Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

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Prefrontal cortex

Figure 8.1

The Prefrontal Cortex

This portion of the brain (bright blue) shows extensive development from 3 to 6 years of age and is believed to play important roles in attention and working memory

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7.2 Piaget’s Four Stages of Cognitive Development

The Sensorimotor Stage

The Preoperational Stage

The Concrete Operational Stage

The Formal Operational Stage

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Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

Inborn Reflexes

Sensorimotor Period

Preoperational Period

Concrete Operations

Formal Operations

(~Birth to 2 yrs)

(~2 to 6 yrs)

(~ 7-12 yrs)

(adolescence to adult)

Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

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SENSORIMOTORSENSORIMOTORSTAGESTAGE

PREOPERATIONALPREOPERATIONALSTAGESTAGE

CONCRETE CONCRETE OPERATIONALOPERATIONAL

STAGESTAGE

FORMAL FORMAL OPERATIONAL OPERATIONAL

STAGESTAGE

The infant constructs an understanding of the world by coordinating sensory experiences with physical actions. And infant progresses from reflexive, instinctual action at birth to the beginning of symbolic thought toward the end of the stage

The child begins to represent the world with words and images. These words and images reflect increased symbolic thinking and go beyond the connection of sensory information and physical action.

He child can now reason logically about concrete events and classify objects into different sets

The adolescent reasons in more abstract, idealistic, and logical ways.

Birth to 2 Years of Age 2 to 7 Years of Age 7 to 11 Years of Age11 Years of Ages

Through Adulthood

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7.2 The Sensorimotor Stage

• From birth to approximately 2 years• Begins with reflexive responding and ends

with using symbols• Object permanence: understanding that

objects exist independently

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7.2 The Preoperational Stage

• From approximately 2 to 7 years• Children use symbols but are many errors in

thinking> Egocentrism: The inability to distinguish

between one’s own perspective and someone else’s perspective.

> Centration: Focusing on one characteristic to the exclusion of others

> Confuse appearance and reality7

Three Mountains Problem

7.2: The Preoperational Stage8

The Three Mountain Tasks

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Conservation Tasks

7.2: The Preoperational Stage10

Piaget’s Conservation Task

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B CAB CA

Figure 8.8

Piaget’s Conservation Task

Child is asked if (A) and (C) have the same amount of liquid. The preoperational child says “no” and will point to (C) as having more liquid than (A).

Two identical beakers shown to child, and then experimenter pours liquid from (B) into (C)

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• NLVM Conservation Applet

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Type of conservation Number Matter Length

Initial presentation Two identical

rows of objects shown to child

Two identical balls of clay shown to child

Two sticks are aligned in front of child

ManipulationOne row is spaced

Experimenter changes shape of one ball

Experimenter moves one stick to right

Preoperational child’s answer to “Are they still the same?”

“No, the longer row has more”

“No, the longer one has more”

“No, the one on top is longer”

Figure 8.9

Some Dimensions of Conservation: Number, Matter, and Length

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7.2 The Concrete Operational Stage

• From approximately 7 to 11 years• Thinking based on mental operations

(strategies and rules that make thinking more systematic and powerful)

• Operations can be reversed• Focus on the real and concrete, not the

abstract

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7.2 The Formal Operational Stage

• From approximately 11 years to adulthood• Adolescents can think hypothetically• Use deductive reasoning

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Object Permanence and the “Impossible Event”

7.3: Criticisms of the Theory

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Theory of Mind

7.4 The Child as Theorist

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The Sociocultural Perspective: Vygotsky’s Theory

• Cognitive development is inseparable from social and cultural contexts

• Zone of proximal development: difference between what can do alone or with assistance

• Scaffolding: teaching style that matches assistance to learner’s needs

The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)

student can work with the student can workassistance of an instructor ________________________ independently

ZPD19

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Vygotsky

• Strong emphasis

• Social constructivist

• No general stages

• Zone of proximal development, language, dialogue, tools of the culture

•It has a major role in shaping thought

•It has a central role

•Teacher is facilitator and guide, not director

Piaget

• Little emphasis

• Cognitive constructivist

• Strong emphasis on stages

• Schemata, assimilation, accommodation, operations, conservation, classification, hypothetical-deductive reasoning

•It has a minimal role

•It just defines existing skills•Teacher is facilitator and guide, not director

Figure 8.11

Comparison of Vygotsky’s and Piaget’s Theories

Sociocultural Context

Constructivism

Stages

Key processes

Role of language

View on education

Implications for teacher

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Figure 8.13

Developmental Changes in Memory Span

In one study: memory span increased from 3 digits at age 2, to 5 digits at age 7, to 7 digits at age 12.

