Cognitive Development - Piaget's Stages

Cognitive Development  Cognitive Development Cognitive Development: The study of the development of general skills like remembering, problem-solving, and decision-making  Cognitive Development: Piaget What is knowledge? Whe...

Cognitive Development  Cognitive Development Cognitive Development: The study of the development of general skills like remembering, problem-solving, and decision-making  Cognitive Development: Piaget What is knowledge? Where does it come from? How does it develop? What can mistakes tell us? Children are little scientists, actively solving problems Jean Piaget (1896-1980) Constructivist:  Cognitive Development: Piaget Learning occurs through: Watching others Experimentation with objects Recognition of the limits of their thoughts  Cognitive Development: Piaget Principles: Development is characterized into discrete, Each stage qualitatively All children progress through stages in No regression to earlier stages  Cognitive Development: Piaget Sensorimotor Stage: Children use their sensory and motor systems to explore their environments Actions move from accidental to intentional (0-2 years): Sensorimotor (2-7 years): Preoperational “Mistake”: Children do not seem to (7-11 years) Concrete operational understand object permanence (11+ years): Formal operational  Stage 1: Sensorimotor (0-2 years) Object permanence - Stage 1: Sensorimotor  Cognitive Development: Piaget Preoperational Stage: Children can now represent experiences with language and mental imagery (0-2 years): Sensorimotor (2-7 years): Preoperational “Mistakes”: These mental representations (7-11 years) Concrete operational are still very limited — children display (11+ years): Formal operational egocentrism, lack of conservation, and centration  Stage 2: Preoperational (2-7 years) Piaget believed that children of this age assume that other people see, hear and feel exactly the same way they do  Stage 2: Preoperational (2-7 years) Egocentrism - 3 Mountains Task  Stage 2: Preoperational (2-7 years) Lack of conservation -  Cognitive Development: Piaget Concrete Operational Stage: Children can reason logically about concrete objects and events (0-2 years): Sensorimotor “Mistakes”: Children cannot think in (2-7 years): Preoperational purely abstract terms or generate (7-11 years) Concrete operational systematic experiments to test their (11+ years): Formal operational beliefs  Stage 3: Concrete Operations (7-11 years) Limits of preoperational thought are overcome and give way to logic Conservation of number, mass, and length Seriation: Transitivity: A>B, B>C → A>C  Cognitive Development: Piaget Formal Operational Stage: Children can think deeply about concrete, abstract, and even hypothetical situations. (0-2 years): Sensorimotor (2-7 years): Preoperational “Mistakes”: No major gaps in logical (7-11 years) Concrete operational reasoning! They’ve made it! (11+ years): Formal operational  Stage 4: Formal Operations (11 years +) Hypothetical and abstract thinking Adolescents can contemplate possibilities, children deal only in realities Propositional thought  Stage 4: Formal Operations (11 years +) Multiple forms of systematic or scientific thought Hypothetico-deductive reasoning Form hypotheses and predictions about situation Deduce logical, testable inferences or conclusions about situation  Stage 4: Formal Operations (11 years +) Hypothetico-deductive reasoning example What factor(s) matter for how long it takes for a pendulum to complete its arc? Weight? Height of the drop? Length of the string?  Legacy & Limitations of Piaget Incredibly insightful observations of children Many of his classic tests are still used Inspired decades of cognitive development research Children don’t follow perfect “stages” of development across all domains of reasoning In thinking of the child as a lone scientist Piaget underestimated Cognitive development Evidence (now) that infants know more than Piaget thought Example:  Limitations to Piaget’s Theory Underestimate the age at which certain skills develop Example: Object permanence Technique: Infants show awareness of object permanence as young as Children may implicitly grasp certain concepts before they can demonstrate mastery explicitly  Limitations to Piaget Cognitive and brain development continue across the lifespan Subcortical dopamine circuits (reward circuits) mature rapidly in adolescence Prefrontal cortex is not fully mature until ~25 years Underlies Prefrontal Cortex Reward/Pleasure Centers Nucleus VTA Accumbens  Cognitive development: A great example of nature and nurture Children are born with some existing capacities to understand the world and an innate drive to learn much more The environment provides input necessary for learning to take place