PSY 101    Class 04 • Development 2: Cognitive Development - Piaget & Vygotsky (Outline)

Child Labor in the United States in the late 19th & early 20th century

• 1870 about 13% of children worked full-time
• 1900 about 20% of children worked full-time
• 1910 at least 18% of children 10-15 years old worked full-time
• Some children under the age of 14 years old worked in coal mines
• In 1900, 25% of the 100,000 textile workers in mills in the South were under age 16. While cotton mills would teach children from ages 5 to 12, at age 12 they were expected to end schooling and work full-time

• In urban areas like New York City in the late 19th century, many working-class children were expected to provide for their own food because, in larger families, parents could not feed all the children. So, they earned money during the day to buy food.

Piaget: Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) - Swiss Cognitive Psychologist Children's reasoning for wrong answers Children as active explorers of environment

Seattle Sea Hawks selling beer and using lack of conservation to make a bigger profit (32 secs., 2014)

Piaget's Stages in a YouTube Video (6.17)

Critique

• Underestimated child's abilities
• Mixing of stages
• Too Western, not sensitive to cultural effects?

Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) - Soviet Cognitive Psychologist Sociocultural Theory of Cognitive Development (1920s-1930s) Zone of Proximal Development or ZPD Language is the crucial element in cognitive development Speech is first public and social, then internalized

The Abilities of Children: Are they inborn?

• Infants seem to have an understanding of objects and their relations earlier than Piaget thought.
  

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

• 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.