Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development

Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development

• Piaget created the first comprehensive theory of cognitive development from infancy through adolescence
• He started as a zoologist, studied philosophy, and later shifted to psychology under Carl Jung
• Reading tests were developed and administered to school-aged children
• Piaget's interest in mistakes led to the discovery of reasoning processes
• He observed his own three kids, using their development as the basis for his theories
  • Kids think differently compared to adults.

Basic Principles

• Piaget viewed children as scientists, driven by a thirst for knowledge
• Children actively seek out knowledge and learn many key lessons independently
• Learning is intrinsically motivated

Schemas

• Schemas are mental structures or concepts in a child's mind
• These are expanded as they encounter new experiences
  • Example the children see cats and learn about the characteristics of cats

Knowledge

• Current knowledge is exemplified by the concept of "cat"
• New situations/objects, like a new cat, are assimilated into existing schemas
• Assimilation involves incorporating new information into existing schemas
• Confirmative feedback consolidates schemas, leading to new knowledge

Accommodation

• Corrective feedback, disequilibrium, and accommodation lead to new learning and updated knowledge
• Assimilation readily incorporates new experiences into existing theories
• Accommodation modifies existing theories based on experience

Theory Reorganization

• Children periodically find their theories inadequate and reorganize their thinking about social and physical worlds
• Three reorganizations of theories lead to 4 stages of cognitive development

Key properties

• Qualitative change (discontinuous change)
• Broad application across contexts and topics

Sensorymotor (0 to 2 years)

• Brief transitions
• Has an invariant sequence, going through all 4 stages without skipping

Substage 1 (0 to 1 months)

• Characterized by basic reflexes

Substage 2 (1 to 4 months)

• Involves primary circular reactions
  • Infants accidentally do something pleasant and try to repeat it, focusing on their own body

Substage 3 (4 to 8 months)

• Characterized by secondary circular reactions
  • Infants discover objects (sounds, sights, sensations)

Substage 4 (8 to 12 months)

• Characterized by intentional behaviour
  • Infants remove obstacles in their way

Substage 5 (12 to 18 months)

• Involves tertiary circular reactions
  • Old actions are applied to new objects, leading to learning about different outcomes

Substage 6 (18 to 24 months)

• Involves using symbols
  • Includes pretend play, gestures, words, and anticipating consequences
• Deferred imitation involves reproducing previously observed behaviour
• Memory development begins

Object Permanence

• Object permanence is the understanding that objects continue to exist even when hidden
• Begins at about 8 months and is fully developed by 18 months

A-not-B Error

• A-not-B error: Happens when infants cannot differentiate objects and actions
  • Positive reinforcement is used to seeing/playing with the toy under object a
  • Inhibiting actions: babies cant stop what they're doing and do something else

Visual Attention

• Action comes from the frontal lobe - babies cant stop what they're doing and do something else
• Visual distinctiveness and attention are important
• Starts with reflexes and finishes with symbols

Preoperational Stage (2 to 7 years)

• Continued use of symbols, such as graphs, maps, and models
• Shows a wide variety of new behaviours, but some limitation
• Egocentrism is the tendency to perceive the world solely from one's own point of view

Egocentrism

• Example: the kid knew which animals were on the side of the examiner, but said the animals he saw from his side
• The three mountains task is subject to criticisms
  • Too complex
  • Unfamiliar
  • Requires cognitive and social skills and their interaction

Concrete Operational Stage (7 to 11 years)

• Children begin to reason logically about the world
• Can solve conservation problems and discover reversibility
  • Knowing objects retain qualities when reversed
• Thinking is based on mental operations, making it more systematic and powerful
  • Object have multiple more qualities
  • Conservation: Objects stay the same (play dough)

Limitations

• Focus on the real and concrete, not the abstract
• Younger children give answers based on the real world and can't think abstractly
• Older children exhibit hypothetical thinking, accepting abstract rules without making sense
• Key achievements include conservation, reversibility, and mental operations

Formal Operational Stage (11+ years)

• Abstract and hypothetical thinking: the ability to think about ideas, principles, and scenarios that aren't physically present
  • Provides a foundation for creativity, problem-solving, and critical thinking
• Children apply mental operations to abstract things and form hypotheses
• Deductive reasoning is used (theory → experiment → evidence)
• Inductive reasoning is used (data → pattern → conclusion)

Key Contributions of Piaget's Theory

• Study of cognitive development
• A new, constructivist view of children (active vs. passive) is considered revolutionary

Weaknesses of Piaget's Theory

• The stage model depicts children's thinking as more consistent than it is
  • Doesnt account for variability and overestimates competence in adolescents
• Vague about cognitive processes.
• Underestimates the role of the social world and culture

Vygotsky's Theory

Sociocultural Perspective

• Cognitive development is inseparable from social and cultural contexts because culture determines what is important and valued
  • Provides tools that shape the way children think
  • Organizes children's knowledge and the way they communicate it to other people

Lev Vygotsky

• Intersted culture and arts
• Worked with Alexander Luria
• Researched studying psychology of art and a school teacher
• Father of the sociocultural approach to child development

Key Interests

• How do children acquire higher cognitive functions during development?
• How do social and cultural patterns shape developmental trajectories?

