I.
Piaget's constructivist approach
Cognition-- activity of knowing and through which knowledge
is acquired
Piaget’s
focus on mistakes and stages
Genetic
epistemology-- branch of philosophy that studies how one comes to know the
world
Clinical
method-- flexible question-and-answer technique sometimes criticized as not
standardized
A. What is Intelligence?
Basic
life function that facilitates adaptation to environment
a. newborns enter world with sense and reflexes
and are active agents in
knowledge
b. knowledge in form of schema--mental cognitive
structures
c. schema become more sophisticated with
development (organized
patterns of thought or action)
d. more sophisticated schema allow for better
adaptation
B. How Does Intelligence Develop?
1. Organization-- combining schema into new and
complex schema
2. Adaptation-- adjusting to the demands of the
environment
a. assimilation-- interpret new experiences
using existing schema
b. accommodation-- modify existing schema to fit
new experience
c. cognitive disequilibrium-- mental conflict
cased when we fail to
understand
3. Constructivism-- theory that children
“construct reality” and actively create
knowledge from their own experiences using
assimilation and accommodation
4. Four distinct stages resulting from
interaction of biological maturation and
experience
a. sensorimotor stage (0-2 years)
b. preoperational stage (2-7 years)
c. concrete operations (7-11 years)
d. formal operations (11 and beyond)
II.
The infant
Sensorimotor
stage-- know world through senses and actions
Behavioral
schema patterns of actions
A. Substages of the Sensorimotor Stage
1. Substage 1:
Reflexive activity (birth to 1 month)
based
on innate reflexes
2. Substage 2:
Primary circular reactions (1 to 4 months)
repeat
interesting acts centered on own body
3.
Substage 3: Secondary circular reactions
(4 to 8 months)
repeat
interesting acts centered on object
4. Substage 4:
Coordination of secondary schema (8 to 12 months)
combine
actions to solve simple problems
5. Substage 5:
Tertiary circular reactions (12 to 18 months)
experiment
with new ways to solve problems
6. Substage 6:
Beginning of thought (18 months to 2 years)
begin
to solve problems mentally
B. The Development of Object Permanence
1. Object permanence-- understanding objects
exist when they leave presence
2. Develops gradually over sensorimotor period
partially
mastered by Substage 4
3. Commit A, not B, error-- looking for object
where last seen, not new place
4. In Substage 5 continue to struggle with
invisible displacements
5. Fully developed by 18 months or so
6. Piaget may have underestimated timing of
acquisition of object permanence
a. Baillargeon and colleagues found early
evidence of object permanence
using looking task
b. at 2 1/2 months infants on tracking task do
not show object permanence
c. at 3 months have acquired the skill
7. Research on children with spinal muscular
atrophy (SMA) provides insight
into process of object permanence
a. infants with SMA have normal IQ but severe
muscle problems
b. SMA children are slower to reach for objects
i. slower
reaching allows for longer thinking and SMA kids do
better
on object permanence tasks
ii.
results indicate that task conditions
like interval between seeing
and
searching for hidden object may impact behavior
8. Data supports some of Piaget’s ideas about
object permanence
important to distinguish between
looking and reaching
C. The Emergence of Symbols
1. Crowing acquisition during sensorimotor stage
2. Acquire symbolic capacity-- use images/words
to represent
objects/experiences
III. The
child
A.
The Preoperational Stage (Roughly Age 2 to 7 Years)
1. More sophisticated symbolic capacity
a. imaginary companions-- pretend friends
created by young children
(normal)
b. perceptual salience-- focus on the obvious
features of object or
situation leads to children being fooled
by appearance
2. Lack of conservation
a. conservation-- properties of object do not
always vary when
change occurs
problems
of conservation-of-liquid-quantity task
b. unable to decenter-- focus on two dimensions
simultaneously
c. centration-- tend to focus on single aspect
of problem
d. reversibility-- process of mental undoing
i. lack
of reversibility leads to difficulty on conservation task
ii.
irreversibility-- cannot engage in
reversibility
e. transformation thought-- ability to
conceptualize transformation
f. preoperational thinker engages in static
thought-- thought fixated on end
state not transformation into another
state
3. Egocentrism-- tendency to view world solely
from one’s own perspective
often
assume that if they know something other people do too
4. Difficulty with classification
lack
class inclusion-- logical understanding that parts are included in the
whole
5. Did Piaget underestimate the preschool child?
a. Gelman (1972) used simplified
conservation-of-number task with beads
evidence
that children can perform earlier than Piaget believed
b. classification skills are found in young
children that include prompting
c. ability to think at higher levels than Piaget
thought, but mostly on
simple tasks
B. The Concrete Operations Stage
1. Concrete operations stage--mastering many
logical operations lacking in
preoperational thinkers (roughly ages
7-11)
2. Conservation
a. ability to solve conservation tasks improves
i. can
decenter-- can mentally juggle two dimensions at once
ii.
acquire reversibility of thought
iii.
can engage in transformational thought
b. horizontal decalage-- different skills within
stage occur at different
times
3. Seriation and transitivity
a. seriation-- mentally order objects along
quantifiable dimension
b. transitivity-- understand logical
relationship of objects in a series
4. Other advances
a. class inclusion-- understand that two
subclasses can be in a whole
b. can engage in mathematical operations
IV.
