Cognitive

Development Theory

What is cognition?

Cognition refers to all activity, processes, and

products of the mind.

Jean Piaget
Jean Piaget was born on August 9, 1896, in Neuchtel,
Switzerland, becoming an expert on the study of mollusks by
his teen years. Over the course of his later career in child
psychology, he identified four stages of mental development
that chronicled young people's journeys from basic object
identification to highly abstract thought. The recipient of an
array of honors, Piaget died on September 16, 1980, in
Geneva, Switzerland. Piaget's oeuvre is known all over the
world and is still an inspiration in fields like psychology,
sociology, education, epistemology, economics and law as
witnessed in the annual catalogues of the Jean Piaget
Archives. He was awarded numerous prizes and honorary
degrees all over the world.

Piagets Theory

The first cognitive theory, developed by Jean Piaget

beginning about 1920.

Piaget observed and described children at different

ages.

His theory is very broad, from birth through

adolescence, and includes concepts of language,
scientific reasoning, moral development, and memory.

Piagets Assumptions About

Children

Children construct their own knowledge in

response to their experiences.

Children learn many things on their own

without the intervention of older children or adults.

Children are intrinsically motivated to learn

and do not need rewards from adults to motivate
learning.

Piaget's Theory: Central Developmental Issues

Nature and Nurture

Nature and nurture interact to yield cognitive development.

Adaptation: Tendency to respond to the demands of the

environment to meet one's goals

Organization: Tendency to integrate particular observations

into

coherent knowledge

Sources of Continuity

Three processes work together from birth to propel development forward

Assimilation: The process by which people translate incoming information
into a form they can understand
Accommodation: The process by which people adapt current knowledge
structures in response to new experiences
Equilibration: The process by which people balance assimilation and
accommodation to create stable understanding

Discontinuities

The discontinuous aspects of Piagets theory are distinct, hierarchical

stages
Central properties of Piagets stage theory:

Qualitative change

Broad applicability across topics and contexts

Brief transitions

Invariant sequence

Hypothesized that children progress through four stages of cognitive

development, each building on the previous one

Stages of Cognitive
Development

Sensorimotor (Birth-2 yrs)

Early on, bundle of reflexes, wired-in

responses

Beginning to discriminate between objects

Begin to develop schemes

Habits are formed such as thumb sucking

Infants begin to use objects to achieve a goal

Object permanence develops

Later on, infants perform miniature experiments

with

objects

Preoperational (2-7 yrs)

Language

Egocentrism

Lack of conservation

Centration

Inability to reason about

transformations

Irreversibility

Symbolic Play

Transductive reasoning

EGOCENTRIC CONVERSATION

QUICK TEST: Sensimotor or

Preoperational?

1. learning to speak English

2. thumb sucking

3. symbolic play

4. babies perform miniature experiments with toys

Concrete Operational (7-11 yrs)

e
Differentiation of one s own perspective from the

perspective of others

Conservation

Decentration

Reversibility

Multiple classification

Deductive reasoning

Reasoning about transformations

Inability to deal with abstract, hypothetical, and

contrary-to-fact ideas

Formal Operational (11-adult)

Ability to deal with abstract, hypothetical, and contrary-to-fact

ideas

Formulation and testing of hypotheses

Separation and control of variables

Proportional thought

Combinatorial thought

Construction of alternatives to reality

Metacognition

QUICK TEST: Concrete Operational

or Formal Operational?

1.using logic to form a conclusion (Deductive reasoning)

2. ability to deal with abstract thoughts

3. decentration

4. awareness of ones own learning or thinking process

(metacognition)

Teenagers'
emerging
ability to
understand
that their
reality is only
one of many
possible
realities may
cause teens to
develop a taste
for science
fiction.

Problems with Piagets Theory

Children often grasp ideas earlier than what Piaget

found

Cognitive development across domains is

inconsistent (e.g. better at reading than math)

Studies have shown that development can to some

degree be accelerated