1. Week 3
EDS 220
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Dr. Evrim Baran
2. What do you think?
How would you explain the concept of “symbol”
to a 6 year old and to a 14 year old. Would
you use words? Would you use symbols?
Specific examples? What kind? What do you
know about how younger and older children
develop?
7. Jean Piagett
• Born: August 9, 1896
• Died: Sept. 16, 1980
• Birth Place:
– Neuchatel, Switzerland
• Education:
– Received PhD from
University of Neuchatel
• Married in 1923 to
Valentine Chatenay and
bore 3 children
8. Piaget Background
• Young Piaget was incredibly precocious
– Published first paper at 10
– Wrote on mollusks, based on these writings was
asked to be curator of mollusks at a museum in
Geneva (he declined in order to finish secondary
school)
– Earned his doctorate in natural sciences at 21
– Began to study psychology, applying intelligence
tests to school
9. Old idea: Children’s minds were
just like adult minds with less
knowledge
New idea: Children think
differently qualitatively than an
adult.
10. Child is not a “tabula rasa” with the
“real world” out there waiting to be
discovered.
Mind is constructed through
interaction with the environment;
Brain develops through a series of
stages.
11. Child as scientist
Children are naturally curious and create
theories about how the world works
Mental structures intrinsically active
constantly being applied to experience
Leads to curiosity and desire to know
Development proceeds as the child
actively refines his/her knowledge of the
world through many “small experiments”.
12. How does Piaget describe
developmental change?
• Children will not be ready to learn if they are
not developed mentally and if their mind has
not progressed to the next stage.
• If children are developed mentally ready to
learn they will be interested in the topic if it is
developed mentally appropriate.
13. Basic tendencies in thinking
• Organization: Combining,
arranging, re-combining,
rearranging behaviors and
thoughts into coherent systems.
• Adaptation: Adjusting to the
environment
14. So, what is a scheme?
• Organized systems of action or
thought that allow us to
represent mentally or “think
about” the objects and events
in our world.
• Basic building blocks of
thinking.
15. So, what is a scheme?
• Sucking through a straw
• Recognizing a rose
• Drinking
• Categorizing plans
16. How do cognitive structures develop?
Processes of adaptation: Assimilation and
accommodation
Assimilation: The incorporation of new
experience into existing structures. (FITTING)
Accommodation: The changing of old
structures so that new experiences can be
processed.
Assimilation is conservative
Accommodation is progressive
24. Equilibration
Searching for a mental balance between
cognitive schemes and information from the
environment.
25. Disequilibrium
Out of balance state that occurs when a person
realizes that his or her current ways of
thinking are not working to solve a problem or
understand a situation.
26. Cognitive Growth
Equilibrium Harmony between one’s schemes and experience
Assimilation Tries to adapt to new experience by interpreting it
in terms of existing schemes
Accommodation Modifies existing schemes to better account for
puzzling new experience
Organization Rearranges existing schemes into new and more
complex structures
27. Stages of cognitive development
• Children periodically reach a point where
their theories are wrong most of the time
and so they must reorganize thinking
about the social and physical worlds
• Three reorganizations of theories lead to
four stages of cognitive development
• Piaget believed all children pass
through stages in same order
30. Stage 1:
Sensorimotor-Infancy (Birth to Age 2)
• Sensing information and performing
actions accordingly.
• Unconscious, self-unaware, and non-
symbolic cognition.
• Basic motor reflexes: grasping,
sucking, eye movements, orientation
to sound etc.
31. Stage 1:
Sensorimotor-Infancy (Birth to Age 2)
• Object permanence: Realizing that
objects in the environment exist
whether the baby perceives them or
not. 8 -12 months
OUT OF SIGHT OUT OF MIND
35. Stage 2
Preoperational Stage (2-7 years old)
Early childhood to early elementary years
Operation: An action carried out
through logic.
Preoperation: Before logical
thinking processes
36. Stage 2
Preoperational Stage (2-7 years old)
• Internalization of actions: Performing an
action mentally rather than physically.
• The ability to form symbols: Words,
gestures, signs, images
• Mental actions do not follow a pattern of
logic
38. Stage 2
Preoperational Stage (2-7 years old)
• Perceptual centration:
Tendency to focus only on
one dimension of an
action or issue and ignore
other dimensions
39. Stage 2
Preoperational Stage (2-7 years old)
• Irreversibility: Lack of ability thinking
backwards or making use of actions or
knowledge from the past.
• Conservation: The amount or number of
something remains the same of the
arrangement or appearance is changed, as long
as nothing is taken away.
41. Stage 2
Preoperational Stage (2-7 years old)
• Egocentrism: Assuming that others
experience the world the way you do.
42. Stage 2
Preoperational Stage (2-7 years old)
• Collective monologue: Form of speech in
which children in a group talk but do not really
interact or communicate.
43. Stage 2
Preoperational Stage (2-7 years old)
• Use concrete props and visual aids whenever possible
(pizza to demonstrate whole, one half, add and substract with sticks, rocks, colored chips)
• Make instructions relatively short (Demonstrating of entering the class
quietly, explain a game by acting out the parts, show examples of finished products)
• Don’t expect them to see the world from someone else’s
point of view (social problems)
• Students may have different meanings for the same
word (Ask children to explain the meaning of invented words.)
