Piaget

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Piagets Cognitive Development Theory
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Cognition

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

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Childs Thinking

• Play The Magic Years (1000) Segment 25 from
  Scientific American Frontiers Video Collection
  for Introductory Psychology (2nd edition)

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Jean Piaget (pee-ah-ZHAY)

• (18961980) Swiss psychologist who became leading
  theorist in 1930s
• Developmental psychologist who introduced a stage
  theory of cognitive development
• Proposed a theory consisting of four stages of
  cognitive development
• Believed that children actively try to make sense
  out of their environment rather than passively
  soaking up information about the world.

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Piagets Theory of Cognitive Development

• 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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Schemas

• Concepts or mental frameworks that people use to
  organize and interpret information
• Sometimes called schemes
• A persons picture of the world

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Development of Schemas

• Schemas are frameworks that develop to help
  organize knowledge
• Assimilationprocess of taking new information or
  a new experience and fitting it into an already
  existing schema
• Accommodationprocess by which existing schemas
  are changed or new schemas are created in order
  to fit new information

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Assimilation

• Interpreting a new experience within the context
  of ones existing schemas
• The new experience is similar to other previous
  experiences

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Accommodation

• Interpreting a new experience by adapting or
  changing ones existing schemas
• The new experience is so novel the persons
  schemata must be changed to accommodate it

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Assimilation/Accommodation
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Assimilation/Accommodation
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Assimilation/Accommodation
As children assimilate new information and
experiences, they eventually change their way of
thinking to accommodate new knowledge
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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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Piagets 4 Cognitive Developmental Stages

• Sensorimotor stage,
• from birth to age 2
• Preoperational stage,
• from age 2 to age 7
• Concrete operational stage,
• from age 7 to age 11
• Formal operational stage,
• begins during adolescence and continues into
  adulthood.
• Each new stage represents a fundamental shift in
  how the child thinks and understands the world

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Sensorimotor Stage (birth 2)

• Information is gained directly 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 - the understanding
  that an object continues to exist even if it
  cant be seen

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Object Permanence

• The awareness that things continue to exist even
  when they cannot be sensed
• Occurs as babies gain experience with objects, as
  their memory abilities improve, and as they
  develop mental representations of the world,
  which Piaget called schemas
• 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)
• Out of sight, out of mind

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Object Permanence
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Object Permanence

• Play Object Permanence Video 15 from Worths
  Digital Media Archive for Psychology

Click Here to view in a separate window
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Preoperational Stage (27 years)

• The word operations refers to logical, mental
  activities thus, the preoperational stage is a
  prelogical stage
• Children can understand language but not logic
• Emergence of symbolic thought - ability to use
  words, images, and symbols to represent the
  world.
• Centration - tendency to focus, or center, on
  only one aspect of a situation, usually a
  perceptual aspect, and ignore other relevant
  aspects of the situation
• Egocentrism - inability to take another persons
  perspective or point of view
• Lack the concept of conservation - which holds
  that two equal quantities remain equal even if
  the appearance of one is changed, as long as
  nothing is added or subtracted
• Irreversibility - child cannot mentally reverse a
  sequence of events or logical operations back to
  the starting point

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Egocentrism

• The childs inability to take another persons
  point of view
• Child on the phone says, See the picture I drew
  for you Grandpa! and shows the picture to the
  phone.
• Includes a childs inability to understand that
  symbols can represent other objects

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Childhood Thinking

• Play A Change of Mind (1200) Segment 26 from
  Scientific American Frontiers Video Collection
  for Introductory Psychology (2nd edition)

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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

• 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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Piagets Conservation Task

• Play Piagets Conservation Task Video 18 from
  Worths Digital Media Archive for Psychology

To view in a separate window click here
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Conservation
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Conservation
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Conservation
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Types of Conservation Tasks
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Concrete Operational Stage (712 years)

• Ability to think logically about concrete objects
  and situations
• Child can now understand conservation
• Classification and categorization
• Less egocentric
• Inability to reason abstractly or hypothetically

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Formal Operational Stage (age 12 adulthood)

• Ability to think logically about abstract
  principles and hypothetical situations
• Hypothetico-deductive reasoning (What if.
  problems)
• Adolescent egocentrism illustrated by the
  phenomenon of personal fable and imaginary
  audience

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Cognitive Development

• Play Infant Cognitive Development (714)
  Segment 14 from The Mind Psychology Teaching
  Modules (2nd edition)

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Assessing Piagets Theory

• Scientific research has supported Piagets most
  fundamental idea that infants, young children,
  and older children use distinct cognitive
  abilities to construct their understanding of the
  world
• BUT
• Piaget underestimated the childs ability at
  various ages.
• Piaget confused motor skill limitations with
  cognitive limitations in assessing object
  permanence during infancy.
• Piagets theory doesnt take into account culture
  and social differences.

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Piagets Theory Challenged

• New studies indicate infants do more than sense
  and react
• One study had 1-month-old babies suck one of two
  pacifiers without ever seeing them
• When shown both pacifiers, infants stared more at
  the one they had felt in their mouth
• This requires a sort of reasoning
• Renée Baillargeon used visual tasks, rather than
  manual tasks, and found that three-and-a-half-mont
  h-old infants could mentally represent objects
  that had disappeared from view

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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
• Some adults never display formal operational
  thought processes

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Information-Processing Perspective

• Focuses on the mind as a system, analogous to a
  computer, for analyzing information from the
  environment
• Focuses on the development of fundamental mental
  processes, such as attention, memory, and problem
  solving
• Developmental improvements reflect
• increased capacity of working memory
• faster speed of processing
• new algorithms (methods)
• more stored knowledge

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Vygotskys Sociocultural Perspective

• Emphasized the childs interaction with the
  social world (other people) as a cause of
  development
• Vygotsky believed language to be the foundation
  for social interaction and thought
• Piaget believed language was a byproduct of
  thought

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Vygotskys Sociocultural Perspective

• Believed that cognitive development is strongly
  influenced by social and cultural factors, such
  as the support and guidance that children receive
  from parents, other adults, and older children
• Children learn from interactions with other
  people
• Zone of proximal developmentwhat a child can do
  by interacting with another person, but cant do
  alone.
• Critical thinking based on dialogue with others
  who challenge ideas
• Piagetfocused on childrens interaction with the
  physical world

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Cross-Cultural Viewpoint

• Cross-cultural studies show that cognitive
  development is strongly influenced by the skills
  that are valued and encouraged in a particular
  environment