Theories of Cognitive Development

Question 1

Enduring themes addressed by theories of cognitive development

Answer 1

Piaget - nature and nurture, continuity/discontinuity, the active child

Information Processing - nature and nurture, how change occurs

Core Knowledge - nature and nurture, continuity/discontinuity

Sociocultural - nature and nurture, influence of the sociocultural context, how change occurs

we will consider each theories fundamental assumptions about children’s nature, the central developmental issues on which the theory focuses, and the practical examples of the theories usefulness for educating children. Together, the five theories allow a broader appreciation of cognitive development than any one of them alone.

Question 2

Piagets Theory

Answer 2

posits that cognitive development involves a sequence of four stages - the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational stages - that are constructed through the processes of assimilation (interpreting incoming information to fit current understanding), accommodation (adapting one’s thinking to match new experiences) and equilibration (balancing assimilation and accommodation to create stable understanding). the theory extends from infancy through adolescence and examines topics such as time, space, distance, number, language use, memory, understanding of other peoples perspectives, problem solving, and scientific reasoning.

among the reasons for the longevity of Piaget’s theory are that it vividly conveys the flavor of children’s thinking at different ages, extends across a broad range of ages and content areas, and provides many fascinating and surprising observations of children’s thinking. the theory posits that children learn through two processes that are present from birth - assimilation and accommodation - and that the contribution of these process is balanced through a third process, equilibrium. these processes produce continuities across development.

VIEWS OF CHILDREN’S NATURE

• fundamental assumption: children are mentally active from the moment of birth, their mental and physical activity both contribute greatly to their development.
• second assumption: children learn many important lessons on their own
• third assumption: children are motivated to learn and do not need rewards from others to learn.
• takes a constructivist approach; depicts children as constructing knowledge for themselves in response to their experiences.
• three important children’s constructive processes are generating hypotheses, performing experiments, and drawing conclusions from observations
• “child as scientist”

CENTRAL DEVELOPMENTAL ISSUES

Nature and Nurture:
believe they interact to produce cognitive development. he believed nurture is provided by caregivers and experiences children encounter. nature includes children’s maturing brain and body, their ability to perceive, act, and learn from experience, and their tendency to integrate particular observations into coherent knowledge. Thus, a vital part of children’s nature is how they respond to nurture.

Sources of Continuity:
main sources of continuity are three processes - assimilation, accommodation, and equilibration - that work together from birth to propel development forward.
Assimilation is the process by which people incorporate incoming information into concepts they already understand. For example, a 2yr old saw a man bald but frizzy hair on the sides which the child could represent as a clown.
Accommodation is the process by which people improve their current understanding in response to new experiences. For example, the father could explain to the child that the man was not a clown due not attributing the clothing and characteristics of a clown. with this new information, the child can accommodate the clown concept to the standard one.
Equilibration is the process by which people balance assimilation and accommodation to create stable understanding. Equilibration includes 3 phases;
- people are satisfied with their understanding of a particular phenomenon (state of equilibrium). people do not see any discrepancies between their observations and their understanding of the phenomenon.
- this new information leads to perceive that their understanding is inadequate (state of disequilibrium), so in short, they are confused.
- they develop a more sophisticated understanding that eliminates the shortcomings of the old one, creating a more advanced equilibrium within which a broader range of observations can be understood.

Example of cognitive growth from Piaget’s Perspective:
involves belief - held by most 4-7yr olds in a wide range of cultures - that animals are the only living things. this belief seems to stem from the assumption that only animals can move in ways that help them survive. children then realise that plants also move in ways that promote their survival (bend down to sunlight). this new information is difficult for them to assimilate to their prior thinking. the resulting disparity between their previous understanding of living things and their new knowledge about plants creates a state of disequilibrium, in which they are confused about what it means to be alive. later their thinking accommodates the new information about plants. this realisation constitutes a more stable equilibrium because subsequent information about plants and animals will not contradict it. through equilibrium, children acquire knowledge of the world round them.

