Piaget

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• Piagets Theory of Cognitive Development
• Key Constructs
• Schemes Knowledge structures
• Simplest schemes are organized patterns of
  behavior, including reflexes
• Ex sucking scheme looking scheme grasping
  scheme
• Become more complex with age and become
  mental/internal
•  Children play an active role in the development
  of schemes through their interactions with the
  environment (constructivist)

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• Organization Inherited predisposition to
  combine physical or psychological schemes into
  more complex systems
• Ex infants combine looking and grasping into a
  reaching scheme

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• Adaptation Inherited predisposition involving
  two processes, assimilation and accommodation
• Assimilation Interpret new experiences in terms
  of existing schemes
• Ex Newborns and young infants try to suck many
  things, regardless of their suckability
• Ex Child sees a camel at the zoo and yells
  horse!

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• Accommodation Modify schemes to fit new
  experiences
• Ex Infants learn to modify their sucking
  depending on the object
• Ex Child sees a camel at the zoo and yells
  Lumpy horse!

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• Object Permanence Understanding that objects
  continue to exist when they cannot be perceived
  directly
• Infants have some understanding of object
  permanence at around 8 months (according to
  Piaget)
• Will search for a fully occluded (covered) object
  if they observe it being hidden

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• But still have difficulty solving visible
  displacement problems
• A-not-B error Tendency to reach where objects
  have been found before, rather than where they
  were last hidden
• Infants make this error until about 12 months of
  age
• According to Piaget, the A-not-B error occurs
  because infants do not have a full understanding
  of the permanent existence of the object
  independent of its spatial location and their
  actions on the object

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• Between 18-24 months, final stage of object
  permanence emerges (according to Piaget)
• Can solve invisible displacement problems
• One object serves as a symbol for a second
  object that is hidden from view

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• General Criticisms of Piagets Theory
• Underestimates the role of specific experiences
  in affecting cognitive development
• Ex Certain experiences (like formal schooling)
  may promote conservation and other abilities

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• Doesnt explain HOW cognitive development occurs
• Concepts (i.e., schemes, organization,
  adaptation) are vague
• Better description than explanation of childrens
  cognitive development

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• Portrays childrens thinking as being more
  consistent than it really is
• Cognitive development occurs more gradually and
  shows more variation within children than
  Piagets theory allows
• Ex Children can typically solve some
  conservation problems sooner than others

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• Underestimates the cognitive competence of
  infants and young children
• Ex Object permanence??

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• Core Knowledge Theories
• Hold that there are specialized learning
  mechanisms that allow infants and young children
  to acquire certain types of knowledge quickly
• Ex Knowledge about object properties such as
  solidity and continuity
• two objects cannot occupy the same space
  objects follow continuous paths through space

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• Infants/young children develop naïve theories
  in certain domains (areas) based on these
  specialized learning mechanisms
• Ex theory of physics (knowledge of physical
  properties of objects)
• Domains of core knowledge have evolutionary
  significance
• Exs knowledge of people , knowledge of living
  things, knowledge of objects

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• Violation of Expectation Method
• Based on assumption of infants preference for
  novel stimuli
• Habituate infants to a possible physical event
• Habituation Decrease in response due to
  repeated presentation of a stimulus
• Present a possible and impossible event
• Measure infants looking time to each event
• Pits novelty of a stimulus against impossibility
  of an event

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• Baillargeon, Spelke, Wasserman (1985)
• Infants were habituated to a screen rotating up
  and then down 180 degrees
• Test trials Object was placed behind the screen
  to block its path
• Screen rotated 112 degrees (possible event) or
  180 degrees (impossible event)
• Infants looked longer at impossible event, even
  though possible event was (arguably) more novel

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• Based on findings using the violation-of-expectati
  on method with very young infants, core knowledge
  theorists claim that some types of object
  knowledge are innate or emerge very early without
  direct experience with objects

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• Issues
• If infants are not fully habituated initially,
  may show a preference for the familiar stimulus
  during test trialsthe more familiar stimulus is
  also the impossible event
• Some evidence indicates the presence of
  familiarity effects

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• Other factors may also be confounded with the
  possible and impossible events
• Ex Degree of movement

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• Should infants looking behavior be attributed to
  higher-order cognitive processes or does it
  reflect more basic perceptual processes (e.g.,
  preference for novelty or familiarity)?
• Perception and knowing are not the same thing. .
  . A person can regard an event as odd without
  knowing why (Haith, 1998)

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• Why does young infants behavior differ from
  older childrens behavior?
• Ex If young infants have object permanence,
  then why dont older infants search for hidden
  objects, make the A-not-B error, etc.?

