Slide 1
A Topical Approach to
LIFE-SPAN DEVELOPMENT
6
Cognitive Developmental
Approaches
John W. Santrock
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 2
Cognitive Developmental
Approaches
• Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
• Applying and Evaluating Piaget’s Theory
• Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive Development
• Cognitive Changes in Adulthood
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Slide 3
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Processes of Development
• Piaget observed own 3 children;
believed six processes used in
constructing knowledge
– Schemes
– Organization
– Assimilation
– Equilibrium
– Accommodation
– Equilibration
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Slide 4
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Schemes
• Actions or mental representations that
organize knowledge
– Behavioral schemes: physical activities
characterizing infancy
– Mental schemes: cognitive activities
develop in childhood
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Slide 5
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Assimilation and Accommodation
• Both operate even in very young infants
• Assimilation — incorporate new information
or experience into existing knowledge
schemes
• Accommodation — adjust existing
schemes to take in new information and
experiences
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Slide 6
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Organization
• Children cognitively organize experiences
- Grouping isolated behaviors into a
higher-order cognitive system; receives
continual refinement
- Grouping items into categories
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Slide 7
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Equilibrium and Equilibration
• Proposed explanation of cognitive shift
(qualitative) from one stage of thought to next
– Disequilibrium — creates motivation for change;
shift occurs as children experience cognitive
conflict
– Equilibration — they resolve conflict through
assimilation and accommodation, to reach a new
balance or equilibrium of thought
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Slide 8
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Stages of Development
• Piaget’s theory unifies experiences and
biology to explain cognitive development
– Motivation is internal search for equilibrium
– Four stages of development…progressively
advanced and qualitatively different
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Slide 9
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Sensorimotor stage
• First of Piaget’s stages
– Birth to about 2 years
– Infants construct understanding of world by
coordinating sensory experiences with
motoric actions
– Contains six substages
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Slide 10
Four distinct stages in Cognitive
Development
Sensorimotor Stage (0-2 years) This is
experienced in the here and now (The active
child: infants develop goal-directed behavior,
means-ends thinking, and object
permanence).
Schemes- organized patterns of behavior,
becoming more elaborate as development
proceeds. The baby will organize their activity
in relation to their environment via
organization, adaptation, and equilibrium (first
5 substages).
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Slide 11
Substages:
a. Stage 1 (1st/2nd month): reflex activity.
Reflexes organize the newborn’s
interactions. Within 3 weeks, babies
come to expect certain coordinations
among perceptual events, such as
sights and sounds. Begin to exercises
some control over reflexes- even
without normal stimulus. Suck reflexes
when lips are touched; eventually
searches for nipple even when not
touched; then sucks even when not
hungry but nipple present. Cannot
grasp object looking at.
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Slide 12
Substages:
a. Stage 2 (2 to 4 months): Self-investigation.
Elaborates on existing schemes and integrates
simple schemes into more complicated behaviors.
Modification and repetition of scheme to achieve
interesting sensations: coordination of different
schemes (e.g., looking and grasping). Primarily
interested in own body. Repeats pleasant bodily
sensations first by chance, then repeats for
pleasure. Begins to suck different objects
differently.
Primary circular reactions: simple repetitive acts that
center upon the infant’s own body (e.g., thumb
sucking, hand clasping).
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Slide 13
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Slide 14
Substages:
c. Stage 3 (4 to 8 months): Coordination
and reaching out. Development of a
variety of schemes that produce
interesting effects: a more externally
orientated, “cognitively extroverted”
approach. Do something that produces
a result, will repeat it. Manipulating
objects and learning about their
properties. Repeat actions that
produce interesting results (e.g.,
shaking a rattle; coo when friendly
face appears). © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 15
Substages:
c. Stage 3 (4 to 8 months): Coordination and
reaching out.
Secondary Circular Reaction: no longer focus
on infant’s own body, rather reaches out.
Operant conditioning, when immediate
reinforcement follows a spontaneous
activity, the baby repeats the activity. Kicks
the mobile, it moves interestingly, will do it
again. Good at tracking moving objects with
eyes and reaching for things to grasp.
