Chapter Nine Handout: EC/Cog
From the PowerPoint Presentation:
Piaget and Vygotsky
I. Basic Premise of each theory
A. Piaget
*when the child is biologically ready, cognitive development occurs as the child actively learns from the
environment. Development moves the child into a qualitatively new stage of thinking because the old has
become inadequate.
B. Vygotsky
*when the child is ready, cognitive development occurs because the child and environment are mutually
interacting. Development is smooth and continuous, building on what has been learned previously.
II. Major Tenets of Each Theory: Piaget
*stage theory (qualitative change)
*based on schemes (mental organizations) that start as motor activities
*use of assimilation and accommodation
Piaget: Preoperational Thought (2-7 yrs)
•use of symbolic thinking, less dependence on sensorimotor activity
•no OPERATIONS: thought is not organized or logical
1.Increases in language and make-believe play may aid thought
2.Egocentrism: kids don’t understand that others’ viewpoints differ from their own.
-animistic thinking
3. Centration: kids focus on only 1 aspect of a stimulus (often appearance) , ignoring others (# in cookies,
raccoon animal studies, gender determinations)
4. Irreversibility: don’t understand that things go through intermediate states from a beginning to an end state.
5. Lack of Conservation: understanding that irrelevant changes to an object do not change its number, mass,
length, area, weight or volume
Problems:
-egocentrism/animism not displayed in familiar situations
-conservation is sometimes earlier & can be trained
-progression is gradual rather than abrupt
III. Major Tenets of Each Theory: Vygotsky
*Cog. Development is a result of working with others socially to solve problems.
*How kids interact with others (school etc) is determined by a culture.
The ZPD (zone of proximal development) is where ability increases
*scaffolding (assistance provided by others) helps.
*cultural tools (language, math, religion, paper, calculators) and the tasks a culture emphasizes may influence
this process.
*individual differences may influence this process
IV. Commonalities
*Both believe that the child is active in cognitive development.
*Both agree that cognitive conflict may initiate development
*Both believe that language is important, although they differ on their views of egocentric speech.
V. Major Conflicts: Culture
*Whereas Piaget believed that all children should pass through these stages in a culturally invariant order,
Vygotsky believed that culture impacts cognitive development more seriously.
Cross Cultural research:
1.cognitive advances may happen at different times
2.training can influence performance on Piagetian tasks
3.Testing for cognitive development may need to be redesigned to be culturally appropriate (monopoly..)
V. Major Conflicts: Egocentric Speech
*Piaget believed that private speech dies out and is replaced by social speech. Piaget thought that thought and
language start with the individual and become social.
*Vygotsky believed that private speech is an important step between social speech and inner speech and that
language starts out as social and becomes individual.
V. Massive Conflict: Direction of development
*Piaget believed that learning begins in the child and moves outward, and that cognitive development occurs
before learning. (because my memory improved I am able to learn)
*Vygotsky believed that learning begins in the world and is brought to the child and that learning causes
cognitive development. (because I have learned, my memory has improved)
VI. Implications for Teaching
*According to Piaget, learning will be directed by the child at the appropriate age. The teacher’s role is to
provide appropriate experiences at the appropriate age.
*According to Vygotsky, learning will be an interactive process leading to cognitive development. You must
teach within the ZPD.
-focus on active, participative learning
-group work and reciprocal teaching are consistent with this approach
Piaget & Vygotsky explain Monopoly
Birth-2
Child’s Skill
Piaget
Vygotsky
Result of Game
Better Game to
Play
2-6years
6-12 years
12 and over
Can move along the Can play, can’t plan May play better
board, does not
ahead
than you
understand rules
Sensorimotor Stage Preoperational
Concrete
Formal Operational
Stage
Operational Stage
Stage
The child becomes better at the game by working with others whose skill levels exceed
their own. Acquisition of these skills will depend on the culture the child is learning in
and the readiness of the particular child.
Money damp; boot
Child gets bored
Your cunning
Humiliating defeat
missing, presumed
quickly, you win by acquisition of all 4
lost
default
railroads leads you
to victory!
Legos
Candlyland
Battleship
Can play with
pieces
Eliciting Accurate Recollections From Children
PLAY DUMB
Interviewer: Now that I know you a little better,
tell me why you are here today.
ASK FOLLOW-UP QUESTIONS
Child: Bob touched my private.
Interviewer: Tell me everything about that
ENCOURAGE CHILDREN TO DESCRIBE
EVENTS
Interviewer: Tell me everything that happened at
Bob’s house.
AVOID OFFERING REWARDS OR
EXPRESSING DISAPPROVAL
AVOID SUGGESTING THAT
INERVIEWERS EXPECTS DESCRIPTIONS
OF PARTICULAR KINDS OF EVENTS
(Poole & Lamb, 1998)
Term
Matching
A. Animistic Thinking
In the three-mountains problem, Natalie is asked to pick the picture that
shows“what the doll sees,” but Natalie picks the picture that shows her
own perspective
B. Egocentrism
Bernard cannot believe that the delicious chocolate cake that he is
enjoying was once some eggs and some powdery stuff from a box, even
though he watched his dad make the cake.
C. Inability to Conserve
Johannes is shown two packages of yellow playdough. One package is
rolled into a banana shape. Johannes insists that the banana shaped
playdough has less than the can shaped playdough.
D. Centration
Keisha fails to understand that a cat with a white line painted down its
back is still a cat, and not a skunk because she is fixated on what it looks
like.
E. Irreversibility
Three-year-old Timmy says, “The fire is mean. It hurt me.”
Identify the following as consistent with the theory of PIAGET, VYGOTSKY or INFORMATION PROCESSING
(P, V, or I)
Adults adjust the support they offer to children to fit the child’s current level of performance
Young children are not capable of operations (mental actions that obey logical rules).
Preschoolers cannot use memory strategies such as rehearsal or categorization because such strategies
tax a young child’s limited working memories.
Young children egocentrically assign human purposes to physical events.
There is an abrupt change toward logical reasoning at around age 6 or 7
Stresses the social context of cognitive development
A classroom based on this approach relies upon assisted discovery and peer collaboration
Around age 4, children realize that false beliefs – ones that do not represent reality accurately – can
guide people’s actions
Focuses on the mental strategies that child use to transform the stimuli following their mental systems
Children’s private speech is the foundation for all higher cognitive processes
Preschoolers rely on scripts to remember familiar, repeated events
In a classroom in this tradition, children are encouraged to discover for themselves through
spontaneous interaction with the environment