Cognitive Development - Week

Who is Lev Vygotsky?

A Russian psychologist known for his socio-cultural theory of development.

→ Criticised Piaget’s theory of cognitive development

What are key aspects of Vygotsky's theory?

Personal and social experience cannot be separated; culture is crucial.

• Learning through social interactions and learning from others

• Guided participation: children’s ability to learn from interaction with others, including through pretend play

• Language - key psychological tool:children use private speech for self-guidance

What is the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)? What are the 3 levels?

The distance between what a child can do alone and what they can achieve with help.

1. Actual level – what the learner can do unassisted 

2. Proximal development - i.e. it is proximal to the learner’s last fully developed level 

3. Potential level - cannot yet do 

What are the 3 developmental levels associated with the Zone of Proximal Development according to Vygotsky?

1. Actual level – what the learner can do unassisted 

2. Proximal development - i.e. it is proximal to the learner’s last fully developed level 

3. Potential level - cannot yet do 

Who is Jerome Bruner?

An American psychologist who developed and tested Vygotsky's ideas.

• He proposed the role of scaffolding and child-centred learning

What is scaffolding in education?

A method where adults provide support to children, which is gradually removed as the child becomes more competent.

How does Bruner's scaffolding relate to Vygotsky's ZPD?

Scaffolding provides the necessary support within the ZPD to facilitate learning.

What are the five steps of scaffolding as per Wood et al. (1976)?

1. Recruitment

2. Reduction of degrees of freedom

3. Direction maintenance

4. Marking critical features

5. 5. Demonstration.

What is the implication of Vygotsky and Bruner's theories for education?

• Scaffolding to assist children in learning

• Importance of collaborative learning.

• Importance of language

What criticisms does Vygotsky's theory face?

• Places too much emphasis on the role of social interaction (Feldman and Fowler, 1997) 

• Some learning is individually constructed through discovery learning (Gallagher and Easley, 1978) 

What does Vygotsky's theory suggest about the pace of development?

Development is domain-specific and dynamic; different skills progress at different rates.

What is the definition of development in the context of psychology?

The process by which an organism grows and changes through its lifespan.

(Smith et al, 2003)

What are the 5 domains of child development?

Physical

Cognitive

Psychosocial: development within different relationships (attachment) 

Emotional

Linguistic

Who was Jean Piaget?

A psychologist who first proposed a theory of cognitive development.

• He put science into practice

What does cognitive development refer to?

How was this theory developed?

How a child learns to think, reason, and use language

• Piaget worked with Binet on IQ 

• Noticed: children’s thinking differs from adults, children of similar ages make similar mistakes 

• Proposed cognitive development occurs in stages 

• Constructivist theory: child has active role in their own development – learn things by themselves 

-> Contradicts behaviourist approach: passive learners 

How is Piaget’s cognitive development theory constructivist?

Child has active role in their own development – learn things by themselves 

What are the key aspects of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development?

1. Schemas - modified through organisation (organise specific observations into meaningful knowledge structures) and adaptation

2. Adaptation: adapting known information to new experiences 

3. Assimilation: child will experience new information and see if it fits in one of their schemas 

4. Accommodation: child will modify schemas based upon experiences and new information 

5. Equilibrium / disequilibrium: information and schemas match/don’t match 

-> Assimilation and accommodation comprise the equilibration process 

What are the two key processes involved in adaptation according to Piaget?

Assimilation and accommodation.

What is assimilation in Piaget's theory?

The process where a child experiences new information and fits it into existing schemas.

What is accommodation in Piaget's theory?

The process where a child modifies their schemas based on new experiences and information.

What is the equilibration process in Piaget's theory?

The process of balancing assimilation and accommodation to achieve cognitive stability.

What are the four main stages of cognitive development according to Piaget?

Sensori-motor, Pre-operational, Concrete operational, and Formal operational.

What is the age range for the Sensori-motor stage?

Birth to approximately 18 months or 2 years.

What are the main behaviours associated with the sensori-motor stage of development?

-Learns through senses 

-Learns through reflexes 

-Manipulates materials 

-Thought and language begins 

-Develop object permanence (pass A-not-B): Child begins to understand that an object exists when they cannot see it. Understanding about objects’ existence 

Objects tied to infants’ awareness of them 

What is object permanence?

The understanding that an object continues to exist even when it cannot be seen.