Core Concepts

• Children seen as social beings and apprentices
• Intersubjectivity: mutual, shared understanding among participants in an activity
• Guided participation: cognitive development occurs through involvement in structured activities with more skilled individuals
• Zone of proximal development: the difference between what a child can do alone and what they can do with assistance
  • This is where learning/development occurs through the interaction of 'what can I do zone' and 'what i can do w guidance' zone

Scaffolding

• Scaffolding involves a teaching style that matches assistance to the learner's needs
• Providing guidance, demonstrating once or twice, but never doing it for them
• Methods vary across cultures due to different needs.

Speech

• Others speech → private speech -> Inner speech

Information Processing

Key Assumptions

• Precise specification of the processes involved in children's thinking
• Emphasis on problem-solving, memory, and manipulation
• A distinction between hardware and software
  • Includes sensory, working, and long-term memory
  • Coordinated by the central executive, which matures with age
  • Software is task-specific: downloading a software or an app

Sensory Memory

• Sensory information from the outside goes into sensory memory with big storage
• Has a brief capacity

Longterm Memory

• Refers to sights, sounds, and sensations that are entering cognitive system
• Capacity is relatively constant over much of development
• Limited capacity, rehearsal is important

Working Memory

• Important to bring workplace information from the environment and relevant knowledge are brought together
• Increases when w/brain maturity and experience

Information Processing Theories

• Focuses on processing speed
  • Increases throughout childhood
  • Biological maturation + experience increases memory
• Employs mental strategies
  • Helps w/ working memory

Executive Functioning

• Synonymous to the central executive, zoning out important information
• Consist of both basic processes and mental strategies
  • New ones emerge between 5-8 years old
• Executive functioning enhances this
  • Better executive functioning = better processes

Connectionist Theories

• Networks within the brain and mapping function to brain structures exist
• Statistical learning involves detecting regularities in input data
  • Allows for predicting and generalizing information without explicit rules

Critique of Information Processing Theories

• Ignores the role of cultural and social influences

Core-Knowledge Theories

• Underestimates cultural influences
• Core knowledge are made because of experience

Understanding people

• Toddlers start to understand imitation, intention, and joint attention by age 2
  • The ability to pay attention and look over there

Theory of Mind

• Involves understanding that what we are thinking is not the same as what others are thinking
• Explaining changes in languages and executive functioning
• Tomm suggests that gradual changes in languages and executive function explains this

False-belief tasks

• Assesses whether children understand that another person's beliefs reflect experiences and influence their actions
• 5 years: excel at solving false-belief problems and understanding that person can feel one emotion and display another

Theory of Mind Module (TOMM)

• Theory of mind emerges because there can be interactions
• Requires changes in language

Memory

Origins of Memory

• Infants aged 2-3 months can remember past events if prompted with a cue
• This ability steadily develops over the first 2 years of life
• This capacity usually develops steadily over the first 2 years of life

Storage

• Parallels the development of brain structures: The brain becomes larger
• Uses strategies for remembering

Memory Strategies

• Rehearsal includes repeating information frequently for working and long-term memory
• Grouping meanings together and storing for longer transfer to midterm memory

Metacognitive Awareness

• This is related to memory
• If you learn something earlier, you are more likely to recall its memory in the future

Key components

• Scripts relate to memory as being able to retain information in order
• You have different items for basic testing
• Autobiographical means its about oneself

Autobiographical Memory

• The memory of events and experiences that relates to our own lives
• Creates a sense of self, who i am
• Can include parents and kids who discuss the past

Memory Distortion

• Can happen when open-ended questions occur
• Elaborative memorization works better

Amnesia

• Inability to recall events in ones early life
• Caused by: immature rain

Eyewitness Testimony

• Children are asked if they can reliably testify the test
• Children are given more information to remember

Problem Solving

• There are many different processes in the domain of cognitive thinking
• Children tend to become effective problem solves
• Adolescents are prone to error
• Young children are very prone to just diving into solving problems

Skill and knowledge

• To master this it depends on how fast someone is and how well they remember/know
• Children test different strategies and adjust them

Scientific problem solving

• Children and adolescents have scientific phenomena
• children and adolescence have scientific processes of experimentation

Academic Skills

• Understanding of how people act and think
• This enables us to understand the behaviour of others

Skills and knowledge

• There must be a relationship with reading and later skills
• This involves the language and reading skills

Writing

• Learning how to write takes so much effort
• Involves numerous goals, both low and high level
• Correcting these issues and making conclusions/arguments can be very difficult

Numbers

• You can also focus on numerical equality
• Focus when babies are first introduced to numbers
• Knowing and using numbers is of the primary
• Includes: one-to-one, stable-order principle, and cardinality principle

Culture

• Involves a high influence of culture and language Children learning the same system are able to count faster