piaget’s theory of cognitive development teoria de piaget del desarrollo cognitivo

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Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive DevelopmentTeoria de Piaget del Desarrollo Cognitivo

Théorie de Piaget du Cognitive Development

(Aportaciones fundamentales y críticas)

Introducción

La presentación de un resumen de la teoría clásica de Piaget en formato ppt es de indudable interés para profesores y alumnos de psicología evolutiva en diferentes campos y muy especialmente en el mundo educativo. Los textos que se presentan a continuación son una recopilación, selección y organización de más de 30 archivos en formato ppt (power point) en lengua castellana, inglés y francés. Por este motivo el lector encontrará fichas en los 3 idiomas. Todos ellos proceden de fuentes propias y de internet. Estos últimos son de acceso público. En todo momento se ha buscado el rigor y la exhaustividad de las presentaciones. Por esta razón, el lector encontrará algún material redundante pero con presentación diferente. Pensamos que el lector como miembro de la comunidad intelectual puede sugerirnos nuevas fichas o detectar errores en las existentes, debido a lo cual nos gustaría que nos enviase los comentarios y sugerencias, compartiendo con nosotros la ampliación de esta presentación.

Piaget’s Theory

He was a child prodigy who published his first article in a refereed journal at the age of 11.

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was one of the 20th centuries most influential researchers in the area of developmental psychology.

Piaget’s Theory

Piaget originally trained in the areas of biology and philosophy and considered himself a “genetic epistimologist.”

He was mainly interested in the biological influences on “how we come to know.”

Piaget’s Theory

Piaget's views are often compared with those of Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934), who looked more to social interaction as the primary source of cognition and behavior.

This is somewhat similar to the distinctions made between Freud and Erikson in terms of the development of personality.

Piaget’s Theory

While working in Binet’s test lab in Paris, Piaget became interested in how children think.

He noticed that young children's answers were qualitatively different than older children.

This suggested to him that the younger children were not less knowledgeable but, instead, answered the questions differently than their older peers because they thought differently.

Piaget’s Theory

Piaget believed that what distinguishes human beings from other animals is our ability to do “abstract symbolic reasoning.”

Piaget’s Theory

This implies that human development is qualitative (changes in kind) rather than quantitative (changes in amount).

El Modelo Piagetiano y su planteamiento epistemológico

• Factores que determinan el desarrollo según Piaget (1966)– 1. Biológicos. Ej: Maduración del sistema nervioso

– 2. Factores de equilibración y autorregulación. Ej: Tendencia a la equilibración. Formas secuenciales en la coordinación general de las acciones de los individuos que interactuan con su medio físico.

– 3. Factores sociales generales (experiencia física y social). Ej: Interacciones entre individuos

– 4. Transmisión educativa y cultural

Describe intellectual development according to Piaget, including a discussion of both the process and the stages of development.

Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

Developed by W. Huitt, 1999

Piaget believed that “children are active thinkers, constantly trying to construct more

advanced understandings of the world”

Piaget’s Theory

There are two major aspects to his theory:

• the process of coming to know and

• the stages we move through as we gradually acquire this ability.

Piaget’s training as a biologist influenced both aspects of his theory.

Process of Cognitive Development Schemas: Assimilation and

Accommodation

Process of Cognitive Development Schemas

As a biologist, Piaget was interested in how an organism adapts to its environment (Piaget described this ability as intelligence.)

Behavior is controlled through mental organizations called schemes that the individual uses to represent the world and designate action.

Schema example:Object permanence

Schema example:Volume permanence

Where do schemas come from?

• Maturationist hypothesis: they are preprogrammed and simply develop

• Behaviorist hypothesis: no mental structures are necessary, all learning is the forming of associations

• Piaget rejected both, and devoted his career to researching the developmental origins of each schema

Process of Cognitive Development

This adaptation is driven by a biological drive to obtain balance between schemes and the environment (equilibration).

Piaget hypothesized that infants are born with schemes operating at birth that he called "reflexes."

In other animals, these reflexes control behavior throughout life.

However, in human beings as the infant uses these reflexes to adapt to the environment, these reflexes are quickly replaced with constructed schemes.

Piaget described two processes used by the individual in its attempt to adapt:

• assimilation and

• accomodation.

Both of these processes are used thoughout life as the person increasingly adapts to the environment in a more complex manner.

Assimilation

The process of using or transforming the environment so that it can be placed in preexisting cognitive structures.

Assimilation

Example: an infant uses a sucking schema that was developed by sucking on a small bottle when attempting to suck on a larger bottle.

Accomodation

The process of changing cognitive structures in order to accept something from the environment.

Accomodation

Example: the infant modifies a sucking schema developed by sucking on a pacifier to one that would be successful for sucking on a bottle.

Assimilation and Accommodation

• Development is driven by a continuing equilibrium between assimilation and accommodation

Schemas: Assimilation and Accommodation

• A schema “always includes both assimilation and accommodation”

• …but in different ratios, resulting in: imitative, ludic, or adaptive schemas

• Intelligence is the equilibrium between assimilation and accommodation

Assimilation

Accommodation

Play as Assimilation and Accommodation

• The child at pretend often imposes a schema on the world (assimilation)

• Children at play also imitate something they’ve observed or repeat a past activity (accommodation)

• Play contributes to development because of this tension between assimilation and accommodation

As schemes become increasingly more complex (i.e., responsible for more complex behaviors) they are termed structures.

As one's structures become more complex, they are organized in a hierarchical manner (i.e., from general to specific).

Symbolic schemes – internal mental symbols that one uses to represent aspects of experience.

Cognitive operation – an internal mental activity that one performs on objects or thoughts.

How We Gain Knowledge:

Piaget's Cognitive Processes (cont.)

¿Cómo se aprende?: Perspectiva genético-cognitiva del aprendizaje

• - Desarrollo Aprendizaje

• Proceso de enseñanza y aprendizaje

Maduración Dllo Cognitivo

Esquemas

Estadios o niveles de competencia cognitiva

Construcción de aprendizajes

Dinámicos y cambiantes

1. Factores biológicos

2. Equilibración y desequilibración

Asimilación y acomodación a través de esquemas

¿Cómo conocemos y aprendemos?

Si el sujeto es consciente de que no puede asimilar el objeto nuevo entonces se produce desequilibrio cognitivo y aparecen esquemas nuevos

Sensoriomotriz, Preop….

Acción

Aprenziaje por descubrimiento

Asimilamos mediante esquemas los objetos y acomodamos los esquemas a los objetos

Un conejo puede asimilar una col pero una col no puede asimilar a un conejo

Ej: El niño simbólico da vida propia a los objetos inanimados

La relevancia de la obra de Piaget: el autor

Piaget• A radical claim: Piaget

didn’t really care about children

• Piaget cared about basic philosophical questions

• The study of developing children allows an empirical evaluation of philosophical questions

The Philosophical Context

• Where does knowledge come from?• Behaviorists are empiricists—all knowledge derives

from experience• The rationalists reject empiricism and argue that some

knowledge is innate or a priori: it does not require experience

• Kant’s synthesis proposed a priori basic categories• Piaget proposed that these basic categories are not

innate but are learned, but not in the way that behaviorists believed

Key Influences: Biology• Piaget’s degrees were in

biology• The influence of Darwin:

development proceeds in stages

• Piaget’s central question: How did human cognition evolve from lower animals?

Cognitive development

Range of topics studied byPiagetInfancy - adolescence

perception

memoryspace timecausalitymoral judgmentplaydreams

imitation

geometrynumberreasoning

scienceconsciousnesspossibility and necessity

chance

physics

• Piaget (1896 - 1980) has had the greatest influence on developmental psychology to date– this is partly to do with the enormity of output….

JEAN PIAGET (1896-1980)

Number of publications (excluding translations)and span of writing career

Articles

COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT:

Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

Stage 1: Sensorimotor Stage (Birth-2yrs)

Stage 2: Preoperational Stage (2-7yrs)

Stage 3: Concrete Operations (7-11yrs)

Stage 4: Formal Operations (11-on)

Invariant developmental sequence!

