Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development Notes

stages

Development occurs in four ______

active

Children are ______ in their development, meaning that they’re always trying to understand & figure out the world around them; they are constructing & creating their knowledge

discontinuous

Piaget argued that cognitive development is ____________

Sensorimotor Stage

Birth - 2 Years

What infants can do:

• Infants learn through their senses.

• E.g., sucking, seeing, hearing, touching

What infants can’t do (according to Piaget):

• Use mental images (mental representation)

  • See smth in their mind and make sense of it 

  • CRUCIAL skill as it’s how we think critically, how we imagine what can happen when we do something

Preoperational Stage

2 - 7 Years

What children can do:

• Use mental images (visualize and think about things)

• Engage in pretend play

What children can’t do :

• Think about another person’s POV 

  • Egocentrism: Centering of one’s self 

  • Can’t think about what is going on in someone else’s mind 

  • Assumption that what they’re thinking abt is what other ppl are thinking abt too

    • Piaget was criticized for this part of his theory 

• Focus on more than one property at a time

  • Centration: Focusing on one property only 

  • e.g.) Show a child a glass tube that is tall and thin, a child w/ centration will on focus on that it’s tall or that it’s thin, not both 

    • Piaget actually got this right lol

Concrete Operations Stage

7 - 11 Years

What children can do:

• Think about more than one property at a time

  • Pass conservation tasks 

  • Understand class inclusion

    • Class Inclusion: Understanding that one thing can belong to many different categories and classes 

    • e.g.) Dogs and cats are different, but they’re both animals. Say there’s a picture of two dogs and three cats all together, if you ask the child if there are more cats or more animals, they’ll say that there are more animals as there are 5 animals total, but only 3 cats

• Think logically 

  • More systematic thinking, having a sense of order with how they think

  • HOWEVER, logical thinking used for concrete information only (i.e., information that is relevant to them)

What children can’t do:

• Reason about hypothetical examples 

  • e.g.) “I want to marry Justin Bieber! He’s so cool and famous!” “Would you still want to marry him if he wasn’t famous?” “…but he is famous??”

Formal Operations Stage

12 Years and Above

What people can do:

• Reason about hypothetical examples, being able to use logic in situations they might not have experienced 

• Think abstractly 

• Introduction of algebra at this age: X + 9 = 12 (X FINDS HIS VALUE MENTIONED 😍😍😍)

• Thinking abstractly allows thinking to be more flexible

Egocentrism

• Centering one’s self; being unable to think about someone else’s point of view

  • Why many kids in the preoperational stage fail the Three Mountain Task (unable to understand what the other person sees on the other side of the mountain)

Centration

• Focusing on one property only

  • One reason why kids in the preoperational stage have trouble with conservation tasks

  • e.g.) Showing a kid a glass tube, the kid will either focus on the fact that the glass is tall, or that it’s thin, they don’t understand the tube can have both properties

Scheme

• Mental structures that organize information

  • Similar to having scripts or having a how-to list on how to do things 

  • e.g.) How to drink from a cup: Pick up the cup, put it up to your mouth, etc…

Assimilation

• Using existing schemes to understand outside information

  • e.g.) When you give a baby a sippy cup, they now have a scheme on how to drink from that cup, the scheme being the baby throws his head back to drink from his cup

    • One day, his mom leaves out a glass of juice on the coffee table and the baby sees this cup

    • Using the scheme the baby already knows, he applies that scheme to the juice glass, which unfortunately goes everywhere and now the carpet is stained and oh my god mom looks so upset 

    • Took what he knew —> Applied it to a new event

Accommodation

• Changing a scheme to adapt to new information

  • e.g.) When you give a baby a sippy cup, they now have a scheme on how to drink from that cup, the scheme being the baby throws his head back to drink from his cup

    • After the baby spills that glass of juice, he’ll eventually come to realize that applying his scheme to the glass isn’t working 

    • He’s going to have to change how he approaches drinking from that glass in order to drink from it correctly and without so much of a mess

    • Throw head back for sippy cup vs. Keep head still for adult cup 

      • Creating a new scheme 

      • Taking what he knows now —> Understanding new information 

Object Permanence

Understanding that objects still exist even when you can’t see them

mental representation

Infants aren’t able to understand the idea of object permanence because they are unable to think about mental images, also known as ______ ______________

concrete information

In the concrete operations stage, logical thinking is only utilized for ________ ___________, information that is relevant to them; these kids cannot reason with hypothetical examples

constructivist view

Piaget’s theory is a ______________ ____; children understand information based on their prior experiences and knowledge