Sources of Discontinuity:

Paiget emphasised continuity in cognitive development, but the most famous part of his theory is the discontinuous aspects. Piaget views his stages of cognitive development as products of the basic human tendency to organise knowledge into coherent structures. each stage represented a unified way of understanding one’s experience, and each transition between stages represents a discontinuous intellectual leap from one coherent way of understanding the world to the next, higher one.

Central properties of Piaget’s stage theory -

• Qualititative change - believed that children of different ages think in qualitatively different ways. for example, he proposed that children in the early stages of cognitive development conceive of morality in terms of the consequences of a person’s behaviour, whereas children in later stages conceive of it in terms of the person’s intent. thus, a 5yr old would judge someone who accidently broke person’s a jar of cookies as having been naughtier than someone who deliberately stole a single cookie; and 8yr old would reach the opposite conclusion. this difference represents a qualitative change, because the two children are basing their moral judgements on entirely different criteria.
• Broad Applicability - the type of thinking characteristic of each stage influences children’s thinking across diverse topics and contexts
• Brief Transitions - before entering a new stage, children pass through a brief transitional period in which they fluctuate between the type of thinking characteristic of the new, more advanced stage and the type of thinking characteristic of the old, less advanced one.
• Invariant Sequence - everyone progresses through the stages in the same order without skipping any of them

Piaget’s stages (reflect discontinuities in development):

sensorimotor stage (first 2yrs) - starts of with developing reflexes, then primary circular reactions, then secondary CR’s, then coordination of SCR’s, Tertiary Ciruclar Reactions, and then Invention of new means through mental combinations. primary circular reactions are repetitive actions (circular) that provide info about the body (primary); refine reflexes and combine them into more complex actions. Secondary CR’s involves behaviour becoming more responsive to the outside world (secondary); attention shifts to the outcome of actions. coordination of SCR’s involves infants doing one thing (dropping a toy) to do another (grasp another toy); object permanence; commit A-not-B error. Tertiary circular reactions is when the child is no longer committed to A-not-B error; do not understand invivisble displacements. and the last one involves infants developing symbolic thought; understand invisible displacements; capable of deferred imitation; start pretend play. infants begin to know the world through the perceptions of their senses and through their motor activities. differentiates self from objects. during this stage, infants gain the understanding of concepts such as objects permanence and become capable of deferred imitation.

Reflexes: According to Piaget, the young infant can have very different impressions of the same object when understood through different schemes. In this case, looking at a cylinder from one particular angle confers a distorted perspective, whereas mouthing the cylinder distorts it by focusing attention on its edge. According to Piaget an infant would not even realise that the same object was involved. Later research raised doubts about this notion.

Primary Circular Reactions: at that stage infants are limited to circular reactions that have no other goal than the action itself (goal = action). For example, by chance infants get their thumbs into their mouths. Sucking the thumb is pleasing. So infants try to repeat this action. When they can do so consistently, they have acquired a new scheme (= organised pattern of action) that coordinates two separate schemes of moving the hand to the mouth and sucking. This coordination requires more than assimilation through repetition of the action. It also calls for the accommodation of each scheme, hand moving and sucking, to link with the other scheme.

Secondary Circular Reactions: according to Piaget, a type of circular reaction in which infants’ actions (e.g., kicking their legs) can be distinguished from their goal (e.g., making toys on a crib mobile shake) –goal is not action Coordination of secondary schemes: The secondary schemes that emerge at Stage 3 can be coordinated in means-ends relationships. Infants learn to drop a toy they were holding in one hand to grab a more attractive toy that is being offered to them. As infants enter sensorimotor Stage 4, they transition from seeing each object differently depending on their schemes for using it, to a more integrated set of schemes that can support a more scheme-independent understanding of the object. The schemes are unified into an integrated representation. If an infant starts to put together the rattle-shaking scheme and the rattle splashing scheme, she will start to understand that certain properties of the rattle persist across these different schemes. Infants in this stage will now retrieve a fully hidden object, but according to Piaget, they will not fully represent the object when it is out of sight. They tend to make the A-not-B error. Piaget believed that repeatedly finding the object hidden in the same spot, Stage 4 infants develop a particular scheme for retrieving that object at a particular location. Infants cannot apply a new scheme to the object in its new location, since the object is still embedded within the older scheme.

