Cognitive DevelopmentOutline1. Major Approaches to Cognitive DevelopmentSlide 4Slide 5Slide 6Slide 7Slide 8Slide 9Slide 10Slide 11Slide 12Slide 13Cognitive Development in AdulthoodCognitive DevelopmentChapter 13Outline1. Major Approaches to Cognitive Development1. Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development2. Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive Development2. Development of Information-Processing Skills1. Metacognitive Skills and Memory Development3. Neurophysiological Changes in Development1. Increasing Neuronal Complexity2. Maturation of Central Nervous System Structures4. Cognitive Development in Adulthood1. Patterns of Growth and Decline2. Wisdom and Aging1. Major Approaches to Cognitive Development-cognitive development-The investigation of how mental skills build and change with increasing physiological maturity (maturation) and experience (learning)1. Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development•The most comprehensive theory of cognitive development•We can learn as much about children’s intellectual development from examining their incorrect answers to test items as from examining their correct answers1. Major Approaches to Cognitive Development1. Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development•Development occurs in stages that evolve via equilibration, in which children seek a balance (equilibrium) between what they encounter in their environments and cognitive processes and structures they have1. Major Approaches to Cognitive Development1. Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development•Equilibration involves three stages:–Equilibrium•Occurs when child’s existing mode of thought and existing schemas are adequate for confronting and adapting to the challenges of environment–Assimilation•Incorporating new information into the child’s existing schemas–Accommodation•Changing the existing schemas to fit the relevant new information about the environment1. Major Approaches to Cognitive Development1. Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development•Sensorimotor Stage (0-2 years)–Involves increases in the number and the complexity of sensory (input) and motor (output) abilities during infancy–0-9 months – infant cognition seems to focus only on what the infants immediately can perceive through their senses1. Major Approaches to Cognitive Development1. Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development•Sensorimotor Stage (0-2 years)–9 months and older have a sense of object permanence •Knowledge that objects continue to exist even when imperceptible to the infants–Children begin to show signs of representational thought•Child starts to be able to think about people and objects that are not necessarily perceptible at that moment1. Major Approaches to Cognitive Development1. Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development•Preoperational Stage (2 to 6-7 years)–The child begins actively to develop the internal mental representations that started at the end of the sensorimotor stage–Children exhibit centration•A tendency to focus on only one especially noticeable aspect of a complicated object or situation1. Major Approaches to Cognitive Development1. Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development•Concrete-Operational Stage (7-8 to 11-12)–Children become able to manipulate mentally the internal representations that they formed during the preoperational period–Conservation of quantity•The child is able mentally to conserve (keep in mind) a given quantity despite observing changes in the appearance of the object or substance1. Major Approaches to Cognitive Development1. Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development•Formal-Operational Stage (older than 11-12 years)–Children develop mental operations on abstractions and symbols that may not have physical, concrete forms–Children are finally fully able to take on perspectives other than their own, even when they are not working with concrete objects1. Major Approaches to Cognitive Development1. Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive Development•Rediscovered in 1970s and 1980s–Vygotsky emphasized the role of the environment in children’s intellectual development–Internalization•The absorption of knowledge from context•The environment determines what the child internalizes1. Major Approaches to Cognitive Development1. Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive Development•Zone of proximal development (ZPD)–The zone of potential development–The range of potential between a child’s observable level of realized ability (performance) and the child’s underlying latent capacity (competence), which is not directly obvious1. Major Approaches to Cognitive Development1. Vygotsky’s Theory of Cognitive Development•Dynamic assessment environment–The interaction between child and examiner does not end when the child responds–In static testing, when a child gives a wrong answer, the examiner moves on to the next problem–In dynamic assessment, when the child gives a wrong answer, the examiner gives the child a graded sequence of guided hints to facilitate problem solvingCognitive Development in Adulthood•Fluid intelligence–The cognitive-processing skills that enable us to manipulate abstract symbols, as in mathematics•Crystallized intelligence–Our stored knowledge, which is largely declarative, such as vocabulary, but also may be procedural, such as the expertise of a master chess player•Although crystallized intelligence is higher, on average, for older adults than for younger adults, fluid intelligence is higher, on average, for young (20s, 30s, 40s) adults than for older