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Cognitive Development
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Theme Theme 4
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
What is Intelligence?
How we gain Knowledge: Cognitive Schemes and Cognitive Processes
Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development
The Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to 2y)
Development of Problem-Solving Abilities
Development of Imitation
Development of Object Permanence
Challenges to Piaget’s Account of Sensorimotor Development: Neo-Nativism and Theory Theories
The Preoperational Stage (2-7y) and the Emergence of Symbolic Thought
Deficits in Preoperational Reasoning
The Development of Theory of Mind (TOM)
The Concrete Operational Stage (7-11y)
The Formal-Operational Stage (11-12y and beyond)
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Perspective
The Role of Culture in Intellectual Development
Tools of Intellectual Adaptation
The Social Origins of Early Cognitive Competencies and the Zone of Proximal Development
The Zone of Proximal Development
Implications for Education
The Role of Language in Cognitive Development
Piaget’s Theory of Language and Thought
Vygotsky’s Theory of Language and Thought
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Cognitive Development 1
Cognition: The activity of knowing and the processes through which knowledge is acquired.
Cognitive development: Changes that occur in mental activities such as attending, perceiving,
learning, thinking, and remembering.
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Genetic epistemology: The experimental study of the development of knowledge, developed by
Piaget.
Unites constructivism and structuralism.
What is Intelligence?
Intelligence: A basic life function that enables an organism to adapt to its environment.
Cognitive equilibrium: Piaget’s term for the state of affairs in which there is a balanced, or
harmonious, relationship between one’s thought processes and the environment.
Intellectual activity is undertaken with one goal in mind: produce balanced, harmonious
relationship between one’s thought and environment.
Process of achieving → equilibration.
Children are active and curious explorers who are constantly challenged by many novel
stimuli and events that are not immediately understood → imbalances are called cognitive
disequilibria → between children’s modes of thinking and environmental events prompt
them to make mental adjustments that enable them to cope with puzzling new experiences
and thereby restore cognitive equilibration.
→ Intelligence as interactionist model that implies that mismatches between one’s internal
mental schemes (existing knowledge) and the external environment stimulate cognitive activity
and intellectual growth.
Constructivist: One who gains knowledge by acting or otherwise operating on objects and events
to discover their properties.
Children’s constructions of reality depend on the knowledge they have available to them →
the more immature the child’s cognitive system, the more limited his or her interpretation of
the event.
How we gain Knowledge: Cognitive Schemes and Cognitive Processes
Cognitive Development 2
Scheme: An organized pattern of thought or action that one constructs to interpret some aspect of
one’s experience (also called cognitive structure).
→ Are representation of reality.
Are the means by which children interpret and organize experience.
→ Piaget: Cognitive development is the development of schemes, or structures.
Organization: An inborn tendency to combine and integrate available schemes into coherent
systems or bodies of knowledge.
Children are constantly organizing whatever schemes they have into more complex and
adaptive structures.
Adaptation: An inborn tendency to adjust to the demands of the environment.
Adaptation occurs through two complementary activities:
1. Assimilation: The process of interpreting new experiences by incorporating them into
existing schemes.
2. Accommodation: The process of modifying existing schemes in order to incorporate or adapt
to new experiences.
→ The two work together to promote cognitive growth.
💡 Process as follow: Equilibrium → Adaptation (Assimilation → Accommodation) →
Organization
Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development
Invariant developmental sequence: A series of developments that occur in one particular order
because each development in the sequence is a prerequisite for those appearing later.
Four major stages:
The sensorimotor stage (birth to 2y).
The preoperational stage (2-7y).
The stage of concrete operations (7-11y).
The stage of formal operations (11y and beyond).
Cognitive Development 3
The Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to 2y)
Def: Piaget’s first intellectual stage, from birth to 2 years, when infants are relying on behavioral
schemes as a means of exploring and understanding the environment.
Infants coordinate their sensory inputs and motor capabilities → form behavioral scheme that
permit them to act on and to get to know their environment.
