EDS220| EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY | Assist Prof. Dr.

Elif
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT Öztürk
Educational Sciences, Curriculum
and Instruction, METU
EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
scientific study of human learning.
The study of learning processes, from both cognitive and behavioral perspectives,
allows researchers to understand individual differences in intelligence, cognitive
development, motivation, self-regulation, as well as their role in learning.
THE FIELD OF EDUCATIONAL
PSYCHOLOGY
Why do you think the field educational psychology is important
for a teacher/an educator?
THE IMPORTANCE OF
EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
FOR A TEACHER
Educational Psychology;
• helps teacher to know that how learning takes place.
• enables a teacher that how learning process should be initiated, how to motivate,
how to learn.
• helps teachers to guide the students in right direction
• informs a teacher about the nature of the learner and his potentialities
THE IMPORTANCE OF
EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
FOR A TEACHER
• helps a teacher to develop a student’s personality
• helps a teacher to adjust his methodologies of learning to demand of the learner
• enables a teacher to know the problems of individual differences and treat every
student on his / her merit.
• helps a teacher how to solve the learning problems of a student
• helps a teacher how to evaluate a student so as to understand whether the purpose of
teaching & learning has been achieved
THE IMPORTANCE OF
EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
FOR EDUCATION
1. Learner Educational Psychology studies various factors which have impacts upon
students, which may include home environment, social groupings, peer groups, his /
her emotional sentiments, and mental health etc.
2. The Learning Process Here educational psychology investigates that how
information and knowledge be transferred and what kinds of methodologies should
be used for that purpose.
3. Learning Situation Educational Psychology studies how environment like of
classroom be managed and how discipline be maintained. Besides it, it studies
various tools and their roles in facilitating the teaching learning process.
THE IMPORTANCE OF
EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
FOR EDUCATION
4. Curriculum Development Educational psychology helps curriculum developers
that what kind of curriculum should be made and what kinds of content be given

5. Evaluation Techniques Educational psychology helps educators that what kinds of

evaluation techniques should be used to test the learner
TOPICS COVERED UNDER
EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
IN THIS COURSE
Cognitive Development
Social Development
Emotional Development
Moral Development
Motivation
Information Processing
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
DEVELOPMENT
Certain changes that occur in human
beings (or animals) between
conception and death.
DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF DEVELOPMENT
•Physical Development
• Physical changes in the body

•Personal (Psychological) Development

• Changes in an individual’s emotions and personality

•Social Development
• Changes in the way an individual relates to others

•Moral Development
• Changes in an individual’s moral behaviours and values of right and wrong

•Psychosexual Development
• Changes in the sexual behaviour

•Cognitive Development
• Changes in the ability to think
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Cognitive development refers to the development
of thinking across the lifespan. 

From birth to adolescence a young person's mind

changes dramatically in many important ways. 
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
By the time you reach adulthood, you have learned a few things about how the world
works. You know;

•You can’t walk through walls

•Although you cannot see your car keys they’ve got to be around here someplace
•If you want to communicate complex ideas like ordering a triple-shot soy vanilla
latte with chocolate sprinkles it’s better to use words with meanings attached to them
rather than simply gesturing and grunting

People accumulate all this useful knowledge through the process of cognitive
development, which involves a multitude of factors, both inherent and
learned.
NATURE & NURTURE
DISCUSS
Why monozygotic twins can ben different in some ways?
NATURE & NURTURE
NATURE (Maturation)
•Changes that occur naturally and genetically programmed
•Emerge over time and relatively uneffected from environment (except for malnutrition or severe
ilness)
NURTURE (Interaction with the environment)
•Changes through learning as individual interact with environment
•Such changes make up a large part of a person’s social development

For development of thinking and personality !!!

Both Nature & Nurture

HOW DO NATURE AND NURTURE
INTERACT TO PRODUCE COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT?
When children are young, their parents
largely determine their experiences

 whether they will attend day care

 the books to which they have access
 the movies they watch
 The people they interract
HOW DO NATURE AND NURTURE
INTERACT TO PRODUCE COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT?

In contrast, older children and

adolescents choose their environments to
a larger degree

 the more that children choose to read, the more

that their reading improves in future years
 The more they exposed to teblets mobile the
more they will be unsocialized
GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF
DEVELOPMENT
1. People develop at different rates
2. Development is relatively orderly
3. Development takes place gradually
you will have a whole range of examples of
different develpmental rates.
Some students will be better coordinated,
some will be more mature in their thinking
and social relations.
Some will be much slower in these areas.
Such differences are very normal in groups
of students.
GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF
DEVELOPMENT
1. People develop at different rates
People develop certain abilities before
2. Development is relatively orderly others.
3. Development takes place gradually
For example, for infancy, they sit
before they walk.

