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

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.