Piaget's Cognitive Development

• Based on observations of his own children 

• Used clinical interviews once children could talk

• Discussed how the children thought about the problems given to them

• People working for him had to have training of up to one year before they could interview children

• Wanted to learn how they were thinking and not about them giving the right answer

• Children have an active role in their own development

• They construct knowledge through their own experience

• Children are 'little scientists' - trial and error learning through experiments

• Have cognitive adaptations - brain can adapt information that is stored 

• Innate motivation to learn without rewards

• Built into their nature to respond to nurture

• Schemas - internal mental representations

• Children have schema for certain actions that are a pleasurable or non-pleasurable experience

• Assimulation - when a new experience fits into existing schema 

• Accommodation - when a new experience doesn't fit into existing schema, the schema must be adjusted for new understanding

• Drive to maintain a stable equilibrium through a process of constant disequilibrium 

• There are approximate ages for each stage

• Order of the stages never changes

• Transition between the stages is discontinuous

• The same sequence occurs across all cultures

• Once a new way of thinking is acquired, it is used across all contexts

• Sensori-motor

• Pre-operational

• Concrete operational

• Formal operational 

Sensi-motor from 0-2 years

• 0-1 Reflex/spontaneous actions e.g. sucking

• 1-4 Primary circular reactions - focus on self

• 4-10 Secondary circular reactions - focus on objects

• 10-12 Coordinating circular reactions e.g. grasping object and putting it into their mouth

• 12-18 Tertiary circular reactions - more mobility as trial and error learning begins

• 18-24 Internal representations e.g. object permanence

Pre-operational lasts from 2-7 years

• Rapid increase in language and symbolic thought

Cognitive ability limited by:

• Egocentrism - unable to take the perspective of others 
• Conservation - understanding that an object can change shape but its qualities don't change
• Centration - focus on one particular (more obvious) aspect of something 

• Possible underestimation of mental abilities

• Object permanence can occur at 3 months (Bower, 1982)

• Planned actions by 9 months (Willats, 1989)

• Deferred imitation by 6 weeks (Meltzoff and Moore, 1994)

• Piaget claimed there was a lack of logical thought processes

• Questions were complex and unfamiliar (McGarrigle, 1974)

• Situational expectations of adult behaviour (Donaldson, 1978)

• Limited working memory capacity to hold the information (Bryant and Trabasso, 1971)

• In all the adapted studies, correct responses increased

• Concrete operational lasts from 7-11 years

Conservation tasks use methods of:

• Compensation - larger area does not equate to large quantity
• Reversibility - ability to reverse actions to see original state
• De-centration - can consider more than one aspect of a problem 

• Still not able to perform abstract reasoning 

• Formal operational lasts from 11-15 years

• Use systematic problem solving 

• Considers all aspects of problems 

• Can imagine and discuss things never encountered before

• Aware of societal values/issues

• Often only sporadic use of formal methods

• Culturally specific

• Abstract - think more abstractly than children and can solve abstract problems e.g. algebra

• Idealistic - think about what is possible and ideal characteristics for themselves, others and the world

• Logical - think more like scientists in devising plans to solve problems and testing solutions (hypothetical-deductive reasoning)