting Events (Assimilation)
Positions of Moving Objects
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Coordination of Schemata
8-12 Months
 Application
of Known Means to New Problems (Means
to Ends)
 Object
Permanence
Before
After
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Coordination of Schemata
8-12 Months
 Consistency
of Objects
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Invention of New Means
12-18 Months

Children Experiment: Create New Schema (Accommodate)
for Unique Problems
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Invention of New Means
12-18 Months
 Sequential
 But
Displacements
Still Can’t Imagine
 Invisible
Displacements
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Representation
18-24 Months
 Representation
of Spatial Relationships…
But Recent Studies Show Errors of Scale
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Representation
18-24 Months

Invention of New Means Via Internal Combinations (Mental
Images)

Children Begin to Think About Solutions to Problems
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Representation
18-24 Months
 Invention
Of New Means Via Internal Combinations
(Mental Images)
 Children
Begin to Think About Solutions to
Problems
Pretend Play
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•
•
•
•
Sensory-Motor Stage
0-2 Years old
Reflex activities to purposeful motor activity
Understanding of objects and spacial relationships
From a new being to beginnings of language
Pretend play emerges in the next stage
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Pre-Operational Stage (Pre-Logical)
2-7 Years Old
 Language
Explosion: Children begin to use words
to represent objects
 Thinking
is still relatively limited; It is dominated
by:





Egocentrism
Centration: Judgment Based upon Perception
Lack of Transformation Reasoning
Lack of Reversibility
All Lead to lack of Conservation
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Pre-Operational 2-7 Years Old
“Egocentrism”
“Is your mom home?”
Nods head ‘yes’
Unable to understand that other people have different points of view
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Pre-Operational 2-7 Years Old
“Centration”
Children focus on the perceptual;
center on what is seen, not evaluating process
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Pre-Operational 2-7 Years Old
“Centration”
Children focus on the perceptual;
center on what is seen, not evaluating process
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Pre-Operational 2-7 Years Old
“Transformational Reasoning”
Focus on the original state and the final state,
but not the process of transformation
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Pre-Operational 2-7 Years Old
“Reversibility”
Inability to follow a line of reasoning back to the beginning;
cannot mentally reverse actions
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Pre-Operational 2-7 Years Old
“Reversibility”
Inability to follow a line of reasoning back to the beginning;
cannot mentally reverse actions
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Pre-Operational 2-7 Years Old
“Reversibility”
WHY??? - Most of life (experience) in the sensorimotor stage and beyond involve
few examples or patterns that can be perceived as reversible
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Pre-Operational 2-7 Years Old
“Conservation”
 Centration, Lack
of Transformational Reasoning,
and Lack of Reversibility = Lack of Conservation
Centration
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Pre-Operational 2-7 Years Old
“Conservation”
 Centration, Lack
of Transformational Reasoning,
and Lack of Reversibility = Lack of Conservation
Mass - 4
Mass - 6
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Pre-Operational 2-7 Years Old
“Conservation”
 Centration, Lack
of Transformational Reasoning,
and Lack of Reversibility = Lack of Conservation
Liquid - 5
Liquid - 9
Liquid - 10
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Piaget and Conservation
 Piaget
suggested that each of the conservation
skills built on each other
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Concrete Operational Stage
7-11 Years Old
 REMEMBER: Progress
between stages is
continuous; there are no abrupt changes!
 “Concrete”: (real, observable)
 Logical
Operations
 Seriation
 Classification
 Theory
of Mind and Social Interactions (“one
among many”)
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Concrete Operational 7-11 Years Old
“Logical Operations”
 Can
use logic to develop understanding of
all of the conservation tests
 Concrete
 Still
- Real - Tangible - Physical
struggle with verbal or hypothetical
problems
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Concrete Operational 7-11 Years Old
“Logical Operations”
 Can
use logic to develop understanding of
all of the conservation tests
 Concrete
 Still
- Real - Tangible - Physical
struggle with verbal or hypothetical
problems
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Concrete Operational 7-11 Years Old
“Seriation”
The ability to mentally arrange a set of elements accurately
along a dimension such as size, weight, and volume
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Concrete Operational 7-11 Years Old
“Classification”
Braden's classification error
The ability to form collections of things beyond a single variable;
Understanding of relationships between classes and sub-classes
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Concrete Operational 7-11 Years Old
“Classification”
Wooden Beads
Brown Beads
White Beads
The ability to form collections of things beyond a single variable;
Understanding of relationships between classes and sub-classes
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Concrete Operational 7-11 Years Old
“Classification”
White-throated Robin
• Robin
• Bird
• Mammal
• Animal
• American Species
• Insectivorous
The ability to form collections of things beyond a single variable;
Understanding of relationships between classes and sub-classes
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Concrete Operational 7-11 Years Old
“Theory of Mind”
The ability to take on the views of others:
This allows truly social interactions;
cooperation, sympathy and empathy
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Concrete Operational 7-11 Years Old
“Theory of Mind”
The ability to take on the views of others:
This allows truly social interactions;
cooperation, sympathy and empathy
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Concrete Operational 7-11 Years Old
“Theory of Mind”
Oops
Broken Lamp
NOT Oops
Application to rules: intentionality and justice
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Formal Operational Stage
11+ Years Old

