1. COGNITIVE THEORIES OF DEVELOPMENT  Genetic Epistemology  Cognitive Mediation

2. GENETIC EPISTEMOLOGY Creator: Jean Piaget Genetic Epistemology:  The study of the development of knowledge  Action = Knowledge

3. GENETIC EPISTEMOLOGY  Piaget proposed: …Physical bodies can adapt to the world …Humans build mental structures to aid adaptation …Humans interactive with their environment …Children think differently at various points in their development

4. GENETIC EPISTEMOLOGY Piaget’s theory is based on a stage approach to development.  All children pass through a series of four universal stages in a fixed order from birth through adolescence:  Sensorimotor  Substage 1Substage 2  Substage 3Substage 4  Substage 5Substage 6  Preoperational  Concrete operational  Formal operational

5. GENETIC EPISTEMOLOGY Movement from one stage to the next occurs:  When a child reaches an appropriate level of physical maturation  Is exposed to relevant experiences. Coined the term Schemes/schemas to describe the basic building blocks of the way we understand the world.  Class room scheme or restaurant schema in adulthood.

6. GENETIC EPISTEMOLOGY Assimilation: The process in which people understand an experience in terms of their current stage of cognitive development and way of thinking. Accommodation: Changes in existing ways of thinking that occur in response to encounters with new stimuli or events. Adaptation:  Piaget’s term for what most of us would call learning.

8. GENETIC EPISTEMOLOGY Sensorimotor Stage (0-2 years) Infant uses senses and motor abilities to understand the world Beginning with reflexes and ending with complex combinations of skills. Learning Process: Primary Circular Reactions: (1-4 months) A behavior/reactions is novel or feels good so they do it again, and again, and again.  Personal behavior such as sucking, making bubbles with mouth. Secondary Circular Reactions: Involves an act that extends out towards the environment.  She may squeeze a rubber ducky and it goes “quack” so she does it again and again and again. Tertiary Circular Reactions: (12-24 months) Same cycle as secondary circular reactions except with variation.

9. GENETIC EPISTEMOLOGY Sensorimotor Stage (0-2 years)-Continued Characteristic Behaviors:  Object Permanence:  Develops the ability to recognize that just because an object is not visible it does not mean it is not there.  Mental Representation:  (18 months) The ability to hold an image in their mind for a period beyond the immediate experience develops.  Goal Directed behavior:  Behavior in which several schemes are combined and coordinated to generate a single act to solve a problem.

10. SENSORIMOTOR SUBSTAGE ONE Basic Reflexes (Birth-1 month) Children enter the world equipped with a set of inherited action patterns and reflexes through which they experience their environment. The intellectual development of the child begins through these actions. This is how the child acquires knowledge about its surroundings. Infants are restricted in what they can know. Behaviors and schemata are limited. Adaptation to their surroundings through assimilation and accommodation begins in this stage.

11. SENSORIMOTOR SUBSTAGE TWO Primary Circular Reactions (1-4 months) The knowledge and intelligence of the infant now extends beyond the innate behaviors they were born with. New acquisitions have only come about through the accommodation of schemata. Show the first signs of learning. Modifying their reflexes as a result of their environment. Come about by a circular means: Actions that are at first random and activate a reflex are attempted again to try and induce the experience again. The signs of intentionality have appeared. Object permanence begins to develop and the active search for a hidden object begins.

12. SENSORIMOTOR SUBSTAGE THREE Secondary Circular Reactions (4-8 months) Secondary circular reactions are the first acquired adaptations of behaviors that are not reflexive. An infant in this stage may accidentally cause something interesting to happen and then seek to re-create the happy event. The interesting events in this case are located in the external world. In primary circular reactions the interesting events are occurring within the body. Does not understand the aspects of cause and effect. Will shift through many behaviors for each activity.

13. SENSORIMOTOR SUBSTAGE FOUR Coordination of Secondary Circular Reactions (8-12 months) Actions from previous stage continue to develop. Difference is that the need now precedes the act. Intentionality occurs in interactions with the environment. Infant is moving towards goal directed behavior. Understanding of cause and effect relationships has come into being in the child’s world.

14. SENSORIMOTOR SUBSTAGE FIVE Tertiary Circular Reactions (12-18 months) Still characterized by a means/ends differentiation. The infants are no longer restricted to the application of previously established schemata to obtain a goal. Can make the necessary alterations to their schemata to solve problems Reflects a process of active experimentation. Differences in cognition coincide with improved locomotive abilities. Causal inferences are still unavailable to the infant Must see an action occur before it has any understanding of the causal relationship.

15. SENSORIMOTOR SUBSTAGE SIX Invention of new means through mental combinations (18-24 months) Symbolic function and mental representation first appear during this stage. This runs parallel with the development of language. Children begin to string words together in pairs. The origins of sentences.