Retrieves a hidden toy under a transparent
cup. Searches for missing objects.
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Slide 16
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Slide 17
Substages:
d. Stage 4 (8 to 12 months): Goal-directed
behavior. Coordination of these schemes into
intentional, “intelligent” looking means-end
sequences, in which one scheme leads to
another. Behavior is deliberate and purposeful.
Try out new schemes in order to effect their
environment. Combine sequences into order.
Some schemes serve as a means for others in
order to reach a goal. E.g., removes a barrier to
get a toy. Can also anticipate events that do not
depend on own immediate behavior (e.g., sees
mother walking toward door, begins to cry).
Crawls across room to get object. Baby is now
a skillful imitator. © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 18
Substages:
d. Stage 4 (8 to 12 months): Goal-directed
behavior.
Play, that is, practicing sensorimotor
schemes for the sheer fun of it, becomes
prominent here. Play for longer periods of
time engaging in same behavior. Infants
in this stage learn from both play and
imitation. Can retrieve object hidden.
Learn from past experience, modify and
coordinate previous schemes.
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Slide 19
Substages:
e. Stage 5 (12 to 18 months):
Experimentation. Curious, trial and
error experimentation, often leading to
the discovery of new means to achieve
goals; outer directed efforts to learn
about the world. Experiments with
hands or mouth. Explores new
properties of objects by trial and error,
systematically testing different
approaches as if thinking “Lets see
what happens if…”
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Slide 20
Substages:
e. Stage 5 (12 to 18 months):
Experimentation.
Varies approaches. This is the last “pure”
sensorimotor stage. Still deals with only
the “here and now”. Cannot yet imitate
events that have occurred earlier or
elsewhere. Imprisoned in own cognitive
world by limited ability to communicate.
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Slide 21
Substages:
e. Stage 5 (12 to 18 months): Experimentation.
Tertiary (third-order) circular reactions: child
begins to actively experiment with things in
order to discover how various actions will affect
an object or outcome. (e.g., sitting in highchair,
dawdling over oatmeal, drops handful over side.
Does it again with more force, delighted in the
splash; learns things fall down, not up; the force
determines the degree of splash; can make an
interesting patter on the floor with the oatmeal;
and oatmeal is on the finer things in life!)
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Slide 22
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Slide 23
Substages:
f. Stage 6 (about 18 to 24 months): mental
combinations and problem solving.
Representational ability- to mentally
visualize objects and actions in memory.
Anticipates consequences. Invention of new
means thorough internal, mental combinations;
first appearance of deferred imitation, symbolic
play, and speech.
This is the transitory stage between sensorimotor
and conceptual intelligence. Beginning of the
representational intelligence and preoperational
thought, which occur in the preschool years.
Changes include the ability to represent objects
and events in thought by symbols and to act on
those symbols. Demonstrates insight!
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Slide 24
Substages:
f. Stage 6 (about 18 to 24 months): mental
combinations and problem solving.
Can contemplate a problem, pause to think, and
then act to solve it, without trial and error. Able
to visualize own actions and thus use mental
trial and error. Toddlers in this stage have not
mastered symbolic thought, but do have mental
images and apparently are able to use them in
solving problems.
E.g.: play with shape box; searching for right
hole for the shape before trying;
succeeding!
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Slide 25
Object Permanence
Objects have an existence of their own
(object permanence). Occurs between 812 months. Takes 2 years to fully
develop. 4-8 months: drop something, will
look, then forget. 8-12 months: will look
where they first found it after seeing it
being hidden, even if it seen it move to
another location (does not recall where
moved to). 12-18 months, look where last
seen. 18-24 months- will look for object
even if did not see it placed somewhere.
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Slide 26
Object Permanence
Requires ability to have mental
representations of the world and objects.
Without mental images, symbols, or
depictions to represent an object, you
would be unable to think about it, because
you have no internal was of representing
it. In other words, without object
permanence, “out of sight, out of mind”.
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Slide 27
Spatial Knowledge
Development of object concept and spatial
knowledge linked to self-locomotion and
coordination of visual and motor
information.
