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Cognitive Develepment - Fundamentals of Psychology 2 - Lecture 2. The views expressed in this presentation are those of the individual Simon Bignell and not University of Derby.
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1Fundamentals of Psychology 2 (4PS038)
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Simon Bignell
Psychology, School of Science
Unit 1: Developmental Psychology
Cognitive Development
Spring 2010
Lecture 2
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Simon Bignell
Psychology, School of Science
Learning outcomes
On completion of the module you will be able to:• Demonstrate an understanding of empirical
research and theories in:– Developmental Psychology– Abnormal Psychology– Cognitive Psychology
• Demonstrate an ability to present, explain and summarise information.
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The module teamModule Lecturers• Simon Bignell: Room N208; Telephone: 01332 593043; email:
[email protected] (Module Leader)
• Anna Maria DiBetta: Room N208; Telephone: 01332 593080; email: [email protected]
• Lovemore Nyatanga: Room N204a; Telephone: 01332 593057; email: [email protected]
Module Seminar Leaders
Above plus the following Post-Graduate Teaching Assistants• Atiya Kamal: Room N302; email: [email protected]• Lauren Kelly: Room N302; email: [email protected]
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Simon Bignell
Psychology, School of Science
Recommended textbooks
• Passer, M, Smith, R., Holt, N., Bremmer, A., Sutherland, E. and Vliek, M. (2008). Psychology: The science of mind and behaviour, London: McGraw Hill.
Additional / Alternative texts:• Unit 1: Developmental Psychology:
– Siegler, R, DeLoache, J.S. & Eisenberg, N. (2006) How Children Develop (2nd Ed.) NY: Worth.
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Simon Bignell
Psychology, School of Science
Components of the module
Unit 1: Developmental Psychology: • Cognitive development (SB)
• The development of social relations (SB)
• The development of the self (SB)
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• Developmental psychology studies the biological, physical, psychological, and behavioural patterns of growth and changes that occur throughout life.
Developmental Psychology
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Major Issues and Methods
• Four Broad Issues: 1. Nature and Nurture: to what extent is our
development the product of heredity (nature) and environment (nurture)?• How do nature and nurture interact?
2. Continuity versus Discontinuity: is development continuous and gradual, or is it discontinuous, progressing through qualitatively distinct stages?
3. Stability versus Change: do our characteristics remain consistent as we age?
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Simon Bignell
Psychology, School of Science
Major Issues and Methods
• Four Broad Issues (cont.): 4. Critical and Sensitive Periods: are some
experiences especially important at particular ages?• Critical Period: an age range during which
certain experiences must occur for development to proceed normally
• Sensitive Period: an optimal range for certain experiences, but if those experiences occur at another time, normal development is still possible
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Psychology, School of Science
Major Issues and Methods
• Cross-Sectional Design: compares people of different ages at the same point in time– Example: we may administer an IQ test to a
group of 10-, 20-, and 30-year-olds– Allows data from many age groups to be
collected relatively quickly– Problem: cohort effects - differences in
historical periods in which people grew up
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Simon Bignell
Psychology, School of Science
Major Issues and Methods
• Longitudinal Design: repeatedly tests the same cohort as it grows older– Example: we may administer an IQ test to a group of
10-year-olds; we retest the same group every five years
– Extremely time-consuming– People may drop out of the study over time
• Also…Sequential Design: combines the cross-sectional and longitudinal approaches– Most comprehensive– Costly and time-consuming
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Simon Bignell
Psychology, School of Science
Major Issues and Methods
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• Physical and motor development follows several biological principles:
– Cephalocaudal principle: Reflects the tendency for development to proceed in a head-to-foot direction. (The head of an infant is disproportionately large because physical growth concentrates first on the head.)
– Proximodistal principle: Development begins along the innermost parts of the body and continues toward the outermost parts. (Thus a fetus’s arms develop before the hands and fingers.)
Physical Development
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• Maturation: the genetically programmed biological process that governs our growth– Infants vary in the age at which they acquire particular skills– Sequence in which skills appear is typically the same across
children
Physical Development
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Physical Development
The adolescent growth spurt can be seen by the rapid increase in height that occurs in males and females at the beginning of puberty.
Source: Data from J.M. Tanner, R.H. Whitehouse, and M. Takaishi, “Standards from Birth to Maturity for Height, Weight, Height Velocity and Weight Velocity” in Archives of Diseases in Childhood, 41, 555-571, 1966.
Hei
ght g
ain
in c
entim
eter
s pe
r ye
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Age in years
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 200
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
22
24
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Cognitive Development
• Jean Piaget– Stage theory of cognitive development
• Lev Vygotsky– Culture significantly affects our cognitive
development• Theory of Mind
– Ability to understand other people’s mental states• Information-Processing Approaches
– Views cognitive development as a continuous, gradual process – The same set of information-processing abilities become more
efficient over time
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Cognitive Development: Piaget’s Stage Model• Piaget’s Stage Model proposed that children’s thinking changes
qualitatively with age– Results from an interaction of the brain’s biological maturation
and personal experiences
• Schemas: organised patterns of thoughts and action– Development occurs as we acquire new schemas and as our
existing schemas become more complex– Disequilibrium: an imbalance between existing schemas and
new experiences
• Assimilation: the process by which new experiences are incorporated into existing schemas
• Accommodation: the process by which new experiences cause existing schemas to change
VIDEO
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Cognitive Development: Piaget’s StagesSwiss psychologist Jean Piaget (1926- 1977) spent over 50 years exploring how a child’s thought processes develops.
