Unit 2: Cognitive Development PDF

UNIT 2: Cognitive development Miss Zulu  Objectives of this unit At the end of this unit students will be expected to: ❖ Provide a definition of development that takes into account three agreed-upon principle. ❖ Describe three continuing debates about development ❖ Su...

UNIT 2: Cognitive development Miss Zulu  Objectives of this unit At the end of this unit students will be expected to: ❖ Provide a definition of development that takes into account three agreed-upon principle. ❖ Describe three continuing debates about development ❖ Summarize research on the physical development of the brain and possible implications for teaching ❖ Explain the principles and stages presented in Piaget’s theory of cognitive development & criticism of his theory  A definition of development The term development refers to certain changes that occur in human beings or animals between conception and death. The term is not applied to all changes, but rather to those that appear in orderly ways and remain for a reasonably long period of time Human development can be divided into a number of aspects; physical development, which deals with the changes in the body; personal development, for changes in the individuals identity and personality; social development, changes in the way the individual relates to others and cognitive development that refers to changes in thinking, reasoning and decision making. Many changes during development are matters of growth and maturation What do you think is the difference between Growth & Maturity?  A definition of development Maturation refers to changes that occur naturally and spontaneously and that are, to a large extent, genetically programmed. Such changes emerge over time and are relatively unaffected by environmental factors, unless in cases of malnutrition or severe illness (Woolfolk, 2019), similarly growth refers to physical and biological changes.  General principles of development There are a few general principals almost all theorists would support; 1. People develop at different rates. Simply put some people grow taller than others, better coordinated and more mature in thinking. HOW OLD DO I LOOK? General principles of development 2. Development is relatively orderly. People develop abilities in a logical order, from infancy, to adulthood. When did you start walking? At what age is a female girls expected to get her monthly’s? When do male boys get their deepened voices? General principles of development 3. Development takes place gradually. Change does not occur overnight, therefore changes will occur overtime.  Three continuing debates about development There are many different approaches to research and theory, here are some continuing debates about key questions surrounding development; Nature vs Nurture Continuity vs discontinuity Critical vs sensitive periods  Nature vs Nurture Nature in development can be defined as the individual's heredity, genetics, biological processes, maturation etc.(Woolfolk, 2019, pg. 61) Nurture can be defined as the action or process of nurturing someone or something, these can include education, parenting, culture, social policies etc. Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution helps us understand how genes and the environment interact.  Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution investigates into the changes in giraffe necks overtime. 1. What do you think caused this? 2. What factor between nature and nurture played in the changes of the necks? Elizabeth born from both white parents, lost her parents to a car crash, subsequently leaving her to the nanny who was Xhosa. She moves from her initial home in the suburbs and now stays in the township. 1. Is she going to experience any change (apart from the move to the township?) 2. What factors will play at a change, should it occur?  Continuity versus discontinuity Continuity refers to the unbroken and consistent existence or operation of something over time. Discontinuity refers to a break in or lack of continuity. The debate around continuity and discontinuity questions “to what extent is there developmental continuity between humans and animals?  Continuous or discontinuous? 1. A person's height? 2. A persons weight? 3. Physical growth in females (Menstrual cycle, Development of breasts, hips) 4. Physical growth in males? ( Adams apple, Break in voice, Facial hair) 5. Changes in personality? (Introverted/extroverted) 6. Skills learned through the years? (Soccer, running, cooking)  Critical vs sensitive periods A critical period is a phase during which the brain cell connections are more plastic and receptive to the influence of a certain kind of life experience. Lacking certain experiences in the early years of life can have a profound effect on developing neural connections. During the critical period, new skills or traits can be formed given the proper life experience. If the necessary experience is not available during this time, it becomes much harder, less successful, or even impossible to acquire the skill or trait after the window of opportunity closes.  