Typical Age Range

Description of Stage

Developmental Phenomena

Birth to nearly 2 years SensorimotorExperiencing the world through senses and actions (looking, touching, mouthing)

•Object permanence•Stranger anxiety

About 2 to 6 years

About 7 to 11 years

About 12 through adulthood

PreoperationalRepresenting things with words and images but lacking logical reasoning

•Pretend play•Egocentrism•Language development

Concrete operationalThinking logically about concrete events; grasping concrete analogies and performing arithmetical operations

•Conservation •Mathematical transformations

Formal operationalAbstract reasoning

•Abstract logic•Potential for moral reasoning

Stage 1: Sensorimotor

Stage (Birth-2yrs)

Nos ubicamos

en el sujeto.Pautas

motrices

Piaget: Sensorimotor Stage (Infancy)

Sub Age (M)

Description

1 0 – 1 ½ Reflex schemas exercised

2 1 ½ – 4 Primary circular reactions

3 4 – 8 Secondary circular reactions

4 8 – 12 Coordination of secondary circular reactions

5 12 – 18 Tertiary circular reactions

6 18 – 24 Beginning of symbolic representation

Sub Age (M) Description

1 0 – 1 ½ Reflex schemas exercised: Involuntary rooting, sucking, grasping, looking

2 1 ½ – 4 Primary circular reactions: Repetition of personal actions that in themselves are pleasurable (e.g., blowing bubbles)

Sensorimotor SubstagesSub Age Description

1 Birth – 1 month

Infants begin to modify the reflexes with which they are born to make them more adaptive.

2 1 – 4 months

Infants begin to organize separate reflexes into larger behaviors, most of which are centered on their own bodies.

Sub Age (M) Description

3 4 – 8 Secondary circular reactions: Dawning awareness of the effects of one’s own accidental actions on environment, and that extended actions can produce interesting change in the environment

4 8 – 12 Coordination of secondary circular reactions: Combining schemas to achieve a desired effect (inten-tionality; early problem solving)

3 4 – 8 months

Infants becoming increasingly interested in the world around them. By the end of this substage, object permanence, the knowledge that objects continue to exist even when they are out of view, typically emerges.

4 8 – 12 months

During this substage, children make the A-Not-B error, the tendency to reach to where objects have been found before, rather than to where they were last hidden.

Lack of Representation

Infant does not track the movement of the train in the tunnel, is happy to see the train again, but is not surprised that it is now a different color or shape.

5 12 – 18 months

Toddlers begin to actively and avidly explore the potential uses to which objects can be put.

6 18 – 24 months

Infants become able to form enduring mental representations. The first sign of this capacity is deferred imitation, the repetition of other people’s behavior a substantial time after it occurred.

The Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to 2 Years): Coordinating Sensory Inputs and Motor Capabilities

Algunas capacidades del niño sensoriomotor

• La adquisición de la noción de objeto permanente, como mecanismo de adaptación a la realidad, ha sido una de las más estudiadas en la psicología del niño menor de dos años.

The key elements of active construction : adaptation

• Adaptation is when these two forces are in equilibrium

– This results in the emergence of a new behavioural schema….

– A sensorimotor schema is a behaviour built up from progressive equilibration of assimilation and accommodation

A well-known example of schema elaboration is

searching for a hidden object

This is known as the development

of the Object Concept

This development illustrates how the logic

of transformations is first acquired through the active construction

of space

Object Permanence

Knowledge that an object continues to exist independent of our seeing, hearing, touching, tasting or smelling it!

Estadios del Desarrollo de la noción de Objeto Permanente (Piaget)

1. El bebé intenta seguir con dificultad el movimiento del objeto y no busca los objetos que han sido ocultados a su vista. (0-2)

2. El bebé sigue la trayectoria del objeto y se orienta con respecto al lugar donde desaparece de su vista pero no busca los objetos que han sido ocultados a su vista . (2-4)

3. El bebé alcanzará el objeto cuando se oculte parcialmente de su vista. (4-8)

4. El bebé alcanzará el objeto cuando se oculte totalmente a su vista, pero cometerá un error característico: busca siempre el objeto donde desapareció por primera vez, aunque se lo escondamos varias veces a su vista. (8-12)

5. El bebé alcanzará el objeto en el último lugar donde despareció de su vista pero no es capaz de representarse las trayectorias ocultas. No busca el objeto si lo escondemos sin que lo vea (12-18)

6. Finalmente el niño es capaz de representarse la trayectoria de los objetos escondidos. Por lo tanto, los busca aunque no haya visto desparecerlos. (18-24)

Object Permanence – knowledge that an object continues to exist independent of our seeing, hearing, touching, tasting or smelling it!

Stage 1 and 2 – Tracks, then ignores

The stages of the object concept

• Schema development during the stages of the object concept– The key stages are marked

by a simple adaptive schema for finding an object AND a limitation on this schema

– This is overcome once the behaviour is so well adapted that ‘new’ information can be assimilated

e.g. 4 - 8 months (3rd stage): “out of sight out of mind”

The stages of the object concept contd.

Space does not yet have an independent construct

in which relocation could exist

8-12 months (4th stage): the ‘place’ error

• What the child achieves in the first year of lfe is a concept of a space that is independent of him/her

• And that objects can undergo reversible operations in this space

• Learning the nature of reversibility at a practical level

• The final stages of the sensorimotor period mark difficulties with mentalising actions

• At the 5th stage, the infant has a problem with invisible displacements

– This is the first demand on the child’s representation of a transformation...

12-18 months (5th stage)

The end of the 6th stage and the beginning of symbolisation

• At the 6th and final stage of this period, the child starts to represent actions symbolically

– This not only allows him to track invisible displacements but also to start to have ‘knowledge’ independent of actions…

– It is at this stage that imitation and ‘pretend’ representations start

18 -24 months (6th stage): The transition to representational

thought

“In general terms it can be said that the child has

become capable of directing his

search by means of representation”

The physics domain : object permanence

– After Piaget a wave of new evidence suggested that infants DO represent an occluded object even if they do not reach for it

• recent evidence comes from Baillargeon and Spelke - see page 75)

Infants well below ‘permanence’age (i.e. 3.5 months) show

a sensitivity to an impossible event based on the concept of an

occluded object

The new experiments display ‘impossible’ events and measure

selective looking time

From sensorimotor to pre-operational thought

• The final stages of the object concept see in the beginning of the symbol function in children

• This was thought by Piaget to allow the crucial ‘interiorisation of action’

• All subsequent stages are now seen to be developments of a new symbol-based system that replaces the old sensorimotor one

Piaget: Structures and operations

• How is knowledge represented ?

• This is the structuralist aspect of Piaget’s theory

• Good examples in– Early Growth of Logic– Child’s Construction of Number

Aspects of Piaget’s structruralism

•The interactions at the sensorimotor level contain an inherent logic

•This logic is based on properties like identity (same object/different place)and reversibility (A to B is reversed by B to A)

•The logic inherent in action is recovered at an explicit mental level through the subsequent stages

•Stability at the operational level is achieved when thought is governed by this logic and it becomes explict

Estudios posteriores que modifican los planteamientos de

Piaget• Baillargeon’s Object permanence task

• Intermodel Perception (Spelke)

• Infant Arithmetic?

• Rational Behavior

• Infant Categorizing

• Growth of Memory

Behavioral Capacities of the Newborn

• Newborns’ Learning and Memory

– It is not clear if Piaget’s inference is accurate. Infants who are tested differently show signs of having a notion of object permanence earlier than Piaget believed was possible.

– Infants seem to have a grasp of physical laws and can distinguish possible from impossible events (at least their reactions seem to indicate that they do.)

– They may also have a grasp of simple numerical concepts.

Tarea de Baillargeon sobre el Objeto permanente

La investigación de Baillargeon sugiere que los bebés almacenan más conocimieinto sobre el objeto y sus propiedades de lo que planteaba

inicialmente la teoría de Piaget. El bebé de 3,5 meses mostraba sorpresa ante el evento

imposible y no ante el posible.

