Three theoretical traditions
HD FS 631:
Learning & Cognitive
Development in Children
• Rationalist EuropeanPiaget
• Empiricist British Skinner
• Sociohistoric Russian Vygotsky
Case, 1998
September 23, 2002
Piaget & Neo-Piagetian Theories
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Cognitive Theories:
A Dialectic?
Theories are
Not right or wrong!
Useful or not useful in
• Describing behavior
• Explaining behavior
• Predicting behavior
Therefore, theories are useful or not useful
in generating research
• that leads to greater understanding
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Thesis (Skinner)
Elicits
Antithesis (Piaget)
Results in
Synthesis (??)
OR
Antithesis (Piaget) becomes Thesis
Elicits
Antithesis (Vygotsky)
Elicits
Synthesis (Social Constructivism?)
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Role of activity:
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1. How does Piaget’s theory account for
developmental change?
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Child actively constructs knowledge
Scientific problem solver
Means for cognitive development
Extrinsic reinforcement unnecessary
Action itself is reinforcing
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Can development be
accelerated? (Piaget)
Premature training?
• Forgotten
• Not generalized or transferred
• Dropped with contradictory evidence
(Smedslund)
• Only at advanced level of a given
stage--when child ready for
disequilibrium
• Role of teacher?
• “Genuine optimism (in educational
psychology) would consist of
believing in the child’s capacities
for invention.”
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Piaget’s view of teaching (1970)
“Each time one prematurely teaches a child
something he could have discovered for
himself,
that child is kept from inventing it and,
consequently, from understanding it
completely
This obviously does not mean the teacher
should not devise experimental situations to
facilitate the pupil’s invention.”
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Reconstruction with new
combinations
Role of teacher? (1974, p. 292)
• To transcend current level of
development,
child must be aware of a contradiction.
• Awareness of contradiction much easier
when it appears between a prediction and
some new external datum that rebuts
prediction.
• Consciousness of a contradiction between
schemas is not produced until the level at
which the subject becomes capable of
transcending it.
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Reflective Abstraction
• More than Aristotelian abstraction,
which separates and retains one quality
(e.g,. shape) from the physical
environment
• Biology & Knowledge, p. 320
• Operational structure at previous stage
integrated into structure at higher level
• Logico-mathematical construction is
neither invention nor discovery
• Proceeds by reflective abstractions
– Construction
– Productive of new combinations
– Achieves a synthesis that outstrips the
original structures and enriches them.
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Criteria
Reflective abstraction
• Recognize existence of one action or
operation previously made by subject itself
• Action has to be reflected
(in the physical sense of the term)
by being projected onto another plane
• e.g., abstract systematization as opposed
to concrete thought
• e.g., algebra instead of arithmetic
Concrete level
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Reflective abstraction
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Reflective abstraction
2x + x
2+1
More abstract level
2+1
Most abstract level
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Prior structure integrated into
new structure
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Four explanations for
development:
Two conditions:
• New structure must be a reconstruction of
the preceding one
• Must widen scope of the preceding,
making it general by combining it with
elements proper to new place
• Therefore, involves both
physical and psychological reflection,
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Maturation
Experience of physical environment
Experience of social environment
Equilibration
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Assimilation: relates experience to
current structures
Disequilibrium:
• Makes a prediction
• Notices contradictory results
Strike & Posner:
• Dissatisfaction
• Plausible
• Useful
Functional assimilation:
• uses any mental structure that is available:
• reason for engaging is to exercise
• Generalizing assimilation: assimilates all
Accommodation:
• Adapts current structures to fit incoming
experiences
• Extreme: imitation
Equilibration: motivating force
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Alternative explanations to equilibration
Current thinking on
disequilibrium
Chi
• Categories are organized within trees of related
concepts
Cognitive conflict inadequate as
mechanism for change: (Chi; Kuhn; see
Strauss)
• Conflict doesn’t explain why more
accurate view wins out
• Misconceptions are highly resistant to
change & schooling
• Choosing among understandings
doesn’t include rational basis for choice
• Changing a misconception requires moving the
concept to a different tree
– New tree must be taught and learned (through
discrimination, generalization, etc.)
– Child abandons original meaning
– Child adds new meaning
– Child replaces concept on new tree, which “fits better”
Siegler
• Variability in responses
• Novelty preference
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• Efficiency preference
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Siegler’s strategy
choice model
Strategy 2
Strategy 5
Strategy 3
2. What specific aspects of Piaget’s
theory have been revised by neoPiagetians ?
Use
Strategy 1
Strategy 4
Age
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New approaches offer
new answers to:
Focus of Neo-Piagetians
• What changes in cognitive development?
• What causes changes in cognitive
development?
• How does one explain individual
differences in cognitive development?
Incorporate Piagetian sine qua nons:
• Stages (with some modification)
• Domain general mechanisms
• Constructivism: the child, in active interaction
with his/her environment, constructs reality
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Fischer’s Skill Theory
• Addresses individual differences
(heterogeneity of cognitive function)
• Blends Piaget, Skinner, & Vygotsky
• Skills develop (not schemes!)