Describe the hidden toy experiment (investigating object permanence)

•4 months: no attempt to search for hidden object 

•4-9 months: visual search for object  

•~9 months: search for and retrieve hidden object

What is the A-not-B error?

When an infant continues to search for an object in its original location after seeing it moved.

What are the six sub-stages of the Sensori-motor stage?

Reflexive schemes, Primary circular reactions, Secondary circular reactions, Coordination of secondary schemes, Tertiary circular reactions, and Beginning of thought.

Describe the 6 sub-stages of the sensori-motor stage of development

1. Reflexive schemes: 0-1 month - infants use their innate reflexes (e.g., sucking, grasping) to explore their world. 

2. Primary circular reactions: 1-4 months - infant starts to show a degree of coordination between the senses and their motor behaviour through the primary circular reactions. 

3. Secondary circular reactions: 4-10 months – aware of the external world. direct their behaviour to reaching and grasping objects (behaviours become secondary) 

4. Coordination of secondary schemes: 10-12 months - infants begin to deliberately combine schemes to achieve specific goals. solve object permanence tasks in which the infant has to co-ordinate two schemes 

5. Tertiary circular reactions: 12-18 months - child begins to search for novelty and uses trial and error to explore the characteristics and properties of objects, and develops new ways of solving problems. 

6. Beginning of thought: 18-24 months - children become able to form enduring mental representations. They engage in deferred imitation - the ability to copy or mimic the actions of others, some time after they have seen these actions, an important type of learning in humans, and facilitated by mirror neurons. 

What is deferred imitation?

The ability to copy or mimic the actions of others after a delay.

Describe some studies which criticise the sensori-motor stage of development

- Evidence suggests object permanence and deferred imitation occur much earlier than Piaget proposed - Baillargeon and colleagues, however, have shown convincing evidence that infants as young as 3.5 months of age understand that objects continue to exist when out of sight 

- Meltzoff & Moore (1994) tested 6-week-old infants. Infants saw one of two facial gestures: mouth opening or tongue protrusion. After 24 hours, infants saw the same experimenter with a passive face. Infants imitated the gesture they had seen the day before. 

-> demonstration of deferred imitation at 6 weeks, far earlier than Piaget's proposed 18 months

What is the age range for the Pre-operational stage?

Approximately 2 to 7 years.

What are the two substages of the Pre-operational stage?

Briefly describe them

Symbolic function stage (2-4 years): children acquire the ability to mentally represent objects that are not physically present, e.g. pretend play 

Intuitive stage (4-7 years): children begin to classify, order, and quantify in a more systematic manner. - based on perception and intuition 

Name behaviours associated with the pre-operational stage of development

•Ideas based on perception 

•Over-generalise based on limited experience, e.g. assuming all pens are red after only seeing red pens 

•Failure to conserve associated with: centration, reversibility and focusing on the end state rather than on the means to the end.  

• Focus on one variable at time; ‘centration’ 

• Reversibility: ability to imagine a series of steps in both forward and reverse directions 

Yet to acquire logical thinking and struggle with ‘invariance’: don’t understand that the properties of certain things are flexible and can change so, fail conservation tasks 

•Egocentrism: only one point of view 

•Rigidity of thought 

•Problems with class inclusion: problems understanding that objects have different classes, e.g. cats are toys and animals etc 

•Limited social cognition: limited awareness of other people, objects etc 

•Become more imaginative in play 

• Display animism: infants and children will make non-life objects real-life, e.g. teddies

What is a common difficulty faced by children in the Pre-operational stage?

Struggling with verbal reasoning tasks, especially those involving transitive inference.

What is centration in the context of Piaget's theory?

Focusing on one aspect of a situation while ignoring others, leading to errors in reasoning.

What does the term 'conservation' refer to in Piaget's theory?

The understanding that quantity does not change even when its shape does.

What criticism has been made regarding Piaget's timeline for object permanence?

Evidence suggests that object permanence occurs much earlier than Piaget proposed, as early as 3.5 months.

What is 'horizontal décalage' and ‘vertical décalage’ in the process of cognitive development?

HD = A phenomenon where a child's thinking skills do not develop simultaneously, even for similar tasks.

VD = The reconstruction of understanding at different stages or levels of cognitive development.

What did Meltzoff & Moore's 1994 study demonstrate?

That infants as young as 6 weeks can demonstrate deferred imitation.

→ Criticises Piaget’s cognitive development theory

Define 'reversibility' in cognitive development.

The ability to imagine a series of steps in both forward and reverse directions.