Causality
4-6 months and 12 months- discovery of
effects of own actions and then effects of
outside forces. That one event causes
another. Allows to predict and control own
world.
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Slide 28
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Sensorimotor Substages
1
Simple reflexes
Basic means of coordinating
sensation and action
through reflexive behaviors
2
First habits and
primary circular
reactions
Infants’ infant’s attempt to
reproduce interesting or
pleasurable event (1-4 mos)
Secondary
circular
reactions
Infant is more objectoriented moving beyond
preoccupation with the self
(4-8 months)
3
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Slide 29
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Sensorimotor Substages
4
Coordination of
secondary
circular reactions
Significant changes in
coordination of schemes
and intentionality (8-12 mos)
5
Tertiary circular
reactions, novelty
and curiosity
Intrigued by objects’ many
properties; explores new
possibilities with them
(12-18 mos)
Internalization of
Schemes
Ability to use primitive
symbols; shift to mental
manipulation (18-24 mos)
6
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Slide 30
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Object Permanence
• Understanding that objects and events
continue to exist even when they cannot be
seen, heard, or touched
– One of infant’s most important accomplishments
– Acquired in stages
– Violation of expectations testing
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Slide 31
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Infant’s Understanding of Causality
(a)
(b)
(c)
Fig. 6.3
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Slide 32
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Evaluating Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage
• New research techniques suggest Piaget’s
theory needs to be modified
– Some abilities develop earlier
• Intermodal perception; substantiality and
permanence of objects
– Transitions not as clear-cut; AB error
– No general theory on how development changes
in cognition and nature-nurture issue
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Slide 33
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Preoperational Stage
• Second Piagetian developmental stage
– About 2 to 7 years of age; two substages
– Children begin to represent the world with
words, images, and drawings
• Not ready to perform Operations
– Internalized actions that allow children to do
mentally what they only did physically before
– Reversible mental actions
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Slide 34
Cognitive Development- Piaget
Preoperational Stage (ages 2 to 7; 18
months to 8 years old)
• The intuitive child
• Children can use symbols and words to think
• Intuitive problem solving, but thinking limited
by rigidity, centrism, and egocentrism
Understand that things have identities that
are stable, unchanging
• Understanding of cause and effect
• Ability to classify
• Understanding of numbers
• Empathy
• Theory of mind (aware
of mental activity)
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Slide 35
Two stages of the Preoperational
Stage:
1. Preconceptual Stage (2-4 years)
Begins to symbolize and develop
ability to internalize objects and
events, develop preconcepts. (e.g.,
the Santa they saw is the one and only
Santa; recognize birds, but not types
of birds)
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Slide 36
Two types of reasoning: syncratic and
transductive.
Syncratic: how preschoolers tend to sort
and classify objects; according to a
limited set of criteria. (e.g., the boat
goes with other boats because they
are boats; this glove goes with the
boats because they are both green;
this block goes with the boat because
they are blocks and fit onto the deck of
the boat).
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Slide 37
Two types of reasoning: syncratic and
transductive.
Transductive reasoning: involves drawing a
reference about the relationship between
two objects based on a single attribute.
Generally leads to wrong conclusions. (e.g.,
if A has four legs and B has four legs, then
A must be B and vice versa).
Animism: the magical belief that inanimate
objects have thoughts, feelings, and
motives. Magical thinking: take
rhymes/stories seriously (Rain, rain, go
away; Step on a crack and break your
mother’s back). © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 38
2. Intuitive stage (4-7 years); centers on
one aspect at a time, egocentrism.
Beliefs are generally based on what they
sense to be true rather than on what logic
or rational thought would dictate. (e.g.,
recalling what color bead was first and last
in a tube, even if reversing the tube.
Unable at this stage to use logical operations
(e.g., if tube turned 29 ½ times, which
bead on top? Must be able to count
number of times tube turned with recalling
what color was on top, etc.). Unable to
understand concept of reversibility.
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Slide 39
From action to symbol. Can use images
and symbols, but lacks logical abilities.
