Cognitive Development – Piaget, Vygotsky & Related Approaches

A comprehensive set of vocabulary flashcards covering key terms from the lecture on cognitive development, including Piaget’s stage theory, Vygotsky’s sociocultural approach, and modern information-processing perspectives.

Cognitive Development

The study of how humans perceive, imagine, think, reason, solve problems and build knowledge over time.

Jean Piaget

Swiss genetic epistemologist who proposed the first major stage theory of children’s cognitive development.

Schema

An organized ‘web’ of knowledge about a specific object, action or idea that guides perception and behavior.

●Each schema incorporates knowledge

about one specific aspect of the world

(e.g., object, action, abstract concept)

about anything Contain beliefs, past experiences, and expectations

 regarding their target.

 

●Building blocks of cognition

 

Functions:

• Form internal mental models of our world

• Guide perception, prediction, and action.

Assimilation

Using an existing schema to interpret new information without changing the schema.

Accommodation

Creating or radically modifying a schema to fit new information that cannot be assimilated.

●When a child’s existing schemas can NOT explain

 what it sees around it, it engages in adaptation processes:

Equilibrium

A cognitive state in which current schemas adequately explain one’s experiences.

Disequilibrium

A cognitive mismatch that prompts assimilation or accommodation to restore balance.

Sensorimotor Stage

Piaget’s first stage (birth–2 yrs); knowledge develops through sensory and motor exploration.

●Exploration via senses and motor abilities

 

➢Begins with reflexes

 (sucking, biting, grasping, banging) → progresses to intentional exploration.

 

➢Own body à Environment; Accidental à Intentional as child develops

 

Infants imitate facial expressions & gestures from a very early age.

 

●No mental representations

➢World only exists for infant if they can perceive it through senses

 

●Object permanence: understanding that things continue to exist even when hidden from view (incomplete ~2 years)

 

Egocentric= thoroughly embedded in their own point of you

 

Object Permanence

Understanding that objects continue to exist even when they are out of sight.

Egocentrism (Piaget)

Difficulty taking another person’s perspective; prominent in pre-operational children.

Preoperational Stage

Piaget’s second stage (2–7 yrs); marked by symbolic thought and notable cognitive limitations.

●Mental representations/symbolic thought developed

 

●Increase in representational activity

➢Language develops

➢Make-believe play

 

 

Key cognitive limitations:

 

●Difficulty entertaining multiple, conflicting representations

 

➢Egocentrism:

 inability to distinguish between one’s own perspective and

 someone else’s (i.e., Theory of Mind) 4-5 years old

 

Theory of mind= tuning / understanding other people have other opinions than yourself

Understanding why other people answer differently 

Important for social interaction eg conversations

 

➢Animism

attribute life-like qualities to inanimate objects (useful for imaginative play).

 

➢Centration:

 fixation on single aspect (neglecting others) can’t focus on multiple aspects

• tendency to focus were sent on one perceptual striking feature of an object without considering other features that might be relevant

• E.g. which chocolate bar is bigger?

 

 Irreversibility → inability to mentally reverse transformations.

 

●Cannot perform logical operations – “dominated by perceptions”

 

 

Piaget’s conservation tasks

●Test understanding that certain physical characteristics of objects

remain the same, even when their outward appearance changes

 

 

Failure of conservation:

• Cannot grasp that quantity, number, matter, or length stays constant

•  despite perceptual transformation (demonstrated via Piaget’s conservation

•  tasks—liquid, mass, number, length).

• E.g., Equal water poured into a taller, thinner glass ⇒ child judges the taller

• glass to “have more.”

• Change something and its still the same / conserve= stay the same

 

●Centration: child concentrates on one feature and cannot

coordinate several (e.g., height vs. weight)

 

Symbolic Thought

Ability to use mental representations such as words and images to stand for objects and events.

Animism

Attributing life-like qualities to inanimate objects, common in pre-operational thinking.

Centration

Focusing on one salient aspect of a situation while ignoring others.

Irreversibility

Inability to mentally reverse a sequence of events or transformations.

Conservation

Understanding that certain physical properties remain constant despite changes in appearance.

Concrete Operational Stage

Piaget’s third stage (7–11 yrs); logical, rule-based reasoning limited to concrete objects/events.

• Thought becomes logical and rule-based—but only with concrete objects/events.

• Children are capable of operating on or mentally manipulating internal representations of concrete objects in a way that are reversible

• Gains:

  • Mastery of conservation (all task types) via reversibility understanding.

  • Decline in egocentrism; appreciate different

 perspectives.

• Ability to classify objects into hierarchies & seriate (order) them.

