Lecture4: Cognitive DevelopmentIntellectual Development

Jean Piaget

Introduction
Understanding how children think is crucial to
understanding their development.
childrens perceptions of life events often
determine how these events affect them.
Cognitive theorists focus on the development
of thinking and reasoning.

Biography of Jean Piaget

born in Switzerland, in 1896.
His father was a professor of medieval
literature.
As a child, he became absorbed in philosophy
and zoology.
wrote his first scientific article on the albino
sparrow at the age of ten.
turned to psychology later

Piaget History
Trained as a zoologist, had the skills necessary
to begin observing children.
children make certain types of errors when
solving problems, depending upon their age.
children thinking is qualitatively different
from that of adults.
Need to understand children from their own
viewpoint.

Piaget history
made extensive work studying the
development of intelligence.
believed that cognitive development occurred
because of the childs unsatisfactory
experiences in solving problems.

Piaget
interested in how children think and construct
their own knowledge.
children proceed through four distinct stages
of cognitive development:
the sensorimotor stage,
the preoperational stage,
the concrete-operational stage,
and the formal-operational stage

General views on the child

No innate ideas...
Nor is the child a tabula rasa with the real
world out there waiting to be discovered.
Mind is constructed through interaction with
the environment.
What is real depends on how developed ones
knowledge is.

Piaget describe developmental

change?
Development occurs in stages, with a
qualitative shift in the organization and
complexity of cognition at each stage.
children are not simply slower, or less
knowledgeable than adults
They understand the world in a qualitatively
different way.

Active view of development

Child as scientist
Mental structures intrinsically active
constantly being applied to experience
Leads to curiosity and the desire to know.
Development proceeds as the child actively
refines his/her knowledge of the world
through many small experiments

Stages of development-cognitive
sensorimotor stage- 0-2 years
understanding is based on immediate sensory
experience and actions.
Only some basic motor reflexes grasping,
sucking, eye movements, orientation to sound,
etc
By exercising and coordinating these basic
reflexes, infant develops intentionality and an
understanding of object permanence.
Thought is very practical but lacking in mental
concepts or ideas.

Sensorimotor contd
Intentionality refers to the ability to act in a
goal-directed manner in other words, to do
one thing in order that something else occurs.
Object permanence refers to the
understanding that objects continue to exist
even when no longer in view.
Need to distinguish between an action and
the thing acted on.

preoperational stage
(about ages 2 to 6), childrens understanding
becomes more conceptual.
Thinking involves mental concepts that are
independent of immediate experience,
language enables children to think about
unseen events, such as thoughts and feeling.
The young childs reasoning is intuitive and
subjective..

Pre operational contd

Symbolic thought without operations.
Operations: logical principles that are applied to
symbols rather than objects.
Also can be said: actions on mental images
Eg: reversibility, compensation, and identity,
perspective taking and mathematics
In the absence of operations, thinking is governed
more by appearance than logical necessity.
Egocentric centrated- get stuck thinking one
way

P
Conservation of liquid

Pre-operational thinking and

problems with conservation with
problems of conservation

Pre-operational thinking and

problems of conservation

Why do pre-operational children fail problems

of conservation?
Because their thinking is not governed by
principles of reversibility, compensation and
identity.
If children applied these principles, they
would conclude liquid is conserved.

Characteristics of Pre-Operational
Thinking
Not governed by logical operations
Consequently, it appears egocentric (think of
examples) and intuitive (e.g., conservation
tasks)
Egocentricmore examples
(2) Intuitive problem solving is not
reasoned or logical.
No reversibility Cannot mentally undo a
given action. Can you think of examples?
Perceptual centration Focus on only one
dimension of a problem.

concrete-operational stage
7 to 12 years of age,
engage in objective, logical mental processes that
make them more careful, systematic thinkers.
Qualitatively different reasoning in conservation
problems.
Flexible and decentered.
Co-ordination of multiple dimensions.
Logical vs. empirical problem solving.
Reversibility. Think of examples
Awareness of transformations.

Concrete operational
Physical operations now internalized and have
become cognitive
Still, logic directed at physical or concrete
problems

formal-operational stage,
Thought no longer applied strictly to concrete
problems.
Directed inward: thought becomes the object of
thought.
Advances in use of deductive and inductive logic.
Think pair share.make examples of logic
can think about abstract ideas, such as ethics and
justice.
They can also reason about hypothetical possibilities
and deduce new concepts

Formal operation
Deductive thought in period of concrete
operations confined to familiar everyday
experience: If Matonge steals Kinyas toy,
then how will Kinya feel?
Formal operations: If we could eliminate
injustice, would the world live in peace?
Thinking goes beyond experience, more
abstract..about angles, God etc

Strengths
Active rather than passive view of the child.
Revealed important invariants in cognitive
development.
Revolutioned how we think about cognitive
development
Integrated diverse observations into one theory
Perceptual-motor learning rather than language
important for development.
Fostered new research .

Weaknesses
Piaget's theory does not explain why
development occurs from stage to stage
occurs. Can you think of why?
ignores individual differences: does not
account for the fact that some individuals
move from stage to stage faster than other
individuals.
the nature of stages themselves- not possible
to place a person in a single stage.

Weaknesses contd
Childrens thinking is not as consistent as the
stages suggest.
Infants and young children are more
competent than Piaget recognized.
Piaget understates the social components of
cognitive development.