Precocious Infants?

• Infants 3½ months old dishabituated (i.e., surprised, looked longer) when screen appeared to pass through the place where box had been located

• Seemed to indicate reasoning about an impossible event

Baillargeon et al., 1987

Reversing the Experiment

Cohen et al., 2000

However, when habituated to the impossible event first and then tested on the possible event, the babies stared more than twice as long at this possible event!

In essence, they looked longer at the novel events, whether possible or impossible.

Figure 10.9

Mean looking times of 6- and 8-month-old infants after they had watched either possible or impossible events. (From Baillargeon, 1986)

Intermodel Perception• Infants held two rings, one in each hand,

under a cloth that prevented them from seeing the rings or their own bodies.

• For some infants the rings were connected by a rigid bar and therefore moved together. For others the rings were connected by a flexible cord and therefore moved independently.

• All the infants were allowed to hold and feel just one or the other type of rings until they had largely lost interest (habituated).

• They were then shown both types of rings.

• The babies looked longer at the rings that were different from those they had been exploring with their hands.

Streri & Spelke, 1988

Aritmética en bebés

Los bebés de 4 meses observan durnante más tiempo los eventos imposibles que los posibles

Cognitive Development• Baby Mathematics

– Shown a numerically impossible outcome, infants stare longer (Wynn, 1992)

1. Objects placed in case.

2. Screen comes up.

3. One object is removed.

4. Possible outcome: Screen drops, revealing one object.

4. Possible outcome: Screen drops, revealing two object.

Rational Behavior

In this experiment, infants were shown a small circle repeatedly jumping over a barrier to get to another circle (a). After they had habituated to this event, the obstacle was removed. In subsequent tests, the infants looked longer if the circle repeated its familiar jumping action (b) (which was not a reasonable behavior since the barrier was no longer there) than if it took a novel, but more efficient, straight-line route (c).

Infant Categorizing• Infants (3 months) shown a

sequence of pictures of cats were surprised when they saw a picture of a dog, suggesting that they were sensitive to the category of cats

• Similarly, 3- to 4-month-olds, after having been shown a series of pictures of mammals, looked longer at pictures of non-mammals and furniture than at a picture of a new mammal Eimas & Quinn, 1994

Behl-Chadha et al., 1995

Infant Categorizing

• After three 15-minute sessions, each with a different-color A block, a 3-month-old baby will kick the mobile with yet a fourth color added.

• But if a new shape is inscribed on the blocks used in the fourth session (e.g., B’s), the baby will not kick, indicating that the baby has formed a category and remembered prior experience

Conceptual Categories

• Babies (7 months) treated plastic toy birds and airplanes, which are perceptually similar, as if they were members of the same category

• Babies (9 -11 months) treated toy airplanes and birds as members of conceptually different categories, despite the fact that they looked very much alike

Mandler & McDonough, 1993

Growth of Memory

Growth of MemoryIn one study (Rovee-Collier et al.), a group of 3-month-old babies were trained to activate a mobile by kicking. They then let an entire month elapse before putting the babies into the experimental situation again. They knew that this was more than enough time for the babies to forget their training.

However, 1 day before being retested, the 3-month-olds were shown the mobile as a reminder (without allowing them to kick). The next day, these infants started kicking as soon as the ribbon was tied to one of their legs. The mere sight of the mobile a day earlier seemed to remind the babies of what they had learned 1 month earlier.

What might be the educational implications?

Relationship with the Social World

Imitation

Wariness

New Relationships

Deferred Imitation (Evidence of Recall)• Infants move from relying on

implicit memory (recognition) to explicit memory (recall)

• For example, infants will imitate live models, as well as actions that they have seen on television– Infants who watch a televised

model on one day will reproduce the model’s behavior 24 hours later (Meltzoff, 1988)

• What might be an educational implication?

Wariness (begins at 6-9 months)• Infants who are

exposed to something new – even a spoonful of cereal from a stranger – display characteristic wariness

• Another evidence of recall

Indicators of New Social Relationships

• Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky)– Assistance provided by adults goes just slightly beyond the child’s

current competence; helps child learn new behaviors

• Attachment– Seek to be near their primary caregivers and

show distress when they are separated, happy when reunited

• Secondary Intersubjectivity– Primary: face-to-face

communication (e.g., social smiling)

– Secondary: shared communication that refers to objects beyond themselves (e.g., looks when mother points)

Indicators of New Social Relationships

Social Referencing– Tendency to look to the caregiver for an

indication of how one should feel and act (girls will do this more than boys)

Language Development– Comprehension: understands words for

highly familiar objects (6 months); identifies phrases (8-9 months)

– Babbling: Vocalizing that includes consonant/vowel repetitions (7 months)

– Jargoning: Babbling with stress and intonation of actual utterances (12 months)

Figure 10.4

Infants pay more attention to faces than to other patterns. These results suggest that infants are born with certain visual preferences. (Based on Fantz, 1963)

El estadio preoperatorio, representacional y

simbólico (2-7)

1 – Substadio preconceptual (2-4)2 – Subestadio intuitivo (4-7)

Preoperational Stage (2-7 years)

• Emergence of symbolic thought

• Centration

• Egocentrism

• Lack the concept of conservation

• Animism

• Artificialism

La descripción piagetiana del pensamiento

preoperatorio• Abarca de los 2 a los 6-7 años.• No es un nivel estructural

propiamente dicho, sino un estadio de preparación para la estructura operatoria.

• Acciones interiorizadas Intuiciones

• Esquemas representacionales

Características del pensamiento

preoperatorio (I)• Centración: atender de forma exclusiva a un único aspecto de la realidad, ignorando otros.

• Intuitivo: tendencia a dejarse llevar por la apariencia perceptiva de los objetos.

• Estatismo: tendencia a fijarse exclusivamente en los estados finales, ignorando las transformaciones

• Irreversibilidad: incapaces de rehacer mentalmente la secuencia de acciones de un proceso para devolver un objeto o situación a su estado inicial

Características del pensamiento

preoperatorio (II)• Razonamiento transductivo: establecer

conexiones asociativas entre las cosas, razonando de lo particular a lo particular.

• Egocentrismo: pensamiento realista centrado en el propio punto de vista.

• Animismo: tendencia a atribuir vida a objetos inanimados

• Fenomenismo: Establecer relaciones causales entre fenómenos que se dan próximos.

• Finalismo:Atribuir causas a todo.• Artificialismo: Todo es obra del hombre

The Preoperational Stage: 2-7 Years, Preconceptual Period (2-4 Years)

A. Accomplishments

1. Symbolic Function

A. Accomplishments

2. Begin Pretend Play

The Preconceptual Period (2 to 4 Years of Age) of the Preoperational Stage

• Emergence of symbolic thought and play

• Representational insight is in place by 2.5 years.

• Dual representation (ability to think about an object in two different ways at the same time) is in place by 3 years of age.

• Preconceptual reasoning is primitive by adult standards.

– Children display animism (a willingness to attribute life and life-like qualities to inanimate objects)

– Children display egocentrism (a tendency to view the world from one's own perspective and to have difficulty recognizing another person's point of view)

– Children not yet proficient at dual encoding

Emergence of symbolic thought and play

Dual representation

Development of Make-Believe Play

1. Play becomes detached from associated real-life conditions (a block can be a telephone)

2. The way the child as self participates in play changes with age (less egocentric)

3. Make-believe play gradually includes more complex scheme combinations (appearance of sociodramatic play)

Sociodramatic play– First appears

around age 2 1/2 and increases rapidly

– Signals an awareness that make-believe play is a representational activity.

Advantages of Make-Believe Play: More than Piaget thought

– Preschoolers who spend more time at sociodramatic play

• are advanced in general intellectual development• are seen as more socially competent by their

teachers.

– Children with imaginary friends:• display more complex pretend play• are advanced in mental representation• are more sociable with peers.

Symbol–Real World Relations

• Dual representation:– A cup can be a cup or a hat– Locate object from map of room

• Insight into one type of symbol–real world relation seems to help preschoolers understand others.