• Give them a great deal of hands on experience (cut out
letters to build words)
• Provide wide range of experiences (taking field
trips, invite story tellers to class)
44. Stage 3
Concrete Operational Stage (7-11
years)
• Concrete operations: Mental tasks tied to
concrete objects and situations.
• Hands-on thinking
• Logical and systematic manipulation of
symbols related to concrete objects.
• Egocentric thought diminishes, operational
thinking develops.
45. Stage 3
Concrete Operational Stage (7-11
years)
• If/then thinking (if x happens then y
happens)
• Solving conservation problems (identity,
compensation, reversibility)
• Classification (put things in correct group
based on a number of attributes)
46. Stage 3
Concrete Operational Stage (7-11
years)
• Classifying objects by using
size, shape, color, and other
characteristics.
• Seriation: Arranging objects
in sequential order according
to one aspect, such as size,
shape, weight, or volume.
A<B<C
47. Stage 3
Concrete Operational Stage (7-11
years)
Not able to reason hypothetical, abstract
problems that involve the coordination of
many factors at once.
48. Stage 3
Concrete Operational Stage (7-11
years)
• Use concrete props and visual aids when dealing
with sophisticated problems (e.g. time lines in history,
diagrams of hierarchical relationships)
• Give them a chance to manipulate and test
objects (scientific experiments
• Make presentations and readings brief and well
organized (stories, short books)
• Use familiar examples
• Give opportunities to classify and group
objects
50. Stage 4:
Formal Operational Stage (11-15 years
old)
• Formal operations: Mental systems for
controlling sets of variables and working through
a set of possibilities.
• Logical use of symbols related to abstract
concepts.
• What is to what might be.
– How life would be different if people did not sleep?
• Hypothetico-deductive reasonings. Inductive
reasoning
51. Stage 4:
Formal Operational Stage (11-15 years
old)
• Adolescent egocentrism:
Assumption that
everyone else shares
one’s thoughts, feelings,
and concerns.
• Imaginary audience: The
feeling that everyone is
watching.
52. Stage 4:
Formal Operational Stage (11-15 years
old)
“Everyone noticed that I wore this
shirt twice this week”
“The whole class thought my answer
was dump”
“No one else in this world can
possibly understand how I feel”
53. Stage 4:
Formal Operational Stage (11-15 years
old)
• What is the difference
between egocentrism in
young children and
egocentrism in adolescents?
55. Stage 4:
Formal Operational Stage (11-15 years
old)
Helping students to build formal operations
• Continue to use concrete-operational teaching
strategy and materials (charts, illustrations)
• Give students the opportunity to explore many
hypothetical questions (position papers on social issues,
economy, personal vision an utopia, describe earth after humans are
extinct)
• Give students opportunities to solve problems
and reason scientifically (design experiments, debates)
• Teach broad concepts ideas relevant to
students’ lives (world history)
58. Limitations of Piaget’s Theory for
Teachers
Examples?
1. Underestimating young children’s
cognitive abilities, overestimating
older children’s cognitive abilities
2. Overemphasizing the biological
influence on cognitive
development
3. Not taking into account of the
effect of the culture and social
group on children.
60. Assignment for next week
• For each stage, bring an example on how you
would teach a child a topic in your field (e.g.
an example of teaching numbers at
preoperational stage, teaching algebra at
concrete operational stage)
A child seeing a zebra for the first time and calling it a horse. The child assimilates this information into her schema for a horse. When the child accommodates information, she takes into consideration the different properties of a zebra compared to a horse, perhaps calling a zebra a horse with stripes. When she eventually learns the name of zebra, she has accommodated this information.
A mental representation, or schema of a certain group of people (a racist schema) -- your whole life you grew up with those around you just adding more and more information to that schema that made sense to you (assimilation) -- you only notice information that fits your schema (assimilation) and confirms it -- then you get to college and actually meet people from that group and realize what you have learned from real interactions requires a radical reorganization of your schemaregarding that group (accommodation). Your new schema is completely different, not just full of additional information
Assimilation is like adding air into a balloon. You just keep blowing it up. It gets bigger and bigger. For example, a two year old's schema of a tree is "green and big with bark" -- over time the child adds information (some trees lose their leaves, some trees have names, we use a tree at Christmas, etc.) - Your balloon just gets full of more information that fits neatly with what you know and adds onto it.Accommodation is when you have to turn your round balloon into the shape of a poodle. This new balloon "animal" is a radical shift in your schema (or balloon shape). The tree example works well where we live so I go with that, but you can invent your own. Now that they are in college in the redwood forest, we have conceptualization (schema) of trees as a source of political warfare, a commodity, a source of income for some people, we know that people sit and live in trees to save them; in other words, trees are economic, political, and social vehicles. This complete change in the schema involves a lot of cognitive energy, or accommodation, a shift in our schema.
A child learns his father is called Daddy, so he calls other males ( e.g. the mailman) Daddy. This is assimilation. He is quickly told that the other man is not Daddy, he is _______. Again, the schema for Daddy is modified. This is accommodation.