Development of Problem-Solving Abilities
1. Reflex Activity (Birth to 1 month) 4. Coordination of Secondary Reactions (8-
12 months)
A period when an infant’s actions are pretty
much confined to exercising innate reflexes, Infants begin to coordinate two or more
assimilating new objects into these reflexive actions to achieve simple objectives, first sign
schemes, and accommodating their reflexes to of goal-directed behavior.
these novel objects. E.g.: Lift with one hand and grab with the
E.g.: Sucking on blankets and toys as well as other.
on nipples
5. Tertiary Circular Reactions (12-18m)
2. Primary Circular Reactions (1-4 months).
An exploratory scheme in which the infant
A pleasurable response, centered on the devises a new method of acting on objects to
infants’ own body, that is discovered by reproduce interesting results.
chance and performed over and over. → reflect infants’ active curiosity - her strong
E.g.: sucking their thumbs, making cooing motivation to learn about the way things
sounds work.
3. Secondary Circular Reactions (4-8 E.g.: originally squeeze the duck to make it
months). quack now decide to drop it, step on it to see
if the same results will happen.
A pleasurable response, centered on an
external object, that is discovered by chance 6. Symbolic Problem Solving (18-24m)
and performed over and over. Inner experimentation: the ability to solve
Is not a fully intentional response. simple problems on a mental, or symbolic,
level without having to rely on trial-and-error
experimentation.
E.g.: Laurent's problem solving occurred at
an internal, symbolic level as he visualized
Cognitive Development 4
the stick being used as an extension of his
arm to obtain a distant object.
Development of Imitation
Voluntary imitation becomes much more precise at age 12-18m
Deferred imitation: the ability to reproduce a modeled activity that has been witnessed at some
point in the past.
First appears at 18-24m
Because they can construct mental symbols, or images, of a model’s behavior that are stored
in memory and retrieved later.
Development of Object Permanence
Object permanence: the realization that objects continue to exist when they are no longer visible
or detectable through other senses.
Clearer signs of an emerging object concept appear by 8 to 12 months.
A-not-B error: tendency of 8-12m to search for a hidden object where they previously found it
even after they have seen it moved to a new location.
By 18-24m → 2ys old → fully understand that objects have a “permanence” about them → fully
develop.
Challenges to Piaget’s Account of Sensorimotor Development: Neo-
Nativism and Theory Theories
Neo-nativism: the idea that much cognitive knowledge, such as object concept, is innate,
requiring little in the way of specific experiences to be expressed, and that there are biological
constraints, in that the mind/brain is designed to process certain types of information in certain
ways.
Infants are born with substantial knowledge about physical world → requires less time and
experience to demonstrate.
From the very earliest months of life, infants are symbolic beings → differ from Piaget.
Argues that there is no such thing as sensorimotor period in the normal human infant.
Cognitive Development 5
8-12 m who commit A-not-B errors will often remember that an object has been hidden at
new location B, what they may lack is the ability to inhibit the tendency to search where
they have previously found the object.
Theory Theories: theories of cognitive development that combine neo-nativism and
constructivism, proposing that cognitive development progresses by children generating, testing
and changing theories about physical and social world.
Infants are prepared from birth to make sense of certain classes of information (neo-
nativism), but such innate knowledge is incomplete and requires substantial experience for
infants to construct reality (Piaget).
Debate: if development is the process of testing and changing theories, why do children end
up with basically the same adults theories of the world?
All infants start with the same ideas about how the world works and modify these
theories as they grow.
The Preoperational Stage (2-7y) and the Emergence of
Symbolic Thought
Def: Children are thinking at a symbolic level but are not yet using cognitive operations.
The preoperational stage is marked by the appearance of symbolic function.
Symbolic function: the ability to use symbols to represent objects and experiences.
Representational insight: the knowledge that an entity can stand for (represent) something other
than itself.
Language is the most obvious form of symbolism → merely using what the child already knows
Cognitive development promotes language development, not vice versa.
