EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
other neurons.
Cognitive Development
Principles of Development
Universal- similar patterns in how children
change overtime.
Developmental Milestones- more advance
behaviors of children in predictable sequences.
*Children develop at different rates
Learners grow at different rates
Heredity and Environment interact in their
effects on development
 Heredity- guides children’s growth to the
process of maturation
 Maturation- genetically controlled
progression of physical changes that
enables children to acquire increasingly
complex behaviors and cognitive abilities
 Environmental factors- make substantial
contribution to children’s development
 Inherited Temperaments- children’s
behaviors are partly the result of the ways
and which their local environment and
culture socialize them to behave.
ISSUES OF HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT
1. NATURE VS. NURTURE
Sensitive period- biologically predetermined
point and development during which a child is
especially susceptible to environmental
conditions.
Developmental processes- heredity,
environment, and children’s own behavior all
nudge children toward increasingly complex
and sophisticated ways of thinking and
behaving.
*Brains continues to develop throughout
childhood, adolescence, and adulthood
 Neurons- continue to from new ones
for a lifetime
 Dendrites- receive messages from
 Axon- arm like structures that
transmits information to other
neurons.
 Synapses- connect neurons consisting
of tiny spaces across.
 Synaptogenesis- irrelevant and useless
synapses that gradually fade away.
*Children have a natural tendency to organize
their experiences
 Schemes- group of similar actions or
thoughts that are used repeatedly in
response to the environment.
*Children are naturally inclined to make sense
of and adapt to their environment
 Assimilation- responding to and possibly
interpreting an objects or event in a way
that’s consistent with an existing scheme.
 Accommodation- modify an existing
scheme
 Form a new scheme to deal with it.
TRENDS IN COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
 Children’s growing working memory
capacity enables them to handle
increasingly complex cognitive tasks
 Children’s growing knowledge base
enhances their ability to learn new
things.
 Children’s knowledge, beliefs and
thinking processes become increasingly
integrated.
 Thinking becomes increasingly logical
during the elementary school years.
PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT
1. Sensorimotor (Begins at Birth)
 Schemes based on act behaviors and
perceptions focusing on what they are
doing and seeing at the moment.
2. Preoperational (About age 2)
 Developing language and symbolic
thought and can now think and talk
about their immediate experience.
3. Concrete operations (About age 6 or 7)
 Adultlike logic but limited to reasoning
about concrete, real life situations.
4. Formal Situations (About age 11 or 12)
 Logical reasoning processes applied to
abstract ideas and to concrete objects
and situations; and advance reasoning
in science and mathematics.