Piaget's Cognitive Development

perception

the process of organizing and interpreting sensory information

- allows us to recognize meaningful objects and events

- happens in the here and now

cognition

all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating

three fundamental processes of cognition

1. storing information

2. categorizing stored information

3. re-presentation: creating mental images of objects: re-presentation

Piaget's theory

the quality of the mind is fundamentally different as it develops through a series of 4 qualitatively distinct stages

infant cognitive development: cognition arises by...

born without cognitive abilities

- they develop through perceiving and acting on the world

mental operation

cognitive action that can be performed on objects or ideas

scheme

a mental framework or organized pattern of thought or behavior that helps a child understand and respond to the world

- like "folders" in the mind that store what a child knows about objects, actions, or concepts

- begin to develop and combine with one another as cognition arises

sensorimotor intelligence stages

1. reflex stage

2. primary circular reactions

3. secondary circular reactions

4. coordination of secondary schemes

5. tertiary circular reactions

6. final stage

sensorimotor intelligence: stage 1

reflex stage

- schemes (basic sucking, grasping, rooting, looking) are reflexive in nature

- infants driven to employ schemes

- no cognition: purely perceptive

* 0-1 month: schemes quickly start coming under voluntary control

(when they decide to act or not act on things)

--> become less reflexive = starts stage 2

sensorimotor intelligence: stage 2

primary circular reactions

- first acquired adaptions: initial responses are chance and then repeated by infant (ex: sucking thumb)

- focused on self (body) not external world

* 1-4 months

sensorimotor intelligence: stage 3

secondary circular reactions

- involves the baby with an object or another person

- acting to reproduce effect, making interesting sights last: actions lead to effects in environment

(baby will try to move their hand like they did to move a ball but without hitting it - don't know cause and effect)

- greater interest in environmental consequence of action (original action not goal directed)

* 4-8 months

--> everything began by chance; still not gaol directed

sensorimotor intelligence: stage 4

coordination of secondary schemes

- start applying multiple schemes to same object (suck, move, rotate object)

- start applying one scheme in service of another

(caregiver puts cloth over ball: "where's your ball?" - baby then lifts cloth to get the ball = held the perception of the ball in their mind; goal directed)

- actions are goal directed: intentionality

* 8-12 months

sensorimotor intelligence: stage 5

tertiary circular reactions

- take independent and varied actions to actively discover the properties of people and objects

- active experimentation

- establishing cognitive structures

* 12-18 months

sensorimotor intelligence: stage 6

final stage

- early stages of mental trial & error

- establishing representational abilities

* 18-24 months

object concept/object permanence

knowing that objects exist as separate entities, independent of our actions and perception

object concept: stage 1 & 2

- more tuned into self (own body than objects)

- absent object concept

- demonstration: fail visual tracking (mind doesn't know trajectory of ball: out of sight = out of mind)

object concept: stage 3

- beginnings of object concept

- more tuned into objects

- demonstration: extending search for object along a trajectory

--> BUT if an object is hidden, infant still doesn't know it exists (fails search task)

(peek a boo game is shocking to the child every time: can't mentally represent it)

object concept: stage 4

- improved object concept

- demonstration: actively searching for hidden objects

- BUT A not B error

(location A: place where ball is hidden = able to find the ball underneath the blanket, location B: second place where ball is hidden / under another blanket = looks under A again not B, then cries)

object concept: stage 5

more complete object concept

- demonstration: searching where object was last seen (no A not B error)

- BUT when journey to hiding place is not visible, the infant fails to find the object

(baby looks in hand for ball not under blanket)

object concept: stage 6

true object concept

- objects exist for infants as independent entities

- demonstration: exhaustive search = mentally represent objects and their displacement