Cognitive Development

Cognitive Development Lectures

Introduction

  • Dr. Benita Green introduces the cognitive development lecture series.
  • Acknowledge the traditional owners of the land, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation.
  • The series includes eight lectures, with Benita covering lectures 10-14, up to the end of week seven.
  • Dr. Simone Dedane will cover language development after the break.

Big Questions in Cognitive Development

  • How do we conceptualize cognitive development?
  • What is cognitive development, and what mental capacities are involved?
    • Capacities for memory.
    • Capacities for attention.
    • Capacities for knowledge and facts.
    • The ability to interact with and understand the world.
  • How and why does developmental change occur?
    • Is it purely maturation, or are other factors involved?
    • What pressures drive cognitive development to meet challenges?
  • How can we apply cognitive development theories to concrete examples, such as children's play?
    • Cognitive development isn't just in the brain; it involves physical, sensory interactions with the environment.
    • Children learn through physical interaction (e.g., with blocks, learning about shape, balance, and structure).

Core Theories of Cognitive Development

  • Overview of three main theories:
    • Piaget's theory of cognitive development
    • Information processing theories
    • Vygotsky's sociocultural theory
  • These will be revisited in subsequent lectures in more detail.
  • Children's cognitive development involves physical, sensory interaction with their environment.

Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development

  • Most well-known theory, highly influential.
  • Specifies three distinct stages:
    • Sensorimotor stage (age 0-2)
      • Children use senses and motor skills to interact with the world.
      • Learning about their bodies and the objects they manipulate.
      • Learning to grasp, hold objects, bring objects to their mouth, manipulate objects to make sounds.
      • They also learn how to crawl and move around.
    • Preoperational stage (age 2-6)
      • Children are no longer bound by the "here and now".
      • They start understanding language, symbols, pictures, and signs, and can use them to represent objects in the world.
      • They are not yet reasoning logically about these things.
    • Concrete operational stage (age 7-12)
      • Children start to think logically about concrete objects.
      • They can manipulate objects (e.g., counters, blocks) and perform concrete operations with them.
      • Still need concrete objects to support their thinking.
    • Formal operational stage (age 12+)
      • Children can think abstractly and are no longer tied to concrete objects.
      • Can do abstract thinking purely mentally.

Distinct Stages

  • Stages are qualitatively different. Children stay in a stage for a couple of years, master skills, and then make a sudden leap to the next stage.
  • This is a discontinuous theory of development.
  • Criticism: Piaget describes the stages but doesn't explain how a child moves from one stage to the next.

Sensorimotor Stage Details

  • Age: Approximately 0-2 years.
  • Children explore the world through senses and motor abilities.
    • Primary circular reactions (1-4 months):
      • Repeating pleasurable actions centered on their own body (e.g., sucking thumb).
      • Intentional rather than automatic reflexes.
    • Secondary circular reactions (4-8 months):
      • Repeating actions with objects in the world (e.g., shaking a rattle to make a noise).
    • Tertiary circular reactions (12-18 months):
      • Experimentation and trial and error.
      • Deliberately dropping things to see what happens.
      • Recognizing object permanence (objects exist even when out of sight).

Preoperational Thought Details

  • Age: Approximately 2-6 or 7 years.
  • Children develop mental representations of objects.
  • Engage in symbolic thought
  • They can use objects in their environment to stand in for something else.
  • Substages:
    • Preconceptual/symbolic stage (2-4 years):
      • Understanding symbols and words.
      • Egocentric perspective (not considering others' perspectives).
      • Speech is egocentric; responses are not contingent on each other.
      • Example:
        • Child 1: "My dad is a policeman."
        • Child 2: "I have a real big dog. He caught a robber once. He licks my face all the time."
    • Intuitive stage (4-7 years)
      • Speech becomes more social and less egocentric.
      • Genuine reciprocal conversation and curiosity about others' viewpoints.