• Conservation= basic properties of an object or situation remains stable as conserved even though superficial properties might be changed

 

Limitations: Difficulty with purely abstract or

hypothetical concepts; reasoning tied to the

 "here-and-now."

 Cannot easily envision remote future/past.

➢Only when faced with concrete information that

can be perceived directly

➢Limited to the here and now

 

Reversibility

Awareness that actions can be undone, underpinning mastery of conservation tasks.

Seriation

Ability to order items along a quantitative dimension, such as length or weight.

Classification

Organizing objects into hierarchical categories and sub-categories based on shared properties.

Formal Operational Stage

Piaget’s fourth stage (12 yrs+); capacity for abstract, hypothetical and systematic reasoning.

Further development of logical thinking/reasoning:

 

Abstract thought (e.g., algebraic equations)

 

Idealistic thought

 

Scientific, systematic, hypothetical-deductive problem solving

 

 

Increased interest in abstract, intangible phenomena:

(e.g., love, justice, morality, values, thought itself)

 

• Capabilities:

  • Think about possibilities, ideals, morality, love, justice.

  • Engage in scientific method style problem-solving (form hypothesis → test logically).

  • Metacognition: “Thinking about thinking.”

  • Not all individuals may reach or consistently use formal operations.

 

Hypothetical-Deductive Reasoning

Forming hypotheses and logically testing them to solve problems.

Abstract Thought

Thinking about ideas and concepts not tied to concrete objects or events (e.g., justice, love).

Metacognition

Thinking about and regulating one’s own thought processes.

Lev Vygotsky

Russian psychologist who emphasized social and cultural influences on cognitive development.

Vygotskys theory

Emphasized role of social & cultural factors, community an interaction are important

 

• Children collaborate and strive together and task to enhance their levels of understanding

• Children also work with significant others such as parents teaches to advanced and knowledge levels

 

Infants born with basic functions for intellectual development:

➢Attention    Sensation

➢Perception    Memory

 

Cooperative/Collaborative Dialogue

• More Knowledgeable Other (MKO) = parent, teacher, older peer, or

 skilled tutor who guides the child.

• Learning process: MKO models → child observes → internalizes → self-regulates performance.

 

Example: Father helping daughter with first jigsaw; demonstrates strategies

 (find corners/edges), hands her pieces, praises success; gradually withdraws support as

competence grows (scaffolding).

 

Culture & Tools of Intellectual Adaptation

• Culture determines which cognitive tools/strategies are valued & taught.

  • Western school culture → note-taking.

  • Pre-literate societies → knot-tying, pebble counting, oral repetition, etc.

  • Even solitary cognitive acts are socioculturally mediated.

 

 

Through sociocultural interaction, these develop into higher mental functions

Key features:

➢More Knowledgeable Other (more skilled tutor)

➢Zone of Proximal Development

 

Importance of language

Critisism Piaget

●Cognitive development doesn’t go through “stages”

 

●Under-estimated competencies of children

Over-estimated  capacities of adolescents

• Age brackets might be uncorrected

 

●Task demands (e.g., assumptions about experimenters’ goals)

• Do they want me to say this ?

 

●Socio-cultural influences, cultures

 

●Do all individuals reach formal operations?

• Some might never reach all stages

Sociocultural Perspective

View that learning is mediated by social interaction, language and cultural tools.

More Knowledgeable Other (MKO)

A person with higher skill or understanding who guides the learner.

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

Range between what a learner can do alone and what they can do with guidance.

Scaffolding

Gradual withdrawal of support as a learner’s competence increases within the ZPD.

Tools of Intellectual Adaptation

Culturally provided methods (e.g., language, counting systems) that shape thinking.

Learning Leads Development

Vygotsky’s idea that instruction within the ZPD drives cognitive growth ahead of maturation.

Information-Processing Approach

Framework focusing on mental processes such as attention, memory and problem-solving speed.

Processing Speed

Rate at which cognitive operations can be executed; increases with age and aids problem solving.

Automaticity

Ability to perform mental processes with little conscious effort due to practice.

Knowledge Base

Accumulated factual and conceptual information stored in long-term memory.

Cognitive Strategies

Deliberate techniques used to encode, store and retrieve information or solve problems.

Metamemory

Awareness and understanding of one’s own memory processes and strategies.

Neo-Piagetian Theory

Approach integrating Piagetian stages with information-processing concepts like working memory.

Working Memory Capacity

Amount of information that can be actively held and manipulated; proposed driver of stage progression.

Transactional Model of Child Development

View that children and caregivers mutually influence each other’s behavior and development.

Psychometric Approach

Study of cognitive abilities through quantitative measurement, such as IQ testing.

Theory of Mind

Understanding that others have beliefs, desires and perspectives different from one’s own.