General Psychology Unit 4
Development
Cognitive development
• Refers to the normal development of thought and intellectual processes; imagination, reasoning,
perception, problem solving, etc.
• At some point after conception, we all gain consciousness – we become aware of ourselves and
our surroundings, and our brain and our thinking gets better
Piaget
• The goal of the theory is to explain the mechanisms and processes by which the infant, and then
the child, develops into an individual who can reason and think using hypotheses
• To Piaget, cognitive development was a progressive reorganisation of mental processes as a
result of biological maturation and environmental experience
• Children construct an understanding of the world around them, then experience discrepancies
between what they already know and what they discover in their environment
1. Schemas: an idea of what something is and how to deal with it
2. Adaption processes to gain and change schemata: assimilation and accommodation
3. Stages of development: sensori-motor stage (birth to 2 years) - pre-operational stage (2 to 7
years) - Concrete operational stage (7 to 11 years) - Formal operational stage (11 years and up)
Schemas
• A psychological structure that contains the knowledge, rules, and strategies children use to
understand and explore the world
• As experiences happen, this new information is used to modify, add or to change previous
existing schemas
• During the first 2 years of life, intelligence is dominated by sensorimotor schemes, which are
action patterns such as reaching, grasping, or tasting
• When children transition from infancy to early childhood, they shift from knowing the world
through physical action to thinking about things inside their heads
• Now children have cognitive schemas, which are mental symbols (thoughts) and procedures that
guide their interactions with the world
Assimilation
• Integrating a new experience into an existing schema or way of understanding the world
• If a toddler has a schema for horse but has never seen a deer before, she may call the first deer
she sees a “horsey.”; she wants to fit within her understanding
Accommodation
• Modifying a schema or way of understanding the world, to adjust to a new experience
• Soon enough the toddler will realize that the deer are not just horses, and she adjusts her
schema, then she will be able to tell the difference between the two
Sensorimotor stage (0-2)
• The stage in Piaget’s theory, from birth until approximately 2 years of age, when infants
coordinate sensory systems, learn to keep mental representations of objects in mind, and begin to
think through the results of actions before performing them
• Change from knowing the world by sensing and acting to the ability to manipulate mental symbols
, General Psychology Unit 4
• Object permanence is the ability to understand that objects continue to exist in space and time
even when they are not currently being perceived
• Toddlers will have to see something to know that it exists, for example if you toss a blanket over
their dummy, they may think that it completely vanished
Preoperational stage (2-7)
• Piaget’s second stage when children are illogical because their thinking is centred (focused on
one aspect of a problem), appearance-bound (focused on what is perceptually obvious) static
(considering only the current situation), and irreversible (incapable of reversing changes)
• Egocentrism is the inability on the part of a child in the preoperational stage of development to
see any point of view other than their own
• The concept of conservation occurs when the child understands that changing the form of a
substance or object does not change its amount, overall volume, or mass
• This accomplishment occurs during the operational stage of development between ages 7 and 11
• Children centre on irrelevant dimensions and fail to mentally reverse the movement of the object
• During this stage, which occurs from age 4-7, the child begins to develop logic or reasoning
• One of the processes that develops is that of centration, which refers to the tendency to focus on
only one aspect of a situation, problem, or object
• Animism is the belief that objects that are inanimate (not living) have feelings, thoughts, and have
the mental characteristics and qualities of living things
• Animistic thinking is very common (if not ubiquitous) in young children and Piaget noted that this
is a characteristic of the preoperational stage of childhood development
• Children frequently believe that their toys have feelings
Concrete operational stage (7-12)
• A mode of thinking when children think more logically and flexibly about concrete materials
• Concrete operational children have difficulty handling abstract concepts
• They cannot think in the abstract, however, in math, a child will use their fingers to add or subtract
• During this stage, the child shows increased use of logical thinking
• Reversibility refers to the ability to recognize that numbers or objects can be changed and
returned to their original condition
• For example, during this stage, a child understands that a favourite ball that deflates is not gone
but can be filled with air again and put back into play
• Decentration refers to the ability to consider multiple aspects of a situation
• For example, when asked to choose between two lollipops, a child might choose based on how
one flavour is better than the other even though the other is the same size and colour
Formal operational stage (11-12)
• In Piaget’s theory the capacity for increasingly abstract thought that emerges around 11 to 12
years of age (shift from things to ideas)
• Formal operational children can engage in deductive reasoning (generate and test hypotheses)
and formal propositional logic (the ability to understand possible combinations of variables)
• Think about abstract ideas, ideas that are not grounded in concrete reality
• Teens move beyond the here and now to consider “what is possible” and they generate new
knowledge by internal reflection
• Individuals can speculate about future and develop problem-solving strategies for planning events
Criticisms
• Critics argue that it oversimplifies things and being too rigid in how it classifies it by age
• Today’s researchers have found of the abilities in earlier ages
• Hundreds of studies have documented that children understand more than Piaget gave credit for
• Adults do not perform nearly as well as Piaget predicted they should, and children show many
mental competencies earlier than Piaget thought
Development
Cognitive development
• Refers to the normal development of thought and intellectual processes; imagination, reasoning,
perception, problem solving, etc.
