Chapter 6 - Theories of Cognitive Development

Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

Children cognitively organize their experiences to make sense of the world

-Organization - grouping isolated behaviours into a higher-order, smoothly functioning cognitive system (grouping/arranging items into schemas)

-Equilibration - Explains how children shift from one stage of thought to the next

Shift occurs as children experience Cognitive Conflict (Disequilibrium) in trying to understand the world

Relation of Stages

Different way of understanding the world makes one stage more advanced than another

-Cognition is qualitatively different in one stage compared with another

-Each of Piaget’s stage is age-related, consists of distinct ways of thinking

Piaget’s Four Stages of Cognition Development

1. Sensorimotor Stage

2. Preoperational Stage

3. Concrete Operational

4. Formal Operational

Object Permanence

Understanding objects/events continue to exist, even when they cannot be perceived

-Acquiring sense of object-permanence is one of the infant’s most important accomplishments

Infants and Object Permanence

Renee Baillargeon documented infants as young as 3-4 months have object permanence

-By 6-8 months, infants have learned to perceive gravity/support (tested via violation of expectation paradigm)

Example: Object hanging on end of table should fall

-Habituating event; infant seeing Object A supporting Object B

-Impossible even; Object B no longer supported by Object A, 6-8 month olds dishabituate

Sensorimotor Stage of Piaget

Data does not support Piaget’s claim that certain processes are crucial in stage transitions

-”A-not-B Error” - Perseveration error, infants presented with an object hidden at location A, then switched to location B → Infant continues to look for object at location A even after seeing it moved

-Due to incomplete linkage between object identity and location

Error does not show up consistently (especially in older infants); indicates lots of individual variation

Core Knowledge Approach

Argues Piaget' underestimate cognitive abilities of infants, especially young infants

-Particularly; infants have sense of quantity despite not learning symbolic representations (6-8 months)

Infant’s Number Sense

Uses habituation/violation of expectation paradigm

1. Object place in case, screen comes up

2. Second object added

3. Screen drops; revealing 2 objects (possible outcome) or,

4. Screen drops; revealing 1 object (impossible outcome)

-Infants dishabituate to the impossible event (6-8 months)

Symbolic Function Substage

Young child gains ability to form mental representation of an object that is not present

-Part of the “pre-operational stage”

Limitations:

1. Egocentrism - inability to distinguish one’s perspective from someone else’s’; problem in the Symbolic Function Substage

• Three-Mountain Task - When asked to identify what the experimenter sees, child thinks experimenter has the same view as them (identifies objects that they can see)

2. Animism - Belief that inanimate objects have life-like qualities

• During pre-operational stage, children have difficulties distinguishing animate vs inanimate objects (attribute life-like qualities to inanimate objects)

Intuitive Thought Substage

Children use primitive reasoning and want to know the answers to various questions

-Part of the Preoperational Stage

-Seem sure about their knowledge/understanding, but are unaware “how” they know what they know

Centration and Conservation

Conservation - Awareness that altering an object’s substance or appearance does not change basic properties

Centration (Over selectivity) - Focus of attention on one characteristic to the exclusion of all others

-Children’s difficulties in Conservation Tasks is due to Centration

Conservation Task

Failure in the task is attributed to a child’s centration

Ex; Two glasses with equal volumes, when poured into taller and thinner glass child believes the taller glass has more

Concrete Operational Stage

Logical reasoning replaces intuitive thinking

-Children can perform concrete operations - reversible mental actions on concrete objects
-Conservation involves recognition that length, number, mass, quantity, area, weight and volume of objects/substances are not changed by transformations that merely alter their appearance

-Still do not have perfect understanding of conservation tasks, “appears at different rates”

Horizontal Decalage

Similar abilities do not appear at the same time within a stage of development

Ex; In conservation task, conservation of length is often solved BEFORE conservation of volume, which is solved BEFORE conservation of mass

Seriation and Transitivity

Concrete-Operational children are capable of classification, shown by their understanding of interrelationships among sets and subsets

Seriation - Order of information along a QUANTITATIVE dimension

Transitivity - Ability to reason logically by combining relationships

Ex; If A —> B, and B —> C, then A —> C

-Requires being based on real, concrete objects

Classification Example - Family Tree

Ordering members in vertical/horizontal, serial fashion (seriation)

-Transitivity involves understanding that an individual who is the child of your parent’s sibling is related

Formal Operational Stage

Individuals think in abstract and logical ways

-More systematic in solving problems using logical reasoning

Prior to Formal Stage, children use trial-and-error problem solving (lacks logic)

Process of Thinking in the Formal Stage

Process of “Thinking” becomes:

