Week Three
Cognitive Development
“The thoughts of youth
are long, long thoughts.”
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
American Poet, 19th Century
Cognitive Developmental View

Piaget's Theory
 Cognitive
Processes
 Schema:
 A concept or framework that exists in the
individual’s mind to organize and interpret
information
Cognitive Developmental View

Piaget's Theory
 Cognitive
Processes
 Assimilation:
 The incorporation of new information into
existing knowledge
Cognitive Developmental View

Piaget's Theory
 Cognitive
Processes
 Accommodation:
 An adjustment to new information, causing the
schema to change
Cognitive Developmental View

Piaget's Theory
 Cognitive
Processes
 Equilibration:
 When adolescents experience cognitive
conflict, they resolve conflict to reach a
balance
Cognitive Developmental View
Piaget's Four Stages of Cognitive Development
Fig. 4.1
Cognitive Developmental View

Piaget's Theory
 Early
Formal Operational Thought
 Unconstrained
thoughts
 Unlimited possibilities

Late Formal Operational Thought
 Test
reasoning against reality
 Intellectual balance restored
Cognitive Developmental View

Evaluating Piaget's Theory
 Contributions
 Cognitive
development
 Assimilation
 Accommodation
 Conservation
 Hypothetical-deductive reasoning
Cognitive Developmental View

Evaluating Piaget's Theory
 Criticisms
 Some
cognitive abilities emerge earlier than
he thought
 Some concrete operational concepts do not
appear in synchrony
 Culture exerts stronger influence than he
envisioned
Cognitive Developmental View

Cognitive Changes in Adulthood
 Realistic
 Face
and pragmatic thinking
reality, idealism decreases
 Reflective
 Become
and relativistic thinking
aware of diverse opinions and
multiple perspectives
Cognitive Developmental View

Post-formal thought
 Reflective,
relativistic, and contextual
 Provisional
 Realistic
 Open
to emotions and subjective
Cognitive Developmental View
Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development
(ZPD)
Fig. 4.3
Cognitive Developmental View

Vygotsky

Social Constructivist Approach
 Emphasizes the social contexts of learning
and the construction of knowledge through
social interaction
Information-Processing View
Cognitive Resources
 Mechanisms of Change
 Attention and Memory
 Executive Functioning

Information-Processing View
Decision Making
 Reasoning
 Critical Thinking
 Creative Thinking
 Expertise
 Metacognition and Self-Regulatory
Learning

Information-Processing View

Critical Thinking
 Thinking
reflexively and productively
and evaluating the evidence
Information-Processing View

Creativity
 The
ability to think in novel and
unusual ways and come up with
unique solutions to problems
Information-Processing View

Convergent Thinking
A
pattern of thinking in which
individuals produce one correct
answer; characteristic of the items on
conventional intelligence tests
Information-Processing View

Divergent Thinking
A
pattern of thinking in which
individuals produce many answers to
the same question; more
characteristic of creativity than
convergent thinking
Metacognition and SelfRegulatory Learning

Metacognition
 Cognition
about cognition, or “knowing
about knowing”

Self-Regulatory Learning
 Consists
of self-generation and selfmonitoring of thoughts, feelings, and
behaviors to reach a goal
Intelligence Tests

The Binet tests
 Mental
age (MA): an individual’s level of
mental development relative to others
 Intelligent quotient (IQ): a person’s tested
mental age divided by chronological age,
multiplied by 100
Intelligence Tests
The Normal Curve and Stanford-Binet IQ Scores
Fig. 4.10
Intelligence Testing

Intelligence Quotient:
 A method
of quantifying performance on
an intelligence test
Originally:
I.Q. =
Mental Age
Chronological Age
Intelligence Testing
First intelligence test by Binet
 Revised as the Stanford-Binet
 Terman applied new concept of I.Q.

Intelligence Testing

David Wechsler – Wechsler-Bellevue
Intelligence Scale
 WAIS-III
 WISC-III
 WPPSI-III

Wechsler scales now more widely
used
The Use and Misuse of
Intelligence Tests
IQ scores correlate substantially with
school grades
 IQ scores correlate moderately with
work performance
 Many other factors contribute to work
and school performance

Psychometric/Intelligence View

Theories of Multiple Intelligences
 Factor Approaches
 Gardner’s
 Verbal
Theory of Multiple Intelligences
and mathematical skills
 Spatial skills
 Bodily-Kinesthetic skills
 Musical skills
 Interpersonal and intrapersonal skills
 Naturalist skills
Psychometric/Intelligence View

Sternberg’s Thiarchic Theory
 Analytical
 Creative
 Practical
Psychometric/Intelligence View

Emotional Intelligence
 Perceive
and express emotion accurately
and adaptively
 Understand emotion and emotional
knowledge
 Use feelings to facilitate thought and to
manage emotions in oneself and others
Controversies in Intelligence

The influence of heredity and
environment
 Hereditability
is the fraction of the
variance in a population that is attributed
to genetics
 Environment
Group Comparison in
Intelligence

Cross-Cultural Comparisons

Cultural Bias in Testing
 Culture-fair

tests
Ethnic Comparisons
 Stereotype
threat
Social Cognition

Adolescent Egocentrism
 Heightened
self-consciousness of
adolescents, reflected in their belief that
others are as interested in them as they
themselves are, and in their sense of
personal uniqueness
Social Cognition

Personal fable
 The
part of adolescent egocentrism
involving an adolescent’s sense of
uniqueness
Social Cognition

Perspective Taking
 The
ability to assume another person’s
perspective and understand his or her
thoughts and feelings
Taking it to the Net

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