Cognitive development How children’s thinking changes as they grow older.

Schemas Is that a real person? No and it’s not made from chocolate either When a piece of information is acquired, it gets added and stored (assimilation & accommodation)

Piaget’s Theory!! The child’s cognitive development is….. Child goes through a set of stages in development in a FIXED ORDER!!! Same for all children everywhere!! “Children are scientists” – children are actively interacting with the environment, discovering and making sense of the world from birth.

There are 4 stages to my cognitive development theory. What are they?

The Sensori Motor Stage!!! (0-2) BODY SCHEMAS – the baby realises that it exists and starts to be able to recognise itself in the mirror or in a photo MOTOR COORDINATION – infant learns to coordinate its movements a bit, e.g. hand to mouth for food OBJECT PERMANANCE – begins to know that an objects still exists even when they can’t see it, after 8 months they will begin to look for hidden objects.

Pre Operational Stage (2-7) ANIMISM – Children treat objects as though they are alive!!! REVERSIBILTY – can’t work backwards, e.g. Ben Do you have a sister? Yes – Frogmella. Does Frogmella have a sister? Nope. EGOCENTRISM – can’t see someone else’s point of view. Three mountains experiment. Decentering – when egocentrism stops and also means that a child can recognise that an object has more than one feature, e.g. big and yellow. Watch the three mountains

Concrete operational stage (7-11) Linguistic Humour – double meanings. A horse walks into a bar, Barman says ‘why the long face?’ Seriation – Ability to put things in rank order Small – large, young to old Conservation – don’t know that quantity stays the same when you rearrange objects

The formal operational stage (11+) Ability to solve sophisticated problems, reasoning skills.

Too fixed and rigid. Children reach different parts of different stages and can go back and forth!!! 50% of adults make to it the formal operational!! Underestimate effect of support Ignored different types of thinking Cultural differences, thinking doesn’t develop in same way everywhere NO how and why!!!!!

Vygotsky!! Innate by influenced by UPBRINGING Cultural tools Apprentice Zone of Proximal development Scaffolding

Cognitive bingo PiagetVygotskyZPD apprentice Scientistcultural toolsscaffolding Conservationegocentrism Linguistic humour seriation animism Preoperationalconcrete operational Formal operationalsensori motor Invariant universal

Core study: Conservation of Number (1952) Cross sectional study – compared children of different ages. Watch this video from 30seconds. The counter task only – this is the procedure FINDINGS - Pre operational stage (2-7)children fail the task and say there are more counters. Children in concrete operational stage (7-11)pass the test and know that the counters are the same just stretched out.

Limitations of Conservation Study Stupid question!!! Naughty teddy – 60% Sample size!!

Applications to real life! Piaget 1.Readiness 2.Discovery learning (teacher is a facilitator) 3.Peer support (helps decentring) Vygotsky 1.Role of teacher (ZPD) 2.Spiral curriculum 3.Scaffolding