Lecture4: Cognitive Development- Intellectual 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

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.

Pre-operational thinking and problems of conservation

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.