PSY 101    Class 05 • Development 2: Cognitive Development - Piaget & Vygotsky

Piaget: Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) - Swiss Cognitive Psychologist Interested in the reasoning for wrong answers by children in testing Concerned with how children use their intelligence Children as active explorers of environment

Piaget's Stages in a YouTube Video (6.17)

Concepts in Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development

• Operation = the ability in the mind (that is, by thinking) to manipulate or do something involving an object from the external world
• Object permanence = child recognizes that an object continues to exist even when that object is no longer visible
• Conservation = the awareness that physical qualities remain constant (don't really change) despite changes in shape or appearance
• Centation = the tendency to focus on just one feature of an problem, while neglecting other important aspects
• Irreversibility = the inability to imagine or envision reversing (or undoing) an action
• Egocentrism = a limited ability to share another person's point of view
• Animism = the belief that all things are living

Critique

• Appears to have underestimated children's cognitive abilities, that is, they may develop these abilities earlier than Piaget claimed. (See more below)
• Problem of "mixed" forms of thinking: Children showing various stages at the same time
• While the sequence of these stages may be invariant, their timing may be tied to cultural factors and, thus, they may appear at different times than Piaget suggested. Thus, this theory may be too highly Western in its specifics

Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) - Soviet Cognitive Psychologist Primary architect of the Sociocultural Theory of Cognitive Development during the 1920s-1930s Not well known in West until the 1960s-1980s because of the closed nature of the Soviet government Child is partner in constant social interactions with parents, teachers, & older children Cognitive skills develop in response to cultural resources, for example, language skills are taught in literate cultures via schools compared with non-literate cultures which rely upon conversation Expertise is learned via apprenticeship with instructor helping student develop skill at the border between what is known & not known (Zone of Proximal Development or ZPD) Language is the crucial element in cognitive development Speech is first public and social. It is later internalized to become private speech (as spoken thoughts inside our heads) as young child gets older

The Abilities of Children: Are they inborn?

• Infants seem to have an understanding of objects and their relations earlier than Piaget thought. For example, by 3-4 months infants know that

• Objects are distinct and have boundaries
• Objects move in continuous paths
• Solid objects cannot pass through other solid objects
• Objects cannot pass through holes smaller than the object

• Infants can add & subtract small numbers, e.g., 1+2 = 3; 3-1 = 2

• In a study reported in SCIENCE (Cesana-Arlotti et al., 2018), researchers showed that 12- & 19-month old infants appear to recognize logical inconsistencies in what they are seeing in the world (even before they can use language).
  

• These suggest that there is a kind of "pre-wiring" of the nervous system to deal with these basic functions.