Cognitive Development and Piaget's 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.