What do children’s drawings tell us
about child development?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=fJlUZhpwmlE
Drawing develops through distinct stages
(Luquet, 1913;1927; Piaget & Inhelder 1956;1971)
1.) Scribbling (ages 2-4)- fortuitous realism
2.) Preschematic stage (ages 4-7)
Failed realism –
elements are unrelated/unconnected
Intellectual realism –
Children draw what they “know”
3.) Schematic stage (ages 8-9)
Visual realism –
children draw what they “see”
Visual & Intellectual realism
(Freeman & Janikoun, 1972)
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Intellectual realism- draw
what you know rather than
what you see
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Visual realism-draw what
you see in a very realistic
way
Cognitive development

Cognitive Psychology: The study of how we gain,
organise, remember and use information.
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Cognitive Development: How and when we develop
these mental abilities and changes which occur in
them throughout the lifespan.
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Much of what psychologists know about cognitive
development comes from observing behaviours –
therefore inferences can be made.
Jean Piaget

Piaget is responsible for developing entirely new
fields of scientific study, including cognitive
theory and developmental psychology. The
recipient of two prestigious prizes, he summed
up his passion for the ongoing pursuit of scientific
knowledge with these words: "The current state
of knowledge is a moment in history, changing
just as rapidly as the state of knowledge in the
past has ever changed and, in many instances,
more rapidly."
Jean Piaget
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1. He taught at a all boy school.
2. He was the oldest kid in his family.
3. He wrote his first published scientific paper at the age of 10.
4. He went to the University of Zurich.
5. He moved to Paris.
6. He started to study kids while he was working as a teacher.
7. He married Valentine Chatenay.
8. He had 3 children.
9. He went back to University of Zurich to be a professor.
10. His most famous book was The Language and Thought of
the Child.
Jean Piaget

Famous theory of Cognitive Development
(1920s)
 Many current views in Psychology are based
upon Piaget’s theories.
 The development of mental abilities occurs as
we adapt to the changing world around us.
 Adaptation involves taking in, processing,
organising and using new information in ways
which enable us to adjust to changes in the
environment.
Piaget’s theory of child development
Piagetian
Role of genes
No
Role of
environment
No
Role of child
Very important
Development
is…..
Domaingeneral
Schemas

Schemata are a mental idea about what
something is and how to deal with it.
 We form schemata through experience – we
have schemas for how to interact with people,
how to do things, what to expect from a given
moment. It can also aid our memory.
 Schemata help us take pieces of information
and slot them into what we already know. This
limits our confusion and helps us to deal with
new information easier than if we had to reprocess continually.
 We use schemata in perception; to interpret,
organise and assign meaning to information
obtained through our senses.
Schemas

