Cognitive Development Jean Piaget Learning Objectives Students should

Cognitive Development Jean Piaget

Learning Objectives Students should be able to: • Distinguish between assimilation and accommodation. • Describe the stages of cognitive development as proposed by Piaget. • Explain the following terms: – Object permanence – Conservation – Centration – Irriversability – Egocentricism (including animism and artificialism) – Adolescent egocentricism (including imaginary audience and personal fable)

Cognitive Development Ø Children are not miniature adults, their understanding of the world is fundamentally different, but rational given their experiences. Ø E. g. a child may believe that their teacher lives at school. Ø Children are active learners who seek information and learn from consequences of their behaviors, they are not passive. Ø Cognitive development: The way in which children mentally represent and think about the world.

Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development Ø Children learn to match their thinking about the world with their observations. If child experiences something new, they check whether that experience fits with what they expected. Ø Children progress in their thinking through the processes of: Ø Assimilation: process of incorporating new experiences into current knowledge structures known as schemas. Ø Schema is a hypothetical mental structure that permits the classification and organization of new information. Ø Accommodation: the modification of existing knowledge structures to make it compatible with new experiences.

Sensorimotor Stage Ø Cognitive development occurs in an orderly sequence, some children are more advanced than others, but sequence is the same. Ø Sensorimotor Stages: (birth to 2) Ø Focus on here and now Ø Learn through looking, touching, hearing sucking, grasping. Ø Major milestone at this stage is mental representation Ø the ability to think about things that are absent from immediate surroundings. Ø Children lack object permanence (before age 6 mths): the understanding that something continues to exist even when it is not visible. Ø First signs appear between 4 and 8 mths, but children don’t master the concept of object permanence until they’re about 18 mths

Preoperational Stage Ø Preoperational Stage: (2 to 7 yrs) Ø Children gradually improve in the ability to construct mental representations of experience. Ø Characterized by the use of words and symbols to represent objects and relationships among them. Ø Language accelerates. Ø Children do not yet grasp the concept of conservation- physical properties do not change when their forms or appearance change. Ø For e. g. mass, weight and volume remain the same conserved , even when superficial properties such as appearance or shape changes

Flaws at the Preoperational Stage Ø Piaget says children’s inability to understand conservation is caused by flaws in preoperational thinking. Ø Centration is the tendency to focus on just one aspect of a problem, neglecting other important aspects. Ø Tend to concentrate on the height while ignoring the width Ø Irreversibility is the ability to envision reversible actions Ø Piaget believed that in this stage children are also egocentric: Ø an inability to see the world from other’s perspective. Ø Thinking is one dimensional. Cannot understand that others do not see things the way they do.

Flaws at the Preoperational Stage ØA feature of egocentrism is animism: belief that all things are living, just like ones self. They attribute life and consciousness to physical objects, like moon, and sun. ØE. g. why do stars twinkle, because they are happy and cheerful. ØAlso show artificialism: belief that natural objects have been created by human beings. ØE. g. why is the sky blue? , because mommy painted it. Or what makes it rain? , someone pouring water from a water can.

Concrete Operations Stage Ø Concrete Operations Stage (7 to 12 yrs): Ø Called concrete because children can perform operations only on tangible objects and actual events. Ø They are concrete in their thinking, not able to think about abstract ideas or things that are not physically at hand. Ø Master the problems at previous stage Ø Leads to decline in egocentrism (people see things in different ways because of different situations and different sets of values)

Formal Operations Stage Ø The formal operations stage: (12 to adult): Ø Represents cognitive maturity. Ø Children begin to apply their operations to abstract in addition to concrete objects. Ø Can perform hypothetical reasoning. Ø They become more systematic in problem solving efforts and use logic to reason likely consequences of possible solutions before acting

Formal Operations Stage Ø Adolescent egocentrism: Ø demand acceptance of their logic without recognizing the exceptions or practical problems that should be considered. Ø E. g. company hurts people, should be punished and shut down, impatiently demands major changes, but what about the other practical problems such as the other workers who would be laid off. Ø This gives rise to two cognitive developments:

Piaget’s Stages Ø Imaginary audience: Ø the belief that other people are as concerned with our thoughts and behavior as we are. Ø See themselves as the center of attention and assume that other people are just as preoccupied with them.

Piaget’s Stages Ø Personal fable: Ø belief that our feelings and ideas are special and unique and that we are invulnerable - like superman. Thus showing off and risk taking behavior. Ø “It cant happen to me attitude” Ø Another aspect is that no one else can understand one’s unique feelings such as needing to be loved or independence. Thus “you just don’t understand me”.

Readings Ø Language Development (including Naom Chomsky’s theory)