Cognitive DevelopmentPages 87-94

Jean Piaget and Cognitive Development• Children at same ages

got same questions wrong on IQ tests

• Piaget’s idea - “Maybe children’s thought isn’t just simpler than adults, but different”

• Stages of Development

Piaget’s important concepts• Schemas – a concept or framework that

organizes and interprets information▫An active process

• Assimilation – incorporating our experiences into existing schemas

• Accomodation – information that doesn’t fit will lead to a changing or new schema

Typical Age Range

Description of Stage

Developmental Phenomena

Birth to nearly 2 years SensorimotorExperiencing the world through senses and actions (looking, touching, mouthing)

•Object permanence•Stranger anxiety

About 2 to 6 years

About 7 to 11 years

About 12 through adulthood

PreoperationalRepresenting things with words and images but lacking logical reasoning

•Pretend play•Egocentrism•Language development

Concrete operationalThinking logically about concrete events; grasping concrete analogies and performing arithmetical operations

•Conservation •Mathematical transformations

Formal operationalAbstract reasoning

•Abstract logic•Potential for moral reasoning

Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

Sensorimotor (birth -2)• Acquire knowledge

through the senses• Learn through

manipulation

Sensorimotor

Object Permanence (around 6 months) the awareness that things continue to exist

even when not perceived. Object permanence 2 - YouTube

Preoperational (2-7)

•“Prelogical”•Gains in language – symbols represent

sounds•Fantasy play

Preoperational Stage

•Children in the preoperational stage are egocentric (the inability to take on another’s point of view).

Egocentrism

Preoperational Stage

•Difficulty with Conservation – the principle that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the forms of objects

•Conservation task - YouTube

Concrete Operational (7-11)

•Thinking and logic are tied to concrete reality.

•Understands reversibility – 9+5 and 5+9 are the same

•“Friendship is when someone plays with me.”

•Cannot understand hypotheticals (what if’s)

Formal Operational (12 and up)

•We can reason abstractly.▫“Friendship is mutual trust, loyalty,

empathy, and shared beliefs.”

•If John is in school, then Mary is in school. John is in school. What can you say about Mary?

•God is love. Love is blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Stevie Wonder is God.

Criticisms of Piaget• Human development does seem to unfold in his

sequence around the globe BUT▫ It maybe displayed earlier in certain areas of cognition

▫Does a child reach the formal operational stage in all subject areas at the same time? Formal operational looks different in non-Western

cultures