Tertiary Circular Reactions: Infants begin intentionally coordinating their use of schemes in innovative and creative ways to actively explore the world. They do not repeat an action over and over, looking for the same effect, as a Stage 3 infant would. They vary the action each time. For example, they drop various foods. Invention of new means through mental combinations: The capacity for mental representation is seen in the emergence of deferred imitation, the ability to recall and copy another person’s behaviour hours or days after the behaviour has been observed (head touch in Gergely’s study). Although infants show some ability to imitate other people’s actions quite early in life, up until now, they have only imitated the behaviour they see someone else is demonstrating on the spot. Their newly acquired ability to recall and imitate other people’s past actions enables them to engage in make believe and pretend play.

preoperational stage (ages 2 to 7) - children become capable of mental representations but tend to be egocentric (has difficulty taking viewpoint of others) and to focus on a single dimension of an event or a problem. learns to use language and to represent objects by images and words. classifies objects by a single feature: e.g. groups, together all the red blocks regardless of shape or all the square blocks regardless of colour. conservation not yet solved (more liquid in one container than the other, but they have the same volume but just in a different shape of container).

concrete operational stage (ages 7 to 12) - in which children think logically about concrete aspects of the environment (objects and events) but have difficulty thinking abstractly and in succeeding on tasks requiring hypothetical thinking, such as the pendulum problem (children presented with pendulums of varying length and weight, and ask what factor influence(s) how much time it takes the pendulum to swing through a complete arch? is it to do with the length of the string, heaviness of the weight or height from which the weight is dropped, or some combination of these factors?). achieves conservation of number (age 6), mass (age 7), and weight (age 9). classifies objects according to several features and can order them in series along a single dimension such as size. class-inclusion task solved (are there more tulips than flowers?). transitivity task solved (show how A is longer than B, then B is longer than C, then put A and C on the table ask whether A or C is longer - stick A must be longer than stick B).

formal operational stage (age 12 and beyond) - become capable of systematic thought and experimentation. can test hypotheses systematically, and reason about hypothetical situations. can think logically about abstract propositions. the 4 Beaker problem and Wason Selection Task could be solved. not everybody reaches this stage, even adults.

Strengths of Theory:

• broad overview of development
• plausible and attractive perspective on children’s nature
• its inclusion of varied tasks and age groups
• fascinating observations

Weaknesses of Theory:

• vagueness regarding cognitive mechanisms
• underestimation of infants and young children’s cognitive competence
• lack of attention to the contribution of the social and cultural world to cognitive development
• overestimation of the constituency of children’s thinking
• failed to distinguish competence from performance
• his tasks may have been too complex
• egocentrism needs to be revised, different levels of knowledge about perspectives

Question 3

Information Processing Theories

Answer 3

a class of theories that focus on the structure of the cognitive system and the mental activities used to deploy attention and memory to solve problems.

to help specify the processes involved in children’s thinking, David Klahr used task analysis - which is the identification of goals needed to perform the task, obstacles that prevent their immediate realisation, information in the environment and prior knowledge relevant to achieving the goals, and potential strategies for reaching the desired outcome. the idea is that people thinking is limited by the same factors that are limited in a computer.

