Cognitive development

How children’s thinking changes as they grow older.

Schemas

Is that a real person?

No and it’s not made from chocolate either

When a piece of information is acquired, it gets added and stored (assimilation & accommodation)

Piaget’s Theory!!

• The child’s cognitive development is…..

Child goes through a set of stages in development in a FIXED ORDER!!!

Same for all children everywhere!!

“Children are scientists” – children are actively interacting with the environment, discovering and making sense of the world from birth.

There are 4 stages to my cognitive development theory. What are they?

The Sensori Motor Stage!!! (0-2)BODY SCHEMAS – the baby realises that it exists and starts to be able to recognise itself in the mirror or in a photo

MOTOR COORDINATION – infant learns to coordinate its movements a bit, e.g. hand to mouth for food

OBJECT PERMANANCE – begins to know that an objects still exists even when they can’t see it, after 8 months they will begin to look for hidden objects.

Pre Operational Stage (2-7)

ANIMISM – Children treat objects as though they are alive!!!

REVERSIBILTY – can’t work backwards, e.g. Ben Do you have a sister? Yes – Frogmella. Does Frogmella have a sister? Nope.

EGOCENTRISM – can’t see someone else’s point of view. Three mountains experiment.

Decentering – when egocentrism stops and also means that a child can recognise that an object has more than one feature, e.g. big and yellow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OinqFgsIbh0Watch the three mountains

Concrete operational stage (7-11)

Linguistic Humour – double meanings. A horse walks into a bar, Barman says ‘why the long face?’

Seriation – Ability to put things in rank order

Small – large, young to old

Conservation – don’t know that quantity stays the same when you rearrange objects

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLj0IZFLKvg

The formal operational stage (11+)

Ability to solve sophisticated problems, reasoning skills.

Too fixed and rigid. Children reach different parts of different stages and can go back and forth!!!

50% of adults make to it the formal operational!!

Underestimate effect of support

Ignored different types of thinking

Cultural differences, thinking doesn’t develop in same way everywhere

NO how and why!!!!!

Vygotsky!!

• Innate by influenced by UPBRINGING

• Cultural tools

• Apprentice

• Zone of Proximal development

• Scaffolding

Cognitive bingo

• Piaget Vygotsky ZPD apprentice• Scientist cultural tools scaffolding• Conservation egocentrism• Linguistic humour seriation

animism• Preoperational concrete operational• Formal operational sensori motor• Invariant universal

Core study: Conservation of Number (1952)

Cross sectional study – compared children of different ages.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLj0IZFLKvgWatch this video from 30seconds. The counter task only – this is the procedure

FINDINGS - Pre operational stage (2-7)children fail the task and say there are more counters. Children in concrete operational stage (7-11)pass the test and know that the counters are the same just stretched out.

Limitations of Conservation Study

• Stupid question!!!

• Naughty teddy – 60%

• Sample size!!

Applications to real life!

Piaget

1. Readiness

2. Discovery learning (teacher is a facilitator)

3. Peer support (helps decentring)

Vygotsky

1. Role of teacher (ZPD)

2. Spiral curriculum

3. Scaffolding