Psychometric characteristics of cognitive development - Young Lives
Cognitive Development Cognitive developmental view Information processing view...
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Transcript of Cognitive Development Cognitive developmental view Information processing view...
Cognitive Development
Cognitive developmental view
Information processing view
Psychometric/intelligence view
Social cognition
Piaget’s theory
Piaget said adolescents are motivated to cognitively understand their world because it is biologically adaptive
Adolescents actively construct their world employing various cognitive organizational skills. These are:
schema, assimilation, accommodation, equilibration
What is a schema?
A concept or framework that exists in an individual’s mind to organize and interpret information.
How do you make sense of the world? What is the general organizational
framework that denote how you view the world?
Weltenschauung… a German term
What is assimilation?
The process of incorporating new information into existing knowledge
You are synthesizing what you don’t know into what you already know
e.g., Charles Darwin’s father was a preacher.
Who is Darwin? What is father? What is preacher? … the synthesis
What is accommodation?
Occurs when individuals adjust to new information.
It is not a synthesis but is a reorganization of knowledge.
Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” is a great book about this
Upsetting your world view...
What is equilibration?
Think of Steven Gould’s concept of punctuated equilibrium.
Things remain stable until there is a sudden and dramatic shift, then there is stability again: this is equilibration
Equilibration is a cognitive punctuated equilibrium
Piagetian Stages of Cognitive Development Stage 1: Sensorimotor Stage (0-2) Stage 2: Preoperational Stage (2-7) Stage 3: Concrete Operations Stage (7-
11) Stage 4:Formal Operations Stage (12+)
Sensorimotor stage
Infants construct an understanding of the world by coordinating sensory experiences with physical motoric actions.
There are six substages of the sensorimotor stage of cognitive development; stage ends with emergence of object permanence
Preoperational period
In this stage of cognitive development, children begin to represent their world with words, images, and drawings.
Appearance of symbolic thought Reality and fantasy are indistinguishable Animistic thinking, transductive
reasoning
Concrete operations
In this stage children can perform operations, that is, mental actions that allow the individual to do mentally what had formerly been done before physically
Logical reasoning replaces intuitive thought; conservation tasks are beginning to be solved
Formal operations
Characterized by abstract, idealistic, and logical thought
emerges at approximately 11 to 15 years of age (if at all)
harmony, melodious, quaint… what do these mean?
Emergence of hypothetical-deductive reasoning
Formal operations
Deductive reasoning “Bob left the hotel and walked toward
the parking lot. Without the benefit of moonlight or any artificial light, he was able to spot his black car 100 meters away. How was this possible?”
Early formal operational thought
Adolescents’ think in hypothetical ways producing unconstrained thoughts with unlimited possibilities.
There is an excess of assimilation as the world is perceived too subjectively and idealistically
“We can change the world!”
Late formal operational thought
Involves a restoration of intellectual balance
Teens now test out the products of their reasoning against experience and a consolidation of formal operational thought takes place.
An intellectual balance is achieved by accommodation to the assimilation
Late formal operational thought
Tested Compared What is real? What is trash? Does this jive? Who am I?
Information-Processing Approach 3 main characteristics
– thinking: highly flexible, adaptations and adjustments; task-oriented; goal-directed
– change mechanisms: encoding, automaticity; strategy construction
– self-modulation: using the above two characteristics to actively regulate the self and refine thinking processes
Information processing requirements Attention: concentration and focusing of
mental efforts; attention is selective and shifting– 12 year olds’ attention is much better than
an 8 year olds’ attention– attention span is about 20-50 minutes for
teens– many adults have trouble attending for more
than 50 minutes
Information processing requirements Memory: the retention of information
over time Short-term memory: limited capacity to
about 7 items and lasts for around 30 seconds
Long-term memory: relatively permanent memory that can last for decades
Important adolescent thinking skills: Decision Making Decision making: adolescents need
practice in decision making; how do you teach a teen to make good decisions?
How does the role of the parent change when teaching decision making to adolescents?
What is the appropriate method to use to make decisions?
