Week 4 - Cognitive Development

Question 1

Relevant Background: What is cognition and cognitive developmental theory?

Answer 1

Cognition: how we think about things, the way we understand the world (attention, memory, language, problem-solving, decision-making)

Cognitive Developmental Theory: theorises how our cognition develops over time (focuses on things like memory and concept formation)

Question 2

Relevant Background: What work came before Piaget?

Answer 2

Developmental processes had NOT been scientifically examined

Patricia Miller (1993) –> Noted surprising features of children’s thinking:
–> Physics: children do not expect objects to be permanent
–> Numbers: eg. in pre-schoolers, when a row of cookies is spread out they believe there are more cookies
–> Liquid quantity: believe that when water is poured from a thin tall glass to a short wide glass (more water in thin glass)

Question 3

Relevant Background: Piaget: The structure of cognitions and how we learn them

Answer 3

As we develop we aquire ‘cognitive structures’ (mental rules that we use to understand the world)
–> Two main structures: mental schemata and concepts

Mental Schemata: mental representation of an action which includes the knowledge and experience we have acquired relating to that action

Concepts: rules that describe properties of environmental events and how they relate to other concepts

HOW DO WE LEARN THEM
1. Assimilation - when a schema is adapted to other objects but is not changed
2. Equilibrium -the process of adapting schema without any real change
3. Disequilibrium - coming across an object for which the existing schema is a poor fit
4. Accommodation - process of changing an existing schema
5. Equilibration - back and forth between disequilibrium and accommodation

Question 4

Piaget: State the 4 stages and the claims for each

Answer 4

1. Sensorimotor
2. Preoperational
3. Concrete operational
4. Formal operational

Each new stage derives from and improves upon the previous stage

Invariant sequence

Stages are universal

Question 5

Piaget’s Stages: Outline the Sensorimotor Stage

Answer 5

Birth - 2 years
–> Discovery of relations between sensation and motor behaviour (this is how children develop familiarity with objects - eg. sucking, grasping)

Major characteristic is OBJECT PERMANENCE: at some point between 0-2years children begin to understand that objects continue to exist even when they’re not perceptually visible

Question 6

Piaget’s Stages: Outline the Preoperational Stage

Answer 6

2/3 –>6/7 years
1. –> Use of SYMBOLS to represent objects internally (especially through language)

Thinking separates from movement
Thinking capacity increases greatly in speed
Children acquire verbal skills
Evidence of thinking abstractly

2. –> Children are EGOCENTRIC- children cannot take others’ perspectives
3. –> Centration - children exclusively focus on one salient aspect of a problem (children can’t understand that properties of an object can REVERSE)

Question 7

Piaget’s Stages: Outline the Concrete Operations Stage

Answer 7

7-11 years
–> Mastery of “logic”, and development of rational thinking
–> Increasingly flexible thinking
–> Child is able to infer others’ mental states (ToM)
–> Child begins to grasp abstract concepts
–> Understanding of CONSERVATION develops

Conservation:
–> to recognise that some properties of objects remain fundamentally unchanged even if there are external changes in appearance
Piaget’s conservation task involved pouring water from a wide cylinder into a tall thin cylinder

Question 8

Piaget’s Stages: Outline the Formal Operations Stage

Answer 8

11 years onwards
–> Development of abstract thinking and hypothetical reasoning

Endpoint in terms of major development
–> Formal, abstract and rational thought
–> Use of metaphors and analogies
–> Exploring beliefs, values, and operations

*Information is either assimilated or accommodated to schemes
–> The goal of accommodation and assimilation = equilibrium
–> Equilibrium = achieved through equilibration - a “drive” for equilibrium

Question 9

Debate: Criticisms of His Case Studies

Answer 9

Case Studies
Natural Observations
- ‘experimenter’ adapts to child’s responses
- inconsistency in questions
- notes taken by experimenter during process -> bias?

Under-estimation of ages
- Piaget: object permanence min 8-9 months
- Wassterman –> infants understand object permanence from 5 months old:
o Infants ‘habituated to a screen moving 180 degrees
o Then they showed them an possible (box stopping) impossible event (box or bridge moving beyond 180 degrees)
o FOUND: 5 months old infants surprised with impossible event UNDERSTOOD solid object and that it continues to exist

Gelman (Conservation)
–> Experimental procedure: 3 year olds, two lines of toy turtles - each covered by the experimenter in turn
o ONE line is transformed - children gave CORRECT ANSWERS

Question 10

Controversy: Stage Theories

Answer 10

Are they reliable?
Individual Differences
Vgotsky - importance of instruction, importance of culture in symbolism
Difficult to assess how each stage derives from previous
Ethnocenric
Development beyond adolescence eg. moral reasoning
Social context - social factors in development

Question 11

Legacy and Impact: Applied Impact