They see the world from only their

point of view before they can be able to
imagine how others see it
GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF
DEVELOPMENT
1. People develop at different rates
Very rarely do changes
2. Development is relatively orderly appear over night,
3. Development takes place gradually
Changes is likely to take
time
PIAGET’S THEORY OF
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
INFLUENCES ON DEVELOPMENT

Piaget identified four factors that interact to influence changes in thinking:

- Biological maturation
- Activity
- Social experiences
- Equilibration
INFLUENCES ON DEVELOPMENT

MATURATION

Biological changes genetically programmed

in each human being

Parents and teachers have little impact on

this aspect of cognitive development
INFLUENCES ON DEVELOPMENT

ACTIVITY

With the physical maturation, the ability to act on

the environment and learn from it increases.

As we act on the environment –as we explore, test,

observe, and eventually orginize information- we
are likely to alter our thinking processes at the
same time.
INFLUENCES ON DEVELOPMENT

SOCIAL EXPERIENCES
As we develop, we are also interacting with the people
around us.

According to Piaget, our cognitive development is

influenced by social transmission, or learning from
others.
PIAGET’S THEORY OF
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
BASIC TENDENCIES IN THINKING

According to Piaget, all species inherit two basic tendencies, two major principles
guide intellectual growth and biological development:
-Organisation
-Adaptation
 em a
i al Sch Schema Forming Dog:
Ini t Ears
Four legs
Tail

EQUILIBRIUM
Disequlibrium ! This is a
Accommodation cat see it
has long Ears
whiskers Four legs
This is Assimilation Tail
a cat
This is a
Dog !
 em a
i al Sch Schema Forming Dog:
Ini t Ears
Four legs
Tail

S ATION
OR GANI
EQUILIBRIUM
Disequlibrium ! This is a
Accommodation cat see it
has long Ears
whiskers Four legs
This is Assimilation Tail
a cat
This is a
Dog !

TAT ION
ADAP
BASIC TENDENCIES IN THINKING

ORGANISATION
Combining, arranging, recombining, and rearranging of behaviours and thoughts
into psychological structures.

Piaget calls these structures as Schema

 basic building blocks of thinking
BASIC TENDENCIES IN THINKING

ADAPTATION
Tendency to adapt to the environment

Two main adaptation processes:

- Assimilation
- Accommodation
ADAPTATION
ASSIMILATION
How humans perceive and adapt to new information.
It is the process of fitting new information into pre-existing cognitive schemas

 For example when children see a cat for the first time , they call it a dog.
 They try to match the new experience with an existing scheme for identfying animals

It occurs when humans are faced with new or unfamiliar information

and refer to previously learned information in order to make sense of it
ADAPTATION
ACCOMMODATION
Occurs when a person must change existing schemas to respond to a new situation.
The process of taking new information in one's environment and altering pre-
existing schemas in order to fit in the new information. 

This happens when the existing schema (knowledge) does not work, and
needs to be changed to deal with a new object or situation
ADAPTATION
ASSIMILATION AND ACCOMMODATION

Assimilation and accommodation cannot exist without the other.

People adapt to their increasingly complex environments by using existing schemas
whenever these schemas work (assimilation)
and by modifying and adding to their schemas when something new is needed
(accommodation).
EQUILIBRATION
Organizing, assimilating and accommodating can be seen as a kind of
complex balancing act.

In Piaget’s theory, the actual changes in thinking take place

through the process of equilibration.

The act of searching for a balance!

WHAT IF THIS CHILD
SEES A LION !!!
WHAT WE ASSIMILATE IN OUR
DAILY LIFE !!!!
EQUILIBRATION
The process of equilibration:
If we apply a particular schema to an event

The schema The schema does not produce a satisfying result

works Th
in
ki
ng
ch
The equilibrium exist an
ge
Disequilibrium exist 
 a nd
m
ov
es Become uncomfortable
ah
ea
d

Motivates us to keep searching for a

solution through assimilation and
accommodation
PIAGET’S FOUR STAGES OF
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Proposed that children’s thinking progresses through a series of four discrete
stages.

1. Sensorimotor stage
2. The preoperational reasoning stage
3. The concrete operational reasoning stage
4. The formal operational reasoning stage
INFANCY:
SENSORIMOTOR STAGE (BIRTH TO 2
YEARS)
Infants progressively construct knowledge and
understanding of the world
by coordinating experiences (such as vision and
hearing) with physical interactions with objects (such
as grasping, sucking, and stepping)
INFANCY:
SENSORIMOTOR STAGE (BIRTH TO 2
YEARS)

Infant develops;
•Object permenance
 understanding that objects continue to exist even though he
or she cannot see or hear them
•Goal orientation
• the deliberate planning of steps to meet an objective

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRF27F2bn-A
EARLY CHILDHOOD:
PREOPERATIONAL STAGE (2 TO 6 OR 7
YEARS)
Starts when the child begins to learn to speak and enlarge their
vocabulary dramatically.

