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PIAGET-Cognitive Development

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18 views40 pages

PIAGET-Cognitive Development

Uploaded by

Larh Obese Emmanuel
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Psychology of Human

Development and
Learning

EDC 241
Cognitive
Development/Intellectu
al Development
Cognition
 All the mental activities associated
with thinking, knowing, and
remembering
 Children think differently than

adults do
Jean Piaget's
Background
 Jean Piaget was born in Switzerland in
1896. He published his first scientific
paper at the tender age of 10 – a 100-
word description of an albino sparrow in
a naturalist magazine. Between the
ages of 15 and 19, he published
numerous papers on mollusks and was
even offered a job as a curator at a
museum, although he had to decline the
offer since he still had two years of high
school to complete.
Jean Piaget (pee-ah-ZHAY)
 (1896–1980) Swiss psychologist who
became leading theorist in 1930’s
 Developmental psychologist who
introduced a 4 stage theory of
cognitive development
 Believed these stages were
BIOLOGICAL and occurred in same
order but environment & culture could
change how fast we progress through
them.
 Believed that children actively try to
make sense out of their environment
Jean Piaget's Background
cont’d

 Piaget's interest in child cognitive


development was influenced by watching his
13-month-old nephew, Gerard, at play. By
chance, Piaget observed the toddler playing
with a ball. When the ball rolled under a table
where the boy could still see it, Gerard simply
retrieved the ball and continued playing.
When the ball rolled under a sofa out of his
sight, however, the child began looking for it
where he had last seen it. This reaction
struck Piaget as irrational.
Jean Piaget's Background
cont’d
 Piaget came to believe that
children lack what he referred to as
the object concept - the knowledge
that objects are separate and
distinct from both the individual
and the individual's perception of
that object.
Jean Piaget's Background
cont’d
 Jean Piaget set out to study his daughter
Jacqueline as she developed through
infancy, toddlerhood, and childhood. He
quickly noted that during the early months
of his daughter's life, she seemed to believe
that objects ceased to exist once they were
out of her sight. At nearly a year, she started
to search actively for objects that were
hidden from her view although she made
mistakes similar to the one Gerard made. By
21 months, Jacqueline had become skilled at
finding hidden objects and understood that
Jean Piaget's Background
cont’d

 Piaget's observations of his nephew and


daughter reinforced his budding hypothesis
that children's minds were not merely smaller
versions of adult minds. Instead, he proposed,
intelligence is something that grows and
develops through a series of stages. Older
children don't just think faster than younger
children, he suggested. Instead, there are
both qualitative and quantitative differences
between the thinking of young children
versus older children.
Sensorimotor Stage
(birth – 2)
 Information is gained directly
through the senses and motor
actions
 In this stage child perceives
and manipulates but does not
reason
 Symbols become internalized
through language
development
 Object permanence is
acquired - the understanding
Object Permanence
 The awareness that things continue to
exist even when they cannot be sensed
 Occurs as babies gain experience with
objects, as their memory abilities improve,
and as they develop mental
representations of the world, which Piaget
called schemas
 Before 6 months infants act as if objects
removed from sight cease to exist
 Can be surprised by

disappearance/reappearance of a face
(peek-a-boo)
 “Out of sight, out of mind”
Object Permanence
Preoperational Stage (2–7 years)
 The word operations refers to logical, mental
activities; thus, the preoperational stage is a
prelogical stage
 Children can understand language but not logic
 Emergence of symbolic thought - ability to use
words, images, and symbols to represent the
world.
 Centration - tendency to focus, or center, on only
one aspect of a situation, usually a perceptual
aspect, and ignore other relevant aspects of the
situation
 Egocentrism - inability to take another person’s
perspective or point of view
 Lack the concept of conservation - which holds
that two equal quantities remain equal even if the
appearance of one is changed, as long as nothing
Egocentrism
 The child’s inability to take
another person’s point of view
 Child on the phone says, “See
the picture I drew for you
Grandpa!” and shows the
picture to the phone.
 Includes a child’s inability to
understand that symbols can
represent other objects
Conservation
 An understanding that certain
properties remain constant
despite changes in their form
 The properties can include

mass, volume, and numbers.


Conservation
 Numbe
r

In conservation of number tests, two equivalent rows of coins


are placed side by side and the child says that there is the same
number in each row. Then one row is spread apart and the child
is again asked if there is the same number in each.
Conservation
• Length

In conservation of length tests, two same-length sticks are


placed side by side and the child says that they are the same
length. Then one is moved and the child is again asked
if they are the same length.
Conservation
• Substance

In conservation of substance tests, two identical amounts of clay


are rolled into similar-appearing balls and the child says that they
both have the same amount of clay. Then one ball is rolled out and
the child is again asked if they have the same amount.
Conservation
Conservation
Conservation
Types of Conservation Tasks
Concrete Operational Stage
(7–12 years)
 Ability to think logically about
concrete objects and situations
 Child can now understand

conservation
 Classification and categorization

 Less egocentric

 Inability to reason abstractly or

hypothetically
Formal Operational Stage
(age 12 – adulthood)
 Ability to think logically about abstract
principles and hypothetical situations
 Hypothetico-deductive reasoning (What if….
problems)
 Adolescent egocentrism illustrated by the
phenomenon of personal fable and imaginary
audience
Some factors that influence how
children learn and grow

 Schemas - a kind of mental or cognitive


structure which the child uses as it interacts
with the outside world.
 It contains all the ideas, memories and
information about a particular object that a
child associates with that object
Assimilation
 Interpreting a new experience
within the context of one’s
existing schemas
 The new experience is similar

to other previous experiences


Some factors that
influence how children
learn and grow cont’d
 Accommodation – changing or altering our
existing schemas in light of new information, a
process known as accommodation.
 Accommodation involves modifying existing
schemas, or ideas as a result of new
information or new experiences
Accommodation
 Interpreting a new experience
by adapting or changing one’s
existing schemas
 The new experience is so

novel the person’s schemata


must be changed to
accommodate it
Assimilation/
Accommodation
Assimilation/
Accommodation
Accommodation
As children assimilate new information and experiences,
they eventually change their way of thinking to
accommodate new knowledge
Some factors that
influence how children
learn and grow cont’d
 Equilibration – Piaget believes that it is
important to maintain a balance between
applying previous knowledge (assimilation)
and changing behaviour to account for new
knowledge (accommodation)
 Educational
Implications
 Acceptance of individual
differences in developmental
progress. Piaget’s theory assumes
that all children go through the same
developmental sequence but that they
do so at different rates.
 A deemphasis on practices aimed
at making children adultlike in
their thinking. Piaget referred to the
question “How can we speed up
development?”

 Piagetian-based educational programs


accept his firm belief that premature
teaching could be worse than no
teaching at all, because it leads to
superficial acceptance of adult
formulas rather than true cognitive
 A focus on the process of
children’s thinking, not just its
products. In addition to checking the
correctness of children’s answers, teachers
must understand the processes children use
to get to the answer.

 Appropriate learning experiences build on


children’s current level of cognitive
functioning, and only when teachers
appreciate children’s methods of arriving at
particular conclusions are they in a position
to provide such experiences.
 Recognition of the crucial role of
children's self-initiated, active
involvement in learning activities.

 In a Piagetian classroom, children are


encouraged to discover themselves
through spontaneous interaction with
the environment, rather than the
presentation of ready-made knowledge.

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