Cognition and Piaget's Cognitive Development Theory

Cognition

• Cognition is the mental process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses.
• Piaget's theory of cognitive development views children as "scientists" who test and explore hypotheses about the world by reflecting on their experiences.

Piaget's Cognitive Theory

• Three basic components: schemas, adaptation processes, and stages of development.
• Schemas: how knowledge is organized and represented, enabling the formation of a mental representation.
• Adaptation processes: enable learning and the transition from one stage to another.
• Stages of development: characterized by equilibrium and disequilibrium, where existing schemas can or cannot explain what has been perceived.
• Assimilation: adding new experience or information to an existing cognitive structure.
• Accommodation: reorganizing thoughts when new information does not fit the schema.

Stages of Cognitive Development

• Sensorimotor Stage (0-2 years): exploring the world through senses and motor activity, understanding cause and effect, and developing object permanence.
• Preoperational Stage (2-7 years): developing language and communication, imagining the future, and reflecting on the past, but with difficulty distinguishing fantasy from reality.
• Concrete Operational Stage (7-11 years): developing abstract reasoning ability, understanding conservation of matter, and understanding hierarchic categories.
• Formal Operations (12-15 years): developing adult thinking, thinking about hypothetical situations, forming and testing hypotheses, and organizing information.

Criticisms of Piaget

• Tasks were methodologically flawed.
• Underestimated the impact of culture.

Lev Vygotsky

• Social constructivist theory of cognitive development: highlighting the role of social and cultural interactions.
• Importance of language: learning happens through interactions with others, allowing us to represent reality and distance ourselves from the present.

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

• Lower limit: child working independently.
• Upper limit: the level of potential skill that the child can reach with assistance.

Scaffolding

• Instructional technique: providing individualized support to gradually improve a learner's ability to the next level based on prior knowledge.

Self-Concept

• Perception about oneself, including traits, preferences, social roles, values, beliefs, interests, and self-categorization.
• Develops throughout the lifespan.

Stages of Self-Development

• Infancy: basic sense of self, recognizing themselves in the mirror, and developing self-awareness.
• Early Childhood: concrete descriptions, physical descriptions, and overestimation of abilities.
• Middle and Late Childhood: shift to internal traits and abilities, social role descriptions, and more realistic about abilities.

Perspective Taking

• Ability to assume another's perspective.
• Develops through stages (Selman).

Self-Concept (Bandura, Erikson, Rogers)

• Self-worth.
• Ideal self: the kind of person you would like to be.
• Self-efficacy: confidence in the ability to exert control over one's own motivation, behavior, and social environment.

Morality

• Understanding of the difference between right and wrong or good and bad behavior.
• Motivates our behavior.

Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Development

• Describes how one's sense of right and wrong changes with age.
• Three levels: pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional morality.

Levels of Moral Development

• Pre-conventional Morality: stages 1-2, focusing on punishment, obedience, and self-interest.
• Conventional Morality: stages 3-4, focusing on concern for others, duty, and respect for authority.
• Post-conventional Morality: stages 5-6, focusing on social contracts, universal moral principles, and individual judgments.

Attachment

• First social relationship, strong emotional bond between infant and caregiver.
• Infants show attachment through proximity-seeking behaviors.

Phases of Attachment Formation (Bowlby)

• Phase 1: Indiscriminant Sociability (0-2 months): no preference among caregivers.
• Phase 2: Attachments in the Making (2-7 months): increasing preference for most familiar and responsive individuals.
• Phase 3: Specific, Clear-Cut Attachments (7-24 months): separation anxiety and stranger anxiety.
• Phase 4: Goal-Coordinated Partnerships (24 months): infants can tolerate short parental absences.

Types of Attachment

• Type A: didn't care, okay.
• Type B: upset when mother goes, okay with stranger.
• Type C: scared without mother.
• Type D: random.

Emotional Attachment

• Innate.
• Deprivation: break in an infant's attachment.
• Separation: when an infant is no longer with its main caregiver.

Learn about cognition, the mental process of acquiring knowledge and understanding, and Piaget's theory of cognitive development, including schemas, adaptation processes, and stages of development.