Cognitive Development
Piaget
Piaget’s Assumptions About Children
• Children construct their own knowledge in response to their experiences.
• Children learn many things on their own without the intervention of
older children or adults.
• Children are intrinsically motivated to learn and do not need rewards
from adults to motivate learning. (notice the language "motivated,"
which is an extension of the Mechanistic Worldview, that behavior must be
pushed, or caused (motivated) by some external force. Piaget is saying the
humans are genetically predisposed for action.) The coordination of this action
is what leads to symbolic thought, language, and then coordinated language.
Reflexes..........Primary, secondary circular reactions.......Basic word use......behaving within societal norms.....language about language...
How is it that Infants begin where they do, from birth, and then progress cognitively into that of the adult? This is what Piaget attempts to explain for our entire species. You can read about it here. Piaget also argues that we are born with the most basic behaviors as a jumping off point, so to speak, in order for us to assimilate and accommodate to our universe. You should be aware of these reflexes (in windows media format).
One of my personal goals is for your to be able to deduce the chronological age, in weeks, of an infant based on their behaviors. In other words, use the action of the infant and deduce whether those behaviors Expresses some underlying cognitive organization or structure, which is defined in Piaget's first 6 stages of development.
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First 2 years of “cognitive” life: The Sensorimotor stage.
From Piaget’s Six Psychological Studies:
Intro:
1. The period that extends from birth to the acquisition of language is marked by extraordinary development. It’s often underestimated because it is not accompanied by words that permit a step-by step pursuit of the progress of intelligence and emotions, as will occur later. In fact, what is interesting about Piaget is that one reason he became interested in child development was because he was interested in why children would make mistakes on IQ tests that were similar to other children of the same age--an interest in the Expressive view point. This was contrary to what most IQ researchers were interested in. They were more interested in the total number children got *right,* an Instrumental view point. Another way to think about this: What does an incorrect answer tell us about the cognitive organization of a person?
2. Overarching theme: The Sensory-Motor stage is a conquest by Perception and Movement of the entire practical universe that surrounds the small child. It’s a Copernican revolution for a child who, from birth, has no perceptual understanding of objects in the world and that she, herself, is also an object in that world.
1. At the beginning, the neonate grasps everything to herself, or more precisely her OWN BODY (self implies an awareness of existence, which the child doesn’t have—at least not yet). By the end, when language and thought begin, she is for all practical purposes one ELEMENT or entity amoung others in a universe that she has gradually created herself, and which after this will experience as EXTERNAL to herself.
| The first few details with reflexes in the Sensory Motor Stage | |
| · Stage 1 (birth-1m): Reflexes: sucking, grabbing, staring, listening | |
| · Stage 2 (1-4m): The 1st acquired adaptations-accommodation and coordination of reflexes. E.g., sucking a pacifier differently from a nipple, groping at a bottle to suck it. | |
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The next 2 involve objects and people |
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| · Stage 3 (4-8m): Procedures for making interesting sights last--responding to people and objects. | |
| · Stage 4 (8-12m): New adaptation and anticipation--Becoming more deliberate and purposeful in responding to people and objects. | |
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The last 2 are the most creative, action first & then ideas |
| · Stage 5 (12-18m): new means through active experimentation--experimentation and creativity in the actions of ‘a little scientist’. E.g., repeatedly knocking over a glass of milk to see what happens next. | |
| · Stage 6 (18-24m): New means through mental combinations--thinking before doing. The Child can achieve a goal without trial & error experiments. |
2. At birth through the first stage, mental life is limited to the exercised of reflexes, which are genetically determined that respond to basic needs.
· Even though they are present at birth, they still go under a refinement; the rooting reflex is present at birth; the child’s ability to suck becomes refined, for example, and the infant is better at sucking in one or 2 weeks than during the first few days.
· More importantly, these reflexes give rise to a sort of generalization of activity. The infant is not content to suck ONLY when he nurses; he also sucks at random. He sucks his fingers, or whatever object may b presented. And he finally coordinates the movement of his arms with the sucking until he is able to introduce his thumb into his mouth systematically.
· In short, the infant is assimilating a part of his universe to his reflexive sucking to the degree that his initial behavior can be described by saying that for him the world is essentially a "thing to be sucked". In short order, this same universe will also become a thing to be looked at, to listen to, and as soon as his movements allow, to shake.
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3. Around the 5th week, we see the 2nd stage. Systematic thumb sucking belongs to this stage, as does turning the head in the direction of a sound or the following of a moving object, as is systematic smiling.
· From the perceptual point of view, around the time the child begins to smile, she recognized certain persons as distinct from others. But this does not mean that the infant conceptualizes a person, or even as an object. Persons and objects are tangible and animated apparitions which she recognizes as such, but this proves nothing with respect to their substantiality, or as to the dissociation between the self and the external universe. Between 3 and 6 months, the infant begins to grasp what she sees; this capacity for 'prehension' and then for manipulation broadens her potentiality for acquiring new habits.
Essentially, the first 2 stages is where Piaget introduces his concept of assimilation and how it leads to development: by incorporating new elements the child has an opportunity to differentiate between them. This occurs because the infant’s random movements produce something interesting, and can now repeat these movements. This is how the circular reactions are defined.
