CH6: Theories of Cognitive Development

What is Piaget’s theory?

Children are naturally curious and create theories about how the world works, helps make it more predictable and make sense

Describe in assimilation

When new experiences are incorporated into existing theories

Describe in accomodation

When existing theories are modified based on experience

What is equilibration?

Process by which children reorganize their schemas, and in the process move on to the next developmental stage

Results in qualitatively difference and more advanced theories/schemas

What are Piaget’s 4 stages of cognitive development?

Sensorimotor

Preoperational

Concrete operational

Formal operational

Describe the sensorimotor stage

Infant’s knowledge is based on senses and motor skills

By the end of the stage, use mental representations and understand object permanence

Describe the preoperational stage

Children learn how to use symbols (words and numbers) to represent aspects of the world but relate to the world only through their own perspective

Describe the concrete operational stage

Children understand and apply logical operations to experiences, provided they are focused on the present

Describe the formal operational stage

Adolescents or adults think abstractly, speculate on hypothetical situations, and reason deductively about what may be possible

What is object permanence?

Understanding that objects exist independently of the infant

What is egocentrism?

Difficulty seeing the world from another’s pov, they believe that others see the world in the same way they do

Don’t understand that other people have different ideas and feelings

What is animism?

Attributing life-like properties to inanimate objects e.g., the sun is sad because it can’t see me

What is centration?

Concentrating on one aspect of a problem, but ignoring other relevant aspects

What are mental operations?

Strategies and rules that make thinking more systematic and powerful

What were Piaget’s contributions to developmental psychology?

Influenced the study of cognitive development itself (why cognitive processes are central to development)

A new constructivist view of children, children are active participants in their own development

Fascinating, often counterintuitive, discoveries

How have Piaget’s theories been interpreted?

To facilitate, instead of direct children’s learning

Recognize individual differences when teaching

What are some weaknesses of Piaget’s theory?

Underestimates cognitive competence in infants and overestimates in adolescence

Some components, processes and mechanisms of change, are too vague to test

Cognitive development is not as “stage” like as the model, doesn’t account for variability in performance

Undervalues influence of sociocultural forces on cognitive development

What is the sociocultural perspective?

The children are products of their culture, culture determines which cognitive activities are valued

Cultures provide the tools that shape the way children think

Higher level cultural practices help children to organize their knowledge and communicate it to others

What was Vygotsky’s sociocultural perspective theory?

Child development as a journey that does not occur in isolation, children advance when they collaborate

Describe guided participation

When cognition develops from children’s structured activities with others who have a more highly developed skill set, promotes cognitive growth

What is intersubjectivity?

Mutual, shared understanding among participants in an activity

What is the zone of procimal development?

Difference between what a child can do when working alone or working with assistance

Helps the children accomplish something they can’t do on their own

Based on the premise that cognition develops in a social setting and then shifts to the independent control of the child

What is scaffolding?

Teaching style that matches the amount of assistance to the learner’s needs

Creates a more collaborative learning environment, promotes learning, child can eventually complete the task on their own (transfer skills to the child)

Key is to give help, but not more that is needed

What is private speech?

Children talk to themselves while playing, comments directed to themselves intended to regulate their behaviour

Eventually becomes internal, inner speech (thought) rather than private speech

More often on difficult tasks or after a mistake

What is the information processing theory?

Human cognition consists of mental hardware and mental software

What is mental hardware consisted of?

Sensory memory

Working memory

Long-term memory

All coordinated by the central executive

Describe sensory memory

Information is stored briefly, no more than a few seconds and is not analyzed

Describe working memory

The memory that is used while performing a task, includes the cognitive processes required for the task

A small number of items may be stored briefly

Describe long-term memory

The permanent storehouse of information, rarely forgotten but sometimes is hard to access

Describe the central executive

The coordinator that implements specialized strategies to accomplish goals which includes: inhibiting inappropriate thoughts and actions, shifting from one thought or action to another, planning, and updating the contents of working memory

What is executive functioning?

Mechanism of growth that includes inhibitory processes, planning, and cognitive flexibility

How do cognitive processes become stronger during development?

More efficient strategies through experience and observing

More effective executive functioning (inhibiting inappropriate thoughts and actions, and flexibility and shifting from one task to another)

Increased automatic processing

What is automatic processing?

When cognitive activities require virtually no effort

At the beginning, children have limited experience so learning uses working memory and have few automatic processes, but over time when a skill is mastered working memory is freed for other tasks

Describe connectionist theories

View the mind as a system of networks of processors

Describe the core knowledge theory

Views cognitive development as an innate capability to easily acquire knowledge in such specialized domains of evolutionary importance such as language, knowledge of objects, and understanding of people

Each module is pre-wired to analyze one kind of data, they help to simplify learning of the distinctive core domains knowledge

How do infants make sense of the nature of objects?

Recognizing different instances of the same kind of thing, being able to categorize

How do infants categorize?

Initially by organizing perceptual cues of the objects (colour, size, shape, etc.)

By 18 months, combine categories and create subcategories based on increased knowledge and on information from parents

Parents/caregivers help by identifying common features to existing categories

How do children make the distinction between living and non-living things?

Movement

Growth

Internal parts

Inheritance

Illness

Healing

How is movement used to differentiate living from non-living?

They understand that animals can move themselves, inanimate objects need to be moved

How is growth used to differentiate living from non-living?

Understand animals grow, change, and become more complex, whereas inanimate objects stay the same

How are internal parts used to differentiate living from non-living?

Understand the insides of inanimate and animate objects are different

How is inheritance used to differentiate living from non-living?

Understand only living things have offspring that resemble their parents

Understand biological characteristics of living things, mechanical characteristics for non-living things

How is illness used to differentiate living from non-living?

Understand permanent illnesses and states such as colour blindness or allergies are more likely to be inherited from parents, but acute illnesses such as colds are more likely to be transmitted via interperson contact

How is healing used to differentiate living from non-living?

Understand that injured animals and things heal by regrowth, whereas inanimate things must be fixed by humans

What are teleological explanations?

Understand there is a purpose for living things and their parts

What is essentialism?

Belief that all living things have an essence that cant be seen but gives it an identity

Essence varies between cultures

What is folk psychology?

Informal beliefs about other people and their behaviour

How do children predict how people will act?

By age 1, understand people have intentions behind their behaviours, designed to achieve a goal

By ages 2-5, show relation to theory of mind, an understanding between mind and behaviour

By age 2, know people have desires that determine behaviour

By age 3, knowing the mental world can be distinguished from the physical world

Around age 4, recognize that other people’s behaviours are based on beliefs on events and situations, even when those beliefs are wrong. They recognize people may feel one emotion but show another