16. Piaget’s 6 Substages of Sensorimotor Development SubstageAgeDescription Simple reflexesbirth–1 month Coordinates sensations, reflexes First habits, primary circular reactions 1–4 months Coordination of sensations, habits, and primary circular reactions; body is still main focus of infant Secondary circular reactions 4–8 months Infant becomes more object- oriented, repeats interesting/pleasurable acts Coordination of secondary circular reactions 8–12 months Coordination of vision and touch, eye–hand coordination, intentional acts, coordination of schemes Tertiary circular reactions, novelty, & curiosity 12–18 months Infants intrigued by properties of, and things done with, objects; experiments with new behaviors Internalization of schemes 18–24 months Infant develops ability to use primitive symbols, forms lasting mental images

17. GENETIC EPISTEMOLOGY  At the end of sensorimotor stage: …Object permanence is understood …Infant understands a differentiation between self and world  At around 5.5 and 6.5 months of age, an infant can understand simple causal factors.  Piaget’s work is criticized as: …Being too vague …Underestimating infant ability …Being based mostly on his children’s infancy

18. GENETIC EPISTEMOLOGY Preoperational Stage (2-7 years) Because the child can now use mental representations they are now capable of pretending Develops to the use of symbols. Symbols: Thing that represents something else. Drawings Written language Spoken word can represent a dog Characteristic Behaviors: Creative Play: Checkers are cookies, papers are dishes, a box is a table and so on. It is at this time that there develops a clear definition of the past and future.

19. GENETIC EPISTEMOLOGY Preoperational Stage (2-7 years) Egocentric play: The child sees things pretty much from one point of view: His/Her Own! Because of this they tend to center on one aspect of any problem or communication at a time. They are unable to see that there are multiple solutions to a problem and that mommie can be both: Mom Dads wife Decenter: Allows a child to progress on to the next stage. Deferred imitation: Act in which a person who is no longer present is imitated by children who have witnessed a similar act. Bandura’s Bobo Doll study.

20. GENETIC EPISTEMOLOGY Concrete Operations Stage (7-11 years) Operations refers to logical operations or principles we use when solving problems. Child can now not only use symbols to represent: Can also manipulate those symbols logically. Characteristic Behaviors: Law of Conservation: (age 7) Most children develop the ability to conserve number, length, and liquid volume. Quantity remains the same despite changes in appearance. Reversibility: If you mash up a ball of clay and cut it up into pieces it will still form back into the same ball if the pieces are mashed back together.

21. BC A BCA Piaget’s Conservation Task Child is asked if (A) and (C) have the same amount of liquid. The preoperational child says “no” and will point to (C) as having more liquid than (A). Two identical beakers shown to child, and then experimenter pours liquid from (B) into (C)

22. Type of conservation NumberMatterLength Initial presentation Two identical rows of objects shown to child Two identical balls of clay shown to child Two sticks are aligned in front of child Manipulation One row is spaced Experimenter changes shape of one ball Experimenter moves one stick to right Preoperational child’s answer to “Are they still the same?” “No, the longer row has more” “No, the longer one has more” “No, the one on top is longer” Some Dimensions of Conservation: Number, Matter, and Length

23. GENETIC EPISTEMOLOGY Formal Operations Stage (12+ years) The concrete operations child has a hard time applying his new-found logical abilities to non-concrete (abstract) events. Characteristic Behaviors: Hypothetical Thinking: The ability to think abstractly which characterizes adult thinking.

24. GENETIC EPISTEMOLOGY Information-Processing approaches: Seeks to identify the way that individuals take in, use, and store information. Encoding: Information is initially recorded in a form usable to memory. Storage: Placement of material into memory. Retrieval: Material in memory storage is located, brought into awareness, and used. _____________________________________________ Infantile Amnesia: Lack of memory for experiences that occurred prior to 3 years of age.

25. ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT Creator: Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) The notion of ZPD implies that a child's development is determined by social interaction and collaborative problem-solving. Development is guided by culture and interpersonal communication. ZPD refers to the gap between what a given child can achieve alone and what they can achieve under adult guidance. _____________________________________________________________________

26. ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT Higher mental functions develop through social interactions with significant people in a child's life, particularly parents. Through these interactions: Children come to learn the habits of mind of their culture Including speech patterns, written language, and other symbolic knowledge through which the child derives meaning and affects a child's construction of their knowledge

27. ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT Every function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: 1.Between people (interpsychological) 2.Inside the child (intrapsychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, logical memory, and to the formation of ideas.  All the higher functions originate as actual relationships between individuals.

28. ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT STAGES OF CONCEPT FORMATION These were analyzed using a task based on wooden blocks labeled with nonsense syllables. Children have to work out what the syllable means, e.g., “long and thin”. Four stages were identified.

29. ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT Name of StageDescription of Performance Vague syncreticNo understanding; strategies random Complex Strategies used, but unsuccessful Potential concept Systematic strategies, based on one feature at a time Mature concept Systematic strategies, based on more than one feature; concept formation

30. ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT Teaching Methods: Reciprocal Teaching Fostering Communities of Learners Cultural Mediation:  Vygotsky believed that private speech was essential to growth. Internalization: The specific knowledge gained by a child through interactions with others represents the shared knowledge of a culture. The mastery of skills occurs through the activity of the child within society. Riding a bike, driving a car, drinking a can of coke