Lecture 8

Cognitive Development and Sociocultural Approaches

Learning

A relatively permanent change in an individuals behaviour and in the amount or type of knowledge they have or the way in which we reason with the world

Cognition

Cognitive psychology is dedicated to examining how people think with cognitive processes including thinking, knowing, remembering, judging and problem solving

Cognitive development

Mental process of knowing, including aspects such as awareness, perception, reasoning and judgement

Jean Piaget

Had one of the biggest impacts on developmental psychology

Piaget’s influences

Biology

Philosophy

Freud

Developmental psychology

Alfred Binet laboratories

Fatherhood

Child studies

Epistemology

Study of knowledge

Genetic

Development or emergence

Experimental epistemology

Reject the armchair approach for empirical data

Maturation

‘Readiness’

Problem with behaviourist approach

It characterised learning as passive

Constructivist approach

We contrast new understanding of the world based on what we already know

Piaget and constructivism

Children construct their own knowledge

Actively select and interpret information

Active agents and ‘little scientists’

Piaget and structuralism

Set of mental operations underly thinking

Infants cognitive structures are ‘schemes’

Scheme

A basic unit of understanding

Basic schemes

Sucking

Looking

Grasping

Scheme development

Action schemes are equipped with at birth develop and multiply

Schemes adapts and evolve

Piaget’s process of learning

Equilibrium - assimilation/adaptation - equilibrium

Assimilation

The process whereby new ideas are understood in terms of schemata child already processes

Accommodation

Modifying a scheme to adapt to a new application

Piaget’s stages of cognitive development

Sensorimotor period

Preoperational period

Concrete operational period

Formal operational period

Sensorimotor period

Infants understand the world through their overt physical actions

→ Object permanence

Preoperational period

Roughly 2-7 years

→ Egocentricism

→ Difficulty with conservation

→ Semiological reasoning

Concrete operational period

Logic, reversibility, concrete objects predominate, difficulty with pure logic statements

Formal operational period

Mental operations are no longer limited to concrete objects

Apply purely verbal or logical statements

Piaget’s stages of moral development

Moral realism

Moral relationism

Moral realism

Judgements made in view of the acts consequences

Moral relativism

Judgements made in view of actions intentions

Kohlberg’s stages of moral development

Pre-conventional level

Conventional level

Post-conventional level

Pre-conventional level

Avoid punishment, get reward

Conventional level

Conform to majority norms

Post-conventional level

Individual principles of conscience

Perception of laws based in a social context

Piaget’s role of teaching

Horticultural analogy

Provide rich, stimulating and supportive environment

Direct instruction can inhibit a child’s understanding

→ Classroom mathematics

→ Addition experiment

Evaluation of Piaget

Stafford

Key strengths of Piaget

• Children’s thinking is different from adults

• Intellectual development has continuity

• Children are active learners

Key criticism of Piaget

• Universalism

• Under-estimation of children’s abilities

• Lack of emphasis on social aspects of learning

Lev Vygotsky

Rejected the key psychological frameworks

Was influenced by Piaget’s work but his sociocultural theory differed and places more emphasis on the social

Individual and the environment

Vygotsky emphasised the interrelated roles of the individual and the social world

You have to look at the whole picture to understand it

Dialectical approach

Combination of biology and social processes

General genetic law

General genetic law of cultural development

Any function in the child’s development appears twice or on 2 planes

→ The first plane being between people as intermental

→ The second plane being within the child as a intramental activity

Mediated mind

Humans do not act directly on the social world but rely on tools e.g. language, speech and behaviour

Zone of Proximal Development

The difference between what the child can achieve alone and what can be achieved with help from knowledgeable others

Key strengths of Vygotsky

• Attention to socio-cultural context

• Broader sociohistorical context development

• Fluid boundary between self and others

Key weakness of Vygotsky

• Ambiguity

• Working on the edge of discipline