Pretend (symbolic) play → often pretend to be people they are not, may play these role with
props.
New Views on Symbolism
Dual representation: The ability to represent an object simultaneously as an object itself and as
a representation of something else.
→ the ability to think about an object in two different ways at the same time.
Is fragile in 3-year-olds but improves substantially over the preschool years.
Cognitive Development 6
Deficits in Preoperational Reasoning
Animism: Attributing life and lifelike qualities to inanimate objects.
E.g.: wind blow on the child to cool him off.
Egocentrism: The tendency to view the world from one’s own perspective while failing to
recognize that others may have different point of view.
Appearance/reality distinction: Ability to keep the true properties or characteristics of an object
in mind despite the deceptive appearance the object has assumed; notably lacking among young
children during the preconceptual period.
E.g.: A cat wears a dog mask → identify it as a dog.
Why? → Because not yet proficient at dual-encoding - representing an object in more than
one way at a time.
Children become less egocentric and more proficient at classifying objects on the basis of shared
perceptual attributes such as size, shape and color over preschool years.
Centration: The tendency of preoperational children to attend to one aspect of a situation to the
exclusion of others; contrast with decentration.
→ the way things appear to be - rather than logical or rational thought processes.
Conservation: The recognition that the properties of an object or substance do not change when
its appearance is altered in some superficial way.
Children younger than 6 or 7 lack this.
Why fail to conserve? → because lack decentration and reversibility.
Decentration: The ability of concrete operational children to consider multiple aspects of a
stimulus or situation; contrast with centration.
Reversibility: The ability to reverse, or negate, an action by mentally performing the opposite
action.
Did Piaget underestimate the Preoperational Child?
Preoperational children are not nearly as egocentric as Piaget thought.
Although preschool children do occasionally display animistic responses, these judgments
stem not so much from a general belief that moving inanimate have lifelike qualities as from
the presumption that unfamiliar objects that appear to move on their own are alive.
Cognitive Development 7
Identity training: an attempt to promote conservation by teaching non-conservers to recognize
that a transformed object or substance is the same object or substance, regardless of its new
appearance.
Contrary to Piaget’s viewpoint that conservation can not be taught, many preoperational
children can learn to conserve, and their initial understanding of this law of nature seems to
depend more on their ability to recognize identities than on their use of reversibility and
decentration
The Development of Theory of Mind (TOM)
Def: A person’s concepts of mental activity; used to refer to how children conceptualize mental
activity and how they attribute intention to and predict the behavior of others.
How? → Infants may be just biologically prepared and as motivated to acquire information
about mental states as they are to share meanings through language.
Belief-desire reasoning: The process whereby we explain and predict what people do based on
what we understand their desires and beliefs to be.
False-belief task: A type of task used in TOM studies, in which the child must infer that another
person does not possess knowledge that he or she possesses.
Why fail the test? → because lack of cognitive skills - executive function
Executive function: Cognitive abilities involved in planning, executing, and inhibiting
actions.
Cognitive inhibition: The ability to inhibit certain thoughts and behaviors at specified times.
The Concrete Operational Stage (7-11y)
Def: When children are acquiring cognitive
operations and thinking more logically about
real objects and experiences.
Concrete operational children can easily solve
several of Piaget’s conservation problems.
Can also display reversibility.
Relational logic:
Cognitive Development 8
Mental seriation: A cognitive operation
that allows one to merely order a set of
stimuli along a quantifiable dimension
such as height or weight.
Transitivity: Describes the necessary
relations among elements in a series.
Sequencing of Concrete Operations:
Horizontal decalage: Piaget’s term for a
child’s uneven cognitive performance; an
inability to solve certain problems even
though one can solve similar problems
requiring the same mental operations.
The Formal-Operational Stage (11-12y and beyond)
Def: When the individual begin to think more rationally and systematically about abstract
concepts and hypothetical events.
Hypothetico-deductive reasoning: A formal operational ability to think hypothetically.
