Psychology - Cognition & Development

• Piaget's theory of cognitive development

  • Children and adults think in qualitatively different ways
  • Schema: units of knowledge which become more detailed as we get older
  • Disequilibrium creates the motivation to learn and explore
  • Equilibration: a state of balance when experience and current schema match
  • Assimilation: new experience is incorporated into existing schema
  • Accommodation: creating new schema and radically changing existing ones
• Research support: children watched objects move on slopes, each child formed individual mental representation i.e. schema (Howe et al)
• Real-world application: Piaget's discovery learning through exploration led to activity-based classrooms and flipped learning
• Counterpoint: no firm evidence showing superiority of discovery learning, teacher input may be more key
• Role of others in learning

  Underestimated by Piaget, evidence supports Vygotsky's view of important interaction between learner and others
• Baillargeon's explanation of infant abilities

  • Object permanence: inability may be due to poor motor skills
  • Violation of expectation research: new VOE method to be able to show what babies can do
  • Knowledge of the physical world: innate physical reasoning system (PRS), babies know that objects persist
  • Event categories: e.g. occlusion (one object blocks another), babies predisposed to attend and learn from unexpected events
• Baillargeon's research: VOE method, short and tall rabbits moved behind a window. Findings: babies looked longer at unexpected event, object permanence demonstrated at 5-6 months
• Validity of VOE, in Piaget's studies infants may have been distracted rather than not understood
• VOE is carefully controlled
• May not be object permanence, method assumes that VOE response is to the unexpectedness, it may just be more interesting
• Universal understanding: e.g. dropped object lands on floor understood in all cultures, suggests an innate PRS
• Piaget's stages of intellectual development

  • Children progress through four stages each with a different level of reasoning
  • Stage 1: Sensorimotor stage (0-2 years) includes object permanence (develops around 8 months)
  • Stage 2: pre-operational stage (2-7 years): conservation, egocentrism, class inclusion
  • Stage 3: concrete operations stage (7-11) can understand logic but only with physical objects
  • Stage 4: formal operations stage (11+), includes syllogisms and abstract reasoning
• Practical applications: important implications about when a child is biologically ready to be taught certain concepts
• Conservation research: when a 'naughty teddy' rearranged the counters, 72% of children under 7 could conserve (McGariggle & Donaldson)
• Class inclusion research: 5 year olds could demonstrate class inclusion if given a logical explanation in their feedback (Siegler & Svetina)
• Egocentrism research: children of 3 can decentre in the policeman task which is more realistic, though children of 4 still do better (Hughes)
• Counterpoint: all criticisms above focus only on the age at which a stage occurs not the basic sequence
• Social cognition: Selman's levels of perspective taking


  • Social perspective taking: domain-specific (Selman) versus domain-general (Piaget)
  • Perspective taking (PT) tested using scenarios e.g. Holly climbing trees to rescue friends kitten
  • Stage theory based on children's responses to perspective-taking scenarios at different ages
  • Stages show that progressively child able to see another person's perspective
• Development occurs because of both maturity and experience
• Three elements fully explain social development, e.g. interpersonal understanding and negotiation strategies
• Research support for stages: both cross-sectional (Selman) and longitudinal (Selman)
• Research evidence questions that the stages in development of perspective-taking are biologically driven
• Research evidence questions that the stages in development of perspective-taking are biologically driven and instead focuses on the role of experience (White et al)
• Shows the importance of perspective-taking skills in social behaviour (Selman)
• Counterpoint: research is correlational
• Practical applications: developed through play in primary schools
• Does not account for cultural differences Wu and Keysar found that young adult Chinese participants did significantly better in perspective-taking than matched Americans
• Vygotsky's theory of cognitive development
• Social processes: knowledge is first intermental (between people), then intramental in the mind of the individual
• Cultural differences in cognition: children pick up the 'mental tools' for physical, social and work environments in their culture
• Zone of proximal development (ZPD) gap between current and potential abilities. Increased skills and reasoning ability can only be achieved with the help of experts, not just exploration
• Scaffolding: The process of helping learners cross the ZPD and advance as much as they can, given their stage of development
• Progressive strategies identified by Wood et al from most to least help
• Support of the ZPD: 4-5 year olds performed better with guidance from peers (Roazzi & Bryant)
• Support for scaffolding, mothers gave decreased help as their children get older, and help increasingly offered only when needed (Cronner & Cross)
• Real world application: methods increasingly used in 21st century. 7 year olds receiving peer tutoring progressed further in reading than controls (Van Keer et al)
• Does not account for individual differences, some children like to learn alone
• Social cognition: Theory of mind
• Theory of mind (TOM): 'mind reading', a personal 'theory', knowing what other people know
• False belief tasks: Maxi's mother moves chocolate from blue to green cupboard, where does Maxi look? 3 year olds get it wrong Wimmer and Perner