Cognitive Perspective

Source: Papalia & Martorell (15th ed.), Santrock (17th ed.), Boyd & Bee (7th ed.)

Organization

Tendency to create categories, such as birds, by observing the characteristics that individual members of a category, such as sparrows and cardinals, have in common.

Schemes

Organized patterns of thought and behavior used in particular situations.

Adaptation

How children handle new information in light of what they already know.

Assimilation

Taking in new information and incorporating it into existing cognitive structures.

Accommodation

Adjusting one’s cognitive structures to fit the new information.

Equilibration

Motivates the shift between assimilation and accommodation.

Sensorimotor Stage (birth to about 2 years old)

Infants construct an understanding of the world by coordinating sensory experiences (such as seeing and hearing) with physical, motoric actions.

Preoperational Stage (~2 years old to 7 years old)

Children represent the world with words, images, and drawings.

Concrete Operational Stage (~7 years old to 11 years old)

Children can perform operations that involve objects, and they can reason logically when the reasoning can be applied to specific or concrete examples.

Formal Operational Stage (11-15 years and through adulthood)

Individuals begin to think in abstract and more logical terms.

Sociocultural Cognitive Theory (Lev Vygotsky)

Children’s social interaction with more skilled adults and peers is indispensable to their cognitive development and helps children cross the zone of proximal development (ZPD).

Sociocultural Cognitive Theory (Lev Vygotsky)

Cognitive development involves learning to use the inventions of society, such as language, mathematical systems, and memory strategies.

Sociocultural Cognitive Theory (Lev Vygotsky)

Child’s development is inseparable from social and cultural activities.

Sociocultural Cognitive Theory (Lev Vygotsky)

Emphasizes how culture and social interaction guide cognitive development.

Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

The gap between what they are already able to do by themselves and what they can accomplish with assistance.

Scaffolding

The supportive assistance with a task that parents, teachers, or others give a child.

Information-Processing Theory

Seeks to explain cognitive development by analyzing the processes involved in making sense of incoming information and performing tasks effectively.

Emphasizes that individuals manipulate information, monitor it, and strategize about it.

Information-Processing Theory

Individuals develop a gradually increasing capacity for processing information, which allows them to acquire increasingly complex knowledge and skills.

Cognitive Development Theory (Jean Piaget)

Helps explain how children of different ages think about and act on the world.

Information-Processing Theory

Helps explain how much information people of different ages can manage at one time and how they process it; provides a useful framework for studying individual differences in people of the same age.