Cognitive Development

Cognitive Development  

What is cognition? 

  • Thought 

  • The process of acquiring knowledge or understanding  

Different theories take different approaches to fundamentals.  

Piagetian Theory 

  • How does our cognition change?  

  • Qualitative stage theory  

  • More advanced thought at each stage 

  • Time/Age 

  • Preoperational-> Concrete operational-> Formal operational  

  • Middle Childhood: Concrete Operations 

  • 7-11 Years of Age 

  • Mastery of logic-> rational thought 

  • Resulting in several new skills 

  • Decentration: Can attend to multiple attributes of an object  

  • Length and Number of things  

  • Ex. Quarters- Younger kiddos may think that a row with quarters that are more spread out would have more quarters. Not able to separate the difference between length and quantity and their distinct differences 

  • Reversibility: Objects can be changed and returned to their original condition.  

  • Able to put playdough back in the container after you've mended it into something else 

  • Conservation Skills: Dimensions change, quantity stays the same 

  • Piaget's water conservation task- moving the same amount of water into a different shape 

  • Hierarchical Classifications: Organize into classes and subclasses 

  • Relying on decentration- overarching categories  

  • Seriation: The ability to order items along a quantitative dimension 

  • Adolescence: Formal Operations 

  • Age 12-adulthood 

  • Development of abstract and hypothetical reasoning 

  • Resulting in  

  • Propositional Logic  

  • Reasoning based on theoretical principles 

  • An 8-year-old's response versus a 13-year-old's response uses different reasoning (8: water it’s the same because they watched you pour it; 13: More abstract reasoning)  

  • Hypothetico-deductive reasoning 

  • Make and test hypotheses in order to answer questions  

  • Approach problems in a systematic way  

  • What affects how long it takes the pendulum to swing back and forth? 

  • Length  

  • Width  

  • Height 

Information Processing Perspective 

  • Cognitive development is the result of growth in specific components of the thinking process 

  • Attention  

  • Memory  

  • Speed  

  • Metacognition  

  • Attention  

  • Attention becomes more 

  • Selective: attend only to relevant aspects of a task  

  • Ex. Cup demonstration- 3 cups + 1 object  

  • Flexible: adapt attention to situational requirements 

  • Focusing on what assignments need to be done first 

  • Planful: evaluate a sequence of steps in advance 

  • Determining what assignments need to be done when  

  • Getting items at the “grocery store”  

  • Older children- more likely to scen before shopping 

  • Memory 

  • Working memory improves  

  • Ability to retain and manipulate distinct pieces of information over short periods of time 

  • Working memory strategies improve  

  • Rehearsal 

  • Organization  

  • Elaboration- requires more effort and space in working memory  

  • Combining strategies typically works the best  

  • Organization and elaboration combine information into meaningful chunks, further explaining working memory 

  • Long term memory improves 

  • Knowledge base grows larger, organized into increasingly elaborate networks 

  • Speed 

  • Increase speed of information processing 

  • Metacognition  

  • Thinking about thinking 

  • Important for perspective-taking 

Differences between Piaget and IP  

  • Stage Theory vs. Continuous Theory 

  • Specific tasks vs Overall functioning  

Why do we care about cognitive development  

  • Understanding how children think helps us teach them and understand challenges 

  • Concreteness fading- move from representations that are concrete to abstract representations (numbers) 

  • Understanding how people think helps us understand their challenges 

  • Metacognition -> Introspection ->  

  • Thinking about thinking, self-reflection  

  • The imaginary audience 

  • The Personal Fable  

Creativity  

  • The ability to generate ideas that are:  

  • Original  

  • Feasible  

  • Creativity relies on  

  • Divergent Thinking (what are the possibilities)  

  • Convergent Thinking (Bringing together pieces to find a solution) 

Creativity and Development  

  • What cognitive processes underly convergent and divergent thinking? 

  • Bigger long-term memory bank  

  • Faster information processing 

  • More selective attention  

  • Although, we think of creativity as a strength of childhood it increases through adolescence into adulthood