1. Chapter 7 COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT: PIAGET’S THEORY AND VYGOTSKY’S SOCIOCULTURAL VIEWPOINT

2. PIAGET’S THEORY OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Genetic epistemology – experimental study of the origin of knowledge
What is intelligence?
A basic life function that helps an organism adapt to the environment
Cognitive equilibrium – balance between thought processes and the environment
Constructivist approach – child constructs knowledge

3. PIAGET’S THEORY OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Gaining Knowledge: Schemes and Processes
Schemes: mental patterns (thought/action)
Organization – combine existing schemes into new/complex schemes
Adaptation – adjustment to environment
Assimilation – new information into existing schemes
Accommodation – modify existing schemes for new information

4. Table 7.1 A small sample of cognitive growth from Piaget’s perspective

5. PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Invariant developmental sequence
Sequencing fixed
Individual differences entering/emerging stages

6. PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
The Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to 2 years)
Coordinate sensory inputs and motor skills
Transition from being reflexive to reflective
Development of Problem-Solving Abilities
Reflex activity (birth – 1 month)
Primary circular reactions (1-4 months)
first motor habits, repetitive

7. PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Secondary circular reactions
(4-8 months)
Repetitive actions with objects beyond the body
Coordination of secondary reactions
(8-12 months)
Coordinate 2 or more actions to achieve an objective (intentional)

8. PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Tertiary circular reactions months
Active experimentation, trial & error
Symbolic problem solving months
Inner (mental) experimentation

9. PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Development of Imitation
Novel responses by 8-12 months of age
Deferred imitation – months
Research now shows 6-month-olds are capable of deferred imitation

10. PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Development of Object Permanence
Objects continue to exist when they are no longer visible/detectable
Appears by 8-12 months of age
A-not-B error: search in the last place found, not where it was last seen
Complete by months

11. PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Challenges to Piaget Account
Neo-nativism –
Infants are born with substantial innate knowledge
Require less time/experience to be demonstrated
Young children seem to possess some object permanence, memory

12. Table 7.2 Summary of Piaget’s account of sensorimotor development

13. PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Challenges to Piaget’s Approach
Theory theories
Combination of neo-nativist and Piagetian perspective
Infants are prepared at birth to make sense of some information
Beyond this, Piaget’s constructivist approach is generally accurate

14. PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
The Preoperational Stage (2-7 years)
Symbolic function / representational insight
One thing represents another
Language
Pretend (symbolic) play – developmentally a positive activity
New views on symbolism
Dual representation – think about an object in 2 ways at one time (3 years)

15. PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Deficits in preoperational thinking
Animism
Attribute life/life like qualities to inanimate objects
Egocentrism
View world from own perspective, trouble recognizing other’s point of view

16. Figure 7. 2 Piaget’s three-mountain problem
Figure 7.2 Piaget’s three-mountain problem. Young preoperational children are egocentric. They cannot easily assume another person’s perspective and often say that another child viewing the mountain from a different vantage point sees exactly what they see from their own location.

17. PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Deficits in preoperational thinking
Appearance/reality distinction
Cannot distinguish between the two
Dual encoding
Representing an object in more than one way at a time

18. Figure 7. 3 Maynard the cat, without and with a dog mask
Figure 7.3 Maynard the cat, without and with a dog mask. Three-year-olds who met Maynard before his change in appearance nonetheless believed that he had become a dog.

19. PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Deficits in preoperational thinking
Lack of conservation – do not realize properties of objects do not change just because appearance does
Lack of decentration – concentrate on more than one aspect of a problem at the same time
Lack of reversibility – mentally undo an action

20. Figure 7.4 Some common tests of the child’s ability to conserve.

21. Figure 7.5 Reversibility is an important cognitive operation that develops during middle childhood.

22. PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Did Piaget Underestimate the Preoperational Child?
New evidence on egocentrism
Piaget’s tasks were too complex
Another look at children’s reasoning
Animism not routine among 3-year-olds
Can preoperational children conserve?
Can be trained at 4 years (identity training)

23. PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
The Development Theory of Mind (TOM)
Belief-desire reasoning
Understand behavior is based on
What an individual knows or believes
What they want or desire
Develops after preschool age
False-belief task – desire, not belief
Based on lack of cognitive inhibition
Improves with interaction with siblings

24. PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
The Concrete Operational Stage (7-11 years)
Cognitive operations
Internal mental activity to modify symbols to reach a logical conclusion
Conservation – capable of
Decentering
Reversibility

25. Table 7.3 A comparison of preoperational and concrete operational thought

26. PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Relational logic – capable of
Mental seriation
Transitivity
Horizontal decalage – different levels of understanding that seem to require same mental operations
Based on complexity
Limited to real or tangible aspects of experience

27. Figure 7. 7 Children’s performance on a simple seriation task
Figure 7.7 Children’s performance on a simple seriation task. If asked to arrange a series of sticks from shortest to longest, preoperational children often line up one end of the sticks and create an incomplete ordering (a) or order them so the top of each successive stick extends higher than the preceding stick (b). Concrete operators, by contrast, can use the inverse cognitive operations greater than (>) and less than (<) to quickly make successive comparisons and create a correct serial ordering.

28. PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
The Formal Operational Stage ( )
Hypothetico-deductive reasoning
Ability to generate hypotheses and use deductive reasoning (general to specific)
Inductive reasoning
Going from specific observations to generalizations

29. PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Personal and Social Implications of Formal Thought
Thinking about what is possible in life
Stable identity
Understanding of other’s perspectives
Questioning others
Thinking of how the world “ought to be”

30. PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Does Everyone Reach Formal Operations?
Early Piaget – Yes, at least some signs by 15-18
Other researchers – No. Lack of education
Later Piaget – Yes, but only on problems that are either interesting or important
Seem to be more adolescents at this level than 30 years ago

31. Figure 7. 8 Expertise and formal operations
Figure 7.8 Expertise and formal operations. College students show the greatest command of formal-operational thought in the subject area most related to their major. ADAPTED FROM DE LISI & STAUDT, 1980.

32. AN EVALUATION OF PIAGET’S THEORY
Piaget’s Contributions
Founded cognitive development
Stated children construct their knowledge
First attempt to explain development
Reasonably accurate overview of how children of different ages think
Major influence in social and emotional development, and education
Influenced future research

33. AN EVALUATION OF PIAGET’S THEORY
Challenges to Piaget
Piaget failed to distinguish competence from performance
Does cognitive development really occur in stages?
Little evidence of broad stages
Does Piaget “explain” cognitive development? – more of an description
Little attention to social/cultural influences

34. VYGOTSKY’S SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE
The Role of Culture in Development
Ontogenetic development – development of an individual over his or her lifetime
Microgenetic development – change over relatively brief periods of time
Phylogenetic development – changes over evolutionary time
Sociohistorical development – changes in one’s culture

35. VYGOTSKY’S SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE
Tools of Intellectual Adaptation
Born with elementary mental functions (attention, memory)
Culture transforms these into higher mental functions
Culture specific tools allow the use of the basic functions more adaptively (language, pencils)

36. Table 7. 4 Chinese and English number words from 1 to 20
Table 7.4 Chinese and English number words from 1 to 20. The more systematic Chinese numbering system follows a base-ten logic (i.e., 11 translating as “ten one” [“shi yee”]) requiring less rote memorization, which may explain why Chinese-speaking children learn to count to 20 earlier than English-speaking children.

37. VYGOTSKY’S SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE
The Social Origins of Early Cognitive Competencies
Many discoveries active learners make occur in collaborative dialogue with a tutor
The Zone of Proximal Development
Difference between what a learner can do independently and what can be done with guidance

38. VYGOTSKY’S SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE
Scaffolding – tendency to tailor support to a learner near the limit of capability
Guided participation/apprenticeship
May be very formal and context dependent
May occur in day-to-day activities

39. Figure 7.9 Some functions of shared remembering in children’s memory development. Source: Gauvin, M (2001). The social context of cognitive development. New York: Guilford, p. 211.

40. VYGOTSKY’S SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE
Working in the Zone of Proximal Development in Different Cultures
Cultures where adults and children are segregated, learning is in schools
Cultures where adults and children are together most of the day, learning is through real life observation
Verbal versus nonverbal emphasis of instruction

41. VYGOTSKY’S SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE
Playing in the Zone of Proximal Development
More likely to engage in symbolic play when others are present
Cooperative social play of preschoolers is related to later understanding of others’ feeling and beliefs

42. VYGOTSKY’S SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE
Implications for Education
Active, not passive learning
Assess what is known to estimate capabilities
Guided participations structured by teachers who would gradually turn over more of activity to students
Cooperative learning exercises – help each other; very effective!

43. VYGOTSKY’S SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE
The Role of Language in Cognitive Development
Primary method of passing modes of thinking to children
Becomes important tool of intellectual adaptation

44. VYGOTSKY’S SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE
Piaget’s Theory of Language/Thought
Egocentric speech
Self-directed utterances
Reflected ongoing mental activity
Shifted to communicative speech with age
Little role in cognitive development

45. VYGOTSKY’S SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE
Vygotsky’s Theory of Language/Thought
Egocentric is really an illustration of transition from prelinguistic to verbal reasoning
Private speech – communicative “speech for self”
Serves as a cognitive self-guidance system; does not disappear, becomes inner speech

46. VYGOTSKY’S SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE
Which viewpoint should be endorsed?
Vygotsky
Social speech gives rise to private speech
More common with difficult tasks
Self-instruction improves performance
Does tend to turn into inner speech

47. VYGOTSKY’S SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE
Vygotsky in Perspective: Summary
Cognitive development involves
Dialogues with skilled partners within the zone of proximal development
Incorporation of what tutors say into what they say to themselves
Expect wide variations in development across cultures

48. VYGOTSKY’S SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE
Vygotsky in Perspective: Evaluation
Not yet received intense scrutiny
Verbal guided participation may be less adaptive in some instances than others
Collaborative problem solving can undermine performance
More a perspective, not a theory with as many testable hypotheses as Piaget

49. Table 7.5 Comparing Vygotsky’s and Piaget’s theories of cognitive development