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0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

62 8 10 Adult4 12

Age (years)

Digit Span

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Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

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Sensorimotor Birth to 2 years

Infants know the world through their senses and through their actions. For example, they learn what dogs look like and what petting them feels like.

Preoperational 2 - 7 years

Toddlers and young children acquire the ability to internally represent the world through language and mental imagery. They also begin to be able to see the world from other people’s perspectives, not just from their own.

Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

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Concrete Operational

7 - 12 years

Children become able to think logically, not just intuitively. They now can classify objects into coherent categories and understand that events are often influenced by multiple factors, not just one.

Formal Operational

12+ years Adolescents can think systematically and reason about what might be as well as what is. This allows them to understand politics, ethics, and science fiction, as well as to engage in scientific reasoning.

Sensorimotor Substages

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Sub Age Description

1 Birth – 1 month

Infants begin to modify the reflexes with which they are born to make them more adaptive.

2 1 – 4 months

Infants begin to organize separate reflexes into larger behaviors, most of which are centered on their own bodies.

Sensorimotor Substages

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Sub Age Description

3 4 – 8 months

Infants becoming increasingly interested in the world around them. By the end of this substage, object permanence, the knowledge that objects continue to exist even when they are out of view, typically emerges.

4 8 – 12 months

During this substage, children make the A-Not-B error, the tendency to reach to where objects have been found before, rather than to where they were last hidden.

Object permanence

Objects are tied to infant’s awareness of them– “out of sight, out of mind”

Hidden toy experiment– 4 months: no attempt to search for hidden

object– 4-9 months: visual search for object – 9 months: search for and retrieve hidden object

A-not-B task (Diamond, 1985)– 9 months: A/B error after 1/2 second delay– 12 months: 10 second delay needed to produce

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Piaget’s A-Not-B Task

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Sensorimotor Substages

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Sub Age Description

5 12 – 18 months

Toddlers begin to actively and avidly explore the potential uses to which objects can be put.

6 18 – 24 months

Infants become able to form enduring mental representations. The first sign of this capacity is deferred imitation, the repetition of other people’s behavior a substantial time after it occurred.

Preoperational Stage

A mix of impressive cognitive acquisitions and equally impressive limitations

– A notable acquisition is symbolic representation, the use of one object to stand for another, which makes a variety of new behaviors possible

– A major limitation is egocentrism, the tendency to perceive the world solely from one’s own point of view

– A related limitation is centration, the tendency to focus on a single, perceptually striking feature of an object or event

– Preoperational children also lack of understanding of the conservation concept, the idea that merely changing the appearance of objects does not change their key properties

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Piaget’s Three-Mountain Task

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Egocentric Conversations

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The Balance Scale: An Example of Centration

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Procedures Used to Test Conservation

Concrete Operational Stage

Children begin to reason logically about the world

They can solve conservation problems, but their successful reasoning is largely limited to concrete situations

Thinking systematically remains difficult

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Inhelder and Piaget’s Pendulum Problem

The task is to compare the motions of longer and shorter strings, with lighter and heavier weights attached, in order to determine the influence of weight, string length, and dropping point on the time it takes for the pendulum to swing back and forth

Children below age 12 usually perform unsystematic experiments and draw incorrect conclusions

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Formal Operational Stage

Cognitive development culminates in the ability to think abstractly and to reason hypothetically

Individuals can imagine alternative worlds and reason systematically about all possible outcomes of a situation

Piaget believed that the attainment of the formal operations stage, in contrast to the other stages, is not universal

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Implications for Education

Piaget’s view of children’s cognitive development suggests that children’s distinctive ways of thinking at different ages need to be considered in deciding how best to teach them

In addition, because children learn by mentally and physically interacting with the environment, relevant physical activities, accompanied by questions that call attention to the lessons of the activities, are important in educational practice

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Critique of Piaget’s Theory

Although Piaget’s theory remains highly influential, some weaknesses are now apparent

– The stage model depicts children’s thinking as being more consistent than it is

– Infants and young children are more cognitively competent than Piaget recognized

Object permanence in 3-month-olds (Bower, 1974)

Number conservation in 4 year olds (McGarrigle & Donaldson, 1974)

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Critique of Piaget’s Theory

– Piaget’s theory understates the contribution of the social world to cognitive development

Piaget’s tasks are culturally biasedSchooling and literacy affect rates of development

– e.g. Greenfield’s study of the Wolof

Formal operational thinking is not universal– e.g. Gladwin’s study of the Polynesian islanders

– Piaget’s theory is vague about the cognitive processes that give rise to children’s thinking and about the mechanisms that produce cognitive growth

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