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnk3
2SFXDQc&feature=related
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzbR
pMlEHzM
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmcU
lq56yyg
The processes of adaptation
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Piaget determined that adaptation of our
schemas was dominated by two key
processes.
Assimilation: The process of taking new
information and fitting it into existing schemas.
We use assimilation to make sense of new
information based upon old information.
For example: A toddler may identify a truck as
a ‘car’ simply because his schema has told
him that a vehicle with four wheels is a car.
The processes of adaptation
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Accommodation: Sometimes we cannot assimilate new
information into an existing SCHEMA. It will not fit in, and
we cannot change the information in any way to link it to
what we already know.
In this case, we are forced to change our schemata to
accommodate the new information.
This is a more advanced process than assimilation
because it involves restructuring the way in which existing
information is mentally organised so new information can
be included.
For example, when the child realises that a truck and a
car are different, accommodation has occurred.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAQur-Y_BJY
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1.
2.
A child seeing a zebra for the first time and calling it a horse. The child assimilates this
information into her schema for a horse. When the child accommodates information, she
takes into consideration the different properties of a zebra compared to a horse, perhaps
calling a zebra a horse with stripes. When she eventually learns the name of zebra, she has
accommodated this information.
Assimilation is like adding air into a balloon. You just keep blowing it up. It gets bigger and
bigger. For example, a two year old's schema of a tree is "green and big with bark” - over
time the child adds information (some trees lose their leaves, some trees have names, we
use a tree at Christmas, etc.) - Your balloon just gets full of more information that fits neatly
with what you know and adds onto it.
When a child learns the word for dog, they start to call all four-legged animals dogs. This is
assimilation. People around them will say, no, that's not a dog, it's a cat. The schema for
dog then gets modified to restrict it to only certain four-legged animals. That
is accommodation.
A child learns his father is called Daddy, so he calls other males ( e.g. the mailman)
Daddy. This is assimilation. He is quickly told that the other man is not Daddy, he is
_______. Again, the schema for Daddy is modified. This is accommodation.
When I was growing up my parents believed that tattoos were bad, so I created a schema
for people with tattoos. I assimilated such information as "probably rides a motorcycle," "is
dirty," and "probably has been in jail" into this schema during my childhood (because that's
what my parents said). When I got to college, I met a lot of people with tattoos who did not
fit into my schema, and thus had to do some accommodation to accept those people.
WATCH: http://video.about.com/psychology/Jean-Piaget-s-Cognitive-Child-DevelopmentTheory.htm#vdTrn
My own son, then 3 years old at the time. We were out shopping and three trucks
drive by, two 18-wheelers, and a smaller truck. "Look", my son says, "a daddy truck, a
mommy truck and a baby truck." Is this assimilation or accommodation? Explain why.
Come up with your own example for “assimilation” OR “accommodation”
Piaget’s four stages of
development
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4 distinct and sequential stages from birth to adulthood.
Each stage is linked to an approximate age range.
This does not mean that individuals progress when they
reach a certain age, some develop sooner or later than
others.
 Everyone proceeds through these stages in the same
order.
 Some individuals (intellectually disabled) may never reach
the final level of development.
 Piaget also defined the cognitive accomplishments (types
of thinking) which are attained in each stage of
development.
The Sensorimotor stage
(birth to 2 years)
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First stage of Cognitive Development
Infants begin to understand the world by combining
sensory experiences (vision, touch etc) with motor
(movement) abilities.
Infants originally do not understand the incoming
sensory input. They don’t know that they can reach
out and touch something less than an arm’s length
away.
It is only at about 3 months old that infants learn to
reach out and touch objects, or turn towards a noise.
The Sensorimotor stage
(birth to 2 years)
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At about seven months old, babies discover the idea
of object permanence.
Object permanence is the understanding that objects
still exist, even if they cannot be seen.
Before infants develop Object Permanence, out of
sight is literally out of mind. An infant will follow an
object with his eyes, but stop when it is hidden.
Eventually, an infant will search actively for an object,
even if they have not seen it being hidden.
The Sensorimotor stage
(birth to 2 years)
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Object permanence is the key development of the
Sensorimotor Stage.
 In the Sensorimotor Stage, infants also develop the
ability to carry out goal-directed behaviour.
 Goal-directed behaviour is behaviour which has a
particular purpose.
 This behaviour develops towards the end of the
sensorimotor stage, when a child begins to realise
that certain actions will get them what they want.
This may occur through trial-and-error, but the child
will trial many behaviours until one achieves the
desired outcome.
The Sensorimotor stage
(birth to 2 years)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue8yJVhjS0
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSG
Wh2CWJnA
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmg
gsuJvxuI
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The pre-operational stage
(2 to 7 years)
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More sophisticated thinking.
Children become able to accommodate and
assimilate information into their schemata.
An important development of this stage is
symbolic thinking.
Symbolic thinking is the ability to use symbols
