Cognitive Development in Infancy and Childhood: Piaget

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Cognitive Development in Infancy and Childhood
Piagets Cognitive Stages
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Question to ponder

• Do Kids think differently than adults?
• Do freshmen think differently than Seniors?

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Piagets Theory of Cognitive Development

• Jean Piaget (18961980) Swiss psychologist who
  became leading theorist in 1930s
• Piaget believed that children are active
  thinkers, constantly trying to construct more
  advanced understandings of the world
• These understandings are in the form of
  structures he called schemas

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Piagets Approach

• Primary method was to ask children to solve
  problems and to question them about the reasoning
  behind their solutions
• Discovered that children think in radically
  different ways than adults
• Proposed that development occurs as a series of
  stages differing in how the world is understood

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Cognition

• All the mental activities associated with
  thinking, knowing, and remembering
• Children think differently than adults

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Stage 1- Sensorimotor Stage

• From birth to about age two
• Child gathers information about the world through
  senses and motor functions
• Child learns object permanence

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Sensorimotor Stage (birth 2)

• Information is gained through the senses and
  motor actions
• In this stage child perceives and manipulates but
  does not reason
• Symbols become internalized through language
  development
• Object permanence is acquired

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Object Permanence

• The understanding that objects exist independent
  of ones actions or perceptions of them
• Before 6 months infants act as if objects removed
  from sight cease to exist
• Can be surprised by disappearance/reappearance of
  a face (peek-a-boo)

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Object Permanence

• The awareness that things continue to exist even
  when they cannot be sensed
• Out of sight, out of mind

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Object Permanence
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Stage 2- Preoperational Stage

• From about age 2 to age 6 or 7
• Children can understand language but not logic
• Fantasy Play

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Preoperational

1. Symbolic functioning is that a child uses to
   represent something that is not physically
   present like the use of mental symbols, words, or
   pictures

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Preoperational - Egocentrism

• The childs inability to take another persons
  point of view
• Includes a childs ability to understand that
  symbols can represent other objects

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Concrete Operational Stage (712 years)

• Understanding of mental operations leading to
  increasingly logical thought
• Classification and categorization
• Less egocentric
• Inability to reason abstractly or hypothetically

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Concrete operational

1. Decentering this is where a child considers all
   aspects of a problem to solve it
2. Elimination of egocentrism kids can begin to
   see the others point of view

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Conservation

• An understanding that certain properties remain
  constant despite changes in their form
• The properties can include mass, volume, and
  numbers.

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Conservation
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Conservation
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Conservation
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Conservation

• Number

In conservation of number tests, two equivalent
rows of coins are placed side by side and the
child says that there is the same number in each
row. Then one row is spread apart and the child
is again asked if there is the same number in
each.
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Conservation

• Length

In conservation of length tests, two same-length
sticks are placed side by side and the child says
that they are the same length. Then one is moved
and the child is again asked if they are the
same length.
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Conservation

• Substance

In conservation of substance tests, two identical
amounts of clay are rolled into similar-appearing
balls and the child says that they both have the
same amount of clay. Then one ball is rolled out
and the child is again asked if they have the
same amount.
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Formal Operational Stage (age 12 adulthood)

• Hypothetico-deductive reasoning
• Adolescent egocentrism illustrated by the
  phenomenon of personal fable and imaginary
  audience

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Stage 4- Formal Operational Stage

• Child can think logically and in the abstract
• Can solve hypothetical problems (What if.
  problems)

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Critique of Piagets Theory

• Underestimates childrens abilities
• Overestimates age differences in thinking
• Vagueness about the process of change
• Underestimates the role of the social environment
• Lack of evidence for qualitatively different
  stages