Chapter 7 Cognitive Development: Piagets Theory and Vygotskys Sociocultural Viewpoint

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Chapter 7 Cognitive Development Piagets Theory
and Vygotskys Sociocultural Viewpoint
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Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development

• Intelligence is viewed as a basic life function
  that helps in adapting to the environment.
• Intelligence is a form of equilibrium, and the
  process of achieving it is called equilibration.
• Children must construct knowledge.
• Cognitive schemes The structure of intelligence
• Behavioral (or sensorimotor) schemes Organized
  patterns of behavior that are used to represent
  and respond to an object or experience
• Symbolic schemes Experiences represented
  mentally
• Operational schemes Internal mental activity
  performed to reach a logical conclusion

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Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development (cont.)

• Figure 7.1 
• Reversibility is an important cognitive operation
  that develops during middle childhood.

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How We Gain Knowledge Piaget's Cognitive
Processes

• Organization is the process where existing
  schemes are combined into new and more complex
  intellectual structures.
• Adaptation is the process of adjusting to the
  demands of the environment.
• Assimilation The process of attempting to fit
  new experiences to existing schemes
• Accommodation The process of modifying existing
  structures in order to account for new
  experiences

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How We Gain Knowledge Piaget's Cognitive
Processes (cont.)
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The Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to 2 Years)
Coordinating Sensory Inputs and Motor Capabilities

• Development of problem-solving skills
• Reflex activity (First month of life) Infant's
  actions are based on reflexes
• Primary circular reactions (1 to 4 months) First
  nonreflexive schemes are simple repetitive acts
  centered on their own bodies.
• Secondary circular reactions (4 to 8 months)
  Interest in external objects
• Coordination of secondary schemes (8 to 12
  months) Coordination of two or more actions to
  achieve simple objectives
• Tertiary circular reactions (12 to 18 months)
  Active curiosity and motivation to learn about
  the way things work

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The Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to 2 Years)
Coordinating Sensory Inputs and Motor
Capabilities (cont.)

• Symbolic problem solving (18 to 24 months)
  Behavioral schemes are internalized mental
  symbols are constructed which can be used to
  guide future behaviors.
• Development of deferred imitation begins at 18 to
  24 months.
• Object permanence Objects continue to exist when
  they are no longer visible or detectable through
  the other senses

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The Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to 2 Years)
Coordinating Sensory Inputs and Motor
Capabilities (cont.)
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Challenges to Piaget's Account of Sensorimotor
Development Neo-Nativism and "Theory" Theories

• Neo-nativism
• Infants are born with substantial knowledge about
  the nature of the physical world.
• Knowledge does not have to be constructed.
• Infants are also symbolic beings.
• Theory theories
• Infants are prepared from birth to make sense of
  certain classes of information.
• Such innate knowledge is incomplete and requires
  substantial experience for infants to construct
  reality.
• Infants devise ideas or "theories" about how the
  world works and then test and modify their
  theories.

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The Preconceptual Period (2 to 4 Years of Age) of
the Preoperational Stage

• Emergence of symbolic thought and play
• Representational insight is in place by 2.5
  years.
• Dual representation (ability to think about an
  object in two different ways at the same time) is
  in place by 3 years of age.
• Preconceptual reasoning is primitive by adult
  standards.
• Children display animism (a willingness to
  attribute life and life-like qualities to
  inanimate objects)
• Children display egocentrism (a tendency to view
  the world from one's own perspective and to have
  difficulty recognizing another person's point of
  view)
• Children not yet proficient at dual encoding

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The Preconceptual Period (2 to 4 Years of Age) of
the Preoperational Stage

• Figure 7.4 
• Piagets three-mountain problem. Young
  preoperational children are egocentric. They
  cannot
• easily assume another persons perspective and
  often say that another child viewing the
• mountain from a different vantage point sees
  exactly what they see from their own location.

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The Intuitive Period (4 to 7 Years of Age)

• Intuitive thought is an extension of
  preconceptual thought.
• Children now somewhat less egocentric
• Children now more proficient at classifying
  objects on the basis of shared perceptual
  attributes
• Children still incapable of conservation

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The Intuitive Period (4 to 7 Years of Age) (cont.)

• Figure 7.6 
• Some common tests of the childs ability to
  conserve.

