Chapter 7

COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT: PIAGET’S

THEORY AND VYGOTSKY’S
SOCIOCULTURAL VIEWPOINT
 PIAGET’S THEORY OF COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT

• Genetic epistemology – experimental study of

the origin of knowledge
• What is intelligence?
– A basic life function that helps an organism
adapt to the environment
– Cognitive equilibrium – balance between
thought processes and the environment
– Constructivist approach – child constructs
knowledge
 PIAGET’S THEORY OF COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT

• Gaining Knowledge: Schemes and Processes

– Schemes: mental patterns (thought/action)
• Organization – combine existing
schemes into new/complex schemes
• Adaptation – adjustment to environment
–Assimilation – new information into
existing schemes
–Accommodation – modify existing
schemes for new information
• Table 7.1 A small sample of cognitive growth from Piaget’s perspective
 PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT

• Invariant developmental sequence

– Sequencing fixed
– Individual differences entering/emerging
stages
 PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT

• The Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to 2 years)

– Coordinate sensory inputs and motor skills
– Transition from being reflexive to reflective
– Development of Problem-Solving Abilities
• Reflex activity (birth – 1 month)
• Primary circular reactions (1-4 months)
–first motor habits, repetitive
PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT

• Secondary circular reactions

(4-8 months)
–Repetitive actions with objects
beyond the body
• Coordination of secondary reactions
(8-12 months)
–Coordinate 2 or more actions to
achieve an objective (intentional)
PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT

• Tertiary circular reactions -12-18 months

–Active experimentation, trial & error
• Symbolic problem solving -18-24 months
–Inner (mental) experimentation
 PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT

– Development of Imitation
• Novel responses by 8-12 months of age
• Deferred imitation – 18-24 months
• Research now shows 6-month-olds are
capable of deferred imitation
 PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT

– Development of Object Permanence

• Objects continue to exist when they are
no longer visible/detectable
• Appears by 8-12 months of age
–A-not-B error: search in the last place
found, not where it was last seen
• Complete by 18-24 months
 PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT

• Challenges to Piaget Account

– Neo-nativism –
• Infants are born with substantial innate
knowledge
• Require less time/experience to be
demonstrated
• Young children seem to possess some
object permanence, memory
• Table 7.2 Summary of Piaget’s account of sensorimotor development
 PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT

• Challenges to Piaget’s Approach

– Theory theories
• Combination of neo-nativist and
Piagetian perspective
–Infants are prepared at birth to make
sense of some information
–Beyond this, Piaget’s constructivist
approach is generally accurate
 PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT

• The Preoperational Stage (2-7 years)

– Symbolic function / representational insight
• One thing represents another
• Language
• Pretend (symbolic) play –
developmentally a positive activity
• New views on symbolism
–Dual representation – think about an
object in 2 ways at one time (3 years)
PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT

• Deficits in preoperational thinking

–Animism
»Attribute life/life like qualities to
inanimate objects
–Egocentrism
»View world from own perspective,
trouble recognizing other’s point of
view
• Figure 7.2 Piaget’s three-mountain problem. Young preoperational children are egocentric. They
cannot easily assume another person’s perspective and often say that another child viewing the
mountain from a different vantage point sees exactly what they see from their own location.
PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT

• Deficits in preoperational thinking

–Appearance/reality distinction
»Cannot distinguish between the
two
–Dual encoding
»Representing an object in more
than one way at a time
• Figure 7.3 Maynard the cat, without and with a dog mask. Three-year-olds who met Maynard
before his change in appearance nonetheless believed that he had become a dog.
PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT

• Deficits in preoperational thinking

–Lack of conservation – do not realize
properties of objects do not change
just because appearance does
»Lack of decentration – concentrate
on more than one aspect of a
problem at the same time
»Lack of reversibility – mentally
undo an action
• Figure 7.4 Some common tests of the child’s ability to conserve.
• Figure 7.5 Reversibility is an important cognitive operation that develops during middle childhood.
 PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT

• Did Piaget Underestimate the Preoperational

Child?
– New evidence on egocentrism
• Piaget’s tasks were too complex
– Another look at children’s reasoning
• Animism not routine among 3-year-olds
– Can preoperational children conserve?
• Can be trained at 4 years (identity
training)
 PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT

• The Development Theory of Mind (TOM)

– Belief-desire reasoning
• Understand behavior is based on
–What an individual knows or believes
–What they want or desire
• Develops after preschool age
• False-belief task – desire, not belief
–Based on lack of cognitive inhibition
–Improves with interaction with siblings
 PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT

• The Concrete Operational Stage (7-11 years)

– Cognitive operations
• Internal mental activity to modify
symbols to reach a logical conclusion
–Conservation – capable of
»Decentering
»Reversibility
• Table 7.3 A comparison of preoperational and concrete operational thought
PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT

–Relational logic – capable of

»Mental seriation
»Transitivity
• Horizontal decalage – different levels of
understanding that seem to require
same mental operations
–Based on complexity
• Limited to real or tangible aspects of
experience
• Figure 7.7 Children’s performance on a simple seriation task. If asked to arrange a series of sticks
from shortest to longest, preoperational children often line up one end of the sticks and create an
incomplete ordering (a) or order them so the top of each successive stick extends higher than the
preceding stick (b). Concrete operators, by contrast, can use the inverse cognitive operations
greater than (>) and less than (<) to quickly make successive comparisons and create a correct
serial ordering.
 PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT

• The Formal Operational Stage (11-12 +)

– Hypothetico-deductive reasoning
• Ability to generate hypotheses and use
deductive reasoning (general to specific)
• Inductive reasoning
–Going from specific observations to
generalizations
 PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT

– Personal and Social Implications of Formal

Thought
• Thinking about what is possible in life
• Stable identity
• Understanding of other’s perspectives
• Questioning others
• Thinking of how the world “ought to be”
 PIAGET’S STAGES OF COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT

– Does Everyone Reach Formal Operations?

