Transcript cog dev vyg & Piaget

Cognitive Development:
Piaget’s Theory and
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural
Viewpoint
PIAGET’S THEORY OF
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
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Genetic epistemology is the experimental study of the
development of knowledge, developed by Piaget
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What is Intelligence?
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According to Piaget, it is a basic life function
that enables an organism to adapt to its
environment.
 All intellectual activity is undertaken with
one goal in mind-cognitive equilibrium
 Piaget described children as constructivist
Cognitive Schemes:
the structure of intelligence
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Scheme is a term used by Piaget to describe the models, or mental
structures, that we create to represent ,organize, and interpret our
experiences.
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There are 3 kinds of intellectual structures:
1.Behavioral schemes
 First intellectual structures to emerge
2.Symbolic schemes
 Appears ~2 year of life
3.Operational schemes
 7 years+
How we gain knowledge: Piaget’s
Cognitive Processes
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Organization is the process by which children
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Adaptation is an inborn tendency to adjust to the
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Assimilation is the process of interpreting new
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Accommodation is the process of modifying existing
combine existing schemes into new and more complex
intellectual structures.
demands of the environment.
 The goal of adaptation is to adjust to the
environment; this occurs through assimilation and
accommodation.
experiences by incorporating them into existing
schemes.
schemes in order to incorporate or adapt to new
experiences.
Piagetian Concept
Example
Equilibrium
Toddler who has never seen anything fly
but birds thinks that all flying objects are
birds
Assimilation
Seeing an airplane flying prompts the child
to call it a birdie
Accommodation
Child experiences conflict upon realizing
that the new birdie has no feathers.
Concludes it is not a bird and asks for the
proper term or invents a name. Equilibrium
restored
Start
Organization
Finish
Forms hierarchal scheme consisting of a
superordinate class (flying objects) and two
subordinate classes (birdies and airplanes).
Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive
Development
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According to Piaget, a child’s
development progresses through 4
qualitative stages and an invariant
developmental sequence or universal
pattern of development, which are:
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The Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to 2 Years)
The Preoperational Stage (2 to 7 Years)
The Concrete-Operational Stage (7 to 11
Years)
The Formal-Operational Stage (11-12 Years
and Beyond)
The sensorimotor stage (Birth-2 years)
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The 6 Developmental stages of ProblemSolving abilities:
1. Reflex activity (0-1mon.) exercising and
accommodation of inborn reflexes
2. Primary circular reactions (1-4 mon.)
repeating acts centered on ones own body
3. Secondary circular reactions (4-8 mon.)
repeating acts toward external objects
Sensorimotor stage cont’d
4. Coordination of secondary schemes (8-12
mon.) combining acts to solve simple
problems.
5. Tertiary circular reactions (12-18 mon.)
experimenting to find new ways of to solve
problems
6. Symbolic problem solving (18-24 mon.)
inner experimentation without relaying on
trial-and-error experimentation
•Development of imitation
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Deferred imitation (18-24 mo.) is the ability to reproduce the behavior of an
absent model.
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Development of Object Permanence (8-12 mo) is the idea that objects
continue to exist when they are no longer visible or detectable through the
other senses.
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A-not-B error: tendency of 8-12- month olds to search for a hidden object
where they previously found it even after they have seen it moved to a
different location.
Challenges to Piaget’s account of
sensorimotor development:
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Neo-nativism: idea that cognitive knowledge is innate
and subject to biological constraints
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“theory” theories: theories of cognitive development
that combine neo-nativism and constructivism
Preoperational stage (2-7
yrs)
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There is an increase in their use of
mental symbols to represent objects and
events they encounter
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The Preconceptual Period is the early
substage of preoperations, from age 2 to age
4, characterized by the appearance of
primitive ideas, concepts, and methods of
reasoning. Marked by the appearance of
symbolic function and play.
The Intuitive Period is the later substage of
preoperations, from age 4 to age 7, when the
child’s thinking about objects and events is
dominated by salient perceptual features.
The Preconceptual Period:
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Emergence of Symbolic thought
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Symbolic function
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Ability to use symbols to represent objects or experiences
Symbolic play
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Play where one object, action, or actor symbolizes another
Deficits in preconceptual
reasoning:
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Animism- attributing lifelike qualities to inanimate
objects
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Egocentrism- viewing the world from only one’s
perspective
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Appearance/Reality distinction- inability to
distinguish deceptive appearances from reality
The intuitive period:
Here cognition is described as:
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Centered a tendency to focus on one aspect of a
situation and not on others due to their inability
to understand:
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Conservation- recognition that the properties of an
object or substance do not change when its
appearance is altered in some superficial way.