The brain and cognitive development The brain, or to be concise the Central nervous system (CNS) comprises of the brain and spinal cord, lies at the core of our very existence. It is the organ that controls everything we do. If it gets damaged, we lose sometimes vital functions  The brain and cognitive development The developing brain has a wonderful propensity to repair itself. This is known as neural plasticity, whereby the brain is sufficiently malleable for other regions to take over the functional aspect of the damaged area. There are two key components to brain development; nutrition and stimulation. Hand in hand to nutrition is hydration. Did you know that increased levels of dehydration can cause reduced muscular strength, increased fatigue and impairs brain functions  The brain and cognitive development In addition, there is the Peripheral Nervous System or PNS, which consists of the cranial and spinal nerves, as well as the peripheral ganglia. The PNS is responsible for taking neural messages to the CNS and generated by the CNS.  The brain and cognitive development The PNS is also split into two divisions – the somatic nervous system and the autonomic nervous system – ANS. An easy way to remember what the somatic nervous system is responsible for is in its name ‘soma’ which in Greek means body. The somatic nervous system is thus in control of the body – not brain – and receives input from sensory organs (our senses) and then carries out or implements an appropriate movement of the body The autonomic nervous system – acts as its name implies; autonomic, involuntary, and automatic ; it functions without us having it think about it and is responsible for activities such as regulating smooth muscle (skin), cardiac muscle (the heart) and glands (hormone release).  The brain and cognitive development the ANS is split into two more divisions; the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches The sympathetic nervous system is in charge of what is known as ‘flight/flight’ – this is where is gets the body ready to use energy and can for example be during times of stress – positive body stress like exercising and negative body stress like if you were in an accident. The body would release enough energy and the correct hormones to deal with these situations the parasympathetic nervous system, conserves energy and stores it – it is responsible for getting the body back to a comfortable state where all feels balanced and excess energy is not required, this is called a state of homeostasis  The brain and cognitive development The brain can be divided into hemispheres. The term hemispheric lateralization refers to the left and right hemispheres of the brain, which are situated, by their very location, away from the mid-line, or corpus collosum: the interconnecting nerve fibers allowing the transfer of information from left to right hemisphere. What colour is the shoe?  The brain and cognitive development Further to the hemispheres, due to lateralization of function, and specific areas of the brain, within each hemisphere being responsible for specific functions, the brain is further compartmentalized into four lobes. The diagram shows the different lobes of the brain and where they are situated  The brain and cognitive development The frontal lobe is generally where higher executive functions including emotional regulation, planning, reasoning and problem solving occur. The parietal lobe is responsible for integrating sensory information, including touch, temperature, pressure and pain. The temporal lobe also contains regions dedicated to processing sensory information, particularly important for hearing, recognising language, and forming memories. The occipital lobe is the major visual processing centre in the brain, it receives visual information from the eyes. This information is relayed to several secondary visual processing areas, which interpret depth, distance, location and the identity of seen objects (Castle & Buckler, 2018).  Cognitive development It is how humans acquire, organize, and learn to use knowledge (Gauvain & Richert, 2016). In psychology, the focus of cognitive development has often been only on childhood. However, cognitive development continues through adolescence and adulthood. It involves acquiring language and knowledge, thinking, memory, decision making, problem solving, and exploration. The two most prominent psychologists who have contributed to it are Jean Piaget & Lev Vygotsky.  Cognitive development Swiss Jean Piaget was one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century; believed that children developed thought through passing different mental stages in their life. He believed that human cognitive functioning was a way of interacting with the environment, which is an important means of ensuring survival Thinking process changes radically, though slowly, from birth to maturity because we constantly thrive to make sense of the world. Piaget described 4 interactive factors to cognitive development, these include the following; Biological maturation Activity Social experiences Equilibration  Cognitive development He alludes that humans have basic tendencies in thinking, the first one is organization and adaptation. Organization refers to People are born with the tendency to organise thinking processes into psychological structures. Simple structures are continually combined and coordinated to become more sophisticated and effective. Piaget gave a special name to these psychological structures, schemes. Cognitive development  Cognitive development Adaptation refers to people also have the tendency to adapt to their environment. Involves two basic processes: 1. Assimilation: Using existing schemes to make sense of events in the world. Trying to understand new things by fitting it into what we already know. 2. Accommodation Change of existing schemes to respond to a new situation. If information does not fit into existing schemes, more appropriate structures must be developed. Adjustment of thinking rather than adjustment of information. Cognitive development Cognitive development  Cognitive development Equilibration: Organizing, assimilating and accommodating is a complex balancing act. Actual changes in thinking occur due to Equilibration. People test adequacy of thinking processes in order to achieve balance. If scheme does not produce satisfying results in Disequilibrium.  