Cognitive Development

MBB2

What is Cognitive Development?

• How children/people think, learn, explore, remember, and solve problems

  • perception, attention, language, problem solving, reasoning, memory, conceptual understanding, and intelligence

• Developmental themes:

  • Continuity & discontinuity

  • Nature & nurture

  • The active child

  • Universality & context specificity

  • Mechanisms of change

Theories of Cognitive Development

• Theories of cognitive development

  • psychological frameworks that explain how our cognitive skills develop

• Examples:

  • Piaget’s cognitive-developmental theory

  • Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory

  • Information processing theories

Piaget’s Theory

• Four stages of cognitive development:

  • sensorimotor stage

  • preoperational stage

  • concrete operational stage

  • formal operational stage

Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory

• Individuals’ cognitive development is largely shaped by the social and cultural context.

  • 1. Infants have basic cognitive skills (attention, sensation, perception, memory)

  • 2. As infants interact with others, these skills become more sophisticated.

Information Processing Theories

• Human mind is a complicated information-processing system like a computer

What is Intelligence?

• The capacity to learn from experience and adapt to one’s environment.

  • It is a developmental concept

  • Intelligence means different things at different ages

  • The definition could vary in different contexts.

General Intelligence

A person possesses a certain amount of general intelligence (g), that influences their ability on all intellectual tasks

Multiple Theories of Intelligence

• Intelligence can be measured as:

Intelligence as One Dimension: Mental Age/IQ

• Mental Age (MA)

  • The average age at which children achieve a given score on Binet and Simon’s test

• Intelligence Quotient (IQ):

Intelligence as One Dimension: IQ

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Intelligence as Many Processes

• John Carroll proposed a: Three-stratum theory of intelligence

• A hierarchical integration of:

  • g

  • eight generalized abilities

  • many specific processes

Intelligence as Many Processes

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Stanford-Binet Scales

• Five cognitive abilities:

  • Fluid reasoning

  • Knowledge

  • Quantitative reasoning

  • Visual-spatial processing

  • Working memory

• Popular in U.S For ages 2 to 23 Uses MA to calculate IQ

British Ability Scale

• Three domains:

  • Verbal ability

  • Non-verbal reasoning

  • Spatial ability

• Popular in U.K For ages 3 to 17 Uses g

The WISC-R Intelligence Test

• Wechsler Intelligence Test for Children (WISC)

• The most widely used instrument for children 6+ years Two main sections:

  • Verbal: general knowledge, language skills

  • Performance: spatial & perceptual abilities

• Uses MA to calculate IQ

The WISC-R Intelligence Test - Verbal Section:

• Information: “What is the capital of France?”

• Vocabulary: “What is a helicopter?”

• Similarities: “How are a hammer and a chisel alike?”

• Arithmetic: “If 4 friends divided 20 lollies equally, how many would each person get?”

• Comprehension: “Why do we have prisons?”

• Digit Span: “Repeat the following numbers in order when I have finished: 5, 3, 7, 4, 9.

The WISC-R Intelligence Test - Performance Section:

• Block design: Arrange 9 blocks to match a picture.

• Coding: Identifying patterns from series of simple shapes or numbers, each paired with a simple symbol.

• Mazes: A set of increasingly difficult mazes printed in a response booklet. No pencil lifting or entering blind alleys.

• Object assembly: Assemble puzzle parts to form a meaningful whole.

• Picture completion: ‘What part of this picture is missing?”

• Picture arrangement: Arrange cartoon frames to tell a coherent story

Issues of Measurement?

• WISC scores differ among ethnic groups:

  • Average IQ of Euro-American children is higher than that of African-American children.

• Does this indicate a cultural difference in intelligence?

  • NO

• Examples of culturally insensitive questions:

  • “Who discovered America?”

  • “What should you do if you find someone’s wallet?”

The Koori IQ test demonstrates:

• how value of knowledge is culturally constructed

• what it is like to be assessed and graded on the basis of unfamiliar criteria

sensorimotor stage

• the period (birth to 2 years) within Piaget's theory in which intelligence is expressed through sensory and motor abilities

preoperational stage

• the period (2 to 7 years) within Piaget's theory in which children become able to represent their experiences in language, mental imagery, and symbolic thought

concrete operational stage

• the period (7 to 12 years) within Piaget's theory in which children become able to reason logically about concrete objects and events

formal operational stage

• the period (12 years and beyond) within Piaget's theory in which people become able to think about abstractions and hypothetical situations