Chapter 5

COGNITIVE GROWTH:
PIAGET AND VYGOTSKY

Chapter 5
MODULE 5.1
PIAGET'S APPROACH TO
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Key Elements of Piaget's
Theory
What principles underlie this
cognitive growth?
Principles underlie the growth in children's
schemes
•Assimilation  the process by which people
understand an experience in terms of their current
stage of cognitive development and way of thinking
•Accommodation  changing the existing ways of
thinking, understanding, or behaving in response to
encounters with new stimuli or events
Transitions
Object Permanence
Before an infant has
understood the idea of
object permanence, he
will not search for an
object that has been
hidden right before his
eyes.
But several months later,

he will search for it,
illustrating that he has
attained the concept of
object permanence.
Why would the concept of object permanence be important

to a caregiver?
Earliest Stage of Cognitive Growth
and Substages
Substage 6: Beginnings of Thought
•18 months to 2 years
•Capacity for mental representation or symbolic thought
– Mental representation  an internal image of a past
event or object
– Understanding causality
– Ability to pretend
– Deferred imitation
Cognitive Development in the
Preschool Years
Preoperational Stage (2-7 years)
•Time of stability and change
•Use of operations at end of stage

Relationship Between Language
and Thought
Centration
Centration is the process of concentrating on one limited aspect

of a stimulus and ignoring other aspects.
Conservation: Learning That
Appearances Are Deceiving
Conservation is the knowledge that quantity is

unrelated to the arrangement and physical appearance
of objects.
Incomplete Understanding of
Transformation
Preoperational children
•Unable to envision successive transformations

•Transformation is the process in which one state is
changed into another.
•Ignore middle steps
Egocentrism
Emergence of Intuitive Thought
• Curiosity blossoms and answers to wide variety of

questions sought
• Children often act as authority on particular topics
• Preschoolers believe they know answers to all

kinds of questions, but there is little or no logical
basis for this confidence
Late Stages of Intuitive Thought
Slowly certain qualities prepare children for more

sophisticated forms of reasoning
•Begin to understand the notion of functionality
•Begin to show an awareness of the concept of

identity important to develop an understanding of
conservation
Implications on Education
• Parents and teachers should be aware of general stage of

cognitive development.
• Instructions should reflect the level (slightly higher).
• Instructions should be individualized as much as possible.
• Active engagement
• Opportunities for social interaction
• Permission for mistakes
• Not pushing too much
Intellectual Development:
Piaget
Cognitive Development in the School Years and
Adolescence
Concrete operational stage
•7 to 12 years
•Characterized by active and appropriate use of logic
– Logical operations applied to concrete problems
– Conservation problems; reversibility; time and speed,
and decentering
How does concrete operational
thought emerge?
• Shift from preoperational thought to concrete operational
thought does not happen overnight
• Children shift back and forth between preoperational
and concrete operational thinking
• They can give correct answers but cannot make
justifications
• Once concrete operational thinking is fully engaged,
children show several cognitive advances
Piagetian Stages Related to Youth
Development
Developmental of Formal
Operations
Consequences of Formal
Operational Use
Increased abstract reasoning
•Questioning of parents and authority figures
•More argumentative
•Indecisiveness because of multiple sides of issues

MODULE 5.2
APPRAISING PIAGET: SUPPORT,
CHALLENGES, AND
ALTERNATIVES
Early Critics
Contemporary Critics
Conversation Training
Conclusion
• Piaget provided ingenious description of broad

outlines of cognitive development during infancy
• Piaget underestimated capabilities of younger

infants and children
• Pioneering figure in the field of development

Postformal Thought
Postformal Thought
Perry and Postformal Thinking
MODULE 5.3
VYGOTSKY'S VIEW OF
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT:
TAKING CULTURE INTO
ACCOUNT
Vygotsky's View of Cognitive
Development
• Cognition result of social interactions in
which children learn through guided
participation
• Children gradually grow intellectually and

begin to function on their own because of
assistance that adult and peer partners
provide
Culture and Gender Influences
• Nature of the partnership between developing

children and adults and peers determined
largely by cultural and societal factors
• Societal expectations about gender play role in

how children come to understand world
Zone of Proximal Development
• Cognition increases
through exposure to
information that is new
enough to be
intriguing, but not too
difficult
• Greater improvement
with help = greater
increases in zone of
proximal development
What Is Scaffolding?
Cultural Tools
Vygotsky in the classroom
• Exposure to information within a child’s ZPD
• Active participation in learning
• Interaction with others  child-adult and child-child
• Interactions fall within child’s ZPD
• Cooperative learning
• Reciprocal teaching
• First comprehension stage then progress through ZPD
• Students can assume the teacher role
Evaluating Vygotsky's
Contributions
• Vygotsky’s writings represent consistent theoretical
system related to importance of social interaction
in promoting cognitive development
• Theory consistent with growing body of

multicultural and cross-cultural research and
cognitive development
• Theory lacks insight into processing and

synthesizing of individual bits of information

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COGNITIVE GROWTH:

PIAGET AND VYGOTSKY

But several months later,

Why would the concept of object permanence be important

•Time of stability and change

•Use of operations at end of stage

Centration is the process of concentrating on one limited aspect

Conservation is the knowledge that quantity is

•Unable to envision successive transformations

• Curiosity blossoms and answers to wide variety of

• Children often act as authority on particular topics

• Preschoolers believe they know answers to all

Slowly certain qualities prepare children for more

•Begin to show an awareness of the concept of

• Parents and teachers should be aware of general stage of

•Indecisiveness because of multiple sides of issues

• Piaget provided ingenious description of broad

• Piaget underestimated capabilities of younger

• Pioneering figure in the field of development

• Children gradually grow intellectually and

• Nature of the partnership between developing

• Societal expectations about gender play role in

• Theory consistent with growing body of

• Theory lacks insight into processing and

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