• Opportunities to learn about the functions symbols like picture books, models, maps, and drawings enhances understanding that one object can stand for another.

A. Accomplishments

2. Begin Pretend Play

B. Errors

1. Animism

2. Precausal or Transductive reasoning

3. Egocentrism

Limitations of Preoperational Thought

Egocentrism

Everyone else thinks, perceives and feels the same as I do

Egocentric Conversations

Un ejemplo de egocentrismo y centración: el problema de las 3

montañas

The Preconceptual Period (2 to 4 Years of Age) of the Preoperational Stage

FigurePiaget’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.

Egocentrism

Animistic Thinking

Inanimate objects have lifelike qualities such as thoughts, wishes, feelings and intentions.

The Intuitive Period (4 to 7 Years of Age)

• Intuitive thought is an extension of preconceptual thought.

• Children now somewhat less egocentric

• Children now more proficient at classifying objects on the basis of shared perceptual attributes

• Children still incapable of conservation

Intuitive Period (4-7 Years)

A. Accomplishments

B. Errors

1. Conservation

2. Classification

Inability to Conserve

Conservation is the idea that certain physical characteristics of objects remain the same, even when their outward appearance changes.

Inability to Conserve

• Understanding is centered

• Thinking is perception bound

• States rather than transformations

• Irreversibility

• Lack of hierarchical classifications

The Intuitive Period (4 to 7 Years of Age) (cont.)

Figure 7.6 Some common tests of the child’s ability to conserve.

Procedures Used to Test Conservation

Conservation

• Number

In conservation of number tests, two equivalent rows of coins are placed side by side and the child says that there is the same number in each row. Then one row is spread apart and the child is again asked if there is the same number in each.

Conservation

• Length

In conservation of length tests, two same-length sticks are placed side by side and the child says that they are the same length. Then one is moved and the child is again asked if they are the same length.

Conservation

• Substance

In conservation of substance tests, two identical amounts of clay are rolled into similar-appearing balls and the child says that they both have the same amount of clay. Then one ball is rolled out and the child is again asked if they have the same amount.

A. Accomplishments

B. Errors in Conservation: Liquid

A. Accomplishments

B. Errors in Conservation : Mass

A. Accomplishments

B. Errors in Conservation : AREA

The Balance Scale: An Example of Centration

Errors in Conservation

Falta de Habilidad para clasificar

Es capaz de clasificar sobre un solo criterio pero no es capaz de relacionar la parte con el todo, como se observa en los experimentos de inclusión en clases

A. Accomplishments

B. Errors

1. Classification

¿Más flores o más flores amarillas?

Action schemas teach the logic of reversibility..

conservation

Action teaches transformations and necessary equivalence

greater height/less widthless height/greater width

Co-ordination through reversibility

Without reversibility there are failures of conservation...

Greater density = more

Greater extent = more

greater density/less extentless density/greater extent

Logical equilibration:

Action teaches grouping principles and properties of

inclusion and exclusion= A

“Are there more flowers (C) or more daffodils (A) ? “

requires the simultaneous understanding of the reversible

relationship that C = A + B and A = C -B

See Inhelder and Piaget (1964) Early Growth of Logic, page 106

Action teaches the nature of asymmetric relations:

transitivityCo-ordination of asymmetric relations

A B B C

so that B can be inserted as the middle element in a series

A > B B > C&Co-ordinating the relations

requires the simultaneous understanding thatB < A & B > C

A > B > C

Children co-ordinateconcrete asymmetric relations from around the age of seven

Alternativas a Piageten el estadio preoperatorio

Did Piaget Underestimate the Preoperational Child?

• New evidence on egocentrism shows that children are less egocentric when provided with less complicated visual displays.

• Another look at children’s causal reasoning shows that 3-year-olds do not routinely attribute life or lifelike qualities to inanimate objects.

• Preoperational children can conserve with training.

Criticism of Piaget’s Preoperational Stage Theory

• Many Piagetian problems contain confusing or unfamiliar elements or too many pieces of information for young children to handle at once. As a result, preschoolers’ responses do not reflect their true abilities.

• Are Piaget’s Stages Distinct?

– Piaget believed that the four stages of intellectual development were discrete, and that each one represented a major reorganization in cognitive processes.

– More recently though researchers have shown that this conclusion is not entirely warranted.

• Are Piaget’s Stages Distinct?

– Preoperational children can answer different versions of the conservation tasks correctly.

– In general, the progression between the stages appears to be gradual, so that the difference between stages may not be one of either having the ability or not; it may actually be that the younger child has the same ability but only uses it for simple tasks.

Figure 10.15

(a) With the standard conservation-of-number task, preoperational children answer that the lower row has more items. (b) With a simplified task, the same children say that both rows have the same number of items.

An Overview of Piaget’s Theory

• Implications for Education: Piaget

– Children must discover certain concepts on their own.

– Children’s attention must be directed to key aspects of concepts when they are ready to learn those concepts.

– The teacher needs to determine the child’s level of functioning and then teach material appropriate to that level.

An Overview of Piaget’s Theory

• Implications for Education: Vygotsky

– Lev Vygotsky was a Russian developmental psychologist who thought that education needed to meet children at their own level.

• He believed that the use of the symbolic system of language allowed humans to influence others and control our own behavior.

• Education needs to utilize this feature of language and take into account the child’s level of cognitive maturity.

• He proposed the existence of a zone of proximal development, which is the distance between what a child can do alone and what a child can do with assistance from others.

An Overview of Piaget’s Theory• Implications for Education: Vygotsky

– Vygotsky proposed the existence of a zone of proximal development, which is the distance between what a child can do alone and what a child can do with assistance from others.

– Instruction should occur within the zone, but appropriate guidance should be given whenever possible to bring the child to understanding of more sophisticated concepts.

– He compared this process to scaffolding, temporary supports used to construct a new building. These are temporary supports for the child’s cognitive processes.

CONCEPT CHECK:

Who would be more optimistic about the possibility of teaching a 5 year old to understand conservation of mass?

According to Vygotsky, conservation might lie within the child’s zone of proximal development

Difficulties of Inferring Children’s Concepts

• There may be a fundamental weakness in the assumption made by Piaget that a child either “has” or “lacks” a concept.

• Concepts develop gradually and may appear using some methods of testing but not others.

• Distinguishing Appearance from Reality– Do children in the early preoperational stage fail to

distinguish appearance from reality?

• It’s not entirely clear whether a child’s inability to do so has more to do with lacking a concept or inadequate language skills.

• Children for example may seem to confuse a rock and a sponge that looks like a rock, but when asked to bring to an adult something to wipe up spilled water, they have no problem identifying the sponge as the correct object for that purpose.

Figure

If an experimenter hides a small toy in a small room and asks a child to find a larger toy “in the same place” in the larger room, a 21/2-year-old searches haphazardly. (a) However, the same child knows exactly where to look, if the experimenter says this is the same room as before, except that a machine has expanded it (b).

Figure A child sits in front of a screen covering four cups and watches as one adult hides a surprise under one of the cups.

Figure (cont.)

A child sits in front of a screen covering four cups and watches as one adult hides a surprise under one of the cups.

Figure (cont.)

Then that adult and another (who had not been present initially) point to one of the cups to signal where the surprise is hidden. Many 4-year-olds consistently follow the advice of the informed adult; 3-year-olds do not.

• Understanding Other People’s Thoughts

– Are young children more cognitively egocentric than adults are?

• What Piaget meant by this is that a child cannot easily understand the perspectives of other people.

• Various experiments show that preschool aged children make errors of thought that are typical of egocentric thinking.

• However, adults can make the same mistakes according to other studies.

CONCEPT CHECK:Which is the clearest example of egocentric thinking?

1. An exceptionally wealthy man gives no money to charity.

2. A woman assumes that all her friends will want to see the same movie that she does.

3. At student council meeting, a student takes credit for someone else’s ideas.#2 – selfishness (1) and dishonesty (3) are not the same as egocentrism.

