 1. Emily is four years old.

Her big
sister Amy is three times as old as
Emily. How old will Amy be when
she is twice as old as Emily?
 2. TODAY: YESTERDAY
 TUESDAY :_____________
3. MONTH: WEEK
DAY: _______________
 Definition of Cognition
Intellectual processes • Obtained
• Perception • Transformed
• Memory • Stored
• Thinking • Retrieved
• Language • Used

through which
information is
 Cognition processes information
 Cognition is active
› Information is
 Obtained through senses
 Transformed through interpretive processes
 Stored and retrieved through memory
 Used in problem solving and language
  Swisspsychologist,
developmental
theorist, and
philosopher

1896-1980
Typical Age Description Developmental
Range of Stage Phenomena
Birth to nearly 2 years Sensorimotor •Object permanence
Experiencing the world through •Mental Invention
senses and actions (looking, •Imitation
touching, mouthing)
About 2 to 7 years Preoperational •Symbolic representation
Representing things •Egocentrism
with words and images •Irreversibility
but lacking logical reasoning •Perceptual centration
About 7 to 11 years Concrete operational •Reversibility
Thinking logically about concrete •Conservation
events; grasping concrete analogies •Decentration
and performing arithmetical operations
About 11 through Formal operational •Abstract
adulthood Abstract reasoning logic/reasoning
 Piaget believed that “children are
active thinkers, constantly trying to
construct more advanced
understandings of the world”

 These “understandings” are in the form

of structures he called schemas
 Concepts or mental
frameworks that people use to
organize and interpret
information
 Sometimes called schemes
 A person’s “picture of the
world”
 Interpretinga new experience
within the context of one’s
existing schemas

 Thenew experience is similar

to other previous experiences
 Assimilation
› Children interpret new experiences
based upon their present interpretation
of the world.
› Child assimilates past experience
 Past experience tells child to use one
hand to grab large ball because it
worked with rattles and smaller
objects.
 Interpreting a new experience by
adapting or changing one’s
existing schemas

 The new experience is so novel the

person’s schemata must be
changed to accommodate it
 Accommodation
› Adjustments or modifications in the
thinking process that will become a
part of a child’s new cognitive
repertoire.
› Child accommodates new
information
 Child is unable to grasp the ball with
one hand.
 He accommodates by using two
hands or adapting the one-handed
grasp.
As children assimilate new information and experiences, they eventually change their
way of thinking to accommodate new knowledge
1. Sensorimotor stage
› from birth to age 2

2. Preoperational stage
› from age 2 to age 7
 3. Concrete operational stage
› from age 7 to age 11

4. Formal operational stage

begins during adolescence and continues into
adulthood.

 Each new stage represents a fundamental

shift in how the child thinks and understands
the world
 Stage lasts from birth until
significant language is
acquired, about 2 years old.

 Abilities: Uses senses and

motor skills to explore and
develop new schemas
 Children in this stage
understand the world
through their senses and
motor activities such as
grasping, sucking, seeing,
touching, tasting, etc.
 Knowledge is obtained through physical
experience with the environment

 Infant uses senses to experience the

environment and his/her physical motor
actions t interact with it.
 The more a child has seen and heard,
the more he/she wants to see and hear
 Object Permanence
the awareness that things continue to exist
even when not perceived
Mental invention
• Capacity to think out an action before
representing it
 Imitation
• Capability to copy behaviors
 operations refer to logical, mental activities;
thus, the preoperational stage is a prelogical
stage

 Children can understand language but

not logic
 Emergence of symbolic thought - ability to
use words, images, and symbols to represent
the world.
 Centration - tendency to focus, or center, on
only one aspect of a situation, usually a
perceptual aspect, and ignore other relevant
aspects of the situation

 Egocentrism - inability to take another

person’s perspective or point of view
 Lack the concept of conservation - which
holds that two equal quantities remain equal
even if the appearance of one is changed, as
long as nothing is added or subtracted

 Irreversibility- child cannot mentally reverse

a sequence of events or logical operations
back to the starting point
 Theinability to mentally
reverse actions

i.e. 5+6 = 11 is not 11-6=5

 Ability to think logically about
concrete objects and situations
 Child can now understand
conservation
 Classification and categorization
 Less egocentric
 Inability to reason abstractly or
hypothetically
 Ability to mentally reverse events

i.e. 5+6 = 11 is also 11-6=5

 Imagine the water being poured back
and forth between containers of different
shapes and sizes
› the principle that
properties such as
mass, volume, and
number remain the
same despite
changes in the forms
of objects
(Pre-operational children tended to say there was more liquid
in C as they focused on height)
 The ability to pay attention to others
characteristics of an object or problem

 i.e. The school-aged child can see that a

clay ball rolled into a sausage shape is
wider than it was before, but also shorter
 Ability to reason logically about hypothetical process
and events that may have no basis in reality

› Hypothetico-Deductive Reasoning
 a formal operational ability to think
hypothetically.