Cognitive development After observing children closely, Piaget proposed that cognition developed through distinct stages from birth through the end of adolescence. By “stages” he meant a sequence of thinking patterns with four key features: 1. The stages always happen in the same order. 2. No stage is ever skipped. 3. Each stage is a significant transformation of the stage before it. 4. Each later stage incorporated the earlier stages into itself. Piaget proposed four major stages of cognitive development, and each stage is correlated with an age period of childhood, but only approximately  Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Perspective Lev Vygotsky was a seminal Russian psychologist who is best known for his sociocultural theory. He believed that social interaction plays a critical role in children's learning. Through such social interactions, children go through a continuous process of learning. Vygotsky noted that culture profoundly influences this process. Imitation, guided learning, and collaborative learning all play a critical part in his theory. Vygotsky believed that cultural tools and psychological tools play a very important role in cognitive development.. Cultural tools included IPad, mobile phone, calculators etc, whilst Psychological tools included signs, symbol systems, maps, work of art, language. Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Perspective  Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Perspective Vygotsky believes language provides a way to express ideas and ask questions, frees us from immediate situations to think about what is and what might be. It is the human capacity for language that enables children to provide for cognitive tools in the solution of difficult tasks, to overcome impulsive action, to plan a solution to a problem prior to its execution, and to master their own behaviour. Vygotsky believes that private speech guides cognitive development and advocates for it. Vygotsky formulated three particularly important ideas about cognitive development - The concepts of internalization, - The zone of proximal development and - Scaffolding  Cognitive views of learning The cognitive approach began to revolutionize psychology in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, to become the dominant approach (i.e., perspective) in psychology by the late 1970s (Woolfolk, 2019). The start of the use of computers allowed psychologists to try to understand the complexities of human cognition by comparing it with something simpler and better understood, i.e., an artificial system such as a computer. The use of the computer as a tool for thinking how the human mind handles information is known as the computer analogy.  Cognitive views of learning The idea of information processing was adopted by cognitive psychologists as a model of how human thought works. The information processing theory focuses on the idea that humans process the information they receive from the environment, in the manner of a computer, rather than merely responding to stimuli (Castle & Buckler, 2018). In the information processing theory, as the child takes in information, that information is first briefly stored as sensory storage; then moved to the short term or working memory; and then either forgotten or transferred to the long-term memory  Cognitive views of learning Sensory memory- This refers to a system that holds sensory information very briefly; has very large capacity of information does not stay long in this system. Perception- The process of detecting a stimulus and assigning meaning to it. It is based on physical representation in the world and our knowledge about it (Woolfolk, 2010). Attention- Attention is a critical aspect of information processing, as it allows us to selectively focus on specific stimuli while ignoring irrelevant information. Working Memory- Also known as short term memory entails new information held temporarily and combined with knowledge from long-term memory to solve problems. It contains what you are thinking about at the moment. Long-term memory (LTM)-Important information from STM is encoded and transferred to LTM, where it can be stored indefinitely. LTM, with its unlimited capacity, serves as long-term storage for information throughout our lifetime.  Cognitive views of learning Cognitive load and retaining information- This term refers to the amount of mental resources, mostly working memory, required to perform a task. There are three cognitive loads discussed below; Intrinsic cognitive load- Amount of cognitive processing required to figure out material. Is intrinsic to the task and cannot be avoided. Extraneous cognitive load- “ The resources required to process an irrelevant to the task.” (Woolfolk, 2010, p. 242). Cognitive capacity used to deal with problems not related to the task (e.g., noisy roommate). Germane Cognitive load- Deep processing of information related to the task, including the application of prior knowledge to a new task or problem. Can be supported by instruction (e.g., asking learners to explain to each other The end of Unit 2 Any questions?