The adolescent
A. The Formal Operations Stage
1. Formal operations-- can mentally manipulate
abstract objects/concepts (age 11
or older)
2. Hypothetical and abstract thinking
a. deal with contrary
b. not bound by reality
c. thought is more abstract
3. Problem solving
a. systematic and scientific (less trial and
error)
b. hypothetical-deductive reasoning-- reasoning
from general ideas to
specific implications
vary
factors while holding other constant
4. Progress toward mastery
a. gradual transition into formal operations
b. early versus late aspects of formal operations
thinking
c. Piaget’s claim that intuitive reasoning is
replaced by scientific
reasoning not supported
two
forms of reasoning-intuitive and scientific- coexist in older
thinkers
d. ability to decontextualize-- separate prior knowledge from task at hand
e. progress slow, but today’s teens may be
better able to solve formal
tasks than teens from past generations
B. Implications of Formal Thought
1. Good news-- identity, complex thought,
understanding others
2. Bad news-- confusion, rebellion, and idealism
a. adolescent egocentrism (Elkind)-- ignorance
of perspective of others
b. imaginary audience-- hypothesized audience
(self-consciousness)
c. personal fable-- feeling of absolute
uniqueness (no one understands
them)
3. Unable to link between adolescent egocentrism
and formal thought
imaginary
audience fear may be due to real peers and consequences
V.
The adult
A. Limitations in Adult Cognitive Performance
Half
of college students and adults lack mastery of formal operations
a. lack of expertise in a domain of knowledge
hurts adult responding
b. strongest performance in area of own
expertise
B. Growth Beyond Formal Operations?
1. Postformal thought-- term for logic beyond
formal thinking
2. Relativistic thinking-- realizing
understanding subjective to knower
a. absolutist-- assumes truth line in nature and
is only one truth
b. relativist-- problem can be viewed in
multiple ways and one’s
assumptions influence the “truth”
c. Perry found changes in college students
i. students
originally look for the answer to a question
ii.
take position that any position is as
good as another
iii.
able to make commitments to positions
d. advances in thought
i. concrete
thinker-- focus on objects
ii.
formal thinker-- mentally manipulate
ideas
iii.
postformal thinker-- manipulate whole
systems of ideas
iv.
postformal thinking seen in a minority
of adults
C. Aging and Cognitive Skills
Poorer performance on Piagetian
tasks of older cohorts due to several factors
a. lack of motivation to solve the tasks
b. difference in problem solving style
c. poorest performance on laboratory and
unfamiliar tasks
VI.
Piaget in perspective
A. Piaget's Contributions
Giant
in the field of human development
a. stimulated research
b. showed infants active in own development
using processes of
assimilation and accommodation
c. some logical processes of preschoolers explained
d. accurate basic description of
cognitive-developmental sequences
B. Challenges to Piaget
1. Underestimating young minds
2. Failing to distinguish between competence and
performance
a. failure does not necessarily mean lack of
competence
b. overemphasized the idea that knowledge is
all-or-nothing
3. Wrongly claiming that broad stages of
development exist
ignores
idea of domain specific knowledge
4. Failing to adequately explain development
vague
description of how development comes about
5. Giving limited attention to social influences
on cognitive development
VII. Vygotsky's
sociocultural perspective
A. Lev Vygotsky
1. Born 1896 (same year as Piaget)
2. Active scholar during 1920s and 30s
3. Work banned by Russian government
4. Died at age 38
5. Basic argument-- cognitive growth occurs
in a sociocultural context and
evolves out of the child's social
interactions
B. Culture and Thought
1. Society precedes the individual
environment
provides conditions that allow for the emergence of thinking
2. Each culture has own impact
children
raised in small villages have similar answers, children in urban
setting
have different answers
3. Knowledge depends on social experience
C. Social Interaction and Thought
1. Zone of proximal development-- gap between
what can accomplish alone
versus with assistance of more skilled
partner
a. knowledge not fixed (cannot be tested by
single test)
b. upper limit of knowledge moves in response to
cultural change
2. Guided participation-- scaffolding of
involvement in culturally relevant
activities rejects Piaget’s view of
children as independent explorers
D. The Tools of Thought
1. “Tools” used to assist thinking
2. Language
(spoken and written) is a key tool
a. disagreed with Piaget’s emphasis on
egocentric nature of speech
b. private speech-- speech to self that guides
own thought and behavior
i. varies
with age and task
ii.
more frequent in open-ended activities
iii.
intellectually capable children more
likely to engage in private
speech
iv.
metacognitive based private speech
contributes to effective
problem-solving
c. social speech-- conversation; inner speech--
silent verbal thought
E. Evaluation of Vygotsky
1. Placed needed emphasis on role of social
environment on cognitive
development
2. Too much emphasis on social interactions