Task analysis helps information processing researchers understand and predict children’s behaviour and rigorously test precise hypotheses regarding how development occurs. in some cases, it allows them to formulate a computer simulation, a type of mathematical model that expresses ideas about mental processes in precise ways.

information processing theorists reject the idea of general stages. Performance on cognitive tasks improves because of improvements in specific components of information processing. The components responsible for these improvements vary across tasks. Information-Processing Theorists describe cognitive development with two changes:

1. Quantitative: children become faster and more efficient at processing information
2. Qualitative: children use different ideas to make predictions (e.g., moral development)

competence vs. performance:
young children might fail on tasks not because they lacked the cognitive competence the task was intended to assess, but because some aspect of the testing situation confused or overwhelmed them.
if it’s not cognitive competence; working memory overload; no inhibition of impulses and habitual responses; or not enough cognitive flexibility

VIEWS OF CHILDREN’S NATURE

The Child as a Limited-Capacity Processing System:
Information processing theorists draw comparisons between the information processing of computers and that of humans to understand the differences in children’s thinking at various ages. a computers information processing is limited by its hardware and software. the hardware limitations relate to the computers memory capacity and it’s speed in executing basic operations. the software limitations relate to the strategies and knowledge that are available for performing particular tasks. In the information processing view, cognitive development arises from children gradually surmounting their processing limitations through expanding the amounts of information they can process at one time, increasing their processing speed, and acquiring new strategies and knowledge.

The Child as a Problem Solver:
problem-solving involves strategies for overcoming obstacles and attaining goals. children’s cognitive flexibility helps them attain their goals. every young child shows great ingenuity in surmounting the obstacles imposed by their parents, the physical environment, and their own lack of knowledge.

The following positions have been taken by information processing theories in the Nature – Nurture discussion:

1. Nurture: Children differ from adults only because they have had less experience. With proper training children at any age could succeed on almost any cognitive task.
2. Nature: maturation limits the complexity of children’s thinking and the kinds of cognitive tasks they can do.

CENTRAL DEVELOPMENTAL ISSUES

The Development Of Memory:

• working memory involves actively attending to, gathering, maintaining, and processing information. it is limited in both its capacity (the amount of info it can attend to at one time) and in the length of time for which it can maintain information in an active state without updating activities. the exact capacity varies with age, the task, and the type of information being processed. capacity and speed increases throughout our lifespan (due to maturational changes in the brain), but basic organisation of working memory is constant from early childhood. apart from internal, external environments also influence attention.
• long-term memory; in contrast to the moment-to-moment nature of working memory, long term memory consists of the knowledge that people accumulate over their lifetime. it includes factual knowledge, conceptual knowledge, procedural knowledge, attitudes, reasoning strategies, and so on. thus, can be thought of as the totality of one’s knowledge, whereas working memory can be regarded as the subset of that knowledge. can retain an unlimited amount of information for unlimited periods of time.
• executive functioning - involves the control of cognition. the prefrontal cortex plays an important role in this cognitive control. three major types of executive functioning are; inhibiting inadvisable actions such as resisting the temptations to play with one’s phone when an important test looms soon; enhancing working memory through the use of strategies, such as selectively attending to the most important information; and being cognitively flexible, such as imagining someone else’s perspective in an argument despite it differing from one’s own. executive functioning uses information in working memory and long term memory to flexibly shift goals and inhibit impulses to behave in ways that are inappropriate in the situation. it also updates the contents of working memory so that new goals can be pursued effectively. the ability of executive functions increases greatly during the preschool and early elementary school years and is related to later academic achievement and occupational success. the ability to inhibit habitual responses becomes apparent slightly later.
• Explanations of Memory Development - explaining the properties that make memory good and the limitations that prevent it from being better (three capabilities; basic processes, strategies, and content knowledge). the development of memory, problem solving and learning reflects improvements in the 3 capabilities. basic cognitive processes include associating events with one another, recognising objects as familiar, recalling facts and procedures and generalising from one instance to another. a key basic process key to all others is encoding which is the representation in memory of specific features of objects and events. it allows infants to remember and learn from birth and onward. The acquisition of strategies involve the rehearsal strategy which is the repeating of information multiple times in order to remember it. another strategy is selective attention which is the process of intentionally focusing on the information that is most relevant to the current goal. content knowledge involves with age and experience, knowledge about almost everything increases. children generally learn more about a topic than adults do. both strategies and content knowledge enhances learning, memory, and problem solving beyond the level that basic processes alone could provide.

