Various Perspectives
of Cognitive
Development
How Children Develop (3rd ed.)
Siegler, DeLoache & Eisenberg
Chapter 4
Why developmental theories?
1.
Provide a framework for
understanding important
phenomena
2.
Raise crucial questions about
human nature
3.
Motivate new research
studies that lead to a better
understanding of children
Why not just one theory?

Because child development is a complex and
varied process, no single theory accounts for
all of it.


Theories of cognitive and social development, for
example, focus on different capabilities.
The four theories examined in this chapter
allow a broader appreciation of cognitive
development than any one of them does by
itself.
Guiding Questions



How do various theories explain learning
during childhood?
What do sociocultural theories and dynamicsystems theories say about children’s
learning?
How can five major theoretical perspectives
of children’s cognitive development be
applied to everyday observations and
interactions with children?
How Do Children
Learn?
How do various theories explain
learning during childhood?
Major Theories of Cognitive
Development





Piaget’s Theory
Information Processing Theories
Core-Knowledge Theories
Sociocultural Theories
Dynamic-Systems Theories
Piaget’s Theory

Often labeled constructivist because it depicts children
as constructing knowledge for themselves.

Children learn in some ways that remain constant
throughout development and in other ways that change
throughout development.

Children are seen as…

Active
Learning many important lessons on their own
Intrinsically motivated to learn



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
Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive
Development

Sensorimotor Stage
(Birth – 2 years of age)

Preoperational Stage (2
– 7 years)

Concrete Operational
Stage (7 – 12 years)

Formal Operations
Stage (Age 12 and
Beyond)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Information-Processing
Theories

View children as undergoing continuous cognitive
change.

View children as active problem-solvers

Cognitive development occurs because children’s
ability to process information gradually improves

Emphasis on structure (organization of the cognitive
system) and processes (specific mental activities)
The Development of Memory

Components of the Memory System:

Sensory memory: refers to sights, sounds, and other
sensations that are just entering the cognitive system and
are briefly held in raw form until they are identified.

Working memory: a workspace in which information from
the environment and relevant knowledge are brought
together, attended to, and actively processed.

Long-term memory: refers to information retained on an
enduring basis.
Explanations of Memory
Development

Basic processes are the simplest and most frequently
used mental activities:

associating events with one another


recognizing objects as familiar
recalling facts and procedures

generalizing from one instance to another

encoding – the process of representing in memory information
specific features of objects and events

Encourage development by allowing infants to learn and
remember even in their earliest days.

With development, children execute basic processes
more efficiently, which further enhances their memory
and learning and helps them overcome earlier limitations.
Additional Cognitive
Processes
Core-Knowledge Theories

Idea that children are born with certain cognitive
abilities that are more advanced than once thought.

Emphasize the sophistication of infants’ and young
children’s thinking in areas that have been important
throughout human evolutionary history.

Children are seen as…



Active learners
Organizers and problem solvers
Having special abilities in certain areas
Specialized Learning Mechanisms

Evidence for specialized learning
mechanisms:

Face Perception: from birth onward, infant prefer
looking at faces over other objects.

Language: the universality of language
acquisition and the role that the left hemisphere
plays in processing grammar provide evidence for
specialized mechanisms for learning language.
Domain Specificity

The basic understandings proposed by coreknowledge theorists are assumed to be domainspecific—limited to a particular area, such as
living things or inanimate objects
Children’s Informal Theories

A number of core-knowledge theorists have
proposed that young children actively organize
their understanding of the most important
domains into naïve theories.

These informal theories share important
characteristics with formal scientific theories:



Identify fundamental units for dividing up the vast
number of objects and events in the world
Explain many particular phenomena in terms of a few
basic principles
Explain events in terms of unobservable causes
Naive Theories

Recent evidence suggests that
infants begin life with a primitive
theory of physics.

It also appears that the first
theories of psychology and
biology may emerge at about 18
months and three years of age,
respectively.
What do sociocultural theories
and dynamic-systems theories
say about children’s learning?
Sociocultural Approaches



Focus on the contribution of other people and the
surrounding culture to children’s development.
Emphasize guided participation, a process in which
more knowledgeable individuals organize activities in
ways that allow less knowledgeable people to engage in
them at a higher level than they could manage on their
own.
Present interactions as occurring
in a broader sociocultural context
that includes cultural tools, the
innumerable products of human
ingenuity that enhance thinking.
View of Children’s Nature

Lev Vygotsky is considered to be the
originator of the sociocultural approach to
cognitive development.

Vygotsky’s work created a stir because
his view of children’s nature was so
different from Piaget’s.
Distinguishing Features of
Sociocultural Theories
Dynamic-Systems Theories

Emphasize how varied aspects of the child
function as a single, integrated whole to
produce behavior.

By emphasizing the relations among motor
activities, attention, and other aspects of
children’s behavior, dynamic-systems
approaches improve our understanding
of how development occurs.
View of Children’s Nature

Emphasize children’s innate motivations to explore
the environment (Piaget)

Emphasize precise analysis of problem-solving
activity (information-processing)

Emphasize early emerging competencies (coreknowledge)

Emphasize the formative influence of other people
(sociocultural)
Distinguishing Features of
Dynamic-Systems Theories
How can the major theories of
cognitive development be applied to
everyday observations and
interactions with children?
In-Class Activity