Object permanence.
Deferred imitation occurs. Better grasp of
symbols.
Acquisition of language is a major
achievement here. Another major
achievement is Intuition. Can look at a
problem and quickly deduce the
solution. Applies trial and error,
applying one scheme after another
until one works.
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Slide 40
Egocentrism: unable to take role of another
person or view the world from other vantage
points. Does not know yet that others have
different wants, needs, and perspectives.
Precausal reasoning: the inability to
distinguish between psychological and
physical causes, between subjective
experiences and objective events. E.g.,
convinced that dreams are real.
Centering: inability to consider more than one
dimension at a time. Also, seeing is
believing: appearance vs. reality. Only focus
on one aspect at a time.
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Slide 41
SUMMARY
• Beginning of organized language and
symbolic thought
• Child begins to perceive language as a tool
to get needs met
• Much of child’s language is egocentric-they
talk to self and do not listen to other children
• Child does not use logical thinking; as a
result, cannot reason by implication
• Child’s reasoning is transductive reasoning:
reasoning from a particular idea to a
particular idea without logically connecting
them
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Slide 42
Pretend Play
Deferred imitation: based on mental
representation of previously viewed event
Pretend play: fantasy/imaginary play, make
object represent or symbolize something
else.
Language: uses system of symbols to
communicate
Conservation: Cannot yet grasp this concept
(Two things remain equal even if
appearance changes)
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Slide 43
Distinguishing between Appearance and
Reality
Age 5-6
What seems to be and what is (e.g., is the
cookie monster (costumed person) really
the cookie monster?
Distinguishing between Fantasy & Reality
18 months-3, distinguish between real and
imagined events
magical or wishful thinking of age 3 and older
does not seem to stem from confusion
between fantasy and reality
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Slide 44
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
The Symbolic Function Substage
Symbolic
function
Egocentrism
Animism
First substage of preoperational
thought; young child gains ability
to represent mentally an object
that is not present (2-4 years)
Inability to distinguish between
one’s own and another’s view
Belief that inanimate objects have
lifelike qualities, capable of action
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Slide 45
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
The Three Mountains Task
View 1
View 2
(d)
(c)
Child
seated
here
(d)
(b)
(a)
(a)
(c)
(b)
Child seated here
Fig. 6.4
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Slide 46
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
The Symbolic Drawings
of Young Children
(a) A 31/2-year-old’s symbolic
drawing. Halfway into this
drawing, the 31/2-year-old
artist said it was “a pelican
kissing a seal.”
(b) This 11-year-old’s
drawing is neater and more
realistic but also less
inventive.
Fig. 6.5
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Slide 47
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
The Intuitive Thought Substage
• Children begin using primitive reasoning
and want to know answers to all sorts of
questions (4-7 years)
– Why? questions exhaust adults
– Centration — focusing attention on one
characteristic to exclusion of all others
– Conservation — object or substance
amount stays same regardless of changing
appearance; lacking in preoperational stage
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Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Slide 48
Piaget’s
Conservation
Task
Fig. 6.6
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Slide 49
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Some Dimensions of Conservation:
Number, Matter, and Length
Fig. 6.7
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Slide 50
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Concrete Operational Stage
• Piaget’s third stage (7-11 years)
• Children can perform concrete operations
• Logical reasoning replaces intuitive
reasoning if applied to specific, concrete
examples
• Consider several characteristics of object
at once
• Cross-cultural variations exist
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Slide 51
Cognitive development
Piaget: the Concrete Child
• The major cognitive achievement of
middle childhood (ages 6 to 12) as the
development of logical thinking. Less
egocentric.
• In the sensorimotor stage, the infant’s
actions and expectations show that they
have begun to appreciate certain
regularities in their environment.
• In the Preoperational Stage, the child is
able to form mental images and to
represent and communicate their practical
knowledge of the world symbolically.
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Slide 52
The preschooler:
• can talk about people and events, make
drawings, reenact events in symbolic play,
and invent stories
• their verbal explanations of time, space,
and cause and effect may be poetic, but
they are rarely logical
• their thinking is intuitive.
