1. COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
refers to how a person perceives, thinks, and gains an
understanding of his/her world through the interaction and
influence of genetic and learned factors
Jean Piaget believed that all children pass through a series
of distinct stages in intellectual development. As a child
moves to a new stage, his/her thinking is qualitatively
different from that of the previous stage. He saw this
progression from one stage to the other as a continuous
and gradual process
He was convinced that intellect grows through processes
he called assimilation and accommodation
2. Assimilation – using existing patterns in new situations, for
example, an infant that has been sucking on a nipple is suddenly
presented with a pacifier and starts sucking on it. Since a pacifier is
similar to a nipple, the infant can adjust the way his mouth fits
around the pacifier, in other words, the infant assimilates the pacifier,
a new object, to an existing schema
Not every object infants encounter can be assimilated to an existing
schema. When an infant encounters a blanket, for instance, she
may try to suck on it. However, because the qualities of a blanket
are so unlike the qualities of a nipple or thumb, she is unable to
assimilate the blanket as an object to suck on
Accomodation – when existing ideas are modified to fit new
requirements, that is, she will modify the she sucks, perhaps by
choosing a corner of the blanket and suck on that, using
approximately but not exactly the same schema as when sucking on
a nipple
3. I. SENSORY MOTOR STAGE (BIRTH – 2 YRS)
# Intellectual level is nonverbal
# Looking, grasping, and other actions
# Emergence of object permanence – concept that objects
continue to exist even when they are hidden from view
# By about age 11/2, a child begins to actively pursue
disappearing objects and by age 2, a child can anticipate the
movement of an object behind a screen
II. PREOPERATIONAL STAGE (2 – 7 YRS)
- Develop an ability to think symbolically and to use language
- Childs thinking makes little or no use of reasoning and logic
- Child is egocentric – thought that is self-centered and fails to
consider the viewpoints of others
- Children do not understand certain rules of operation, such as
irreversibility and centration
4. - Irreversibility – the inability to mentally reverse a sequence of
events or logical operations e.g. 2 x 3 = 6 but when asked
3 x 2 = ?
- Centration – the tendency to focus, or center, on only one
aspect of a situation and ignore other important aspects of the
situation e.g. center only on the height of the beaker
III. CONCRETE OPERATIONAL STAGE (7 – 11 YRS)
- Mastery of the concept of conservation – concept that the
volume of matter remains unchanged when the shape of
objects changes e.g. they understand that pouring liquid from
a tall glass into a shallow dish does not reduce the amount of
liquid
- During concrete operational stage, children can perform
operation but only on images of tangible “concrete” objects
5. IV. FORMAL OPERATIONAL STAGE (11 – 15 YRS)
- Child’s thinking is applied to abstract concepts
- Becomes capable of hypothetical thinking
- Is capable of deductive reasoning
- Capable of systematic formulation and testing of concepts
- Individuals can perform abstract reasoning necessary to
comprehend algebra, psychology, physics and philosophy
- The ability to think in formal operational stage also allows the
thinker to explore his own values and beliefs and compares
them to those of their parents, friends and teachers
- Individuals often fail to differentiate between what others are
thinking and their own thoughts, this is known as adolescent
egocentrism – the belief that one is the focus of others’
thoughts and attention