3. Compare/contrast Fischer’s skill theory
and Case’s neo-Piagetian theory
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Invariant developmental
progression of skills
Skills are sets of actions
• Both physical and mental actions
• Skills: jointly defined by organism and
environment
• Heterogeneous environments produce
heterogeneous skills
• Some skills more advanced developmentally
than others!
• Most environments are heterogeneous
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• By organism and environment
• Optimal level: the maximum level of
complexity of a skill the individual can
control
– The child’s best performance
• Optimal level only for skills practices in the
most supportive environments
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Skill Development Sequence
Three tiers
• Three tiers
• Four hierarchical levels in each tier
• Fourth level in one tier = first level in next
tier
• Ten hierarchical levels
• Sensorimotor (Birth - 2)
• Representational (2 - 12)
• Abstract (12 - adult)
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Fischer’s Four-Level Cycles
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Comparisons
(Bjorklund, p. 105)
Levels
1
Single set
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Mapping
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System
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System of systems
= single set
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• Stages reminiscent of Piaget
• Optimal level reminiscent of Information
Processing
Skills vs schemes
• Structures for knowing world
• Well-integrated
• Characterized by type of variations child can
control (s -m, rep, abstract)
• Skills never at same level of dev’t
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Case:
Processing Efficiency
Case’s Theory
• Most influential neo-Piagetian
• Integrates Piaget and Information
Processing
• Domain general changes in processing
capacity
• Children become increasingly efficient in
processing ability
• Effectively increases capacity of working
memory
• Replaces Piaget’s equilibration,
assimilation, and accommodation
• Through practice and maturation, children
become faster and more efficient at
processing information
• Children can then execute increasing
number of mental processes
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Developmental Stages
Sensorimotor (0 - 18 mos.)
Stages build on one another (epigenesis)
Development heterogeneous:
• Both inter-individual
• And intra-individual
– Physical movements of objects
• Interrelational (18 mos. - 5 years)
– Coordinate relations among objects, events, and
people
• Dimensional (5 - 11 years)
– Comparison of two dimensions
• Vectorial or Abstract Dimensional
– Abstract systems
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Executive Control Structures
Represent
• problem situation
• objectives of task
• strategy or procedures for solving
Developmental differences
• How situation represented
• How many options considered and
coordinated at one time
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With increasing age,
• Child represents greater number of
– problem situations
– objects
– strategies
• Enabling child to solve more complex
problems
• Due to increase in working memory or
processing efficiency
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Optimal level of cognitive
competence
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Central Conceptual Structure
• Limits executive control structures
• Influenced by maturation
• More homogeneity of cognitive function
than other theorists
• Some domain specificity exists
• More similarity in complex general
conceptual representations
• Network of semantic nodes and relations
• Plays a central role in mediating children’s
performance
• Across a broad range of tasks
• Plays a central role in development
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Case: Comparisons
• Development occurs gradually
• Later structures develop from earlier
structures
• Through child’s interaction with
environment
• Constructivist theorist
4. What’s the evidence supporting
Karmiloff-Smith’s neo-Piagetian theory?
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Karmiloff-Smith’s
Neo-Piagetian/Neo-Nativist Theory
• Neo-nativist or structural-constraint theory
• Complicated cognitions once thought to
develop gradually
• Actually found in very young infants
• Examples: Carey, Baillargeon, Spelke
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Neo-nativists
• Knowledge of objects (object permanence,
language, space)
• Innate; constrains child’s flexibility
• Requires only proper environmental stimuli to
be demonstrated
• Modular, domain specific knowledge
• Mind/brain designed: process certain types of
information in certain ways
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Constructed schemes?
Innate abilities?
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Karmiloff-Smith:
Nativism & Constructivism?
• Piaget: Object permanence,imitation
– develop gradually
– constructed by child
• Now: innate; await only requisite
motor/sensory skills!
• Young infants show sophisticated levels of
object permanence and imitation when tasks
modified to minimize motor demands
• Baillargeon, Spelke, Meltzoff
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• Not incompatible!
• Nativism may describe initial state of
human cognitive development
• Nativism does not preclude constructivist
approach to subsequent development
• Constructivism does not require domaingeneral, or stages!
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Three ways that knowledge gets
into brain
Representational redescription
• Innately specified
• Gained through interaction with
environment
• Representationally redescribed
• Mind re-represents own representation
– Making representations of representations
• Special purpose knowledge: modular;
– activated: specific environmental stimuli
– inaccessible to parts of cognitive system
– similar to complex, procedural knowledge in other
species
– Analogous to Piaget’s reflective abstraction
– Introspective process
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Knowledge at implicit level
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Three levels of explication
• Modular-like,
• Reflects efficient, innate procedures
• Unavailable to consciousness
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• E1
– Redescribed & available to other cognitive
systems; not yet conscious
– E.g., initial language
• E2
– Conscious knowledge, not verbalized
– No research here
• E3
– Verbalized; can be shared with others
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Critique: Neo-Piagetian
Why still teach Piaget?
Comparison with Piaget
• Stages more domain specific
• Retains process of development
assumptions:
• Each neo-Piagetian theory deals with
troublesome parts of Piaget
– Each incorporates newer research
– Constructivism
– Intrinsic activity
– Levels of representation
• Difficulties
– Limited description of critical role of environment
– Difficult task-and-skill analyses
• Recognizes significance of innate
knowledge
• Is development domain specific?
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