• They leap to conclusions and often
confuses desires with reality, coincidence
with cause and effect
• The preoperational child deals in
particulars; they have not discovered
general rules, and don’t seem to feel a
need for them © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 53
The concrete operational child:
• Thinks more like an adult
• Spatial thinking: can use a map, give
someone directions, judge distances
• Adult logic takes the form of
deduction and induction
• Both modes of thought establish
connections between generalizations
and particulars
• Deduction is reasoning from the
general to the particular (if all men
have hearts of gold, then this man
has a heart of gold)
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Slide 54
• Cause and effect- understands this
• The preoperational child reasons from
particular to particular; therefore often
assuming connections that do not exist;
now Induction is reasoning form the
particular to the general
• Catagorization- sorts objects into
categories; knows subclasses
• Transitive reasoning occurs for the child:
“I have not had my nap so it is not
afternoon”)- understanding the
relationship between two objects by
knowing the relationship to a third object
(three sticks, identifies longer one)
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Slide 55
• Changes in the Concrete Operational
Stages:
• Thought becomes more systematic and
planful
• They can think ahead
• Can shift mental gears
• The preoperational child is a spectator,
viewing the world as scenes seen while
looking out a train window, have not
explored the view/world yet. Now the child
is in control; can sped up or slow down the
thinking as the situation demands
• Can think of alternate routes
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Slide 56
• Most important, can shift mind into
reverse, retrace their mental route, and
maybe discover where they made a wrong
turn
• These new found abilities Piaget named
“operations”
• An operation is a mental activity that
organizes and transforms information
• The difference between operations and
schemes is that operations are mental
manipulations of information, not physical
or sensory associations
• It is the difference between winding up and
throwing a baseball and contemplating
your next move in
a chess game.
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Slide 57
• Inductive and deductive reasoninginductive reasoning (conclusions
about an entire class- my dog barks;
your dog barks; all dogs bark);
• deductive reasoning- usually
develops in adolescence- general
statement about a class (premise)
and applies to particular members of
that class (all dogs bark, Spot is a
dog, therefore, Spot barks)
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Slide 58
• A child in this stage is limited to
operations on the concrete or physical
world; hence the term concrete operations:
they think about real people, real objects,
and possible events.
• When formal operations occur, they will be
able to deal with abstractions and
hypothetical situations.
• Concrete operations help the child to the
discovery of logical relationships among
objects and actions.
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Conservation
• Mastery of conservation is the major
achievement of the concrete
operational stage.
Slide 59
• For the preoperational child, seeing
is believing: they don’t understand
that certain properties of a substance
remain the same (are conserved).
•
• Between ages 5/6, the child
vacillates.
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Slide 60
There comes a time somewhere between ages
6½ and 7 years, 8 months when the child’s
attitude changes: they do not need to reflect,
but rather decide, and may even look
surprised that a question is asked, they are
certain of the conservation.
Complete conservation may not fully develop
until adolescence.
Piaget believes that conservation reflects a
basic reorganization of the child’s mind. They
are able to coordinate different pieces of
information in their mind.
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Slide 61
The preoperational child focuses on one
dimension (e.g., length); the conserver is
able to decenter attention and consider two
or more dimensions simultaneously.
They can comprehend the functional
relationship between height and width;
focusing on the transformations that occur
(the clay is rolled into different shapes).
They have reversibility: they can mentally
undo the transformation by imagining rolling
the clay back into its original shape.