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• Conclusions (Cohen Cashon, 2006)
• Evidence is mixed and has been used both to
  justify core knowledge theories and more
  traditional Piagetian explanations of object
  knowledge
• Researchers should focus on understanding the
  process of acquiring object permanence, rather
  than treating it as an all-or-none phenomenon

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• Microgenetic Designs
• Designed to answer questions about how learning
  occurs

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• Three essential characteristics
• Observations are made across a period of rapidly
  changing competence in a particular area
• Within this period, the density of observations
  is high relative to the rate of change
• Observations are analyzed intensively to infer
  underlying processes

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• Microgenetic studies typically involve
• Relatively small numbers of participants (or
  single subject designs)
• Trial-by-trial assessments of childrens
  strategies for solving particular types of
  problems
• Behavioral observations of strategy use (often
  supplemented with self-reports in children 5
  years and older)

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• Overlapping Waves Theory (R. S. Siegler)
• Microgenetic studies across different areas
  consistently indicate that childrens thinking is
  highly variable
• For example
• Different children use different strategies
• Individual children use different strategies on
  different problems within a single test session
• Individual children use different strategies to
  solve the same problem on two occasions close in
  time

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• According to Overlapping Waves Theory
• Development is a process of variability, choice,
  and change
• Children typically know and use varied strategies
  for solving a given problem at any one time
• With age and experience
• Relative frequency of existing strategies changes
  
• New strategies are discovered
• Some older strategies are abandoned

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• Children usually choose adaptively among
  strategies
• Choose strategies that fit the demands of the
  problem given the strategies and available
  knowledge that children possess
• Choices of strategies become even more adaptive
  with experience in a particular content area

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• According to OWT, cognitive change can be
  analyzed along five dimensions
• Source of change (causes that set the change in
  motion)
• Path of change (sequence of knowledge states or
  predominant behaviors that children use while
  gaining competence)
• Rate of change (how much time or experience
  separates initial use of a new strategy from
  consistent use of it)
• Breadth of change (how widely the new strategy is
  generalized to other problems and contexts)
• Variability of change (differences among children
  in the other dimensions of change changing set
  of strategies used by individual children)

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• Siegler (1995)
• Examined effects of training on strategy use for
  number conservation problems (N45 54-73 mos.,
  mean 5.17 years)
• Could add more buttons and make one line a
  different length could take away buttons and
  make one line a different length or could change
  the length of the line and not add or take away
  any buttons
• Random assignment to one of three training
  conditions
• Feedback only (answer correct/incorrect)
• Feedback plus explain-own-reasoning (How did you
  know that? followed by feedback)
• Feedback plus explain-experimenters reasoning
  (Feedback followed by How do you think I knew
  that?)

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• Findings
• Different Types of Strategies (Explanations)
  Used
• Relative Length Compare lengths of two rows
• Type of Transformation Objects added/subtracted
  or just moved around
• Counting
• Dont know

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• Over the course of the experiment
• Frequency of length strategies decreased
• Frequency of transformation strategies increased
• Frequency of counting remained consistently low
• I dont know first increased and then decreased

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• Source of change
• Combination of feedback and explain-experimenters
  -reasoning led to greater learning than feedback
  alone
• Path of change
• Children relied initially on relative length,
  then abandoned this strategy but did not adopt a
  consistent alternative, then usually adopted the
  type of transformation strategy

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• Rate of Change
• Most children required multiple sessions to
  progress from initial use to consistent use of
  the transformation strategy
• Breadth of Change
• Relatively narrow (low generalizability)
• Even some of the best learners continued in the
  final session to offer relative length
  explanations (rather than transformational
  explanations) when the longer row also had more
  objects

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• Variability of change
• Substantial variability within and between
  children
• Within children Only 2 of children relied on a
  single strategy throughout the study 70 used
  three or more strategies
• Between children Individual differences in
  learning could be predicted by two pretest
  measures (total number of strategies used,
  whether two strategies were ever used on the same
  problem)