What is 'conservation' in Piaget's theory?

Understanding that certain properties of objects remain unchanged despite superficial changes in appearance.

What is egocentrism in children?

The inability to see the world from another person's perspective.

What are 'class inclusion' problems?

Difficulties in understanding that objects can belong to multiple categories.

What is 'animism' in child development?

The tendency of children to attribute life-like qualities to inanimate objects.

Describe Piaget's 3 mountains task.

A task where a child must choose a viewpoint of a model of three mountains from a different location, highlighting egocentrism.

Explain some criticisms of Piaget’s 3 mountains task

• Rational imitation:
  Infants imitate what they believe the adult intended, not just what was done (Gergely et al., 2002).
  → 14-month-olds inferred intention in head vs hands light-switching task.

• Also in chimpanzees:
  Rational imitation observed in non-humans too (Buttelmann et al., 2007).

What is the age range for the concrete operational stage?

Ages 7/8 to 11/12 years.

What cognitive abilities develop during the concrete operational stage? Explain these terms

Decentration: More flexible thinking, start to understand that not everyone is correct 

Conservation: understanding that certain properties of objects remain the same, even when their appearance changes

Ability to reason about relationships between objects.

No longer egocentric: can see things from different perspectives 

Reversibility: children understand that some things can be reversed - Water poured back = same height again (reversibility)

Compensation: E.g. taller glass = narrower → same amount (compensation) 

What is transitive inference?

The ability to understand the relationship between two items based on their relationship with a third item.

What is the age range for the formal operational stage?

Ages 11/12 years and onwards.

What behaviours are associated with the formal operational stage of cognitive development?

•think conceptually: see higher picture 

•think hypothetically: can predict things 

•abstract thought 

•Reasoning about abstractions: Patterns and non-verbal ways of communicating, e.g. facial expressions, body language 

•Applying logic: sets of principles and rules that can be applied before a behaviour is produced 

•Advanced problem solving 

• Gradual development 

What is 'appearance-reality distinction'?

The understanding that objects can appear different from what they truly are.

Briefly describe Inhelder and Piaget’s pendulum study (1958)

A test to assess if individuals could think formally by investigating what determines the period of a pendulum

→ shows how adolescents could develop experimental strategies to isolate and test variables, a key component of scientific reasoning

What is the implication of Piaget's theory for education?

Emphasises child-centered learning and that children learn best when they are ready at the appropriate cognitive stage.

What are two main areas of criticism of Piaget's theory?

Experimental concerns regarding task design and theoretical concerns about socio-cultural factors.

Name some experimental concerns about Piaget’s theory

- Age ranges he gave did not match up to the stages he proposed 

–e.g. Gelman (1982) – turtle conservation task: found that children of 3 years old were able to conserve 

-Language -> Potentially problematic in Piaget’s conservation studies –Issue of language difficulties & question order (e.g. Donaldson, 1978; Rose & Blank, 1974) - misleading questions, repetition of questions, different cultures and languages will have different understandings 

-Social concerns: Social situation of conservation tasks:  

- “naughty teddy” (McGarrigle & Donaldson, 1974) 

•Light, Buckingham and Robins (1979): if a child sees someone getting punished for doing a task, more unlikely to complete the task 

•Object permanence - method of removal important (Bower & Wishart, 1972) 

What is 'perseveration' in cognitive tasks?

The tendency to repeat movements or solutions that were previously successful.

What is meant by ‘motor perseveration’ and ‘capture error’ in relation to perserveration?

•Motor perseveration: repeat movements 

•Capture error: use a once-successful solution

What is the significance of the 'A not B task'?

It highlights issues of memory and performance skills in understanding object permanence.

What did the 'policeman/boy experiment' demonstrate?

Young children could understand perspectives better when the task was made relatable, contradicting Piaget's findings.

- found 90% success rate in 4 year oldwhen asked to place the doll (placed ‘out of sight’ of the policeman) 

- 60% in 3 year olds

-> Contradicts Piaget’s 3 mountain task – lacks RLA, ecological validity

What is the criticism regarding the lack of detail in Piaget's studies?

His studies often lacked participant detail and did not adequately explain the reasons for cognitive transitions.

Name some theoretical concerns (socio-economic critiques) of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development

+Inspirational insights into cognitive development – universal theory 

-Lack of detail about participants or success rates 

-Fails to explain WHY transition occurs – or failures 

-Overlooks cultural factors involved in change