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Slide 62
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Classification Skills
• Concrete operations child understands one
person can be father, brother, and grandson
• Seriation — involves stimuli along
quantitative dimension (e.g. length)
• Transitivity — if relation holds between first
and second object, and holds between the
second and third object, then it holds between
first and third object
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Slide 63
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Classification: An Important Ability in
Concrete Operational Thought
Fig. 6.8
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Slide 64
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Formal Operational Stage
• Individuals move beyond concrete operations
and think in more abstract and logical ways
(11-15 years)
• Abstract, Idealistic, and Logical Thinking
– Verbal problem-solving ability increases
– Increased ability to think about thought itself
– Thought is full of idealism and possibilities
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Slide 65
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Formal Operational Stage
• Children solve problems by trial-and-error
• Adolescents think more like scientists
• Hypothetical-deductive reasoning
– Have cognitive ability to develop hypotheses, or
best guesses, and systematically deduce the best
path to follow in solving a problem
• Assimilation dominates initial development
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Slide 66
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Adolescent Egocentrism
• Heightened adolescents’ self-consciousness
• Imaginary audience
– Belief that others are as interested in them as
they are
– Involves attention-getting behavior motivated by
desire to be noticed, visible, and “on stage”
• Personal fable — adolescent’s sense of
uniqueness and invincibility
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Slide 67
Applying and Evaluating Piaget’s Theory
Piaget and Education
• Take a constructivist approach
• Facilitate rather than direct learning
• Consider child’s knowledge, level of thinking
• Use ongoing assessment
• Promote the student’s intellectual health
• Turn classroom into setting of exploration
and discovery
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Slide 68
Applying and Evaluating Piaget’s Theory
Evaluating Piaget’s Theory
• Contributions
– Vision of children as active, constructive thinkers
• Criticisms
– Some estimates of children’s competence is
inaccurate
– Development not uniformly stage-like
– Effects of training underestimated
– Culture and education influence development
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Slide 69
Applying and Evaluating Piaget’s Theory
Neo-Piagetians
• Argue Piaget got some things right, but
theory needs revision
• More emphasis to memory, attention,
information-processing strategies, and
processing speed
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Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Slide 70
Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive
Development
• Social contexts; minds are shaped by
cultural context in which they live
• Tools are provided by society
• Children actively construct their knowledge
and understanding through social
interactions
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Slide 71
The Zone of Proximal Development
• Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
– Tasks too difficult for children to master alone
but that can be mastered with guidance and
assistance from more-skilled person
• Scaffolding
– Changing level of support over course of a
teaching session to fit child’s current
performance level; dialogue is important tool
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Slide 72
Vygotsky’s Zone
of
Proximal
Development
Fig. 6.9
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Slide 73
Vygotsky: Language and Thought
• Believed young children use language to
plan, guide, and monitor behavior
• Language and thought initially develop
independently, then merge
• Private speech: language of self-regulation
– Self talk (3 to 7 years of age)
– Inner speech: child’s thoughts
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Slide 74
Teaching Strategies based on
Vygotsky’s Theory
• Successfully applied to education
– Effectively assess child’s ZPD
– Use child’s ZPD in teaching
– Use more-skilled peers as teachers
– Monitor and encourage private speech
– Place instruction in meaningful context
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Slide 75
Tools of the Mind
• Emphasizes child’s self-regulation
• Give special attention to at-risk children
– Poverty
– Difficult conditions (e.g. homeless, drug
problems in home)
– Dramatic play has central role in classroom
– Child writings are important
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Slide 76
Evaluating Vygotsky’s theory
• Social constructionist approach
• Importance of skills valued by specific
culture
• Knowledge constructed through social
interactions (sociocultural)
• Criticisms:
– Overemphasize role of language
– Facilitators may be too helpful, overcontrolling
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 77
Cognitive Changes in Adulthood
Piaget’s View of Adult Cognition
• Thinking qualitatively in formal operations
same as adolescents
• Adults have more knowledge
• Research shows:
– Many don’t reach highest level until adulthood
– Many adults don’t use formal operational thinking
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 78
Cognitive Changes in Adulthood
• Thinking of young adults is beyond formal
operational stage of adolescents. It is…
– Realistic — Idealism decreases in face of real
world constraints
– Pragmatic — Switch from acquiring knowledge
to applying it
– Reflective and Relativistic — Move away
from absolutist thinking of adolescence
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 79
Cognitive Changes in Adulthood
Is There A Fifth, Postformal Stage?
• Postformal thought is
– Reflective, relativistic, and contextual
– Provisional
– Realistic
– Open to emotions and subjective
• More research needed
• Another possible stage may be wisdom
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 80
6
The End
© 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.