Course 1.5 Changing man
Problem 4 – Cognitive development
Cognition: The activity of knowing and the inner processes and products of mind through which
knowledge is acquired. Cognitive processes are crucial for survival.
Cognitive development: The change of mental abilities (attending, remembering, symbolizing,
categorizing, planning, reasoning, problem solving, creating, fantasizing)
PIAGET’S COGNITIVE-DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY
Genetic epistemology: Experimental study of the origins and the development of
knowledge. Genetic means essentially developmental. He used large samples of children
(clinical method) and question/answer techniques.
Constructivist approach: Children gained knowledge by acting or otherwise operating on
objects and events to discover their properties.
PIAGET’S DEFINITIONS-IDEAS ON COGNITIVE CHANCE
At first cognition/constructing the understanding of the word develops by transformation,
refinement of psychological structures as:
Schemes: organized ways of making sense of experience that change with age. At first they
are sensorimotor action patterns. {Dropping the object. It becomes creative at 18 months.}
Mental representations: Internal depictions of information that the mind can manipulate.
This approach helps for the transition from sensorimotor approach to a more thinking
before acting.
1. Images: Mental pictures of objects, people and spaces
2. Concepts: Categories in which similar objects or events are grouped together.
PROCESSES FOR THE CHANGE IN COGNITION
Adaptation: Involves building schemes through direct interaction with the environment.
Adjusting to demand of the environment. It consists of:
1. Assimilation: Use of current schemes to interpret the external world. Interpretation
in terms of existing schemes. E.g. seeing an airplane and call it as a birdie, horse is
doggie.
2. Accommodation: Create new schemes or adjust the old ones after noticing that our
current way of thinking does not capture the environment completely. Better
puzzling of experience. E.g. noticing that the birdie has no feathers and that cause
conflict disequilibrium and by accommodation equilibrium is restored.
→Equilibration: It is the back and forth process between equilibrium (comfortable state)
and disequilibrium (cognitive discomfort). Every time equilibration occurs more effective
schemes are produced.
, Course 1.5 Changing man
Problem 4 – Cognitive development
Organization: A process that occurs internally, apart from direct contact with the
environment. Children develop new schemes, rearrange them and linking them with other
schemes to create an interconnected cognitive system. Forms a hierarchy superordinate
class (flying objects), subordinate classes (birds, airplanes).
PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
It includes all cognitive changes
Invariant sequence: A series of developments that occur in a particular order because the
sequence is necessary for the development. All children go through the same stages. Stages
cannot be skipped.
The stages are universal
Sensorimotor stage (birth-2 years)
The period when infants start to coordinate sensory inputs and motor capabilities,
forming behavioral schemes that let them act on the environment and acquire knowledge
through that. From reflexive to reflective human beings that have learned many things
about themselves their companions, objects and events. It has six substages:
1. Reflex Activity (0-1 month)
During that period the infant acts mostly on innate reflexes, trying to use new objects to
display their reflexes. It is the primitive adaptions that show the beginning of cognitive
growth.
2. Primary Circular Reactions (1-4 months)
Simple repetitive acts that are always centered on the infant’s own body. They are
developed when the child discovers by chance that he has the ability to control and elicit a
pleasurable response linked to the basic needs. They are satisfying so that’s why they repeat
them over and over.
3. Secondary Circular Reactions (4-8 months)
A pleasurable response centered on an external object that is discovered by chance and
performed over and over because of the pleasure that it brings. It cannot be considered
intentional behavior because it was discovered by chance. (?)
4. Coordination of secondary Reactions (8-12 months)
It is the stage when intentional behavior appears. The infant starts to coordinate two or
more actions to achieve an objective. This is the first sign of goal directed behavior. E.g. the
lift up the cushion to grab the toy that is underneath (means end action sequencing). The
act of lifting the cushion is not pleasurable or a response by chance.
They start to develop the object concept far from mastering object permanence
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