Cognitive Development

Cognitive Development- refers to the development of thinking and reasoning

Egocentric- when a child can only appreciate their own point of view- they believe everybody else sees the world as they do

Object Permanence- understanding that objects not in sight may still exist

Schemas- basic building blocks of knowledge about how the world works

Operations- allows us to combine schemas in a logical and reasonable way. As children grow they begin to carry out more complex operations as their schemas develop and they can begin to imagine hypothetical situations. Schemas and operations are learnt through interaction with the environment 

Sensorimotor                      silly priests cause fights

Pre-operational

Concrete operational

Form operational

1. Sensorimotor= birth- 2 years

babies take in information from the environment through their senses in combination with movement and putting info into schemas in their minds. 

2. Pre-operational= 2-7 years

the child is able to represent objects or events by symbols/signs/images to solve problems. The child now can use language to express ideas whilst the child develops general rules about mental operations. 

3. Concrete operational= 7-11 years 

The child is able to use sophisticated mental operations. The child is decentred (able to take in more than one aspect of a situation and able them to conserve). They think about how the world is rather than how it could be and how it might be- they cannot reason hypothetically. 

4. Form operational= 11 years +

They are governed by logic as they can develop the ability to solve abstract problems. They are able to solve problems scientifically, hypothetically and logically. They can think hypothetically. 

Limitations-

• Not as fixed or rigid as Piaget claimed 
• Not everyone will make it to the formal operational stage
  
• Piaget ignored the different kinds of thinking 

-he argued that children are born with a natural thinking ability

-he argued that cognitive development is a result of nurture

-he argued that children are the apprentices who learn skills of others

-the zone of proximal development is the gap between where we are and where we can be 

-scaffolding is the support work to help the child's development

It is a cross-sectional study which means independent measures; which means two or more groups are compared at one point in time 

Aim- to see whether conservation of numbers changes with time

Procedure- lay out two rows of coins, identical to each other. Then change the layout of the second row by stretching the coins out; then ask the child what has changed. 

Findings- the child said that now there were more coins. Operational stage (2-7 years= boy was 4) understood the rows had the same number of counters.

Conclusion- children in concrete=able to conserve, children in pre-operational cannot conserve

Limitations-

• asking the child the same question twice may confuse the child
• lacked ecological validity- set up in a lab =unrepresentitive
• small sample size= unrepresentative

Piaget- 

• readiness- only move on in tasks when ready
• discovery learning- the child should be active as the child is the scientists and they learn by doing
• peer support- the ability to take others' point of view 
• the teacher is the facilitator- help the child (student) to learn 

Vygotsky-

• the teacher should be actively involved
• spiral curriculum- simple ideas revisited at a harder level
• scaffolding is a support network to help children (students) develop