Cognitive Development

PIAGET’S THEORY OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

• “intelligence” could not be equated
with the number of test items they
answered correctly, but basically
why some able to answer but
others were not

• Piaget observed his three children

as sources of information in the
development of his cognitive
development theory

• Stages of development is referred

Jean Piaget (1896- to the qualitative change from
preceding stages – the order of
1980)
stages cannot change
 2 basic
inherent
tendencies

Organization Adaptation

• an ongoing process of • the tendency to adapt to environment

arranging information & through 2 basic processes:
experience into mental
• Assimilation - the process by which an
systems or structures
individual uses an existing structure or
• The psychological ability to deal with the environment
structure is known as
• Accommodation occurs when an
scheme, which helping us
individual must change existing scheme
to understand and interact
to respond to a new situation
with the outside world.
• all organisms have an innate tendency to create a
harmonious relationship between themselves and
their environment in his concept of Equilibrium
• adaptation is a balance of assimilation and
accommodation

Assimilation Accommodation

Adaptation
Sensorimotor Development
- Infants discover aspects of the world through their sensory
impressions, motor activities & coordination of the two
- Learn to differentiate themselves from the external world
- Form schemas only of objects & actions that are present, things
they can see, hear or touch – slowly learn that objects exist even
when they are not visible (object permanence)
- Gain some appreciation of cause and effect
- They are not yet able to form schemas that are mental
representations of objects & actions
- By the end they begin to experiment, repeating & modifying
actions to see the effects
Preoperational Development
- Start to think in images symbols – but yet to manipulate &
transform information in logical ways
- Able to represent something with something else – language
develop rapidly and able to play games of pretend
- Intelligence is more to intuitive (guesses) – yet to make general
& logical statements
- Reasoning ability of no hands-on experience – often wrong &
bizarre by adult standards
- Mental operation about conservation (the ability to recognise
about properties of substance remain the same – volume,
weight, species
- The concept of reversibility & complimentary is yet to developed
Concrete Operational Development
- Slowly able to understand logical principles that apply to
concrete external objects – mental manipulation & mental
operations
- They can appreciate that certain properties of an object remain
the same despite of changes in appearance – sorting objects
into categories
- Appreciate the perspectives of others – able to think about 2
concepts at the same time (longer & wider, cold & hot)
- They still can only perform the logical operations on real &
concrete objects – not on the abstract concepts, which started
to appear in the formal operational level
Understanding Cognitive Development Through
Information Processing
- Human are like computers (information processer) – gradual
quantitative changes in mental capacities
- Older children can take information and shift their attention
from one task to another more rapidly (Manis, Keating &
Morrison, 1980)
- Becoming selective of what they take in as they learn to focus on
relevant parts of incoming information & ignore the rest (Hagen
& Hale, 1973)
- The attention spans increase in length as the memory storage
capacity improve – ability to receive information improves
Understanding Cognitive Development Through
Information Processing
- Memory storage capacity improvement – related to nature &
maturation of the brain (Case, Kurland & Goldberg, 1982) & also
to nurture such as familiarity
- Great memorisation strategies – the role of schools in educating
the children how to memorise & how to study
- Children gradually develop better remembering skills of more
complex & abstract information
- The memories are more accurate, extensive & well organised –
complete network of facts (more complete mental filing system)
Understanding Cognitive Development Through
Information Processing
In group, discuss and draw a milestone of children cognitive
development based on Piaget’s Cognitive Development Stages
which includes 3 fundamental aspects such as age, achievement &
description as follow:

Age Maturation Description

Mental representation Infants can form images of
objects & actions in their
0 – 2 years minds
Object permanence Infants understand that
objects exist even when out of
sight
Culture & Cognitive Development
- Lev Vygotsky viewed the development as a social world of
people – human mind as a product of cultural history
- The children mind grows through interaction with other minds –
interaction with parents, teachers & others
- Social routines affect children’s knowledge & understanding of
the world (Nelson, 1986) – gradually develop mental
representations (scripts) about the cultural activities
- The children’s cognitive abilities are influenced by the language
of their culture
- Cultural routines and practices – Asian cultures who emphasise
educational achievement is both strongly encouraged by parents
& teachers (Stigler, 1992)
Individual Variation in Cognitive Development
- Differences in development – heredity & environment?
- Children who raised in barren environments develop more
slowly than children in more normal family environments
(Rymer, 1992)
- Differences in academic performance – some have better work
habits learning strategies that their learn from their families
- Some Japanese-American mothers buy 2 sets of textbooks – one
of which they study themselves so that they can better help
their children (White, 1987)
- Children’s cognitive development is also promoted when parents
read & talk to them, encourage & help them to explore &
actively teach them (Gotfried, 1984)
Formal Operational Development
- Adolescents slowly develop a conscious identity – they can start to think and
reason about abstract concepts, engage in hypothetical thinking including
imagining of logical consequences
- They can consider various strategies of doing thing & recognise that some
methods are better than the other
- They can form general concepts & understand the impact of the past on the
present & the present on the future
- They can think logically & systematically about symbols & proposition –
“suppose there were no water in the city…”
- They can reflect on & analyse their own mental processes – to understand it
effectiveness
- People are more likely to use formal operations for problems based on their
own occupations
Formal Operational Development
- Adolescents slowly can apply their advanced cognitive skills to morality –
Kohlberg on moral reasoning
- Kohlberg & Gilligan (1971) – the reasons given for moral choices change
systematically & consistently with age
- Work in group to highlight the Kohlberg Stages of Moral Development
Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development

Stages of Development Description Development Example

Level 1: Preconventional
Stage 1: Obedience & Punishment Orientation
Stage 2: Instrumental Orientation
Level 2: Conventional
Stage 3: Good Boy, Nice Girl Orientation
Stage 4: Law-and-Order Orientation
Level 3: Postconventional
Stage 5: Social-Contract Orientation
Stage 6: Universal-Ethical-Principal Orientation
Implications to Education
• Learners should be involved as active participants in the learning
process
• Educators must understand and build around student’s cognitive
structure
• Optimal learning involves mildly challenging experiences for the
learner (create appropriate level of disequilibrium)
• The materials need to be partially known and partially unknown
• The part that is known will be assimilated, and the part that is
unknown will motivate learners to take in the challenge to
accommodate it
Thank you very much for your attention…