Piaget’s structuralism

• Summary:– The study of pre-operational to operational thought in

children allowed Piaget to conclude that the ‘logic of relations’emerged around the same time across different domains

– This suggested that there was a new sort of mental structuring available that alters for ever the way children think and creates the perception of logical necessity

– Later this becomes emancipated from the concrete situations and becomes ‘formal’ thought

• So what happened to it ?

From Piaget’s structuralism to modularity

• There were some empirical challenges

– Neo-Piagetians started to show a naïve logic in children younger than 7 years

– And earlier development of the object concept in infancy

• This produced a subtle shift away from Piaget’s agenda

– Children’s development was no longer seen in logico-mathematical terms

• But the main theoretical challenge came from Neo-nativism

– This asserted that Piaget had overlooked innate skills

– And that his solutions were too domain general

Neo-nativist representational theories

• Intellectual growth through representational re-description of domain specific skills

• Annette Karmiloff-Smith

– Beyond Modularity MIT Press 1992– (all of it)

A new set of questions• What are the genetically pre-programmed origins of

learning ?

• What are the subsequent developments through growth ?

• To what extent are cognitive skills modular and to what extent domain general ?

• Her book is therefore constructed around key SEPARATE behavioural domains (after Fodor’s Modularity of Mind) : each with its own type of learning

Answer to Will’s question: some others in the Neo-nativist

tradition• Carey and Gelman (naïve theories and natural

kinds)

• Gentner (analogy and metaphor)

• Goswami (natural reasoning)

• Halford (natural maturation of information processing)

• Johnson (neonatal perception)

• Spelke and Baillargeon (naïve physics)

What are the innate structures ?• It is less nativist than Fodor, but more

nativist than Piaget :

• “When I use the term “innately specified”… I do not mean….a genetic blueprint for prespecified modules, present at birth (but)…innately specified predispositions that are more epigenetic than Fodor’s nativism”– “Nature specifies initial biases or predispositions that

channel attention to relevant environmental inputs, which in turn affect subsequent brain development” (page 5)

The linguistic domain• Here she stresses the channel-

specific ability underlying the comprehension of speech in neonates - either in innate or very rapid learning (e.g. linguistically relevant input from other acoustic signals)

– Grammatical development shows language-specific rules e.g. “speaked” but NOT “big he”

“But such generalizations are

are not made. Inferences that that

children do and don’t make in language

acquisition are governed by

specifically linguistic principles which

constrain the class of inputs open to such

generalizations”(P.34/35)

The physics domain : object permanence

– After Piaget a wave of new evidence suggested that infants DO represent an occluded object even if they do not reach for it

– recent evidence comes from Baillargeon and Spelke - see page 75)

Infants well below ‘permanence’age (i.e. 3.5 months) show

a sensitivity to an impossible event based on the concept of an

occluded object

The new experiments display ‘impossible’ events and measure

selective looking time

Baillargeon’s Object permanence task

“this body of research suggests that infants store knowledge about the object world in far

greater sophistication and far earlier than Piagetian theory asserts. Whether or not such

computations are domain specific from the very outset or progressively become domain specific

awaits more sophisticated experimentation involving brain activation”

p. 67-72

The number domain

• Number as a “domain-specific, innately guided process”

– Again habituation studies suggest innate number skills….(Antell &Keating, 1983) - see page 97

– habituated to certain densities or line lengths - neonates dishabituated to new nos. with same line lengths or densities...

The social domain• Also in contra-distinction to

Piaget and the view that children are late to ‘decentre’ socially, she cites evidence from early face recognition experiments that neonates preferentially attend to face-like patterns on a moving board (Johnson & Morton, 1991) - see page 119

neonates prefer these

The notational domain– K-S draws on the fact

that notation itself reflects domain specificity (numbers v words)

– Although there is little infancy work on this, she reports carrying some out herself (see p. 142)

Drawing

Writing

How does early learning ‘scale up’?

• Representational redescription

• Despite early competence, K-S believes that development DOES undergo changes in the level of understanding or ‘reperesentation’ just like Piaget. She describes this as becoming representationally explicit

The levels :ImplicitExplicit 1Explicit 2Explicit 3

The implicit level

– This is similar to the pre-understanding level of the S-R level of Kendler or sensorimotor level of Piaget. It allows ‘behavioural mastery’ but without awareness

– Information is encoded procedurally• procedures are sequentially specified

• new representations are independently stored from one another

• no intra-domain or inter-domain links possible

– “there are many formats in which such knowledge might be represented”, p.156

E1 (Explicit) level

– The first step towards (human) understanding is the spontaenous re-representation of a previous representation - At first this does not imply ‘awareness’

• reduced descriptions of procedures in a compressed format

• result of re-describing I level in a higher level language

• component parts of procedures now available

• intra and inter-domain links possible

Behavioural versus representational change

• E2 (explicit)

– This is where she distinguishes between R-R per se and making the new representation available to consciousness (though it may not be linguistically accessible)

• E3

– As above but articulable

Behavioural change

Representational change

Evidence : from language

• The linguistic domain

• See playroom expt. (p.56)

– At age 3, 100% mastery– Age 5, children will

often pick out the boy doll

– Age 8/9 correct with an appropriate explanation

“lend me a (une) car”

Explanation...

Interpretation :

I level : “independently stored procedures for producing same phonological form” - good mapping of definite and indefinite

E1 level : common phonological form linked across 2 functions (‘a’ v ‘one’ - see also production ) aware of the dual function of

“une” - focus on “one”

E2/E3 level : knowledge of context now available to conscious access and verbal report (and can properly justify response)

Summary : the later questions

• How can development be re-construed bearing in mind native competences?

• What are these competences ?

• How do they develop within domains ?

• How do domains of competence become interlinked?

PAUSE FOR THOUGHT

• What ever happened to learning ?

– It had already become separated from interactionism because of the focus on ‘operations’ and what children ‘do’ on one-off tasks at

different ages and stages. See:

Chalmers, M. and McGonigle, B. (1997)

Capturing dynamic structuralism in the laboratory

In Piaget, Vygotsky and Beyond (ed. L. Smith, J. Dockrell and P. Tomlinson, Routledge, London) pp. 183-200

(first part)

Learning in the neo-nativist models

• Does K-S include learning mechanisms ?– Yes – Does she study them explicitly like Kendler ?– No

• So how is learning incorporated into the new developmental psychology ?

• Through allusion to connectionist models...

The contemporary influences

• K-S’s position is influenced by Piaget’s research combined with recent cognitive science and modularity of mind

• and, more recently, connectionism - but this has yet to fulfill its promise

language as structure (Fodor)

modularity of mind (Fodor)

connectionism (McLelland)

1980’s 2000’s1956

Piagetian constructivism

Cognitive science : modularity of mind

Cognitive science

From learning to neo-nativism: what has been gained and what

lost?• Gains : – a more useful conception of behavioural development from

the point of view of mapping with brain function and structure– questions that are less ‘epistemic’ and more to do with actual

development – (therefore) more focus on ‘real-life’ areas of development

• Losses :– the focus on learning through behaving in the world

• (the focus is now more on internal changes in representation)

– paradigms that provide evidence of different levels of executive control

• (there are very few experiments that test the new ‘levels’ thesis explicitly)

Estadio Operatorio (7-11

años aprox.)

Estadio Operatorio

• Características PrincipalesDescentración

Desarrollo de la capacidad para utilizar operaciones concretas

Concepto de Operación

Acción elegida (ej:ordenar) interiorizada y reversible (ej: adición-sustración), coordinada e integrada en una estructura de conjunto (ej: modelo matemático de agrupamiento).