• Early Piaget – Yes, at least some signs
by 15-18
• Other researchers – No. Lack of
education
• Later Piaget – Yes, but only on problems
that are either interesting or important
• Seem to be more adolescents at this
level than 30 years ago
• Figure 7.8 Expertise and formal operations. College students show the greatest command of
formal-operational thought in the subject area most related to their major. ADAPTED FROM DE
LISI & STAUDT, 1980.
 AN EVALUATION OF PIAGET’S THEORY

• Piaget’s Contributions
– Founded cognitive development
– Stated children construct their knowledge
– First attempt to explain development
– Reasonably accurate overview of how
children of different ages think
– Major influence in social and emotional
development, and education
– Influenced future research
 AN EVALUATION OF PIAGET’S THEORY

• Challenges to Piaget
– Piaget failed to distinguish competence
from performance
– Does cognitive development really occur in
stages?
• Little evidence of broad stages
– Does Piaget “explain” cognitive
development? – more of an description
– Little attention to social/cultural influences
 VYGOTSKY’S SOCIOCULTURAL
PERSPECTIVE

• The Role of Culture in Development

– Ontogenetic development – development
of an individual over his or her lifetime
– Microgenetic development – change over
relatively brief periods of time
– Phylogenetic development – changes over
evolutionary time
– Sociohistorical development – changes in
one’s culture
 VYGOTSKY’S SOCIOCULTURAL
PERSPECTIVE

• Tools of Intellectual Adaptation

–Born with elementary mental
functions (attention, memory)
–Culture transforms these into higher
mental functions
»Culture specific tools allow the use
of the basic functions more
adaptively (language, pencils)
• Table 7.4 Chinese and English number words from 1 to 20. The more systematic Chinese
numbering system follows a base-ten logic (i.e., 11 translating as “ten one” [“shi yee”]) requiring
less rote memorization, which may explain why Chinese-speaking children learn to count to 20
earlier than English-speaking children.
 VYGOTSKY’S SOCIOCULTURAL
PERSPECTIVE

• The Social Origins of Early Cognitive

Competencies
– Many discoveries active learners make
occur in collaborative dialogue with a tutor
– The Zone of Proximal Development
• Difference between what a learner can
do independently and what can be done
with guidance
 VYGOTSKY’S SOCIOCULTURAL
PERSPECTIVE

• Scaffolding – tendency to tailor support

to a learner near the limit of capability
• Guided participation/apprenticeship
–May be very formal and context
dependent
–May occur in day-to-day activities
• Figure 7.9 Some functions of shared remembering in children’s memory development. Source:
Gauvin, M (2001). The social context of cognitive development. New York: Guilford, p. 211.
 VYGOTSKY’S SOCIOCULTURAL
PERSPECTIVE

• Working in the Zone of Proximal

Development in Different Cultures
– Cultures where adults and children are
segregated, learning is in schools
– Cultures where adults and children are
together most of the day, learning is
through real life observation
– Verbal versus nonverbal emphasis of
instruction
 VYGOTSKY’S SOCIOCULTURAL
PERSPECTIVE

• Playing in the Zone of Proximal Development

– More likely to engage in symbolic play
when others are present
– Cooperative social play of preschoolers is
related to later understanding of others’
feeling and beliefs
 VYGOTSKY’S SOCIOCULTURAL
PERSPECTIVE

• Implications for Education

– Active, not passive learning
– Assess what is known to estimate
capabilities
– Guided participations structured by
teachers who would gradually turn over
more of activity to students
– Cooperative learning exercises – help each
other; very effective!
 VYGOTSKY’S SOCIOCULTURAL
PERSPECTIVE

• The Role of Language in Cognitive

Development
– Primary method of passing modes of
thinking to children
– Becomes important tool of intellectual
adaptation
 VYGOTSKY’S SOCIOCULTURAL
PERSPECTIVE

• Piaget’s Theory of Language/Thought

–Egocentric speech
»Self-directed utterances
»Reflected ongoing mental activity
»Shifted to communicative speech
with age
»Little role in cognitive development
 VYGOTSKY’S SOCIOCULTURAL
PERSPECTIVE

• Vygotsky’s Theory of Language/Thought

–Egocentric is really an illustration of
transition from prelinguistic to verbal
reasoning
–Private speech – communicative
“speech for self”
»Serves as a cognitive self-
guidance system; does not
disappear, becomes inner speech
 VYGOTSKY’S SOCIOCULTURAL
PERSPECTIVE

• Which viewpoint should be endorsed?

–Vygotsky
»Social speech gives rise to private
speech
»More common with difficult tasks
»Self-instruction improves
performance
»Does tend to turn into inner
speech
 VYGOTSKY’S SOCIOCULTURAL
PERSPECTIVE

• Vygotsky in Perspective: Summary

– Cognitive development involves
• Dialogues with skilled partners within the
zone of proximal development
• Incorporation of what tutors say into
what they say to themselves
– Expect wide variations in development
across cultures
 VYGOTSKY’S SOCIOCULTURAL
PERSPECTIVE

• Vygotsky in Perspective: Evaluation

– Not yet received intense scrutiny
• Verbal guided participation may be less
adaptive in some instances than others
• Collaborative problem solving can
undermine performance
– More a perspective, not a theory with as
many testable hypotheses as Piaget
• Table 7.5 Comparing Vygotsky’s and Piaget’s theories of cognitive development