COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT, P

Cognition – Mental processes by

which knowledge is acquired,
elaborated, stored, retrieved, and
used to solve problems.
Cognitive Development – Refers
to the changes that occur in
children’s mental skills and
abilities over time.
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive
Development
 Jean Piaget

• Jean Piaget, Switzerland, died in

1980’s
• His theory describes how children’s
thinking and learning develops
• He believed
– knowledge is built by the child over
time
– children are active learners in their
environment
– knowledge is the result of interaction
between the child and the environment
Cognitive Development

• Knowledge is the result of

interactions:
Child +
Environment +
Understanding
+

Interest =

Learning
 Basic Terminology
• Organization • Adaptation
• Scheme – Assimilation
– Accommodati
on
• Equilibrium
 COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive
Development
Scheme – (Schema for singular,
Schemata for plural)

An organized pattern of thought or

action that one constructs to interpret
some aspect of one’s experience.

Represent the way that people

organize and understand the things
around them.
 COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive
Development
Symbolic schemes – internal mental
symbols that one uses to represent
aspects of experience.

Cognitive operation – an internal

mental activity that one performs on
objects or thoughts.
 Scheme
• Cognitive or mental
structures by which
an individual
intellectually adapts
to and organizes the
environment
• Repeated patterns
of behavior that
develop by trial and
error
• Never stop
changing;
constantly refined
 COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive
Development

Assimilation – The process of

interpreting new experiences by
incorporating them into existing
schemes.
Accommodation – The process of
modifying existing schemes in order
to incorporate or adapt to new
experiences.

Examples….
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive
Development
 How we gain knowledge:
Piaget’s Cognitive
Processes
• Organization is the process by which children
combine existing schemes into new and more
complex intellectual structures.
• Adaptation is an inborn tendency to adjust to the
demands of the environment.
– The goal of adaptation is to adjust to the
environment; this occurs through assimilation
and accommodation.
• Assimilation is the process of interpreting new
experiences by incorporating them into existing
schemes.
• Accommodation is the process of modifying
existing schemes in order to incorporate or adapt to
new experiences.
 Organization

• Schemes also change through a second

process called organization.
• It takes place internally, apart from
direct contact with the environment.
• Once children form new structures,
they start to rearrange them, linking
them with other schemes to create a
strongly interconnected cognitive
system.
 Adaptation
• Adaptation involves building schemes, or
psychological structures, through direct
interaction with the environment.
• According to Piaget, adaptation consists
of two complementary activities:
– Assimilation – using current schemes to
interpret the external world.
– Accommodation – adjusting old
schemes or creating new ones after
noticing that current thinking does not
capture the environment completely.
• Piaget used the term disequalibration to
describe the implementation of
assimilation and accommodation to create
equilibrium between thinking and reality.
 Equilibration/
Equilibrium

• Balance between assimilation and accommodation

• The person faced with understanding a new type of

woman has to deal with situations that can not be fully
handled by existing schemes. This, in Piaget's theory,
creates a state of disequilibrium, or an imbalance
between what is understood and what is encountered.
People naturally try to reduce such imbalances by using
the stimuli that cause the disequilibrium and
developing new schemes or adapting old ones until
equilibrium is restored. This process of restoring
balance is called equilibration. According to Piaget,
learning depends on this process. When equilibrium is
upset, children have the opportunity to grow and develop.
 Equilibration/
Equilibrium

• Teachers can take advantage of equilibration by

creating situations that cause disequilibrium and
therefore pique students interest/curiosity/discomfort. To
resolve any disequilibrium, students must
accommodate a new perspective and grow in
understanding. However, not all students can detect
the discrepancies in new words, images, or ideas that
might create disequilibrium. This is a skill that improves
as a person's cognitive abilities develop.
 Piagetian Example
Concept
Toddler who has
Equilibrium never seen anything
fly but birds thinks
that all flying objects
are birds
Seeing an airplane
Assimilation flying prompts the
child to call it a birdie
Start
Child experiences
Accommoda conflict upon realizing
tion 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
Forms hierarchal
Organizatio
 How We Gain
Knowledge:
Piaget's Cognitive
Processes (cont.)
 COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

Stage 1: Sensorimotor Stage (Birth-2yrs)
Stage 2: Preoperational Stage (2-7yrs)
Stage 3: Concrete Operations (7-11yrs)
Stage 4: Formal Operations (11-on)

Invariant developmental sequence!

The sensorimotor stage (Birth-
2 years)

• The 6 Developmental stages of

Problem-Solving 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 (discovered by chance and
repeat for pleasure )
Sensorimotor stage
cont’d
4. Coordination of secondary
schemes (8-12 mon.) combining acts
to solve simple problems. (is when
infants begin to coordinate tow or
more actions to achieve simple
objectives.)

• 5. Tertiary circular reactions

(12-18 mon.) experimenting to find
new ways of to solve problems. an
exploratory scheme in which the
infant devises a new method of acting
on objects to reproduce interesting
results.
6. Symbolic problem solving (18-
24 mon.) inner experimentation
without relaying on trial-and-
error experimentation
(Inner experimentation is the
ability to solve simple problems
on a mental, or symbolic, level
without having to rely on trial-
and-error experimentation)
 Sensorimotor Substages

Substage Age Description

Simple Birt Coordinates
h
reflexes mon - 1 sensations,
th actions
First 1-4 Coordination of
habits, mon sensations,
primary ths habits, and
circular primary circular
reactions reactions; body
still main focus
Secondar 4 - 8 More object-
y circular mon oriented, repeats
reactions ths interesting/
pleasurable acts
Coordinat 8- Coordination of
ion of 12 schemes/touch/
secondar mon vision, eye-hand
y circular
Figure ths coordination,
6.1reactions intentional acts
 COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
• Development of imitation
– Deferred imitation

(18-24 mo.) is the ability to reproduce

the behavior of an absent model.
 Piaget stage of object
permanence

• Out of the
sight , out
of the
mind
 Understanding
Physical Reality
• Object Permanence
– Understanding that objects and
events continue to exist even when
they cannot be seen, heard, or
touched
– One of infant’s most important
achievements, assessed by
violation of expectations
– Understanding of causality
 Object Permanence

(a) (b)

Fig.
6.2
 COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive
Development
Object Permanence – knowledge
that an object continues to exist
independent of our seeing, hearing,
touching, tasting or smelling it!
Stage 1 – Tracks, then ignores
Stage 2 – Looks where it
disappeared
Stage 3 – Search for partially
hidden
Stage 4 – Search for objects that
disappear in last place found
Stage 5 – Follows series of visible
displacements
Stage 6 – Fully developed
Stage 1 and 2 (birth to 4
month)
• Baby look toward the source of
sound they hear.
• However ,since they did not
actively search for an object
when it disappeared ,but instead
seemed quickly to turn their
attention elsewhere .
• Out of the sight out of the mind
OUT OF THE SIGHT
OUT OF THE MIND
 Stage 3 (4 to 8 month)

• at this stage Child has three

observation,
• 1)object that disappear
completely seem quickly to be
forgotten.
• 2)appearance of the same object
in several places cause no
visible consternation.
• 3)child reach the object if its
partly hidden.
 Stage 4 (8 to 12 month)

• Object exist if its out of the side

,
• Baby begins to search hidden
object.
• A NOT –B- ERROR
Baby reach for an object in the
last place they found it even
when they have seen it to
moved to a new location.
A NOT B ERROR