1. Abstract - Thinking theoretically

2. Idealistic - Understanding desirable qualities

3. Logical - Thinking systematically

Ex; Hypothetical-Deductive reasoning - cognitive ability to develop predictions about ways to solve problems and systematically determine which is the best path to follow in solving the problem by a process of deduction (top-down thinking)

Adolescent Egocentrism

Heightened self-consciousness, reflected in their belief others are as interested in them as they are in themselves

-And in their sense of personal uniqueness/invincibility

Results in “Personal Fable” — Story about oneself, barrier to rational thought

Imaginary Audience

Aspect of egocentrism, attention-grabbing behaviours motivated by a need to be seen

-Higher imaginary audience score → lower global self-esteem

Criticisms of Piaget’s Theory

1. Some cognitive abilities emerge earlier than Piaget thought

2. Some concrete operational concepts do not appear in synchrony

3. Some children at one cognitive stage can be trained to reason at a higher cognitive stage

4. Cultural and education exert stronger influences on children’s development than Piaget believed

Vygotsky’s Theory of Cultural Development

Zone of Proximal Development - Range of tasks too difficult for children to master alone, but can be mastered with guidance of adults or more-skilled children

-Optimal condition for a child’s cognitive growth is the middle

ZPD includes lower and upper limit

Comfort and Frustration Zones

Comfort Zone - Lower end of ZPD, what the learner can do independently

-Staying here too long leads to boredom and apathy

Frustration Zone - Upper end of ZPD, what a learner cannot do even with assistance

-Staying here too long leads to anxiety and confusion

Scaffolding

More skilled individual (teacher, advanced peer) adjusts the amount of support to fit the child’s current performance

-Dialogue:

• Important tool of Scaffolding

• Occurs when the child’s rich, but unsystematic/disorganized and spontaneous concepts meet with the skilled helper’s more systematic, logical and rational concepts

Progress in ZPD is analyzed through Dialogue

Private Speech

Vygotsky concluded young child use language for social communication, planning, guiding and monitoring their behaviour in a Self-Regulatory Fashion

-Private Speech - Transition from external to internal speech, must use language to communicate with others BEFORE they focus inward on their own thoughts

-Important tool in a child’s thinking process, involves talking to oneself, self-talk is then used to self-regulate

Teaching Strategies of Vygotsky

1. Assist the Child’s ZPD

2. Use the child’s ZPD in teaching

3. use more-skilled peers as teachers

4. Monitor and encourage children’s use of private speech

5. Place instruction in a meaningful context

6. Transform the classroom with Vygotskian ideas

Conclusions of Vygotsky’s Theory

1. Is a social constructivist approach; emphasis social context of learning and construction of knowledge through social interactions

2. Critics point out Vygotsky was not specific enough about age-related changes

Information Processing Approach

Analyzes how children manipulate and monitor information, and create strategies for handling it

Information Processing - Computer Metaphor

Computer’s information processing is limited by hardware and software

-hardware limitation - amount of data that can be stored (capacity/speed)

-software limitation - kinds of data and strategies used to operate on data

Cognitive Resources

Are capacity and speed processing, influences developmental changes in information processing

-Also influence memory and problem-solving

Biology and Experience contribute to a growth in cognitive resources

Robert Siegler

Described three mechanisms that work together to create changes in children’s cognitive skills:

1. Encoding - Process in which information gets into memory

-Ex; Using repetition, pneumonics 

2. Automaticity - Ease with which information is processed

-Ex; Something becoming “Implicit Knowledge” (becomes hard to articulate and express), like riding a bike

3. Strategy Construction - Creation of new procedures for processing information

-Ex; Children moving from trial-and-error to systematic strategies to encode information

Self-Modification

Children use what they have learned in previous circumstances to adapt their responses to new situations (evaluates, then re-evaluates to determine if response to acceptable)

-Characterizes children’s information

Meta Cognition

Cognition about cognition (knowing about knowing)

Example: Metacognitive Awareness Inventory, uses a 3-point Likert scale to determine if statements are “always, sometimes or never” relevant

-Higher scores = greater cognitive development because of their self-modification

Information Processing Similarities with Piaget

1. Some versions of the information-processing approach are constructivist

2. Information-processing psychologists describe ways in which individuals do and do not understand important concepts at different points in life

3. Emphasize the impact that existing understanding has on the ability to acquire new understanding (self-monitoring)

Information Processing Differences with Piaget

1. View development as a gradually increasing capacity for processing information, rather than knowledge occurring abruptly in distinct stages

2. Focuses on precise analyses of change and on contributions of ongoing cognitive activity, such as encoding and strategies