The Development Of Problem Solving:

• important contributors to the growth of problem solving include the development of planning and encoding. overlapping waves theory characterises development of problem solving as involving acquisition of new strategies, and increasingly frequent choice of strategies that fit particular situations.

A-NOT-B error revised:
Ahmend and Ruffman (1998)
requires not only memory for the location of the toy, but it also requires the action of reaching for the toy

Question 4

Core Knowledge Theories

Answer 4

core knowledge theories are based on the view that children begin life with a wide range of specific cognitive competencies.

Core-knowledge approaches also hypothesize that children are especially adept at acquiring evolutionarily important information, such as language, spatial and numerical information, understanding of other peoples thinking, and face recognition.

VIEW OF CHILDREN’S NATURE

core-knowledge theories depict children as active learners, this perspective on children’s nature resembles that of Piagetian and information-processing theories. However, they also dramatically differ in their view of children’s innate capabilities. Piagetian and information processing theorists propose that children enter the world equipped with only general abilities to allow them to gradually increase their understanding of all types of content. by contrast, core knowledge theorists view children as entering the world not equipped not only with general learning abilities but also with specialised learning mechanisms, or mental structures, that allow them to quickly and effortlessly acquire information of evolutionary importance.

these approaches further posit that from early ages, children organise information about the most important areas into domain-specific knowledge structures. domain specific reasoning systems means, limited to a particular area. This area allows children to distinguish between living and nonliving things; to anticipate that inanimate objects they encounter for the first time will remain stationary unless an external force is applied to them; to anticipate that animals they encounter for the first time might well move on their own; and to learn especially quickly in these and other areas of evolutionary importance.

the domain-general learning mechanism - one mechanism is there to help you learn everything

Different mechanisms are believed to produce development in each domain; for example, a kind of mechanism that has been labeled a theory of mind module (TOMM) is believed to produce learning about one’s own and other epople’s minds, but different specialised mechanisms are believed to produce learning about faces, language, movement, and other important domains.

core object system: key principles
- cohesion - objects should hold together across time and space rather than disintegrate
- continuity - object does not dissapear
- contact - object can only with if someone touches it
Spelke and Kinzler (2007)

core object system: signature limits

• 3 to 4 objects at a time, not more
• solid objects (strawberries), not substances (liquids)

core object systems:

• suggested to be innate
• extends to other species
• does not explain all of cognition
• involves objects, number, agents, place, shape/form, social partners

CENTRAL DEVELOPMENTAL ISSUE: NATIVISM VERSUS CONSTRUCTIVISM

Nativism:

nativism is a type of core-knowledge approach that posits that infants are born with substantial knowledge of evolutionarily important domains. Elizabeth Spelke proposed the “Core-Knowledge Theory”. She hypothesised that infants begin life with four core-knowledge systems, each of which includes understanding of a particularly important domain.

• one system represents inanimate objects and their mechanical interactions
• second system represents the minds of people and other animals capable of goal-directed actions
• a third system represents numbers, such as the numbers of objects and events
• fourth system represents spatial layouts and geometric relations

Language is another domain in which core-knowledge theorists have proposed that children have innate knowledge and a specialised learning mechanism (language acquisition device). Theorists hypothesised that this specialised learning mechanism enables young children to rapidly master the complicated systems of grammatical rules that are present in all human languages. Universality of acquisitions early in life, without apparent effort and without instruction from other people, is characteristic of the domains that are viewed as particularly important by core-knowledge theorists.

Constructivism:

core-knowledge constructivism proposes that children generate increasingly advanced theories of areas such as physics (knowledge of objects), psychology (knowledge of people), and biology (knowledge of plants and animals) by combining basic innate knowledge with subsequent learning produced by both domain-general and domain-specific mechanisms. sees children as active learners with impressive early understanding of vital concepts and domain-specific learning mechanisms.