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Did Piaget Underestimate the Preoperational Child?

• New evidence on egocentrism shows that children
  are less egocentric when provided with less
  complicated visual displays.
• Another look at childrens causal reasoning shows
  that 3-year-olds do not routinely attribute life
  or lifelike qualities to inanimate objects.
• Preoperational children can conserve with
  training.

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The Concrete-Operational Stage (7 to 11 Years)

• Some examples of concrete-operational thought
• Conservation by decentering and using
  reversibility
• Relational logic using mental seriation (the
  ability to mentally arrange items along a
  quantifiable dimension such as height or weight)
  and transitivity (the necessary relations among
  elements in a series)
• The sequencing of concrete operations
• Horizontal decalage Some forms of conservation
  are understood much sooner than others.

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The Concrete-Operational Stage (7 to 11 Years)
(cont.)

• Figure 7.7
• Childrens performance on a simple seriation
  task. If asked to arrange a series of
• sticks from shortest to longest, preoperational
  children often line up one end of the sticks and
• create an incomplete ordering (a) or order them
  so the top of each successive stick extends
• higher than the preceding stick (b). Concrete
  operators, by contrast, can use the inverse
• cognitive operations greater than (gt) and less
  than (lt) to quickly make successive comparisons
• and create a correct serial ordering.

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The Concrete-Operational Stage (7 to 11 Years)
(cont.)
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The Formal-Operational Stage (11 to 12 Years and
Beyond)

• Hypothetico-deductive reasoning
• Thinking like a scientist
• Personal and social implications of formal
  thought
• Paves the way for thinking about what is possible
  in one's life
• Questioning begins about everything from parental
  authority to government spending
• Formal operational thought is reached very
  slowly, if at all.

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An Evaluation of Piaget's Theory

• Piaget's contributions
• Founded the field of cognitive development
• Convinced us that children are curious, active
  explorers of their environment
• First to try to explain and not just describe the
  process of development
• Challenges to Piaget
• Piaget failed to distinguish competence from
  performance.
• Still a hotly debated topic Does cognitive
  development really occur in stages?
• Does Piaget "explain" cognitive development? His
  explanations raise more questions than they
  answer.
• Piaget devoted too little attention to social and
  cultural influences.

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The Role of Culture in Intellectual Development

• Vygotsky's four interrelated levels of analysis
• Microgenetic Refers to changes that occur over
  relatively brief periods of time
• Ontogenetic Development of an individual over
  his or her lifetime
• Phylogenetic Changes over evolutionary time
• Sociohistorical Changes that have occurred in
  one's culture, and the values, norms, and
  technologies generated throughout history

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The Role of Culture in Intellectual Development
(cont.)

• Infants are born with the following tools of
  intellectual adaptation
• Attention
• Sensation
• Perception
• Memory

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The Social Origins of Early Cognitive
Competencies and the Zone of Proximal Development

• Learning occurs within the context of
  cooperative, or collaborative, dialogues between
  a skillful tutor and a novice pupil.
• The zone of proximal development
• The difference between what a learner can
  accomplish independently and what he or she can
  accomplish with the guidance and encouragement of
  a more skilled partner
• "Scaffolding" is the tendency of more expert
  participants to carefully tailor the support they
  provide to the novice learner's current situation.

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The Social Origins of Early Cognitive
Competencies and the Zone of Proximal Development
(cont.)

• Apprenticeship in thinking and guided
  participation
• Children's cognitions are shaped as they take
  part, alongside adults or other more skillful
  associates, in everyday culturally relevant
  experiences.
• Our culture encourages context-independent
  learning (learning and discussing things that
  have no immediate relevance).

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Implications for Education

• Active learning in the classroom
• Cooperative learning exercises

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The Role of Language in Cognitive Development

• Piaget's theory of language and thought
• Egocentric, self-directed speech merely reflects
  the child's ongoing mental activity and does not
  play a role in a child's cognitive development.
• Vygotsky's theory of language and thought
• Nonsocial utterances illustrate the transition
  from prelinguistic to verbal reasoning.
• Self-directed monologues occur more during
  problem solving.
• Private speech helps young children plan
  strategies and regulate their behavior.
• Which viewpoint should we endorse?
• Vygotsky's theory is more widely held today.

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The Role of Language in Cognitive Development
(cont.)