Children do not yet understand concrete logic and cannot

mentally manipulate information

Children's increase in playing

The child still has trouble seeing things from different points
of view !
EARLY CHILDHOOD:
PREOPERATIONAL STAGE (2 TO 6 OR 7
YEARS)
Semiotic (Symbolic) Function (2-4 Years):
The children's play is mainly categorized by
symbolic play and manipulating symbols.
pieces of paper being plates, and a box being a
table
children develop imaginary friends or role-play
with friends
Children's play becomes more social and they
assign roles to each other
EARLY CHILDHOOD:
PREOPERATIONAL STAGE (2 TO 6 OR 7
YEARS)
Intuitive thought (4-7 years):
Children tend to become very curious and ask
many questions,
Begin to use primitive reasoning
There is an emergence in the interest of
reasoning and wanting to know why things
are the way they are
EARLY CHILDHOOD:
PREOPERATIONAL STAGE (2 TO 6 OR 7
YEARS)
Children are not able to operate logically until
7 due to several problematic characteristics:

Conservation:
Children aren’t capable of conservation during
this stage. 
the ability to recognize that measurable
physical features of objects, such as length,
area, and volume, can be the same even when
objects appear different.
EARLY CHILDHOOD:
PREOPERATIONAL STAGE (2 TO 6 OR 7
YEARS)
Children are not capable of conservation because of three weaknesses in the way
they think:

Perceptional Centration
Irreversibility
Egocentrisim
EARLY CHILDHOOD:
PREOPERATIONAL STAGE (2 TO 6 OR 7
YEARS)
Perceptional centration
is the tendency to focus on one aspect of a problem and ignore other key aspects
(Example: same amount of water in different glasses)

Focusing on only one dimension

Lack understanding different aspects of a problem

EARLY CHILDHOOD:
PREOPERATIONAL STAGE (2 TO 6 OR 7
YEARS)
Irreversibility
Not able to thinking backwards.
the inability to mentally reverse an operation.
in the example, the three-year-old can’t imagine pouring the juice from the tumbler
back into the bottle.
If she poured the juice back, she’d understand that the tumbler holds the same
amount of liquid as the bottle.
EARLY CHILDHOOD:
PREOPERATIONAL STAGE (2 TO 6 OR 7
YEARS)

Egocentrisim
seeing everything form one’s own perspective.
Can not understand every people has a way of own thinking.
 Collective monolog (example: shaking hands in telephone)
EARLY CHILDHOOD:
PREOPERATIONAL STAGE (2 TO 6 OR 7
YEARS)
EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS
Verbal instruction and warning are not very useful
 Not able to make sense of them

Demonstrating and having the child physically participate in the activity is more
effective

 Make Instuctions relatively short, using actions as well as words

 Dont expect them to be consistent
 Provide a wide range of experiences in order to build a foundation of concept
learning and language
LATER ELEMENTARY TO THE MIDDLE
SCHOOL YEARS:
CONCRETE OPERATIONS STAGE (6 OR 7
TO 11 OR 12 YEARS)
•Is characterized by the appropriate use of logic
•A child's thought processes become more mature and ‘adult-
like’
•Start solving problems in a more logical fashion
LATER ELEMENTARY TO THE MIDDLE
SCHOOL YEARS:
CONCRETE OPERATIONS STAGE (6 OR 7
TO 11 OR 12 YEARS)
Children are capable of:

•Identity
•Compensation
•Reversibility
•Classification
•Seriation
LATER ELEMENTARY TO THE MIDDLE
SCHOOL YEARS:
CONCRETE OPERATIONS STAGE (6 OR 7
TO 11 OR 12 YEARS)
Identity
 If nothing is added or taken away, the material remains the same.

Compensation
 An apperent change in one direction can be compensated for by a change in
another direction
 (if the liquid rises higher, the glass is narrower)
LATER ELEMENTARY TO THE MIDDLE
SCHOOL YEARS:
CONCRETE OPERATIONS STAGE (6 OR 7
TO 11 OR 12 YEARS)
Reversibility
 being able to reverse the order of relationships between mental categories
 (For example, a child might be able to recognize that his or her dog is a Labrador, that a Labrador is a
dog, and that a dog is an animal)

Classification
 Ability to focus on a single characteristics of an object
 (cities vs countries / fruits vs vegetables / mammals vs non-mammals)

Seriation
 Being able to make orderly arrengement

! Some people remain at concete operational stage throughout their life

LATER ELEMENTARY TO THE MIDDLE
SCHOOL YEARS:
CONCRETE OPERATIONS STAGE (6 OR 7
TO 11 OR 12 YEARS)
EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS
Requires the use of concrete examples, objects, pictures, and hands-on practices.
Give students a chance to manipulate and test objects
Give well orginized and brief presentations
Use familiar examples to explain more complex ideas
Give opportunities for classification and grouping
Present problems that require analytical thinking
THE FORMAL OPERATIONAL REASONING STAGE
(11 OR 12 YEARS AND THROUGHOUT THE REST OF
LIFE).

