parsons ch 6

Introduction

  • Cognitive Development: Piaget described it as constructing systems of transformation that correspond to reality.

  • Early Development: Begins in utero and accelerates with stimulation.

  • Counselor's Role: Understand cognitive development to discern normative behavior from concerns needing intervention.

Objectives

  • Describe major regions of the cerebral cortex and their functions.

  • Explain Piaget's concept of equilibration and the processes of assimilation and accommodation.

  • Describe object permanence and representational thought.

  • Explain the primary differences between the cognitive development theories of Piaget and Vygotsky.

The Developing Brain

  • Brain Growth: Significant change between conception and age three.

    • At birth, almost all neurons are present.

    • Doubles in size in the first year.

    • By age three, reaches 80% of adult volume.

  • Synaptic Formation: Faster rate during these years than any other time.

    • Brain creates more synapses than needed; surplus connections are eliminated via blooming and pruning.

  • Cerebellum: Triples in size during the first year, responsible for voluntary movements.

  • Visual Cortex: Infant's sight develops into full binocular vision, and depth perception emerges.

  • Hippocampus and Amygdala: Develop at about three months, increasing recognition, memory, and anxiety response.

Cortical Development

  • Cerebral Cortex: Outer layer, central to cognitive processes, 85% of brain's weight.

  • Environmental Stimulation: Cortex grows in response to it.

  • Cortical Regions: Divided into regions with specific functions.

    • Motor skills correspond with visual, auditory, and motor areas development.

    • Language capabilities become active in later infancy.

    • Prefrontal cortex develops into young adulthood, associated with executive processes.

Lateralization and Plasticity of the Cortex

  • Lateralization: Hemispheres differ in function.

    • Left Hemisphere: Verbal abilities and positive emotion.

    • Right Hemisphere: Spatial abilities and negative emotion.

  • Plasticity: Capacity of the nervous system to modify itself in response to experience and injury.

    • If one part is damaged, others may take over.

    • Prefrontal lobes have limited plasticity.

Experience Essential to Cognitive Development

  • Genetic Factors: Direct neurons and influence interactions.

  • Environmental Input: Brain fine-tunes itself based on input.

    • Senses report to the brain about environment and experiences, stimulating neural activity.

  • Multisensory Stimulation: Associated with improved development.

  • Caregiver Contact and Environmental Stimulation: Important for neural growth.

    • Poor childcare is associated with lower scores on various skills.

    • Good childcare can reduce negative impacts of stressful home life.

Poverty: A Threat to Cognitive Development

  • Negative Effects: Chronic poverty negatively affects brain growth.

  • Malnutrition and Reduced Stimulation: Higher rates in low socioeconomic status families.

  • Romanian Orphanages: Illustrates the importance of early stimulation and social interaction. #### Case Illustration 6.1: Children of Extreme Deprivation

    • Background: Strict fertility regulation and poverty led to child abandonment.

    • Conditions: Minimal contact with peers.

    • Outcomes: Impairment in developmental areas; intellectual deficits, attention disorders, etc.
      *Children adopted before six months fared as well as UK-adopted children; those adopted after six months improved but lagged behind. Improvements maintained but not advanced at six-year follow-up (O'Connor et al.).

    • Failure to experience appropriate stimulation resulted in decreased neural exercise, especially in prefrontal lobes.

    • Conditions diminished left cerebral hemisphere functioning and disrupted stress management.

    • Conclusion: Appropriate stimulation is needed for neuronal development and synaptic connections.

Cognitive Development: Jean Piaget

  • Piaget's Theory: Describes qualitative cognition changes from infancy through adolescence.

  • Children as Active Learners: Their thinking differs from adults.

  • Constructing Knowledge: Children construct knowledge and learn through experience.
    #### Schema and Adaptation

  • Making Meaning: Constructing a mental model of the world.

  • Cognitive Structures (Schema): Modifying schema to adapt and organize experience.

  • Adaptation: Schemata helps understand/create meaning and facilitates adaptation.
    #### Equilibration

  • Equilibrium: Desire and seek order in knowledge and cognitive structures.

  • Disequilibrium: Balance is shaken when encountering new events.
    #### Exercise 6.1: Everyday Encounters with Cognitive Disequilibrium

  • Dog Duty: Forgetting a dog bag.

  • Restaurant: Experiencing horrible food and service.

  • Major Purchase: Learning about bad reviews.

  • Relationship: Hearing worrisome things about a new person.

  • Grade: Receiving a lower-than-expected grade.
    #### Assimilation and Accommodation

  • Assimilation: Integrating new experiences into an existing schema.

  • Accommodation: Creating a new schema when an experience doesn't fit.
    #### Cognitive Equilibrium and Disequilibrium

  • Balance: Assimilate more than we accommodate.

  • Disequilibrium: Rapid change; move from assimilation to accommodation.

  • Stages of Development: Sensorimeter goes into pre operational.

  • Focus was not on the growth in knowledge or facts stored, but instead on the qualitatively unique ways our conceptualization of reality is constructed throughout our development. depends on neurological capabilities as they interact with our experiences.
    #### Sensorimotor Stage of Development (Birth - One Year)

  • Sensory and Motor Resources: Infants adapt via sensory and motor resources.

  • Thinking: Sensing and moving.

  • Action Patterns: Sensorimotor action patterns.

  • Intentionality: Intention and goal-oriented.
    #### Preoperational Stage of Development (Age Two - Seven)

  • Object Permanence: Object permanence and representational thinking leads to intentional, goal oriented problem solving.

  • Representational Thinking: Understanding that objects continue to exist even when out of sensory experience,Internally, cognitively, represent an object or an experience. Reveals the child's movement into pigeon's preoperational stage of this cognitive development.

  • Internal Representation: Signals the infant's movement into Piaget's preoperational stage of cognitive development.

  • Elementary Memory: Allows discerning "me" from the world.

  • Causal Actions: Accidental actions become understood as cause and effect.

  • Representational Thought: Engagement allows infant to employ symbols( such as words as cues to mental images of things not physically presentSay the word mommy and watch the infant search for his mother).

  • Complex abilities Complex abilities including object permanence, understanding of object. properties, and problem solving while becoming increasingly complex with age, probably occur earlier than the eighteen dash twenty four months posited by Piaget.
    #### Characteristics of the Preoperational Stage of Cognitive Development Description

  • Egocentrism (The child assumes that their / view of the world, their experience, is the same for everyone else