Ejemplos: una adición, medida o clasificación

• Naturaleza social de las operaciones• Contrariamente a la mayoría de las acciones, las

operaciones implican siempre, en efecto, una posibilidad de intercambio, de coordinación individual e interindividual; y ese aspecto cooperativo constituye una condición sine qua non de la objetividad de la coherencia interna (equilibrio) y de la universalidad de estas estructuras operatorias (Piaget, J. y Inhelder, B (1969). Psicología del niño. Madrid. Morata, p.98)

• ..el término social debe ser entendido de manera amplia como transmisiones educativas, culturales o morales, p.99)

Estadio Operatorio

Reglas lógicas fundamentales de la génesis de las operaciones concretas

Reversibilidad

II - Una transformación operatoria es siempre relativa a un invariante, como el esquema o noción de

conservación

I - Las operaciones consisten en transformaciones reversibles

Noción de conservación

Reglas lógicas fundamentales de la génesis las operaciones

ILas operaciones consisten en transformaciones reversibles

Compensacion

Reversibilidad

Los cambios en una característica son compensados por cambios en otras características. Por ej: El ancho por

el alto en un vaso de agua

Inversión (A – A = 0)

Toda operación poseesu contraria

ReciprocidadA corresponde a B

y viceversa

Juan es mayor que Manuel Manuel es menor que Juan

Reglas lógicas fundamentales de la génesis de las operaciones

Una transformaciones operatoria es siempre relativa a un invariante, como el esquema o noción de

conservación

Noción de conservación(ej: objeto permanenente,líquidos, materia, número)

Tipos de Operaciones Cognitivas (Martí, 1990)Lógico Matemáticas Infralógicas

Lógicas Clases

-Clasificación.

- Ej: flores del mismo color.

Clases

-Adición partitiva.

-Ej:disolución de un azucarillo en agua. ¿La cantidad de líquido y peso permanecen constantes?

Relaciones

-Seriación.

-Ej: ordenar bastones de menor a mayor.

Relaciones

-Orden (espacial y temporal).

-Ej: Ante la rotación de un bastoncillo con perlas. ¿Orden de aparición?

Numéricas Sistema numérico

Ej: conservación del número.Cálculo: suma, resta, multiplicación.

Medida

Ej.: El niño debe construir una torre de igual altura que la del modelo pero con restricciones distintas.

Operar con valores

Estadio Operatorio

¿Cómo se estructuran los diferentes tipos de operaciones?

La operación es una acción coordinada e integrada en una estructura de conjunto.

Piaget propone que los diferentes tipos de operaciones (cuantitativas y cualitativas) se pueden

estructurar en el desarrollo genético del niño a través de una estructura lógica: Los

AGRUPAMIENTOS

Los agrupamientos son estructuras lógicas semejantes pero no idénticas a los “grupos” matemáticos. Son una

combinación de la estructura del grupo y del retículo (modelo pseudomatemático de agrupamiento)

Las 5 Propiedades de Los Agrupamientos• Combinación o composición

Dos operaciones de un conjunto constituyen por su reunión una nueva operación del conjunto. (x+x´= y). Ej: niños + niñas = niños. Niños + adultos= humamos. Los niños son también humanos.

• Reversibilidad Cada operación puede invertirse. (a-b=c; a-c=b)

• Asociatividad• Expresa la posibilidad psicológica de obtener el mismo resultado por

dos caminos diferentes (a+b)+c=a+(b+c)

• Identidad La composición de toda operación con su inversa culmina en una “operación idéntica general” (a-a=0; a+0=a). Equivale a la anulación de la operación.

• Tautología Una acción cuando se repite no añade nada nuevo a la clase. Ej: niños + niños =niños.

¿Cuántos tipos de agrupamientos propone Piaget?

• Propone 9 agrupamientos diferentes que describen la estructura cognitiva de este periodo: 1 agrupamiento preliminar y 8 mayores.

• De los 8 mayores, 4 referidos a la lógica de clases (ej:clasificación) y 4 a la lógica de las relaciones (ej:seriación).

Estadio Operatorio

Los conceptos más significativos del pensamiento operatorio según Piaget (1969)

• Reversibilidad• Conservación• Clasificación• Seriación.

¿Por qué son los más significativos?

Porque Piaget los considera indispensable para operar lógicamente a nivel cuantitativo y cualitativo; para comprender el concepto de unidad y de número; y

para poder operar con números

Número

Estadio Operatorio

La evolución de las nociones de conservacion, clasificación y seriación

La Conservación Todas las operaciones requieren de la noción de

conservación

1- No existe conservación2- Tendencia a aceptar la conservación, pero entra en

conflicto con la percepción.3- Adquisición de la nociónEdades de adquisición: Materia (7-8), peso (9),

Volumen (11). (ver diapositivas del periodo preoperatorio)

Estadio Operatorio

Operaciones lógicas que implica la noción de Conservación (ver propiedades

del agrupamiento)

• 1- Reversibilidad por inversión. Ej: un objeto que ha cambiado de forma puede volver su forma original por una acción contraria. A-A=0

• 2 – Compensación

• 3 – El concepto de identidad

Estadio Operatorio

La Clasificación

Pertenece a la lógica-matemática de clases. Referida a la categorización de la realidad

• 1- Etapa de las colecciones figurales. Simple reunión espacial.

• 2 – El niño sabe clasificar por un atributo. Por ej: color.

• 3 – El niño es capaz de utilizar diferentes clases. Por ej: clasificar por forma y color.

Estadio Operatorio

Pertenece a la lógica-matemática de clases. Permite ordenar la realidad de forma creciente o

decreciente

1 – Ausencia de correspondencia entre elementos

1,2,3,4,5,6,… A-1;b-2;c-3;….

A,b,c,d,e,f,…

2 – Correspondencia término a término por ensayo y error.

3 – Coordinación sistemática de las relaciones en juego. Dominio de la reversibilidad y la reciprocidad.

La SeriaciónEstadio Operatorio

El número y las nociones operatorias implicadas en el mismo

• Reversibilidad, Conservación, Clasificación, Seriación.

El número es una síntesis de la cardinalidad y la ordinalidad que implica el dominio de la inclusión de clases.

Para Piaget, el número junto con las operaciones lógicas que supone es la forma más esencial y central de la ASIMILACIÓN INTELECTUAL

Estadio Operatorio

Referencias Bibliográficas

• Bermejo, V. (1994). Desarrollo Cognitivo. Madrid. Síntesis.

• Palacios, J. , Marchesi, A. y Coll, C. (1990): Desarrollo psicológico y educación I. Psicología Evolutiva.. Madrid. Alianza.

• Piaget,J (1987?) Introducción a la Epistemología Genética. Vol I. El pensamiento matemático. Mexico D.F.. Paidos

• Piaget,J, y Inhelder, B.(1984), Psicologia del niño, Madrid. Morata.

Diapositivas complementarias del estadio operatorio

• A continuación se recopilan diferentes diapositivas que complementan y clarifican el desarrollo anterior y proceden de fuentes diferentes.

Key Questions

• What changes between early and middle childhood in the way that children think?

• What changes between early and middle childhood in the way that they are treated?– What do we ask 8-year-olds to do that we do not ask 4-

year-olds to do?– How is the day of a 7-year-old different from the day of

a 3-year-old?– How was your middle childhood different from your

parents?

Biological Changes

• Become much more physically coordinated and strong– Sex differences in strength widen

• Brain maturation– Alpha activity (active) becomes more common

than theta (sleep-like)– Further development of frontal lobes

• Greater ability to regulate emotions• Greater ability to engage in planning, self-reflection

What changes: Piaget

• He considered this to be a period of development between child-like and adult-like thinking

• Kids move from preoperational thinking to concrete operational thinking?– What does this mean?

• Ability to classify along two dimensions, hierarchically

FoodVeggies I like

Veggies I hate

Characteristics of Concrete Operational Thinking

Identity

Compensation

Reversibility

Changes in outward appearancedon’t change overall amount

Changes in one feature are compensated by changes

in other features

One operation will negate,or reverse, another

The Concrete Operational Stage: 7-11 Years

A. Génesis de las operaciones concretas

1. Logical Reasoning. Noción de operación:

1.1Noción de Reversibiidad

1.2 Noción de Conservación

The Concrete Operational Stage: 7-11 Years

A. Accomplishments

1. Logical Reasoning

2. Reversibility

3. Seriation

4. Transitivity

B. Still having trouble….

Del pensamiento preoperatorio al pensamiento

operatorio• Descentración frente a centración• Realidad inferida frente a apariencia• Reversibilidad frente a irreversibilidad• Transformaciones frente a estados finales.