The person is capable of hypothetical and deductive

reasoning
People develop the ability to think about abstract concepts
THE FORMAL OPERATIONAL REASONING STAGE
(11 OR 12 YEARS AND THROUGHOUT THE REST OF
LIFE)

Abstract thought 
begin to consider possible outcomes and consequences of actions
Metacognition
the capacity for "thinking about thinking" that allows adolescents and adults to reason
about their thought processes and monitor them.
Problem-solving 
The ability to systematically solve a problem in a logical and methodical way emerges.
Hypothetical Thinking
involves hypothetical "what-if" situations that are not always rooted in reality
THE FORMAL OPERATIONAL REASONING STAGE
(11 OR 12 YEARS AND THROUGHOUT THE REST OF
LIFE)

EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONs
Continue to use concrete operational teaching strategies
Give students opportunity to explore many hypothetical questions
Give students opportunity to solve problems and reason scientifically
Teach broad concepts, not just facts, using materials and ideas relevent to studetns’
life
LIMITATIONS
Although Piaget’s theory has been very influential, it has not gone unchallenged.
The Trouble with stages:
cognitive development is considerably more continuous than Piaget claimed.
Underestimating Childrens Abilities:
children may be able to learn concepts and capability of complex reasoning that supposedly represented
in more advanced stages with relative ease
Cognitive development and infornation processing:
Piaget did not take into account variability in a child's performance notably how a child can differ in
sophistication across several domains.
Cognitive development and culture:
Piaget’s theory overlooks the important effects of child’s cultural and social group
ACTI
VITY
 er va tion
Cons Obje
ct
1. Sensorimotor stage perm
anen
ce
Classification Identity
Reve
rs ibility
2. The preoperational reasoning stage
Egoce c ti o n
n tr isi m ot i c fun
Semi
Irrev  
ersib in g Metacognition
ili ty
s o l v Hypothetical Thinking
m -
ble 3. The concrete operational reasoning stage
o
Pr
Intuitiv on
et hought at i
Perce
ptiona ori ent
l l
Centr
ation Goa
Seriation 4. The formal operational reasoning stage
t 
Abstract though
Compensation
1. Sensorimotor stage

2. The preoperational reasoning stage

3. The concrete operational reasoning stage

4. The formal operational reasoning stage

1. Sensorimotor stage
Goal orientation
Object permanence
2. The preoperational reasoning stage
Semiotic function Perceptional Centration
Intuitive thought Irreversibility
Egocentrisim
Conservation
3. The concrete operational reasoning stage
Identity
Compensation
Reversibility
Classification
Seriation
4. The formal operational reasoning stage
Abstract thought  Metacognition Problem-solving 
Hypothetical Thinking
 Sensorimotor stage (birth to 2 years)
1 •Object permenance
understanding that objects
continue to exist even though he or
she cannot see or hear them
•Goal orientation
• the deliberate planning of steps to
meet an objective
Concrete operatIons (6/7 to 11/12 years)
3
appropriate use of logic
Children are capable of:
•Identity, Compensation, Reversibility, Classification,
Seriation
Use of concrete examples, objects, pictures, and hands-on
practices.
Well orginized and brief presentations
Use familiar examples to explain more complex ideas
Give opportunities for classification and grouping
Present problems that require analytical thinking
preoperational stage (2 to 6 or 7 years)
• The children's play is mainly categorized by symbolic play
• Children tend to become very curious and ask many
questions,
2
• Begin to use primitive reasoning
• Three Weaknessess:
Perceptional Centration
Irreversibility
Egocentrisim
• Have the child physically participate in the activity
• Make Instuctions relatively short,
• Provide a wide range of experiences in order to build a
foundation of concept learning and language
Formal operational reasoning stage (11/12 years
to rest).
Abstract thought 
Metacognition the capacity for "thinking about thinking"
Problem-solving 
Hypothetical Thinking "what-if" situations
Give students opportunity to explore many hypothetical
4
questions, to solve problems and reason scientifically
EXIT TICKET
1. What do you learn best
2. What you do not understand?
3. three key words you keep in your mind