psychology
Maria Castro 
siegler5e_ch042019.pptx4
Theories of Cognitive Development
Presentation Slides
Chapter
1
Piaget’s Theory
Information-Processing Theories
Core-Knowledge Theories
Sociocultural Theories
Dynamic-Systems Theories
Outline of Chapter
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When we understand development, it…
Provides a framework for understanding why experiences, even some that seem insignificant, are important
Raises important questions that help us versus understanding how we develop
Helps us better understand children
Why Is Understanding Development Important?
| Theory | Main Questions Addressed |
| Piagetian | 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 |
| Dynamic-systems | Nature and nurture, the active child, how change occurs |
TABLE 4.1 Enduring Themes Addressed by Theories of Cognitive Development
Enduring Themes Addressed by Theories of Cognitive Development
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Jean Piaget’s Theory
Cognitive development involves a sequence of four stages:
Sensorimotor
Preoperational
Concrete operational
Formal operational
Stages constructed through processes of assimilation, accommodation, and equilibration
Piaget’s Theory
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Piaget’s fundamental assumption:
Children are mentally active from birth.
Their mental and physical activity both contribute to their development.
This is a constructivist approach to cognitive development
Children construct knowledge for themselves in response to their experiences.
Children’s constructive processes are:
Generating hypotheses
Performing experiments
Drawing conclusions from their observations
Piaget's View of Children's Nature
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Nature and Nurture—Believed that both interact together to produce cognitive development
Continuity—Believed main sources of continuity are:
Assimilation: The process by which a child incorporates incoming information into concepts/schemas they already know. (e.g., a child sees a zebra for the first time and calls it a horse).
Accommodation: The process by which people improve their current understanding based on new experiences by altering existing schemas or forming new ones. (e.g., when the child calls the zebra a horse, a parent may correct them and tell them it’s a zebra. The next time the child sees a zebra, they will call it a zebra not a horse.)
(continued on next slide)
Piaget: Central Developmental Issues
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Equilibration: The process by which children balance assimilation and accommodation to create stable understanding. In the zebra example, when a child receives the information that the zebra is not a horse, a state of disequilibrium begins until the information is processed, and they understand there is a difference.
Discontinuity—Believed in distinct stages (discontinuous) of cognitive development (see next slide)
Piaget: Central Developmental Issues (cont.d)
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| Stage | Approximate Age | New Ways of Knowing |
| Sensorimotor | Birth to 2 years | Infants know the world through their senses and through their actions. For example, they learn what dogs look like and what petting them feels like. |
| Preoperational | 2–7 years | Toddlers and young children acquire the ability to internally represent the world through language and mental imagery. They also begin to see the world from other people’s perspectives, not just from their own. |
| Concrete operational | 7–12 years | Children become able to think logically, not just intuitively. They now can understand that events are often influenced by multiple factors, not just one. |
| Formal operational | 12 years and beyond | Adolescents can think systematically and reason about what might be, as well as what is. This allows them to understand politics, ethics, and science fiction, as well as to engage in scientific reasoning. |
Piaget: Stages of Development
Birth to 1 month—Reflexes: Sucking, grasping
Primary Circular Reactions: 1-4 months
Secondary Circular Reactions: 4-8 months
Coordination of Secondary Circular Reactions: 8-12 months: Object permanence (knowledge that objects still exist even when they are not visible)
Tertiary Circular Reactions: 12-18 months—Actions based on interest of the child (squeezing a toy over and over to hear the noise); “little scientists”
Symbolic Representation: 18 to 24 months—Deferred imitation—repeating behaviors of others at a later time
Sensorimotor Intelligence
Piaget’s term for the way infants think—by using their senses and motor skills
Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to Age 2 )
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A-not-B-Error: The tendency to reach for a hidden object where it was last found, rather than in the new location where it was last hidden; a mistake in searching that is made around 8-12 months
Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to Age 2 Years) (cont.d)
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Symbolic Representation
The use of one object to stand for another
Centration
Focusing on a single, perceptually striking feature of an object to the exclusion of other relevant but less striking features (e.g., conservation concept)
Egocentrism
Perceiving the world solely from one’s own point of view
Conservation Concept
The idea that changing the appearance of objects does not necessarily change the properties; don’t understand this concept until later in this stage
Preoperational Stage (Ages 2 to 7)
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Preoperational Stage (Ages 2 to 7)(cont.d)
The 3-Mountains task is a class example of egocentrism.
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Piaget’s three-mountains task
Preoperational Stage (Ages 2 to 7) (cont.d)
Three examples of conservation tasks.
