Cognition and development

• Cognitive development

  Describes the mental processes involving reasoning and our understanding of the world

  • Cognitive psychologists have been concerned with how thinking and reasoning develops in childhood
• Piaget realised that children do not know less than adults but think in a different way
• Piaget looked at children’s learning in two aspects

  • Motivation in development
  • How knowledge develops
• Piaget believed that there are four stages to cognitive development, which occur as we grow older.
• Schema


  These are mental structures that represent a group of related concepts- unit of knowledge
• Early schemas are present when a child is born
• From birth onwards schemas develop as a result of interactions with the environment

  • New experiences lead to new schemas
• +Evaluation of Schema

  Fantz (1961) supported that babies as young as 4 days old show a preference for a face rather than the same features jumbled up

  • Time spent looking on images indicated interest, longest time looking at image was that of a face
• Assimilation and accommodation is how learning takes place
• Assimilation


  Occurs when a child tries to understand new information in terms of their existing knowledge
• Example of assimilation


  A baby is given a toy car but may begin to suck it the same was as sucking a bottle

  • The new information is being incorporated into an existing schema
• Accommodation


  When a child adapts an existing schemas in order to understand new information that does not fit
• Example of accommodation 


  A child may have a schema for a dog but not a cat - this new information can not be assimilated into the dog schema so a new one is created
• +Research Support


  Howe (1992) used children between 9 and 12 year olds in groups of 4 to discuss movement of objects

  • Their understanding was assessed before and after discussion
  • Increase in knowledge and discussion but not all came to the same conclusion

  Supports learning by making own decisions
• +Piaget’s theory has had positive applications in education


  This is because it has understood that the learning occurs through discovery
• However, Bennett found that children taught via formal methods did best in core topics like reading and maths suggesting discovery learning is not better than formal methods
• Assimilation and accommodation is HOW

  learning takes place
• Equilibration and disequilibrium is the motivation to learn
• Equilibration


  This is a balance between existing schemas and new experiences
• Disequilibrium 


  An unpleasant sensation caused when existing schema do not allow us to make sense of new information.
• We are then motivated to adapt to the new situation by exploring and learning leading to Equilibration
• Stages of intellectual development

  • Four stages characterised by a different level of reasoning
  • all children develop through the same sequence of stages
• Stages of Intellectual Development

  1. Sensorimotor
  2. Preoperational
  3. Concrete Operationals
  4. Formal Operational

  
• 1. Sensorimotor stage: 0-2 years, children learn to recognize and respond to their environment

  Object Permeance ability to realise that an object still exists when it passes out of visual field
• +Evaluation of Sensorimotor stage

  Observed whether or not the child would search for the hidden toy

  • Children under 8 months did not search for the toy
  • Children after 8 months searched, but if it was moved to a different area they continued looking in the same space
  • 12 month olds looked in new place
• 2. Preoperational stage: 2-7 years

  This is when language develops, but they lack reasoning

  • Conservation
  • Class Inclusion
  • Egocentrism
• Piaget's theory has been criticized because he only studied middle class white boys from Switzerland so his findings may not apply to other cultures.
• Conservation

  The ability to realise that quantity remains the same even when the appearance of an object changed
• Conservation Research

  • Piaget had two rows of 8 identical counters side by side
  • Young children counted them correctly but when they were pushed together preoperational children struggled to conserve - argued that there were less
• Children under 7 answered incorrectly in volume task and this is because conservation of numbers occurs 6-7 years
• Egocentrism 


  This is the tendency of a child to only see the world from their own point of view- belief that only their view exists
• Egocentrism Research- Inhelder

  ’Three mountain task’- children were shown three model mountains each with a different feature: cross, house or snow

  • A doll was placed at the side of the model
  • The child was asked what could the doll see

  Preoperational children tended to find this difficult and matched the seen from THEIR pov
• Class inclusion

  When a child can classify objects into to categories like types of animals

  • Most children can classify pugs and retrievers into dogs
• Piaget and Inhelder (1964) found that children under 7 struggle with the idea of classification having subsets
• Piaget and Inhelder showed 7-8 children pictures of 5 dogs and 2 cats and asked if there were more dogs or animals in the picture

  • Children believed there were more dogs
• -Evaluation of Conservation

  Rose and Blank (1974) argue that asking the same question twice is confusing for children and it may make them think that their original answer was wrong
• -Evaluation of Conservation: McGarrigle and Donaldson

  Replicated the study and added the condition of ‘naughty teddy’ who knocked the counters together

  • 72% correctly said they were the same

  Means children 4-6 can conserve without being put off by the question
• -Evaluation of Egocentrism

  Hughes argued that the task was not valid as mountains were unfamiliar to most children

  • He used a model with two police officers and baby doll

  Children were able to decentre and imagine other perspectives
• Concrete Operations stage 7-11 years


  Child develops ability to think logically (e.g. conservation, class inclusion) but only applied to physical objects
• Piaget (1967) presented sticks to children of different lengths and they understood that if A is longer than B, B is longer than C