En suma, este tránsito supone la adquisición de

OPERACIONES

Estadio de las operaciones concretas

• Las acciones mentales se vuelven operaciones mentales: se coordinan entre sí, se distancian del presente inmediato y se hacen reversibles

Operación: acciones

interiorizadas organizadasen sistemas de conjunto

Estadio de las operaciones concretas

• El pensamiento se vuelve más lógico, inferencial y menos dependiente del aquí y del ahora.

• Ha adquirido la noción de conservación• Conservación del peso• Conservación de la sustancia• Conservación del volumen

• Las operaciones pueden combinarse entre sí y conducir a una nueva operación.

• Tipos de operaciones:• Clasificación• Seriación• ....

The Concrete-Operational Stage (7 to 11 Years)

• Some examples of concrete-operational thought

– Conservation by decentering and using reversibility

– Relational logic using mental seriation (the ability to mentally arrange items along a quantifiable dimension such as height or weight) and transitivity (the necessary relations among elements in a series)

• The sequencing of concrete operations

– Horizontal decalage: Some forms of conservation are understood much sooner than others.

Figure 7.7Children’s performance on a simple seriation task. If asked to arrange a series ofsticks from shortest to longest, preoperational children often line up one end of the sticks andcreate an incomplete ordering (a) or order them so the top of each successive stick extendshigher than the preceding stick (b). Concrete operators, by contrast, can use the inversecognitive operations greater than (>) and less than (<) to quickly make successive comparisonsand create a correct serial ordering.

De la inteligencia sensoriomotora a las

operaciones concretasInteligenciaSensoriomotora

InteligenciaPreoperatoria

OperacionesConcretas

Acciones observables

Acciones interiorizadas: intuiciones

Acc. interior. en sistemas: operaciones

Esquemas prácticos

Esquemas representacio-nales

Esquemas operatorios

Figure Piaget’s stage theory. Piaget’s theory of cognitive development identifies four stages marked by fundamentally different modes of thinking through which youngsters evolve. The approximate age norms and some key characteristics of thought at each stage are summarized here.

Alternativas a Piageten el estadio operatorio o de la lógica concreta

(7-11 aprox)

Alternativas y complementos a la teoría de Piageten el estadio operatorio

• Los desfases horizontales• Siegler y el problema de la balanza• Teoria del procesamiento de la información• Teoría Sociocultural: Vygotski • Desarrollo de la memoria• Influencias culturales

Los estudios de replicación posteriores a Piaget

• Piaget no da cuenta de las restricciones que imponen los contenidos específicos

DESFASES HORIZONTALESLogros que responden a la misma

estructuración cognitiva (por ej., las conservaciones) se adquieren en momentos

temporales distintos.

Los desfases horizontales• Posibles explicaciones acerca de su

existencia:• Piaget no tiene en cuenta la importancia

del contenido.• Piaget plantea un cambio cualitativo y muy

brusco entre la etapa preoperatoria y operatoria, cuando probablemente se trata de una cambio más progresivo y gradual.

• Influencia de la CULTURA, se trata de un factor que modula lo que se desarrolla y cómo se desarrolla.

The Information Processing View: Siegler’s Balance-Beam Study

• Rule 1: Balance based strictly on weight, no regard for distance

• Rule 2: Side with more weight goes down. If weights equal, side with weights furthest from fulcrum will go down

• Rule 3: Must consider both weight and distance. If these two elements are in conflict (more weight on one side, distance on other), no rule

• Rule 4: Take rule 3 a little bit further, understanding that torque equals weight times distance

The Balance Scale: 4 rules (Siegler)

Notes about the balance-beam study: Information Processing vs. Constructivism

• Found that in some cases, kids would be correct more often using less sophisticated rules

– (e.g., saying side with most weight goes down following rules 1 or 2 in the conflict-weight problem but would only get it right if they got a lucky guess using rule 3).

– **Cannot fit in Piaget’s theory because according to his theory, more sophisticated thinking cannot lead to less correctness**

• Note that rule 4 is a formal operations rule—not many people get it.

• Siegler proposed that the primary problem is one of encoding, focusing on only certain features and ignoring others.

• Note the role of training, domain specificity of theory. Different from Piaget.

Acquisition

Frequency

Accuracy

Automaticity

Developmental Changes in the Processing of Information

Prior Knowledge

Information-Processing Perspective

• Focuses on the mind as a system, analogous to a computer, for analyzing information from the environment

• Developmental improvements reflect – increased capacity of working memory– faster speed of processing– new algorithims (methods)– more stored knowledge

Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Perspective

• Emphasized the child’s interaction with the social world (other people) as a cause of development

• Vygotsky believed language to be the foundation for social interaction and thought

• Piaget believed language was a byproduct of thought

Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Perspective

• Vygotsky - children learn from interactions with other people– Zone of proximal development - what a child can do

by interacting with another person, but can’t do alone.

– Critical thinking based on dialouge with others who challenge ideas

• Piaget - focused on children’s interaction with the physical world

Memory Development• Capacity: Memory span increases during middle childhood.

– One possible reason: Brain maturation. – A more plausible, better supported reason: more speed. Can’t remember

more pieces, just process them more quickly.

• Knowledge base: Prior information on which to call to aid in memory; add context

• Memory strategies: deliberate attempts to aid memory. – rehearsal (space helmet study)– grouping (older kids make better spontaneous groups)– Note impact of training—contrary to Piaget

• Metamemory: knowledge of memory abilities. – Young kids terrible at it. Think they can remember everything, even with

little practice.– metamemory needed to apply strategies. Just knowing strategies not

enough.

Cultural Variations• Concrete operations: Early studies found delay in rate,

level of attainment of operations in some cultures

• When retested with more familiar tasks, in own language, with training, did better. Still a delay, but performed better eventually. Universality of concrete operations confirmed, but not at same ages universally.

• Memory studies show grouping is better among schooled than non-schooled children.

Important to note that most cross-cultural studies conducted by psychologists use standardized measures. Often, the measures have

been standardized on western samples using western methods. This is not a good idea, as results can differ by culture due to methodology.

There is an interesting shift in the way children are treated when they move into early childhood. In industrialized societies, this often is the time

that children enter school. In pre-industrial societies, this is often a time that children take on

more responsibilities, such as working and helping with childcare. In all societies, children

are given much more responsibility in middle childhood, owing mostly to the noticeable shift in

their mental abilities.

Sternberg(2003: 473)

Critique of Piaget’s Theory• Underestimates children’s abilities

• Overestimates age differences in thinking

• Vagueness about the process of change

• Underestimates the role of the social environment

• Lack of evidence for qualitatively different stages

El estadio de las operaciones formales: el pensamiento abstracto

según Piaget (11 aprox. - )

Adolescent Cognition• Piaget’s Theory: Adolescent was in formal

operational stage of cognition where thought is more abstract & adolescents are no longer limited to actual, concrete experiences as anchors for thought

• They can now conjure up make-believe situations & events that are hypothetical possibilities & then try to reason logically about them

• In this stage: adolescent has ability to develop hypotheses, or best guesses to solve problems as in algebraic equation

• They systematically deduce, or conclude best path to follow in solving equation

Challenge to Piaget’s formal Operational Stage

• There is much more individual variation than what he envisioned

• Indeed, it is estimated than only 1 out of 3 young adolescents is a formal operational thinker, and many American adults never become such thinkers

Adolescent Egocentrism • Heightened self-consciousness of adolescents which

is reflected in their belief that others are as interested in them as they are & in their sense of personal uniqueness

David Elkind proposes two types of social thinking:• imaginary audience: a belief that they are ‘on

stage’ and that their every act is being viewed by an imaginary audience

• personal fable: sense of uniqueness making them feel that no one can understand them

Information Processing in Adolescents

• Ability to process information improves in areas of memory, decision making critical thinking & self-regulatory learning

• Robert Sternberg found that solving problems, such as analogies, requires individuals to make continued comparisons between newly encoded information & previously encoded information

• Adolescents probably have more storage space in short-term memory

Adolescent Cognitive CapacitiesAdolescents have:• Increased speed, automaticity & capacity of information

processing• More breadth of content knowledge,• Increased ability to construct new combinations of knowledge• Greater range for applying or obtaining knowledge • Capacity to set goals for extending knowledge• Awareness of their emotional makeup to: periodically monitor

their progress, fine-tune their strategies, evaluate obstacles & make adaptations

CARACTERÍSTICAS DEL PENSAMIENTO DE LOS ADOLESCENTES I

• Se sientan las bases del funcionamiento cognitivo de las operaciones formales (Piaget e Inhelder)

• Características:

– Subordinación de lo real a lo posible: pueden considerar los datos inmediatos pero también elaborar conjeturas e hipótesis. Son capaces de prever diferentes soluciones o alternativas´La no dependencia de lo real les permite comprender fenómenos y acontecimientos alejados de ellos en el espacio y en el tiempo.