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4. The 3rd stage is of practical and sensorimotor intelligence itself. Intelligence appears well before language, before internal thought. It is an entirely practical intelligence based on the manipulation of objects; in place of words and concepts the neonate uses percepts and movements organized into an “action schemata.”
· For example, to grab a stick in order to draw something in the dirt is an act of intelligence (around 18 months). Here an instrument is a means to an end. To discover this “means”, the child must first understand the relationship between the stick and the objective. Another example would be to pull an object closer to oneself (around 1 year).
· More on Assimilation: The baby is not content merely to reproduce movements that have led to an interesting effect. He varies them intentionally in order to study the results of these variations giving himself true explorations or experimentation.
· In effect, action that can be repeated and generalized to a new situation might be thought of as a kind of sensorimotor concept. A baby presented with a new object successfully incorporates it into each of his “action schemata (sensorimotor concept)” (shaking, sucking, stroking, balancing, etc), as though the child could come to know the object by perceiving how it is used. (At 5 or 6 Years, children still define concepts starting with the words “it is for” a table IS FOR writing on.)
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5. The remaining stages consist of the child further elaborating this perceptual action but also with more articulation of movement and coordination of body with objects.
Egocentrism: The self is at the center of reality to begin with for the very reason that it is not aware of itself, while the external world will become objectified to the degree that the self builds itself as a function of internal activity. In other words, consciousness starts with an unconscious and integral egocentricity; whereas the progress of sensorimotor intelligence leads to the construction of an objective universe where the subjects own body is an element among others with which the internal life is contrasted.
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More on Sensorimotor activity:
1. Sensorimotor activity is the action that begins from egocentric towards the construction of an objective universe. This revolution has four main constructions:
1. The construction of categories of objects
2. Construction of categories of space
3. Construction of categories of causality
4. Construction of categories of time
These constructs are purely practical, and not yet ideas or concepts.
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1. Construction of the object (AKA, object permanence):
· In the first few months, infants will not perceive objects in their absence. They will, however, recognize familiar objects.
· As the child begins to grasp objects, at first he will not look for a hidden object. Soon the infant will look for an object under a blanket, but not notice it’s displacements. It’s as though the object is apart of the configuration as a whole and could not be moved separately.
· Toward the end of the first year, objects are sought once they are out of the perceptual field. This is a criterion for the construction of an external reality.
· Current research has elaborated on Piaget’s model, and in some cases has more comprehensively studied the subject. Object Unity—where objects are divided perceptually in an effort to see dishabituation in the child. This ability seems to develop over the first 4 months of age; object individuation—when infants are able to differentiate objects in their perceptual field based on properties of the object (e.g., color, shape, etc.), again various reports between 4 months and 12 months.
Consider these movies on Object Permanence:
Seven-month-old
failing basic Object Permanence task
Nine-month-old
passing basic Object Permanence task
Nine-month-old
failing B not A Object Permanence task
Nine-month-old
passing B not A Object Permanence task
· Difficulty arises in interpreting current research on the issue of familiarity. Kids will show increased interest at first to objects that are familiar. We know this by timing the looking times infants gaze at an object. Piaget said that within the first 6 weeks of life a child can show familiarity with people and objects, but that familiarity doesn’t imply object permanence. The difficulty becomes in determining whether a child shows dishabituation because an event is ‘impossible’ (meaning that the child has a concept of an object) or that dishabituation occurs because the event was familiar.
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2. Construction of Space
· The experience of space is linked to your sensory abilities (sight, hearing, etc) and each is centered on the child’s movement and activity.
· Visual space develops as a function of acuity, and by the end of the 2nd year, the child is able to characterize (categorize) objects IN space, between each other, and b/w objects and own body.
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3. Construction of Causality
* First, infant pulling on cords of a mobile, for example, will believe
that the cord pulling causes ‘interesting things to happen,’ the
mobile and everything else. During the course of the 2nd year, the child recognizes
causal relationships among objects. With objects having their own existence,
the infant can objectify and spatialize causes.
* It might be useful to invoke a learning paradigm of shaping—that behavior
will become more refined in causing events because of reinforcement.
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4. Construction of time
* As with causality, time is constructed as experience with objects, causes, and effects become meaningful.
Some of Piaget’s ideas on Emotional evolution
* There is a constant parallel between the affective and cognitive life. It’s important to recognize that it’s important to not dichotomize these two into separate ‘objects.’
* The first fears can be related to losses of equilibrium or to sudden contrasts between an interesting event and a preceding attitude, whereas contentment and happiness might correspond to the attaining of equilibrium.
* Building on these global experiences of affect (emotion) and of the infant’s genuine level of activity, emotional precepts are connected to their activity. Keep in mind that their ‘feeling’s are not experienced as their own, which would presuppose a self.
* Another level of affectivity arises in the objectification of emotions and by their projection onto activities other than those of the self alone. Joy and sadness are linked to successful and unsuccessful acts, respectively. They are linked to the act without distinction between what is attributable to him and what is attributable to the external world.