Three Mountains Task

  • Used to investigate the ability to take the perspective of someone else.
  • Children are shown a three-dimensional mountain scene with a doll on the other side.
  • Children are asked what they can see and what the doll can see.
  • Younger children (2-4 years) cannot take the doll's perspective and only describe what they themselves see.
  • Older children (4-5 years) can take the doll's perspective and describe what the doll can see.
  • Criticism: Making the task more engaging allows even 3-year-olds to take the doll's perspective.

Concrete Operational Stage Details

  • Age: Approximately 7 or 8 through to 11 or 12.
  • Children can perform mental operations on things in the world, logically and causally linking events.
  • They can classify things, reverse operations, take the perspective of someone else, and pass conservation tasks.

Conservation Tasks

  • Assess the understanding that the amount of something remains the same even when its appearance changes.
  • Example:
    • Two containers with the same amount of liquid; children confirm the amounts are the same.
    • Liquid from one container is poured into a taller, skinnier glass.
    • Children are asked if the amounts are the same.
    • Children who pass the task understand that the amount is conserved, even though the liquid level is higher.
  • Can be done with quantities such as Play-Doh or clay.

Formal Operational Stage Details

  • Age: From about 12 years and above.
  • Thought becomes increasingly flexible and abstract.
  • Children can work at an abstract level, using symbols like algebra.

Criticisms of Piaget

  • Neglects the social context of learning.
  • Focuses on decontextualized, lab-based experimental tasks.
  • Says little about language development, seeing it as an outcome of cognitive development.
  • Suggests intellectual development is complete by age 12.

Information Processing Accounts

  • Focus on the underlying processes that support thinking (memory, attention, language) rather than the content.
  • Quantitative changes with age: attention capacity increases with age.

Simplified Model of Information Processing

  • Thinking is like how a computer processes information.

    1. Sensory register: Information is perceived and recognized.
    2. Short-term memory: Information is held in mind.
    3. Working memory: manipulate with those two numbers in your memory.
    4. Long-term memory: is used to do that mental calculation.

  • Information is encoded, held in short-term memory, worked with, and potentially encoded into long-term memory.

  • Contrasts with Piaget: views cognitive development as quantitative and continuous (memory and attention capacity increases with age).

  • Aligned with modern neuroscience: relates to brain development, such as myelination improving processing speed.

Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory

  • Contrasts with Piaget.
  • Focuses on how cognitive development occurs.
  • Children learn through close, interactive relationships with more competent people (scaffolding).
  • Learning occurs in the zone of proximal development.

Zone of Proximal Development

  • Purple circle: a child's current understanding (what they can do alone).
  • Darker green circle: what the child can't do yet.
  • Learning happens when an adult or peer prompts and guides the child to do just a little bit more than what they can already do.

More Knowledgeable Other

  • A parent, teacher, older sibling, or friend who knows a skill better than the child does.
  • They are able to provide that extra help for them.
  • Organizes the task, providing social meaning (e.g., pouring drinks for visitors).
  • From that, the child internalizes it and makes it their own.

Differences Between Theories

  • Piaget and information processing see the child as an autonomous learner, with learning happening within the child.
  • Vygotsky emphasizes that learning is embedded within an interactive context.

Vygotsky's Perspective

  • Adult organizes the task and provides social meaning.
  • Child internalizes the activity.
  • Vygotsky focused on the "how" of learning, while Piaget focused on the "what."
  • Vygotsky emphasizes that children in different eras/cultures learn different things based on cultural values.
  • Piaget focused on children learning the same things regardless of their location.

Summary

  • Piaget's theory provides a vivid flavor of children's thinking at different ages but has limitations.
  • Information processing theories focus on specific mental processes underlying thinking.
  • Vygotsky's sociocultural theory emphasizes that development is shaped by interactions with others and is embedded in culture and society.
  • Theories differ from each other in their key features.
  • Next week: children's play development.