Inductive reasoning: The type of thinking that scientists display, where hypotheses are
generated and then systematically tested in experiments.
Formal operational thinking is rational, systematic and abstract.
Can be good and not so good.
Imaginary audience: A result of adolescent egocentrism. Adolescents believe that everyone
around them is as interested in their thoughts and behaviors as they are themselves.
Perhaps nearly all adults are capable of reasoning at the formal level, but do do only on problems
that hold
An evaluation of Piaget’s Theory
Piaget’s Contributions
1. Piaget founded the discipline we know today as cognitive development. His interest in
children's thinking ensured that this field would be "developmental" and not merely
apply to children the ideas and methods from the study of adult thinking.
Cognitive Development 9
2. Piaget convinced us that children are curious, active explorers who play an important
role in their own development. Although Piaget's assumptions that children actively
construct their own knowledge may seem obvious today, this viewpoint was innovative
and contrary to the thinking of his time.
3. Piaget's theory was one of the first to try to explain, and not just describe, the process of
development. Largely prompted by his theory, many theorists today have taken
seriously the need to explain transitions in children's thinking (Fischer & Bidell, 1998;
Nelson, 1996; Pascual-Leone, 2000; Siegler, 1996).
4. Piaget's description of broad sequences of intellectual development provides a
reasonably accurate overview of how children of different ages think. He may have
been wrong about some of the specifics, but, as Robert Siegler (1991, p. 18) notes, "His
descriptions feel right. . .. The general trends .. . appeal to our intuitions and our
memories of childhood."
5. Piaget's ideas have had a major influence on thinking about social and emotional
development as well as many practical implications for educators.
6. Finally, Piaget asked important questions and drew literally thousands of researchers to
the study of cognitive development. And, as often happens when heuristic theories such
as Piaget's are repeatedly scrutinized, some of this research led to new insights while
pointing to problems with his original ideas.
Challenges to Piaget
1. Fail to Distinguish Competence from Performance
Piaget underestimated the cognitive capabilities of infants, toddlers, and preschool children.
His tendency to equate task performances with competencies (and to ignore motivation, task
familiarity, and all other factors that influence performance).
2. Does cognitive development really occur in stages?
3. Does Piaget explain Cognitive development?
4. Devoted too little attention to social and cultural influences.
Cognitive Development 10
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Perspective
The Role of Culture in Intellectual Development
Sociocultural theory: Vygotsky’s perspective on cognitive development, in which children
acquire their culture’s values, beliefs, and problem-solving strategies through collaborative
dialogues with more knowledgable members of society.
Children do not develop the same type of mind all over the world, but learn to use their
species-typical brain and mental abilities to solve problems and interpret their surroundings
consistent with the demands and values of their culture.
Neither the course nor the content of intellectual growth was as universal as Piaget assumed.
Should evaluate development from perspective of four interrelated levels in interaction with
children’s environment:
Ontogenetic development: Development of the individual over his or her lifetime.
Microgenetic development: Changes that occur over relatively brief periods of time, in
seconds, minutes, or days, as opposed to larger-scale changes, as conventionally studied in
ontogenetic development.
E.g.: Changes that one may see in the child solving addition problems every week for
11 consecutive weeks.
E.g.: Changes in the use of memory strategies that children use over five different trials
in the course of a 20-minute session.
Phylogenetic development: Development over evolutionary time.
Measured in thousands or even millions of years.
Sociohistorical development: Changes that have occurred in one’s culture and the values,
norms, and technologies such a history has generated.
Emphasized most.
Tools of Intellectual Adaptation
Infants are born with a few elementary mental functions - attention, sensation, perception, and
memory → eventually transformed by the culture into new and more sophisticated higher mental
functions.
Cognitive Development 11
Tools of intellectual Adaptation: Vygotsky’s term for methods of thinking and problem-solving
strategies that children internalize from their interactions with more competent members of
society.
Teach children how to think and what to think.
E.g.: Children in one society might enhance memory by taking notes, other by tying a knot
in a string.