Important adolescent thinking skills: Critical thinking Critical thinking: thinking reflectively,
productively, and evaluating the evidence
There is a lot of non-critical thinking in early teens, even some adults
How do you teach someone to become a critical thinker?
Important adolescent thinking skills: Creativity Creativity: the ability to think in novel
ways “outside of the box” and develop new solutions to problems
Convergent thinking: how are 2 different things alike?
Divergent thinking: how are 2 alike things different?
Creativity: Brainstorming
A technique in which persons can come up with new, creative ideas wherein practicality is not immediately considered.
This is teaching problem solving. Parents would do well to foster brainstorming then to offer a solution to their teens.
Important adolescent thinking skills: Metacognition “thinking about thinking” How can you improve your thinking? Do you think your thinking is a good as
the person next to you; do you think your thinking is better than it was 5 years ago?
Do you know how to learn and how to be your own teacher?
Self-regulation
1) Goal setting and strategic planning 2) Putting a plan into action and
monitoring the activities of the plan 3) Monitoring the outcomes of the
activities and refining the strategies employed
4) Self-evaluation and monitoring
Self-regulation
Most high-achieving students are self-regulatory learners.
They set goals and strategies for achieving those goals
They perform the activities necessary to enact these strategies
They monitor their activities and adjust as is necessary until goal is reached
Psychometric view
Emphasizes the importance of individual differences in intelligence
Emphasizes that intelligence should be quantified through the use of intelligence tests
Intelligence: verbal ability, problem-solving, adaptation, and learning from experience
Intelligence tests
The Stanford-Binet IQ test IQ = MA/CA x 100 Mental age: at what age level
intellectually are you performing relative to the general population?
Chronological age: how old are you? A Ratio index of relative intelligence
Wechsler IQ tests
David Wechsler WPPSI-R (ages 4 to 6.5) WISC-R (ages 6 - 16) WAIS-R (ages > 16) The tests produce a verbal IQ, a
performance IQ, and an overall IQ score Average IQ = 100, SD=15
Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory
Analytical intelligence Experiential/creative intelligence Contextual/practical intelligence Analytical: analyze, judge, evaluate,
compare, contrast Creative: establish new, “look differently”,
artistic/musicians Practical: what works best
Triarchic theory
Those who are creative may not necessary be very practical and vice versa
Those who are good at analysis may not be very practical nor be very creative
Those who are practical may not be very analytical or very creative
Howard Gardner’s 8 frames of mind and intelligences (plural) Verbal skills Mathematical skills Spatial skills Bodily-kinesthetic skills Musical skills Interpersonal skills and Intrapersonal skills Naturalistic skills/observers
Further types of intelligence
Emotional intelligence– developing emotional self-awareness– managing emotions– reading emotions in others– handling relationships
Social intelligence (we’ll talk about it) Political intelligence
Controversies on intelligence measurement The “bell curve” and racist views about
intelligence The influences of heredity and
environment on intelligence Culture-fair IQ tests vs culture-biased IQ
tests What does an IQ test test anyway? Misuses of IQ test scores
Social Cognition
How individuals conceptualize and reason about the people they watch, interact with, have relationships with as well as groups
How individuals perceive themselves within the context of these other people and these other groups
This is social cognition
Social Cognition: Adolescent egocentrism Heightened self-awareness of
adolescents; the belief that others are as interested in them as they are interested in themselves
Heightened sense of self-uniqueness “I am different, I am me!!” (and then
they will dress to look cool)
Adolescent egocentrism
Imaginary audience: teens will play to an imaginary audience to get attention, to be noticed, histrionic behavior
Kewl green hair… :-)
Adolescent egocentrism
Personal Fable: How I am different from everyone else; no one can understand me because I am me and not you and you can’t understand what is like to be me!
Perspective taking
"Put yourself in her position and think how you'd feel."
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
"Put yourself in his shoes" "Walk a mile in his moccasins" "See yourself through others' eyes.”
Perspective taking
This is the extension of development of empathy
Moving outside of the self into the shoes of others is the foundation upon which better self-understanding can be laid.
This can be taught by modeling; by concern for animals in early childhood, and by service projects in older children