such as words and pictures to represent objects,
places and events.
This is why language development occurs in the
Pre-Operational Stage, and why children are able
to play games using imagination.
The pre-operational stage
(2 to 7 years)
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In this stage, Piaget believed that children are unable
to see things from another person’s perspective.
 This is called ego centricism.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OinqFgsIbh0
 This does not mean that 2-7 year olds are selfish, it
means that they are unable to see the world from
anyone’s view but their own.
 An example of this is asking a small child what their
mother would like to for Christmas, and the child
replies that she would like a ‘Barbie Doll’ or a
‘Matchbox Car’.
 Experiment p. 349 textbook (picture cards)
The pre-operational stage
(2 to 7 years)
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By the end of the Pre-Operational Stage, the child is capable
of decentered thinking, which allows them to form a
schema involving someone else as the centre of attention.
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Another way of thinking by children in the Pre-Operational
stage is called animism.
Animism is the belief that everything that exists has some
sort of consciousness of awareness (for example, bumping
into a table, then hitting the table for being ‘naughty’).
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Piaget believed that Animism is linked to Egocentric thinking
– children assume that everyone and everything is like
themselves.
The pre-operational stage
(2 to 7 years)
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Another key accomplishment in the PreOperational Stage is called transformation.
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Transformation is understanding that something
can change from one state to another (for example,
an ice cube can change into water).
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Children are able to identify the initial and final
stages of a process, but cannot explain what
happens in between.
The pre-operational stage
(2 to 7 years)
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While the thinking of a Pre-Operational child is
significantly more sophisticated than that of babies, the
Pre-Operational child can focus on only one quality or
feature of an object at a time.
 This process is known as centration.
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuz4hIzgaSg
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXSI-D75r48
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Example of ‘Rick’ Pg 350
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Another accomplishment in the Pre-Operational stage is
reversibility. This is the ability to follow a line of
reasoning back to it’s original starting point.
The pre-operational stage
(2 to 7 years)
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLj0I
ZFLKvg&feature=related
The Concrete Operational Stage
(7 to 12 years)
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The thinking of concrete operational children revolves
around what they know and what they can experience
through their senses – what is concrete.
A key cognitive accomplishment for a child in the
concrete operational stage is understanding
conservation.
Conservation refers to the idea that an object does not
change it’s weight, mass, volume or area when it
changes shape or appearance.
Example of liquid in different glasses, plasticine shapes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAQur-Y_BJY
The Concrete Operational Stage
(7 to 12 years)
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Another key cognitive accomplishment of the
Concrete Operational Stage is the ability to
organise information (things or events) into
categories based on common features. This is
called classification.
 By the end of this stage, children will have learned
to view the world more accurately. They begin to
think logically about concrete objects and can
create mental pictures of objects and processes.
 They begin to move towards abstract thinking.
The Concrete Operational Stage
(7 to 12 years)
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA04
ew6Oi9M&feature=related
The formal operational stage
(12 years and over)
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Piaget’s final stage of development.
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More complex thought processes become evident and
thinking becomes increasingly sophisticated.
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A key cognitive accomplishment in the Formal Operational
Stage is abstract thinking.
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Abstract thinking is a way of thinking that does not rely
on being able to see or visualise things in order to
understand concepts (Algebra, Physics, Honesty,
Morality)
The formal operational stage
(12 years and over)
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Another key cognitive accomplishment of the
Formal Operational Stage is logical thinking.
Logical thinking is the ability to develop plans
to solve problems, develop hypotheses and
systematically test solutions.
It is not until the Formal Operational stage that
individuals are able to gain understanding of
the concepts of time and distance – that is,
what it means for something to have happened
in 200BC or how far 4000km really is.
The formal operational stage
(12 years and over)
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During the Formal Operational Stage, the ability to think
and behave in idealistic ways is also accomplished.
 For example, teenagers often compare themselves and
others to some ideal standard and strive towards being
like their ideal person.
 It is not until the Formal Operational Stage that a child can
plan and set goals. Beforehand they may have been able
to say ‘I want to be a doctor’ but it is not until now that they
realise exactly what being a doctor entails.
 The extent to which an adolescent is able to function at
the Formal Operational Stage is dependent upon
education and everyday experiences.
The formal operational stage
(12 years and over)
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjJdc
XA1KH8&feature=related
The formal operational stage
(12 years and over)
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Learning Activity 10.12 Pg 354