Research Report: Chapter Summary

Chapter Name: Cognitive Development in Childhood

BY: Ghousia Rashid
BS in Applied Psychology
NUML University Karachi Campus

PIAGET’S THEORY

The sensorimotor stage: birth to age 2

In Piaget’s theory, the sensorimotor stage is first, and is defined as the period when
infants “think” by means of their senses and motor actions. As every new parent will
attest, infants continually touch, manipulate, look, listen to, and even bite and chew
objects. According to Piaget, these actions allow them to learn about the world and
are crucial to their early cognitive development.

The infant’s actions allow the child to represent (or construct simple concepts of)
objects and events.

The preoperational stage: age 2 to 7

In the preoperational stage, children use their new ability to represent objects in a

wide variety of activities, but they do not yet do it in ways that are organized or fully
logical. One of the most obvious examples of this kind of cognition is dramatic play,
the improvised make-believe of preschool children. If you have ever had
responsibility for children of this age, you have likely witnessed such play.  They are
thinking on two levels at once—one imaginative and the other realistic. This dual processing
of experience makes dramatic play an early example of metacognition, or reflecting on and
monitoring of thinking itself.

The concrete operational stage: age 7 to 11

As children continue into elementary school, they become able to represent ideas
and events more flexibly and logically. Their rules of thinking still seem very basic by
adult standards and usually operate unconsciously, but they allow children to solve
problems more systematically than before, and therefore to be successful with many
academic tasks. In the concrete operational stage, for example, a child may
unconsciously follow the rule: “If nothing is added or taken away, then the amount of
something stays the same.” This simple principle helps children to understand
certain arithmetic tasks, such as in adding or subtracting zero from a number, as well
as to do certain classroom science experiments, such as ones involving judgments
of the amounts of liquids when mixed. Piaget called this period the concrete
operational stage because children mentally “operate” on concrete objects and
events.

The formal operational stage: age 11 and beyond

In the last of the Piagetian stages, the child becomes able to reason not only about
tangible objects and events, but also about hypothetical or abstract ones. Hence it
has the name formal operational stage—the period when the individual can
“operate” on “forms” or representations. With students at this level, the teacher can
pose hypothetical (or contrary-to-fact) problems: “What if the world had never
discovered oil?” or “What if the first European explorers had settled first in California
instead of on the East Coast of the United States?” To answer such questions,
students must use hypothetical reasoning, meaning that they must manipulate
ideas that vary in several ways at once, and do so entirely in their minds

Criticism of Sensorimotor Stage. It is agreed that object permanence is developed

as the child develops an understanding of the permanence of objects, and that
uncovering a hidden toy is a demonstration of this, but it is felt that Piaget did not
consider the need for motivation in order for children to search, or the fact that
very young infants may not have the knowledge of how to search.

Criticism of Preoperational Stage It is believed by developmentalists that the

three-mountain task that Piaget asked three-year-old children to solve was too
complex to test children's ability to see someone else's perspective. It is now
believed that young children can see someone else's point of view in a simple
way. Similarly, the conservation tests may also have been too complex, and
further research has indicated that if a conservation task was presented in a
simplified, fun manner, children were able to understand the concept of it much
more easily. Piaget was correct in that, while children are capable for showing
some understanding of these concepts, it does take maturity and experience
before children can fully master logical structures and apply them to daily life.

Criticism of Concrete Operational Stage

It is felt that Piaget spent too much time explaining the typical child, and did not
consider the individual differences of children, or the differences caused by
heredity, culture and education. It is felt that he put too much emphasis on the
individual's internal search for knowledge, and not enough on external motivation
and teachings (Berger, 1988). Piaget did little research on the emotional and
personality development of children and possibly would have been more accurate
to view cognitive development as a gradual and continuous rather than having
definite demarcation stages. Piaget's information processing approach provides a
good way of assessing intelligence and gathering information about memory
development and other cognitive processes, but does not consider the importance
of creativity and social interaction

Criticism of Formal Operation Thought

It is believed that Piaget's last stage of formal operations is not an accurate

description of cognitive development. Nearly a half of adults do not attain the level
of formal operations, and not everyone appears to be capable of abstract reasoning.
These people are possibly not cognitively immature, but have different aspects of
mature thought not covered by Piaget. Formal logic as defined by Piaget consists
of measures such as the pendulum problem and conservation of volume, which
indicates that Piaget believes cognition is bound by mathematics and scientific
thinking. However, this form of formal logic is not as important in non-scientific
fields such as the arts, history, social understanding and personal judgement. It also
does not cover other aspects of mature intelligence such as practical problem
solving, and acquired wisdom and experience (Papalia, Old’s, and Feldman, 1998).
Piaget's description of overall cognitive events indicates that once a new stage of
cognition has been achieved, individuals will reflect it in all areas of their lives.
However, it has been shown that cognitive development may occur in some areas
of thinking and not in others. A more accepted view of cognition development is
that it is an uneven process, with children arriving at each new stage piece by piece
as each new skill and behaviour is acquired .
How Theory of Mind Develops in Typical Children
During infancy and early childhood, children learn the early skills that they’ll need to develop their
theory of mind later on. These skills include the ability to [2,3]:

 pay attention to people and copy them

 recognize others’ emotions and use words to express them (“happy”, “sad”, “mad”)
 know that they are different from other people and have different likes/dislikes from others
 know that people act according to the things they want
 understand the causes and consequences of emotions (If I throw my toy, Mom will be mad)
 pretend to be someone else (like a doctor or a cashier) when they play

Between ages 4-5, children really start to think about others’ thoughts and feelings, and this is when
true theory of mind emerges. Children develop theory of mind skills in the following order [1, 4, 5]:

 Understanding “wanting” – Different people want different things, and to get what they
want, people act in different ways.
 Understanding “thinking” – Different people have different, but potentially true, beliefs
about the same thing. People’s actions are based on what they think is going to happen.
 Understanding that “seeing leads to knowing” – If you haven’t seen something, you don’t
necessarily know about it (like the Dad in the example above on the telephone). If someone
hasn’t seen something, they will need extra information to understand.
 Understanding “false beliefs” – Sometimes people believe things that are not true, and
they act according to their beliefs, not according to what is really true.
 Understanding “hidden feelings” – People can feel a different emotion from the one they
display.
Moral Judgment

Moral judgment refers to the determination a person makes about an action (or inaction),

motive, situation, or person in relation to standards of goodness or rightness. 
People articulate a moral judgment, for example, when they say that an action is right or
wrong, that a person is good or bad, or that a situation is just or unjust. Athletes
frequently make moral judgments about moral issues that arise in sports,
and such judgments have been investigated by sport psychologists. This
entry distinguishes moral judgment from moral reasoning, reviews methods of investigating
moral judgments, and summarizes key findings from the sport-related moral judgment
literature.