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Procedures used to test conservation of liquid quantity, solid quantity, and number. Most 4- and 5-year-olds say that the taller liquid column has more liquid, the longer sausage has more clay, and the longer row has more objects.
Children begin to reason logically about “concrete” features of the world.
Now understand “operations” such as identity, reversibility, and compensation that allow them to understand conservation tasks; applied to math concepts.
Limited in large part to reasoning logically about the “here and now”
Concrete Operational Stage (Ages 7 to 12)
Children begin to think abstractly and to reason hypothetically.
Piaget believed this stage was not universal (i.e., all adolescents reach it).
This represents true scientific reasoning
Formal Operational Stage (Age 12 and Beyond)
Piaget’s theory remains very influential.
Weaknesses of the theory:
The theory is vague about the mechanisms that give rise to children’s thinking and produce cognitive growth.
Infants and young children are more cognitively competent than Piaget recognized.
The theory understates the contribution of the social world to cognitive development.
The stage model depicts children’s thinking as being more consistent than it is.
Piaget's Legacy
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Example: Children in the concrete operational stage would not be expected to be ready to learn abstract concepts, whereas adolescents in the formal operational stage would be.
Children learn best when interacting with their environment, both mentally and physically.
Child-Centered Approach
Considering the various stages of cognitive processing to determine when information should be taught
How can we apply Piaget’s theory to education?
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Task analysis: a research technique of identifying goals, relevant information in the environment, and potential processing strategies for a problem
Computer simulation: A type of mathematical model that expresses ideas about mental processes in precise ways
Information-Processing Theories
Theories that focus on the structure of cognitive systems and the mental activities used to deploy attention and memory to solve problems
Information-Processing Theories
Cognitive development occurs continuously.
Small increments happen at different ages on different tasks.
The Child as a Limited-Capacity Processing System
Cognitive development arises from children’s gradually surmounting processing limitations through:
Expanding amount of information they can process at a time
Increasing processing speeds
Acquiring new strategies and knowledge
The Child as a Problem Solver
Problem-solving: The process of attaining a goal by using a strategy to overcome an obstacle
Information Processing: View of Children's Nature
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Information-processing theories:
Examine how nature and nurture work together to produce development
Emphasize precise descriptions of how change occurs
Focus on:
Development of memory
Development of problem solving
Information Processing: Central Developmental Issues
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The Development of Memory
Working Memory
Actively attending to, gathering, maintaining, storing, and processing information is limited in both capacity (amount of information that can be stored) and length of time information it can be retained
Long-Term Memory
Knowledge that people accumulate over their lifetime
Executive Functioning
The controls of cognition (e.g., attention, organization)
Information Processing: Central Developmental Issues (cont.d)
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The Development of Memory
How are executive functions applied to you throughout your lifetime?
Inhibiting tempting actions that can cause difficulties
Enhancing working memory through use of strategies, such as repeating a phone number
Being cognitively flexible—taking another person’s perspective in an argument even if it is different
Information Processing: Central Developmental Issues (cont.d)
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Basic process—simplest and most frequently used mental activities
Associating events with one another, recognizing objects as familiar, recalling facts and procedures, generalizing information
Selective attention: Process of intentionally focusing on the information that is most relevant to the current goal
Rehearsal: Repeating information multiple times in order to remember
Encoding: The process of representing in memory the information that draws attention or is considered important
Ways to improve memory
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The Development of Problem Solving
Children are depicted as active problem solvers.
Their use of strategies often allows them to overcome limitations of knowledge and processing capacity.
Overlapping waves theory: An information-processing approach that emphasizes the variability of children’s thinking; continue to use inefficient strategies even when learning newer strategies
Planning: Problem solving is more successful if people plan before acting.
Children are not good at planning; planning improves as the prefrontal cortex matures.
Information Processing: Central Developmental Issues (cont.d)
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The Development of Problem Solving: Overlapping Waves Theory
Information Processing: Central Developmental Issues (cont.d)
The overlapping waves model
The overlapping waves model proposes that, at any one age, children use multiple strategies; that with age and experience, they rely increasingly on more advanced strategies (the ones with the higher numbers), and that development involves changes in the frequency of use of existing strategies as well as discovery of new approaches.
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View children as having some innate knowledge in domains of special evolutionary importance
Have domain-specific learning mechanisms for rapidly and effortlessly acquiring additional information in those domains
Understanding and manipulating other people’s thinking
Differentiating between living and nonliving things
Identifying human faces
Finding one’s way through space
Understanding cause-effect
Language
Core-Knowledge Theories
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View children as entering the world equipped with specialized learning mechanisms.