Question 5

Sociocultural Theories

Answer 5

approaches that emphasise that other people and the surrounding culture contribute greatly to children’s development.

noteworthy characteristics of interactions:

1) sociocultural theorists emphasise that much of cognitive development takes place through direct interactions between children and other people who want to help children acquire the skills, knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes valued by their culture.
thus, whereas Piagetian, information-processing, and core knowledge theories emphasise children’s own efforts to understand the world, sociocultural theories emphasise the developmental importance of children’s interactions with other people.

2) children and older adults can have interactions such as guided participation, a process in which older, more knowledgeable individuals organise activities in ways that allow younger, less knowledgeable people to engage in them at a higher level than they could manage on their own.
3) occurs in a broader cultural context. this context includes not only other people but also the inumerable products of human ingenuity that socio cultural theorists refer to as cultural tool - symbol systems, artifacts, skills, values, and the many other ways in which culture influences our thinking. without symbol systems of printed diagrams and spoken language, we would find tasks difficult. thus, sociocultural theories help us appreciate the many aspects of culture embodied in even the most commonplace interactions

VIEWS OF CHILDREN’S NATURE

Vygotsky’s Theory:
starting with Vygotsky, sociocultural theorists have focused on how the social world molds development. these theories emphasise that development is shaped not only by interactions with other people and the skills learned from them, but also by the artifacts with which children interact and the beliefs, values and traditions of the larger society. Vygotsky emphasised gradual continuous changes and viewed children as intent on participating in activities that are prevalent in the specific time and place in which they live. vygotsky also believes children to be social learners. these Vygotskian views gave rise to the central metaphor of sociocultural theories: children as social learners, shaped by other people and by their cultural context and gradually becoming immersed in it.

Children as Teachers and Learners:

sociocultural theories view humans as differing from other animals in their propensity to teach and their ability to learn from teaching which was proposed by Michael Tomasello. guided participation. much of cognitive development takes place through interactions between children and other people.

Children as Products of Their Culture:

sociocultural theorists believe the many processes that produce development are the same in all societies, but the content that children learn (symbol systems, artifacts, skills, and values) vary greatly from cultures and shape thinking. children’s memories of their own experiences also reflect their culture.

CENTRAL DEVELOPMENTAL ISSUES

Intersubjectivity:

Establishing intersubjectivity (the mutual understanding that people share during communication) between people through joint attention (a process in which social partners intentionally focus on a common referent in the external environment) is essential to learning.

Social Scaffolding

Sociocultural theories describe people as learning through guided participation and social scaffolding (a process in which more competent people provide a temporary framework that supports children’s thinking at a higher level than children could manage on their own), in which others who are more knowledgeable support the learners efforts. scaffolding - tendency to tailor support to a learner near the limit of capacity.
the zone of proximal development is what the learner can achieve with assistance.

Private Speech - moves to self-regulation which is key to achieve many tasks. this is essential for what Vygotsky calls the higher mental processes like planning, remembering and reasoning. private speech involves the inability to take the perspective of another in the effort to engage in truly relational and reciprocal communication.

Question 6

Dynamic-Systems Theories

a class of theories that focus on how change occurs overtime in complex systems

Answer 6

view change as the one constant in development. rather than depicting development as being organised into long periods of stability and brief periods of dramatic change, these theories propose that there is no period in which substantial change is not occurring.

these theories view each person as a unified system that, in order to meet goals, intergrates perception, action, categorisation, motivation, memory, language, and knowledge of the physical and social world.

CENTRAL DEVELOPMENTAL ISSUES

Self Organisation:

view development as a self-organising process that brings together components as needed to adapt to a continuously changing environment, a process known as soft assembly.
attaining goals requires action as well as thought. thought shapes action, and vice versa.

Mechanism of Change:

just as variation (the use of different behaviours to pursue the same goal) and selection (increasingly frequent choice of behaviours that are effective in meeting goals and decreasing use of less effective behaviours) produce biological evolution, they also produce cognitive development.