One subtle difference in cultural tools of intellectual adaptation is found in how language names
its numbers.
The Social Origins of Early Cognitive Competencies and the
Zone of Proximal Development
Many of the truly important ‘discoveries’ that children make occur within the context of
cooperative, or collaborative, dialogues between a skillful tutor and a novel pupil.
The partnership is determined by cultural and societal factors.
The Zone of Proximal Development
Zone of proximal development: Vygotsky’s term for the range of tasks that are too complex to
be mastered alone but can be accomplished with guidance and encouragement from a more
skillful partner.
→ Underscores Vygotsky’s emphasis on the importance of social influences on children’s
cognitive development.
Scaffolding: Process by which an expert, when instructing a novice, responds contingently to the
novice’s behavior in a learning, so that the novice gradually increases his or her understanding.
Changing the level of support.
E.g.: Over the course of teaching session, more skilled person adjusts the amount of
guidance to fit student’s current performance level.
Learning and development are the result of interacting in specific culturally defined tasks that
have specific rules.
Competence is not an absolute level beyond which a child cannot exceed, but rather is task-
specific.
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Dialogue is an important part of scaffolding in ZPD → through interaction → children’s
concepts become more systematic, logical and rational.
Apprenticeship in Thinking and Guided Participation
Guided-participation: Adult-child interactions in which children’s cognitions and modes of
thinking are shaped as they participate with or observe adults engaged in culturally relevant
activities.
Children’s cognitions are shaped as they take part, alongside adults or other more skillful
associates, in everyday culturally relevant experiences.
Context-independent learning: Learning that has no immediate relevance to the present
context, as is done in modern schools, acquiring knowledge for knowledge’s sake.
Siblings as Creators of ZPD and Scaffolding
Both benefits.
Working in the ZPD in different cultures
There is not one single path to becoming an effective member of society and that different forms
of guided participation are likely to be used depending on the requirements a culture places upon
adults and children
Playing in the ZPD
Children learn about "people, objects, and actions" through symbolic play → research indicates
that such play might be related to other aspects of cognitive development.
Implications for Education
Three reasons why cooperative learning is effective:
1. Children are more motivated when working problems together.
2. Cooperative learning requires children to explain their ideas to one another and to resolve
conflicts.
3. Children are more likely to use high-quality cognitive strategies while working together.
Effectiveness varies by culture.
The Role of Language in Cognitive Development
Vygotsky: Language as the foundation for social interaction and thought.
Cognitive Development 13
Piaget: Language as a byproduct of thought.
💡
Piaget’s Theory of Language and Thought
Egocentric speech: Talk not addressed to anyone in particular and not adapted in any
meaningful way so that a companion might understand it.
Self-directed speech merely reflects the child’s ongoing mental activity and does not play a
role in a child’s cognitive development.
Speech becomes more social and less egocentric toward the end of preoperational stage
→ Cognitive development promote language, not the other way around.
Focused on children’s interaction with physical world.
Vygotsky’s Theory of Language and Thought
Nonsocial utterances illustrate the transition from prelinguistic to verbal reasoning.
Self-directed monologues occur more during problem solving.
Private speech: Child’s verbal utterances that serve a self-communicative function and guide the
child’s thinking
→ Helps young children plan strategies and regulate their behavior → Cognitive self-
guidance system
→ Language is necessary for thought.
Critical thinking based on dialogue with others who challenge the ideas.
Which viewpoint should we endorse?
More researchers on Vygotsky sides
Social speech give rise to private speech.
Cognitive Development 14
? Vygotsky and Piaget both contributed to genetic epistemology (the experimental study of
knowledge)?
True → Piaget combined his knowledge of zoology and epistemology to create a new science:
the study of the origin of knowledge (previously referred to as genetic). Vygotsky has a
sociocultural view point, where cognitive growth is dependent on one's culture.
💡 Vygotsky thought private speech was an important tool for cognitive development,
whereas Piaget thought it was egocentric and immature.
Cognitive Development 15
