Theories of
Cognitive Development
How Children Develop (3rd ed.)
Siegler, DeLoache & Eisenberg
Chapter 4
Part 1
Today’s Learning Objectives



Describe and critique key theoretical
perspectives on child development.
Describe, compare and contrast key changes
in the cognitive characteristics across
childhood.
Relate our discussions to “real-life”
experiences.
Overview

I. Piaget’s Theory
Questions Addressed by Theories
of Cognitive Development
I. Piaget’s Theory
A. View of Children’s Nature
B. Central Development Issues
C. Developmental Stages
D. Piaget’s Legacy
A. View of Children’s Nature

Jean Piaget’s theory remains
the standard against which all
other theories are judged.


Often labeled constructivist
because it depicts children as
constructing knowledge for
themselves.
Children are seen as



Active
Learning many important lessons on
their own
Intrinsically motivated to learn
B. Central Developmental Issues

1. Nature and Nurture

Piaget believed that nature and
nurture interact to yield cognitive
development.

Adaptation: the tendency to respond
to the demands of the environment to
meet one’s goals

Organization: the tendency to
integrate particular observations into
coherent knowledge
2. Sources of Continuity

Three processes work together from birth
to propel development forward.



Assimilation: the process by
which people translate incoming
information into a form they can
understand
Accommodation: the process by
which people adapt current
knowledge structures in response
to new experiences
Equilibration: the process by
which people balance
assimilation and accommodation
to create stable understanding
Piaget: Learning
Assimilation
Accommodation
Equilibration
3. Sources of Discontinuity

The discontinuous aspects of Piaget’s theory
are distinct, hierarchical stages.

Central properties of Piaget’s stage theory:


Qualitative change

Broad applicability across topics and contexts

Brief transitions

Invariant sequence
Hypothesized that children progress through
four stages of cognitive development, each
building on the previous one
Piaget’s Stages of
Cognitive Development
Sensorimotor
Birth to
2
years
Infants know the world through their
senses and through their actions. For
example, they learn what dogs look like
and what petting them feels like.
Preoperational
2-7
years
Toddlers and young children acquire
the ability to internally represent the
world through language and mental
imagery. They also begin to be able to
see the world from other people’s
perspectives, not just from their own.
Piaget’s Stages of
Cognitive Development
Concrete
7 - 12
Operational years
Children become able to think logically,
not just intuitively. They now can
classify objects into coherent
categories and understand that events
are often influenced by multiple factors,
not just one.
Formal
12+
Operational years
Adolescents can think systematically
and reason about what might be as
well as what is. This allows them to
understand politics, ethics, and science
fiction, as well as to engage in scientific
reasoning.
C. Sensorimotor Stage

Over the course of the first two years,
infants’ sensorimotor intelligence
develops tremendously.
Sensorimotor Substages
Sub
Age
Description
1
Birth – 1
month
Infants begin to modify the
reflexes with which they are born
to make them more adaptive.
2
1–4
months
Infants begin to organize separate
reflexes into larger behaviors,
most of which are centered on
their own bodies.
Sensorimotor Substages
Sub
Age
Description
3
4–8
months
Infants becoming increasingly interested in
the world around them. By the end of this
substage, object permanence, the
knowledge that objects continue to exist
even when they are out of view, typically
emerges.
4
8 – 12
months
During this substage, children make the
A-Not-B error, the tendency to reach to
where objects have been found before,
rather than to where they were last
hidden.
Piaget’s A-Not-B Task
Sensorimotor Substages
Sub
Age
Description
5
12 – 18
months
Toddlers begin to actively and
avidly explore the potential uses
to which objects can be put.
6
18 – 24
months
Infants become able to form
enduring mental representations.
The first sign of this capacity is
deferred imitation, the repetition
of other people’s behavior a
substantial time after it occurred.
D. Preoperational Stage

A mix of impressive cognitive acquisitions and
equally impressive limitations

A notable acquisition is symbolic representation, the use of one
object to stand for another, which makes a variety of new
behaviors possible.

One major limitation is egocentrism, the tendency to perceive
the world solely from one’s own point of view.

A related limitation is centration, the tendency to focus on a
single, perceptually striking feature of an object or event.

Preoperational children also lack of understanding of the
conservation concept, the idea that merely changing the
appearance of objects does not change their key properties.
Piaget’s Three-Mountain Task
Egocentric Conversations
The Balance Scale:
An Example of Centration
Procedures Used
to Test Conservation
E. Concrete Operations Stage

Children begin to reason logically about
the world.

They can solve conservation problems,
but their successful reasoning is largely
limited to concrete situations.

Thinking systematically remains difficult.
Inhelder and Piaget’s
Pendulum Problem


The task is to compare the
motions of longer and shorter
strings, with lighter and
heavier weights attached, in
order to determine the
influence of weight, string
length, and dropping point on
the time it takes for the
pendulum to swing back and
forth.
Children below age 12
usually perform unsystematic
experiments and draw
incorrect conclusions.
F. Formal Operations Stage



Cognitive development culminates in the
ability to think abstractly and to reason
hypothetically.
Individuals can imagine alternative worlds
and reason systematically about all
possible outcomes of a situation.
Piaget believed that the
attainment of the formal
operations stage, in
contrast to the other
stages, is not universal.
G. Piaget’s Legacy

Although Piaget’s theory remains highly
influential, some weaknesses are now
apparent.

The stage model depicts children’s thinking as being
more consistent than it is.

Infants and young children are more cognitively
competent than Piaget recognized.

Piaget’s theory understates the contribution of the
social world to cognitive development.

Piaget’s theory is vague about the cognitive processes
that give rise to children’s thinking and about the
mechanisms that produce cognitive growth.
Implications for Education


Piaget’s view of children’s cognitive development
suggests that children’s distinctive ways of thinking at
different ages need to be considered in deciding how
best to teach them.
In addition, because children learn by mentally and
physically interacting with the environment, relevant
physical activities,
accompanied by
questions that call
attention to the lessons
of the activities, are
important in
educational practice.
Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development
For the next class period!


Bring an article related to your CIP topic with
you to class!
For the greatest benefit to your project, check
the class blog for further instructions under
the “Article Day” entry.