• At some point after conception, we all gain consciousness – we become aware of ourselves and
our surroundings, and our brain and our thinking gets better
Piaget
• The goal of the theory is to explain the mechanisms and processes by which the infant, and then
the child, develops into an individual who can reason and think using hypotheses
• To Piaget, cognitive development was a progressive reorganisation of mental processes as a
result of biological maturation and environmental experience
• Children construct an understanding of the world around them, then experience discrepancies
between what they already know and what they discover in their environment
1. Schemas: an idea of what something is and how to deal with it
2. Adaption processes to gain and change schemata: assimilation and accommodation
3. Stages of development: sensori-motor stage (birth to 2 years) - pre-operational stage (2 to 7
years) - Concrete operational stage (7 to 11 years) - Formal operational stage (11 years and up)
Schemas
• A psychological structure that contains the knowledge, rules, and strategies children use to
understand and explore the world
• As experiences happen, this new information is used to modify, add or to change previous
existing schemas
• During the first 2 years of life, intelligence is dominated by sensorimotor schemes, which are
action patterns such as reaching, grasping, or tasting
• When children transition from infancy to early childhood, they shift from knowing the world
through physical action to thinking about things inside their heads
• Now children have cognitive schemas, which are mental symbols (thoughts) and procedures that
guide their interactions with the world
Assimilation
• Integrating a new experience into an existing schema or way of understanding the world
• If a toddler has a schema for horse but has never seen a deer before, she may call the first deer
she sees a “horsey.”; she wants to fit within her understanding
Accommodation
• Modifying a schema or way of understanding the world, to adjust to a new experience
• Soon enough the toddler will realize that the deer are not just horses, and she adjusts her
schema, then she will be able to tell the difference between the two
Sensorimotor stage (0-2)
• The stage in Piaget’s theory, from birth until approximately 2 years of age, when infants
coordinate sensory systems, learn to keep mental representations of objects in mind, and begin to
think through the results of actions before performing them
• Change from knowing the world by sensing and acting to the ability to manipulate mental symbols
, General Psychology Unit 4
• Object permanence is the ability to understand that objects continue to exist in space and time
even when they are not currently being perceived
• Toddlers will have to see something to know that it exists, for example if you toss a blanket over
their dummy, they may think that it completely vanished
Preoperational stage (2-7)
• Piaget’s second stage when children are illogical because their thinking is centred (focused on
one aspect of a problem), appearance-bound (focused on what is perceptually obvious) static
(considering only the current situation), and irreversible (incapable of reversing changes)
• Egocentrism is the inability on the part of a child in the preoperational stage of development to
see any point of view other than their own
• The concept of conservation occurs when the child understands that changing the form of a
substance or object does not change its amount, overall volume, or mass
• This accomplishment occurs during the operational stage of development between ages 7 and 11
• Children centre on irrelevant dimensions and fail to mentally reverse the movement of the object
• During this stage, which occurs from age 4-7, the child begins to develop logic or reasoning
• One of the processes that develops is that of centration, which refers to the tendency to focus on
only one aspect of a situation, problem, or object
• Animism is the belief that objects that are inanimate (not living) have feelings, thoughts, and have
the mental characteristics and qualities of living things
• Animistic thinking is very common (if not ubiquitous) in young children and Piaget noted that this
is a characteristic of the preoperational stage of childhood development
• Children frequently believe that their toys have feelings
Concrete operational stage (7-12)
• A mode of thinking when children think more logically and flexibly about concrete materials
• Concrete operational children have difficulty handling abstract concepts
• They cannot think in the abstract, however, in math, a child will use their fingers to add or subtract
• During this stage, the child shows increased use of logical thinking
• Reversibility refers to the ability to recognize that numbers or objects can be changed and
returned to their original condition
• For example, during this stage, a child understands that a favourite ball that deflates is not gone
but can be filled with air again and put back into play
• Decentration refers to the ability to consider multiple aspects of a situation
• For example, when asked to choose between two lollipops, a child might choose based on how
one flavour is better than the other even though the other is the same size and colour
Formal operational stage (11-12)
• In Piaget’s theory the capacity for increasingly abstract thought that emerges around 11 to 12
years of age (shift from things to ideas)
• Formal operational children can engage in deductive reasoning (generate and test hypotheses)
and formal propositional logic (the ability to understand possible combinations of variables)
• Think about abstract ideas, ideas that are not grounded in concrete reality
• Teens move beyond the here and now to consider “what is possible” and they generate new
knowledge by internal reflection
• Individuals can speculate about future and develop problem-solving strategies for planning events
Criticisms
• Critics argue that it oversimplifies things and being too rigid in how it classifies it by age
• Today’s researchers have found of the abilities in earlier ages
• Hundreds of studies have documented that children understand more than Piaget gave credit for
• Adults do not perform nearly as well as Piaget predicted they should, and children show many
mental competencies earlier than Piaget thought
