3: Cognitive Development - Piaget

Outline
What is cognition? Piagets Theory
    

Features of the theory Sensorimotor stage Preoperational stage Concrete operations stage Formal operations stage

Problems with the theory Learning Outcomes

What is cognition?


Virtually everything we do involves thinking or cognitive functioning

Recalling a phone number Remembering a list Following directions Reading your watch (how much time until?)

How do children become able to do all these things?  Why are some better at some tasks?  Why are some quicker to develop?

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A Constructivist Approach


Jean Piagets theory remains the standard against which all other theories are judged
Often labeled constructivist because it depicts children as constructing knowledge for themselves

Children are seen as

Active Learning many important lessons on their own Intrinsically motivated to learn
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Nature and Nurture



Piaget believed that nature and nurture interact to yield cognitive development
Adaptation: The tendency to respond to the demands of the environment to meet ones goals Organization: The tendency to integrate particular observations into coherent knowledge

Sources of Continuity


Three processes work together from birth to propel development forward

Assimilation: The process by which people translate incoming information into a form they can understand Accommodation: The process by which people adapt current knowledge structures in response to new experiences Equilibration: The process by which people balance assimilation and accommodation to create stable understanding
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Discontinuities


The discontinuous aspects of Piagets theory are distinct, hierarchical stages Central properties of Piagets stage theory:
Qualitative change Broad applicability across topics and contexts Brief transitions Invariant sequence

Hypothesized that children progress through four stages of cognitive development, each building on the previous one
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Piagets Stages of Cognitive Development

Sensorimotor Birth to 2 years Infants know the world through their senses and through their actions. For example, they learn what dogs look like and what petting them feels like.

Preoperational

2-7 years

Toddlers and young children acquire the ability to internally represent the world through language and mental imagery. They also begin to be able to see the world from other peoples perspectives, not just from their own.

Piagets Stages of Cognitive Development

Concrete Operational 7 - 12 years Children become able to think logically, not just intuitively. They now can classify objects into coherent categories and understand that events are often influenced by multiple factors, not just one.

Formal Operational

12+ years

Adolescents can think systematically and reason about what might be as well as what is. This allows them to understand politics, ethics, and science fiction, as well as to engage in scientific reasoning.

Sensorimotor Substages
Sub Age Description

1 2

Birth 1 Infants begin to modify the month reflexes with which they are born to make them more adaptive. 14 months Infants begin to organize separate reflexes into larger behaviors, most of which are centered on their own bodies.

Sensorimotor Substages
Sub Age Description
Infants becoming increasingly interested in the world around them. By the end of this substage, object permanence, the knowledge that objects continue to exist even when they are out of view, typically emerges. During this substage, children make the A-Not-B error, the tendency to reach to where objects have been found before, rather than to where they were last hidden.
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3 4

48 months

8 12 months

Object permanence


Objects are tied to infants awareness of them

out of sight, out of mind

Hidden toy experiment

4 months: no attempt to search for hidden object 4-9 months: visual search for object 9 months: search for and retrieve hidden object

A-not-B task (Diamond, 1985)

9 months: A/B error after 1/2 second delay 12 months: 10 second delay needed to produce error
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Piagets A-Not-B Task

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Sensorimotor Substages
Sub Age Description
Toddlers begin to actively and avidly explore the potential uses to which objects can be put. Infants become able to form enduring mental representations. The first sign of this capacity is deferred imitation, the repetition of other peoples behavior a substantial time after it occurred.
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5 6

12 18 months 18 24 months

Preoperational Stage


A mix of impressive cognitive acquisitions and equally impressive limitations

A notable acquisition is symbolic representation, the use of one object to stand for another, which makes a variety of new behaviors possible A major limitation is egocentrism, the tendency to perceive the world solely from ones own point of view A related limitation is centration, the tendency to focus on a single, perceptually striking feature of an object or event Preoperational children also lack of understanding of the conservation concept, the idea that merely changing the appearance of objects does not change their key properties
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Piagets Three-Mountain Task

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Egocentric Conversations

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The Balance Scale: An Example of Centration

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Procedures Used to Test Conservation

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Concrete Operational Stage



Children begin to reason logically about the world They can solve conservation problems, but their successful reasoning is largely limited to concrete situations Thinking systematically remains difficult
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Inhelder and Piagets Pendulum Problem



The task is to compare the motions of longer and shorter strings, with lighter and heavier weights attached, in order to determine the influence of weight, string length, and dropping point on the time it takes for the pendulum to swing back and forth Children below age 12 usually perform unsystematic experiments and draw incorrect conclusions
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Formal Operational Stage

Cognitive development culminates in the ability to think abstractly and to reason hypothetically  Individuals can imagine alternative worlds and reason systematically about all possible outcomes of a situation  Piaget believed that the attainment of the formal operations stage, in contrast to the other stages, is not universal

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Implications for Education



Piagets view of childrens cognitive development suggests that childrens distinctive ways of thinking at different ages need to be considered in deciding how best to teach them In addition, because children learn by mentally and physically interacting with the environment, relevant physical activities, accompanied by questions that call attention to the lessons of the activities, are important in educational practice

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Critique of Piagets Theory



Although Piagets theory remains highly influential, some weaknesses are now apparent
The stage model depicts childrens thinking as being more consistent than it is Infants and young children are more cognitively competent than Piaget recognized


Object permanence in 3-month-olds (Bower, 1974) Number conservation in 4 year olds (McGarrigle & Donaldson, 1974)

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Critique of Piagets Theory

Piagets theory understates the contribution of the social world to cognitive development
Piagets tasks are culturally biased  Schooling and literacy affect rates of development


e.g. Greenfields study of the Wolof



Formal operational thinking is not universal

e.g. Gladwins study of the Polynesian islanders

Piagets theory is vague about the cognitive processes that give rise to childrens thinking and about the mechanisms that produce cognitive growth
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Learning outcomes
Demonstrate an understanding of Piagets theory.  Be familiar with the experiments carried out by Piaget  Show an awareness of the strengths and weaknesses of the theory.


Reading
Siegler, Deloache & Eisenberg, Chapter 4 See .pdf handout for further reading
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