Adolescents begin using abstract logical thought

Quality of thinking changes; becomes like adult thinking
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New form of egocentrism: Ideals vs. Reality

*Some adults do not fully enter or exercise formal operations
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Formal Operational Stage - 11+
“Deductive Reasoning”
 Ability
to apply general concepts to
specific situations
 (Still
allows room for disequilibrium!)
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Formal Operational Stage - 11+
“Deductive Reasoning”
Still allows room for disequilibrium!
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Formal Operational Stage - 11+
“Hypothetical-Deductive Reasoning”

Ability to apply HYPOTHETICAL general concepts to specific
situations

Ability to reason about a ‘false premise’ and still come to a
logical conclusion
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Formal Operational Stage - 11+
“Inductive Reasoning”
 Ability
to reason about specific facts and come to a
general conclusion (Scientific laws)
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Formal Operational Stage - 11+
“Inductive Reasoning”
 Ability
to reason about specific facts and come to a
general conclusion (Scientific laws)
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Formal Operational Stage - 11+
“Inductive Reasoning”

Ability to reason about specific facts and come to a
general conclusion (Scientific laws)
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Darwin’s Finches:
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All Finches +

Different Traits +

Different Islands +

= Common Ancestor

= Natural Selection
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Formal Operational Stage - 11+
“Combinatorial Reasoning”
 Ability
to reason about a number of variables at
one time
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Not something a concrete operational child can do reliably
EX: The myriad factors that lead to poor educational results for
some groups of children and not others, and how the process
perpetuates itself!
ACCESS TO SUPPLIES
SINGLE-PARENT
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Formal Operational Stage - 11+
“Reflective Abstraction”
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Internal thought or reflection based upon available
knowledge

Ability to construct new knowledge from internal reflection
and abstract thinking alone!!!
Mr. Zika’s Example
Darwin’s Finches
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Formal Operational Stage - 11+
“Egocentrism”
 New-found
logical abilities
 In
the mind of adolescents: if it is logical to them,
then it is always right
 If
it is illogical to them, then it is always wrong
 The
world is not always logically or rationally
ordered!
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Critiques of Piaget’s Theories
 Small
Sample Size (his children & eventually about
1500 total)
 He
may have underestimated ages of advancement
 Some
of the tasks he tested can be performed
successfully with some instruction
 BUT…
 Still
consistent
 Left
us with an understanding that children do
think differently
 Still
used by teachers, parents, and childcare
workers
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Review:
6 Important Concepts
 Active
Construction
 Qualitative
Differences
 Universal
 Invariant
 Age
Sequence
Does Not Equal Stage
 Stage
Mixture
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Piaget’s 4 Stages
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Lev Vygotsky
 About
same time as Piaget - Died at 38
 Addressed
the the social aspect of learning
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Vygotsky
 Piaget
and Active Construction through
Exploration VS.
 Vygotsky
says ok, but we would not go far
with that alone
 We
need guidance; knowledge from
generations before
 Can
these be reconciled, or incompatible?
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Vygotsky
Culture
does play a role
Language
Numerical
Systems
Writing
Scientific
Concepts
Values of types of thinking
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Vygotsky and Language
Language
 Piaget
Private
as source of thought
- language as byproduct of thought
Speech and Inner Speech
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Zone of Proximal Development
ZPD
I cannot do it, even with help
I can do it, with help
(Scaffolding)
ZPD
I can do it on my
own!
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Scaffolding
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Are Piaget and Vygotsky
Compatible?
 Effects
of parents, peers, and teachers…