– Pensamiento proposicional: posibilidad de usar lenguajes abstractos, de entender y producir enunciados sobre situaciones reales o imaginadas.

CARACTERÍSTICAS DEL PENSAMIENTO DE LOS ADOLESCENTES II

– Razonamiento hipotético deductivo: es capaz de formular hipótesis, compararlas y someterlas a comprobación para obtener conclusiones y deducciones.

– Control sistemático de las variables: es capaz de analizar los factores o variables para poder concluir cual fue la causante del problema.

CARACTERÍSTICAS DEL PENSAMIENTO DE LOS ADOLESCENTES III

• acceso al pensamiento científico: las características anteriores les preparan poder proceder de una forma científica cuando se enfrentan a los problemas y opiniones (procedimientos y estrategias para producir hipótesis o falsearlas, argumentar a favor o en contra, contrastar opiniones con datos empíricos...)

CARACTERÍSTICAS DEL PENSAMIENTO DE LOS ADOLESCENTES IV

• logran el dominio de los esquemas operacionales formales como la combinatoria, las proposiciones, la correlación, la probabilidad, el equilibrio mecánico y la coordinación del doble sistema de referencia (Por ej: pueden tener en cuenta una ley física, la de la velocidad, y su experiencia real con las bicicletas).

• CARACTERÍSTICAS DEL PENSAMIENTO DE LOS ADOLESCENTES V– acceso a la metacognición: conocimiento sobre

los propios procesos de pensamiento (conciencia de sus propias habilidades, capacidades…)

Pensamiento postformal (Labouvi-Vief): mayor grado de relativismo cognitivo, pensamiento dialéctico, capacidad de autorregulación cognitiva, capacidad metasistémica (coordinación sistemas abstractos).

Aspectos criticados sobre el pensamiento formal: no es un sistema uniforme y homogéneo; el razonamiento se ve afectado por principios lógicos pero también por aspectos pragmáticos y funcionales y numerosas variables contextuales; sólo la mitad de la población llega a dominar las operaciones formales.

Consecuencias educativas (el pensamiento formal no es un estadio natural): contextos de aprendizaje, ricos, estimulantes, variados, complejos; aprendizaje cooperativo; factores sociales y ambientales; influencia de las ideas previas; aprender a aprender…

The Formal Operations Stage (11 Years and Up)

Mental actions performed on ideas and propositions. Can reason logically about hypothetical processes and events that may have no basis in reality.

- Deductive reasoning- Does everyone reach this stage?

The Formal-Operational Stage (11 to 12 Years and Beyond)

• Hypothetico-deductive reasoning

• Thinking like a scientist

• Personal and social implications of formal thought

– Paves the way for thinking about what is possible in one's life

– Questioning begins about everything from parental authority to government spending

• Formal operational thought is reached very slowly, if at all.

What characterize the thought processes of a typical adolescent from the view of Jean Piaget?

• Think more abstractly, thinking independently of concrete objects.

• Become more idealistic in thought, considering what is possible.

• Can use hypothetical-deductive reasoning

How is formal operations different from concrete operations?• Children with concrete operational thinking must manipulate

concrete items or specific details in order to solve problems.• Youths with formal operational thinking can manipulate

symbols, and even symbols for symbols (like in algebra, where a letter symbol can be used to represent a number symbol).

What characterize formal operational

thinking? • Solve algebraic problems and understand metaphors

(manipulate symbols for symbols).• Solve probability problems (roll 2 dice, how many

ways to come up with 6?).• Reflect on their own thoughts (metacognition).• Recognize the possibility of multiple causes for events.• Simultaneously consider more than one possible

outcome.• Understand sarcasm.• Handle many possibilities and systematically check

them out

Inhelder and Piaget’s Pendulum Problem

• The task is to compare the motions of longer and shorter strings, with lighter and heavier weights attached, in order to determine the influence of weight, string length, and dropping point on the time it takes for the pendulum to swing back and forth

• Children below age 12 usually perform unsystematic experiments and draw incorrect conclusions

Alternativas a Piageten el estadio de las operaciones formales

(11 aprox. - )

An Evaluation of Piaget's Theory• Piaget's contributions

– Founded the field of cognitive development– Convinced us that children are curious, active explorers of their

environment– First to try to explain and not just describe the process of

development• Challenges to Piaget

– Piaget failed to distinguish competence from performance.– Still a hotly debated topic: Does cognitive development really

occur in stages? – Does Piaget "explain" cognitive development? His explanations

raise more questions than they answer.– Piaget devoted too little attention to social and cultural influences.

The Role of Culture in Intellectual Development

• Vygotsky's four interrelated levels of analysis– Microgenetic: Refers to changes that occur over

relatively brief periods of time– Ontogenetic: Development of an individual over

his or her lifetime – Phylogenetic: Changes over evolutionary time– Sociohistorical: Changes that have occurred in

one's culture, and the values, norms, and technologies generated throughout history

The Role of Culture in Intellectual Development (cont.)

• Infants are born with the following tools of intellectual adaptation – Attention– Sensation– Perception– Memory

The Social Origins of Early Cognitive Competencies and the Zone of Proximal Development

• Learning occurs within the context of cooperative, or collaborative, dialogues between a skillful tutor and a novice pupil.

• The zone of proximal development– The difference between what a learner can accomplish

independently and what he or she can accomplish with the guidance and encouragement of a more skilled partner

– "Scaffolding" is the tendency of more expert participants to carefully tailor the support they provide to the novice learner's current situation.

The Social Origins of Early Cognitive Competencies and the Zone of Proximal Development

(cont.)• Apprenticeship in thinking and guided

participation (Rogoff)– Children's cognitions are shaped as they take

part, alongside adults or other more skillful associates, in everyday culturally relevant experiences.

– Our culture encourages context-independent learning (learning and discussing things that have no immediate relevance).

Implications for Education

• Active learning in the classroom

• Cooperative learning exercises

The Role of Language in Cognitive Development

• Piaget's theory of language and thought– Egocentric, self-directed speech merely reflects the child's ongoing

mental activity and does not play a role in a child's cognitive development.

• Vygotsky's theory of language and thought– Nonsocial utterances illustrate the transition from prelinguistic to

verbal reasoning.– Self-directed monologues occur more during problem solving.– Private speech helps young children plan strategies and regulate their

behavior.

• Which viewpoint should we endorse?– Vygotsky's theory is more widely held today.

The Role of Language in Cognitive Development (cont.)

An Evaluation of Piaget's Theory• Piaget's contributions

– Founded the field of cognitive development– Convinced us that children are curious, active explorers of their

environment– First to try to explain and not just describe the process of

development

• Challenges to Piaget– Piaget failed to distinguish competence from performance.– Still a hotly debated topic: Does cognitive development really occur

in stages? – Does Piaget "explain" cognitive development? His explanations

raise more questions than they answer.– Piaget devoted too little attention to social and cultural influences.

piaget’s theory of cognitive development teoria de piaget del desarrollo cognitivo

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