Stage Age (Years) Major Characteristics
Sensorimotor
Preoperational
Concrete operational
Formal operational
Birth to 2
2 to 7
7 to 12
12 on
• Infant understands world through sensory and motor experiences
• Achieves object permanence
• Exhibits emergence of symbolic thought
• Child uses symbolic thinking in the form of words
and images to represent objects and experiences• Symbolic thinking enables child to engage in pretend play
• Thinking displays egocentrism, irreversibility, and centration
• Child can think logically about concrete events
• Grasps concepts of conservation and serial ordering
• Adolescent can think more logically, abstractly, and flexibly• Can form hypotheses and systematically test
them
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Cognitive Development: Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage (0 to 2 years)• Infants understand their world primarily through sensory
experiences and physical (motor) interactions with objects.• Motor Skills are reflexive and voluntary, enables infants to explore
the new world around them.– Neonates: Only capable of surprise, pleasure, and distress.– Infancy: Introduces further emotions of anger, shyness, and
fear.– At 9 months: An infant will become anxious when separated
from his or her caregiver.– By 2 years: Infants can display emotions of guilt or of being
ashamed. – Object Permanence: the understanding that an object
continues to exist even when it cannot be seen. VIDEO
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Cognitive Development: Piaget’s Preoperational Stage (2 to 7 years)
• The world is represented symbolically through words and mental images; no understanding of basic mental operations or rules– Rapid language development– Understanding of the past and future– No understanding of Principle of Conservation:
basic properties of objects stay the same even though their outward appearance may change
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Cognitive Development: Piaget’s Concrete Operational (7 to 12 years)
• Children can perform basic mental operations concerning problems that involve tangible (“concrete”) objects and situations– Understand the concept of reversibility– Display less egocentrism– Easily solve conservation problems– Trouble with hypothetical and abstract reasoning
• This stage is characterised by 7 types of conservation:
• number, length, liquid, mass, weight, area, and volume.
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Cognitive Development: Piaget’s Formal Operational Stage (12 + years)
• Individuals are able to think logically and systematically about both concrete and abstract problems, form hypotheses, and test them in a thoughtful way
• Early in this period there is a return to egocentric thought
• Most of previous characteristics discussed have now developed.
• The child shows logical thinking and is able to work through abstract problems and use logic without the presence of concrete manipulation.
• Many adults never attain this stage
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Cognitive Development: Piaget’s Theory• Assessing Piaget’s Theory:
– General cognitive abilities associated with Piaget’s four stages occur in the same order across cultures
– Children acquire many skills and concepts earlier than Piaget believed
– Cognitive development within each stage seems to proceed inconsistently
– Culture influences cognitive development– Cognitive development is more complex and variable than Piaget
proposed– Piaget has been criticised for using difficult questions
• Blank & Rose (1974) The way in which the question is asked is important, when they replicated Piaget experiment the percentage of 6-year olds that could conserve increased.
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• Because Piaget concentrated on the individual child, he failed to consider the effect that the social setting may have on cognitive development.
• According to Russian developmental psychologist Lev Vygotsky, the culture in which we are raised significantly affects our cognitive development.
• The way that adults use language and gestures and the child's experience through social interactions are very influential on cognitive development.
• Cognitive development occurs as a consequence of social interactions in which children work with others to jointly solve problems.
Cognitive Development: Vygotsky
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Cognitive Development: Vygotsky
• Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky): – the difference between what a child can do
independently and what the child can do with assistance from adults or more advanced peers
• Helps us recognise what children will soon be able to do on their own
• Emphasises that we can help move a child’s cognitive development forward, within limits
• Children’s cognitive abilities increase when they encounter information that falls within their ZPD.
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Cognitive Development: Vygotsky
“…what is the zone of proximal development today will be the actual development level tomorrow – that is, what a child can do with assistance toady she will be able to do by herself tomorrow”.
“The zone of proximal development defines those functions that have not yet
matured, but are in the process (of doing so)…”
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Cognitive Development: Theory of Mind• Theory of Mind: a person’s beliefs about the “mind” and the ability to
understand other people’s mental states• The ability to make inferences about others’ representational states
and to predict behaviour accordingly’ (Lewis & Mitchell, 1994)– Studies of lying and deception provide evidence of theory of
mind– Rudimentary understanding develops around age 3 to 4
• It is claimed that children below about 4 years do not have theory of mind
• How do we know?– False belief tests:
• Unexpected transfer test (Wimmer & Perner, 1983)• Deceptive box test (Perner, Leekam & Wimmer, 1987;
Gopnik & Astington, 1988)– Appearance-reality tests:
• Rock-sponge test (Flavell, Flavell & Green, 1983)
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• Information processing: The way in which people take in, use, and store information.– To many developmental psychologists, changes in
information processing account for cognitive development. (Sielgler, 1998; Lacerda, von Hofsten & Heimann, 2001; Cashon & Cohen, 2004.)
– According to this approach, quantitative changes occur in children’s ability to organise and manipulate information.
– Children may become increasingly adept at information processing, similar to a computer program becoming more sophisticated as a programmer modifies it on the basis of experience.
Cognitive Development: Information-Processing Approaches
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• Views cognitive development as a continuous, gradual process – The same set of information-processing abilities
become more efficient over time• As children age:
– Information-search strategies improve– Information-processing speed quickens– Attention span and ability to inhibit impulsive
responses to distracting stimuli also improves
Cognitive Development: Information-Processing Approaches
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Summary
• Cognitive Development– Major Issues and Methods– Physical Development– Piaget– Vygotsky– Theory of Mind– Information-Processing Approaches
