1. JEAN PIAGET: Stages of Cognitive Development

2. Cognitive Development
Refers to the mental activities associated with knowing, remembering, and communicating.

3. Stages of Cognitive Development
Piaget rejected idea of children as “little adults”
Focused on thinking and reasoning patterns in children (cognitive psychologist)
Universally, children develop in 4 pre-programmed stages of thinking

4. “assimilation”: use current schemas to interpret the external world
“schemes” or “schema”: way of organizing and making sense of experiences and objects
- a mental framework
- an organized pattern of thought
“assimilation”: use current schemas to interpret the external world
“accommodation”: create new schemas or adjust old ones to fit new experiences, observations
Child playing with white golf ball: throws it on table repeatedly. Researcher replaces ball with egg: child interprets it with current schema and thinks egg is the golf ball (assimilation). Throws egg which breaks and makes mess; child reacts. Eventually accommodate old schema with conclusion that not all round, white objects are “golf balls.”

5. Example of Assimilation and Accommodation
For example, an infant knows how to grab his favorite rattle and thrust it into his mouth.  He’s got that schema down pat.  When he comes across some other object -- say daddy’s expensive watch, he easily learns to transfer his “grab and thrust” schema to the new object.  This Piaget called assimilation: The baby assimilates a new object into an old schema.
When our infant comes across another object again - say a beach ball - he will try his old schema of grab and thrust.  This of course works poorly with the new object.  So the schema will adapt to the new object:  Perhaps, in this example, “squeeze and drool” would be an appropriate title for the new schema.  This is called accommodation: The baby accomodates the old schema to a new object.

6. Assimilation or
accommodation?

7. STAGE 1: SENSORIMOTOR Birth to 2 years
Children use senses (sucking, biting, touching) to learn
acting and thinking
Live in the present; little “reasoning”, but discovering

8. Important cognitive development is “object permanence”
awareness that an object exists when not seen
e.g. blanket experiments
Later develop “stranger anxiety”: making strange when not with parents
Evidence of attachment and awareness parents exist when not around

9. STAGE 2: PREOPERATIONS Ages 2 to 7 Language development, pretend play
Growing / developing thinking patterns and reasoning skills but often illogical
Pretend play: ability to use an object to represent another object.
Illogical thinking: playing hide and seek; count in one bedroom, look in another one, then Seth says to look in next one we counted in. Also, Seth counts on stairs, then wants to look for person downstairs.

10.  Child is shown pictures of watches
Child observes teacher’s watch 

11.  Child listens to teacher’s watch
Child listens to  watches in pictures

12. Children demonstrate “egocentrism”: believe others see the world from their perspective
e.g. 3 mountains problem
Ask child to pick out which picture the doll would see: preoperational child picks their own view.

13. Does Jamie have a sister”
What is your name?
“Sarah”
Do you have a sister?
“Yes. Her name is Jamie.”
Does Jamie have a sister”
“No.”
Example of egocentric thinking; inability to see things from another’s perspective
Also example of child asked to show you their drawing. Will often hold it up in front of their own face.

14. How will egocentric children answer this?
blue cupboard
If child answers red cupboard, s/he demonstrates next stage’s cognitive development
able to see what Sally will know, see from her perspective
Ellie points at object in the room while on phone with me.

15. “Conservation principle”: certain properties stay the same when the form of an object changes.
Which pencil is longer?

16. Are there the same number of coins in each row?
Corner Gas episode clip: Season 3, “Hair Loss” episode, disc 2, 9:30 in.
Which row has more coins?

17. STAGE 3: CONCRETE OPERATIONS
Ages 7 to 11
Reasoning becomes more logical
Learn to think in categories and hierarchies
e.g. categories  collect things
Gain ability to organize them in different ways: by position, year, goals scored/batting average, team, etc.
hierarchies  where I live
able to understand scale more than younger age – neighborhood, city, province, country, etc.

18. Are there more yellow flowers or flowers?
Pre-operational child’s answer?
Concrete Operational child’s answer?
Can see that flowers are categorized by colour but are still in broad category of flowers.
Seth: count the birds; what about this one? “No, that’s a parrot”

19. Child also learns to use and draw maps of familiar places
e.g. his/her home, school
NOTE: Children at early stage two (pre-operations) often unable to use a model of a room to find a hidden object.

20. STAGE 4: FORMAL OPERATIONS
Ages 11 up
Gain the ability to think in the abstract
e.g. moral reasoning, values, ideas
Can solve theoretical problems, answer hypothetical questions
Can work with symbols that don’t represent real world objects
e.g. advanced math, political issues
Concrete political issues in last stage; now can understand abstract concepts like left wing and right wing, communism and democracy

21. SOURCES Laura E. Berk, Infants and Children
“Jean Piaget,” Dictionary of World Biography: The 20th Century
David Myers, Psychology, 8th edition