Reversibility- ability to reverse or negate an action by
mentally performing the opposite action
The Concrete-Operational
Stage (7 to 11 Years)
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Here children are said to think more logically about real
objects and experiences
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Some examples of operational thought
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Conservation
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Classification
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ability to create relationships between things.
Relational Logic
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Reversibility
Logic
Mental seriation
Transitivity
The sequencing of concrete operations
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Horizontal decalage- different levels of understanding conservation
tasks that seem to require the same mental operations
The Formal-Operational Stage
(11-12 Years and Beyond)
Ability to reason logically about hypothetical process and events that
may have no basis in reality
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Hypothetico-Deductive Reasoning
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Thinking Like a Scientist
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a formal operational ability to think hypothetically.
Inductive reasoning- type of thinking where hypotheses are generated and then
systematically tested in experiments.
Personal and Social Implications
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The formal operation stage paves the way for:
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Identity formation
Richer understanding of other peoples psychological perspectives
The ability to way options in decision making
An Evaluation of Piaget’s Theory
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Convinced us that children are curious, active explorers who play
an important role in their own development.
His theory was one of the first to explain, and not just describe,
the process of development.
His description of broad sequences of intellectual development
provides a reasonably accurate overview of how children of
different ages think.
Piaget’s ideas have had a major influence on thinking about social
and emotional development as well as many practical
implications for educators.
Piaget asked important questions and drew literally thousands of
researchers to the study of cognitive development.
Challenges to Piaget’s cognitive
developmental theory:
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Underestimated developing minds
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Failed to distinguish competence from performance
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It is believed by some that Cognitive development does
not evolve in a qualitative and stage like manner- it
tends to develop gradually
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Provides a vague explanation on cognitive maturation
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Devoted little attention to social and cultural influences
STOP HERE
STOP HERE!!!
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural
Perspective
Sociocultural theory states that:
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–
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Cognitive development occurs in a sociocultural context that
influences the form it takes
Most of a child’s cognitive skills evolve from social interactions with
parents, teachers, and other more competent associates
The role of culture in intellectual
development:
Vygotsky proposed that we should evaluate human development
from four interrelated perspectives:
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Microgenetic-changes that occur over brief periods of time-minutes and
seconds
Ontogenetic-development over a lifetime
Phylogenetic-development over evolutionary time
Sociohistorical- changes that have occurred in one's culture and the
values, norms and technologies such a history has generated
Tools of intellectual
adaptation
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Vygotsky (1930-1935/1978) proposed that infants are born with a
few elementary mental functions – attention, sensation, perception and
memory – that are eventually transformed by the culture into new
and more sophisticated mental processes he called higher mental
functions.
The Social Origins of Early
Cognitive Competencies:
Zone of Proximal Development range of tasks that are too complex
to be mastered alone but can be accomplished with guidance and
encouragement from a more skillful partner
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Scaffolding- the expert participant carefully tailors their support to the
novice learner to assure their understanding
Apprenticeship in Thinking and
Guided Participation:
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guided participation, adult-child interactions in which children’s cognitions
and modes of thinking are shaped as they participate with or observe
adults engaged in culturally relevant activities.
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Our culture is one that uses what Vygotsky termed context-independent
learning
Implications for Education:
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Children are seen as active participants in their education
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teachers in Vygotsky’s classroom would favor guided
participation in which they:
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structure the learning activity
provide helpful hints or instructions that are
carefully tailored to the child’s current abilities
monitor the learner’s progress
gradually turning over more of the mental activity to
their pupils
Promote cooperative learning exercises
The role of language in cognitive
development:
According to Piaget:
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Children partake in egocentric speech, utterances neither directed to
others nor expressed in ways that the listeners might understand
Egocentric speech played a little role in cognitive development
Speech tended to become more social as the child matures-less
egocentric
The role of language in cognitive
development cont’d
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According to Vygotsky:
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Thought and language eventually emerge
A child’s nonsocial utterances, which he termed private
speech, illustrate the transition from paralinguistic to
verbal reasoning
Private speech plays a major role in cognitive
development by serving as a cognitive self-guidance
system, allowing children to become more organized
and good problem solvers
As individuals develop, private speech becomes inner
speech
To consider…
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According to contemporary research:
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Children rely heavily on private speech when
facing difficult problems
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There is a correlation between “self-talk” and
competence
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Private speech does eventually become inner
speech and facilitates cognitive development
Theories of Cognitive Development:
Vygotsky vs. Piaget
Vygotsky’s sociocultural Piaget’s cognitive
theory
developmental theory
Cognitive development varies
across cultures
Cognitive development is mostly
universal across cultures
Stems from social interactions
Stems from independent
explorations
Social processes become
individual-physiological processes
Individual (egocentric) processes
become social processes
Adults are important as change
agents
Peers are important as change
agents