These mental structures allow them to quickly and effortlessly acquire information of evolutionary importance.
Domain-specific: Information about a particular content area
Different mechanisms produce development in each domain.
Core-Knowledge Theories: View of Children's Nature
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Inanimate objects and their mechanical interactions
Minds of people and animals capable of goal-directed actions
Numbers
Spatial layouts
Nativism
The theory that infants have substantial innate knowledge of evolutionary important domains
Core-Knowledge Theories: Central Developmental Issues
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Children identify fundamental units for dividing relevant objects and events into a few basic categories.
Children explain many phenomena in terms of a few fundamental principles.
Children explain events in terms of unobservable causes.
Constructivism
The theory that infants build increasingly advanced understanding by combining rudimentary innate knowledge with subsequent experiences
Core-Knowledge Theories: Central Developmental Issues (cont.d)
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Applying Core-Knowledge Theories to Education
Children learn to apply specifics to all members of a group.
Hearing and seeing storybooks leads children to learn and generalize logic and hypothetical species.
It is particularly important in understanding evolutionary concepts like natural selection.
Core-Knowledge Theories
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Cognitive Development
Takes place through direct interactions between children and others (e.g., parents, siblings, teachers, friends)
Focuses on guided participation—the process in which more knowledgeable individuals (e.g., parents) help less knowledgeable individuals (i.e., children) organize activities—initially helping them develop skills on their own
Focuses on cultural tools—symbol systems, artifacts, skills, and values used to convey thoughts
Sociocultural Theories: Approaches that emphasize that other people and the surrounding culture contribute greatly to children’s development
Sociocultural Theories
Sociocultural theorist Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky believed that children were social learners, connected to others who help them gain skills and understanding.
Three Steps to Thought Processing:
Child uses private speech (talking through problem solving out loud)
Private speech becomes whispers or silent lip movements eventually leading to internal thoughts only
Parent helps child understand and problem solve (scaffolding)
Sociocultural Theories: View of Children's Nature
Joint Attention
A process in which social partners focus on the same external object (shared attention), which is particularly involved with language development (e.g., a parent tells a child the name of an object while pointing at it)
Intersubjectivity
The mutual understanding that people share during communication
Sociocultural theories believe that change occurs through social interaction.
Sociocultural Theories: Central Development Issues (cont.d)
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Autobiographical Memories
Memories of experiences that include associated thoughts and emotions (personally meaningful). Parents use scaffolding to help children develop autobiographic memories
Social Scaffolding
A process in which a more competent person provides a temporary framework that supports the child’s thinking at a higher level than children could manage on their own
Sociocultural Theories: Central Development Issues (cont.d)
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The National Association for the Education of Young Children has been critical of the focus on rote memorization of facts in U.S. schools.
One improvement can be to change the school culture, focusing on helping children gain a deeper understanding through cooperative activities and develop a desire to learn.
How can we apply sociocultural theories to education?
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Soft Assembly
The process of self-organization that involves bringing together and integrating attention, memory, emotions, and actions as needed to adapt to changing environments
Complex system
Continuously reaching which causes improvement
Relationship with parents changes as child begins to crawl
Dynamic-Systems Theories
Theories that focus on how change occurs over time in complex systems
Dynamic-Systems Theories
Dynamic-systems theories emphasize that:
Children are innately motivated to explore the environment
Children have a precise way of problem solving
Infants and toddlers are competent
Other people are important in influencing development
Dynamic Systems: View of Children's Nature
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Motivators of Development
Children are motivated to learn about the world around them.
They are interested in the world around them.
They expand their capabilities.
Practicing new skills (and improving on them) is a result of being motivated.
Observing other people and imitating their actions motivates development.
Dynamic Systems: View of Children's Nature (cont.d)
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The Centrality of Action
Children’s specific actions contribute to development throughout life.
It is evident in reaching and grasping for objects.
Actions shape memory.
Dynamic Systems: View of Children's Nature (cont.d)
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Self-Organization
Development is a process of self-organization.
It involves integrating attention, memory, emotions, and actions to adapt to changing environment.
“Soft assembly” as components are ever changing.
Mechanisms of Change
Changes occur through mechanisms of variation: the use of different behaviors to pursue the same goal
Selection: Increasingly frequent choice of behaviors that are relatively successful in reaching goals
Children also use efficient and novel behaviors.
Dynamic Systems: Central Developmental Issues, (cont.d)
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