› Thinking Like a Scientist

 Inductive reasoning- type of
thinking where hypotheses are
generated and then systematically
tested in experiments.
 Underestimated developing minds
 Failed to distinguish competence
from performance
 It is believed by some that Cognitive
development does not evolve in a
qualitative and stage like manner- it
tends to develop gradually
 Provides a vague explanation on
cognitive maturation

 Devoted little attention to social and

cultural influences
OTHER THEORIES
 What are the implications of Piaget’s
theory for parents and teachers?
› Children build understanding of the world
through interaction and association.
› Kids are not PASSIVE “buckets” waiting to be
filled with a teacher’s knowledge!
› Young people are incapable of adult logic!
 Acquisition
of knowledge
was active and socially
constructed

 Role of social interaction

 Zone of Proximal Development

› Scaffolding
 ZPD

Can solve
Cannot solve Can solve
w/
w/help
help or
or
problem independently
“scaffolding”
 Computer metaphor and human
thinking

 CODING , STORING and

RETRIEVING information
Information Processing System
 Environment – source of input

 Receptors – sensory system that allows the

child to see, hear, smell, taste and feel

 Sensory register – for storage

STM and LTM

SENSORY INPUT
STORAGE RETRIEVAL
Coding

- Converting - The process

information into a - The process
whereby a
form that can be whereby a
encoded
entered and stored memory
information is
stored in the is brought into
held for future
memory. consciousness.
use.
 Three memory systems:

SENSORY SHORT TERM MEMORY LONG TERM

MEMORY MEMORY

1. Large capacity 1. Limited capacity

2. Brief storage of items 1. Unlimited capacity
2. Contain sensory (30 seconds) 2. Storage thought
information by some to be
3. Involve in conscious permanent
3. Very brief 3. Information
retention of processing of
information organized and
images (1/2- 2 indexed
sec)
Applicationsof Info
Processing System
 TECHNIQUES TO REMEMBER
 helping us associate the
information we want to remember
with a visual image, a sentence, or
a word.

 i.e. Visual Image

To remember the name Angela dela
Rosa, picture an angel surrounded
by roses.
 i.e. WORD
ROYGBIV – colors of the rainbow
 i.e. Sentence
My Dear Aunt Sally (mathematical order
of operations: Multiply and Divide before you
Add and Subtract)
 My Very Eager Mother Just Sent Us
New Potatoes – 9 planets
-Grouping items
together which can
be remembered only
a bit of information.
 09177645118
 4953827169
 924751861783

 Apple,cucumber, paper, ink,

cabbage, banana, grapes, beans,
stapler, orange
Apple, cucumber, paper, ink,
cabbage, banana, grapes, beans,
stapler, orange

3 chunks:
 Apple, banana, grapes, orange
 Cucumber, Cabbage, Beans
 Paper, Ink, Stapler
 "Thirty days have September
April, June and November
All the rest have thirty-one
February has twenty-eight alone
Except in leap year, then the time
When Feb days are twenty-nine."
Which months of the year
have 30 days and 31
days?
 Sum total of cognitive abilities
 Popularized by Galton in late 1800s
 Differing views
1921 - 14 psychologists answered the
question
‘the ability to carry on abstract thinking’,
‘the capacity to learn or profit by
experience’, and
‘the capacity to acquire capacity.’
 The capacity to learn from
experience and adapt
successfully to one’s
environment
 Francis Galton
› Believed that intelligence was
inherited
› Based intelligence on:
 Muscular strength
 Size of your head
 Speed at reacting to signals
 Your ability to detect slight
differences
 crystallized intelligence Cognitive skills and
specific knowledge of information acquired
over a lifetime; it is heavily dependent on
education and tends to remain stable over the
lifetime.
 fluid intelligence The capacity for deductive
reasoning and the ability to use new
information to solve problems; it is relatively
independent of education and tends to
decline in old age.
 Gardner’s
Intelligences
Naturalistic intelligence
Spatial (artistic) (understanding nature)

Musical

Intrapersonal
(personal
adjustment) Logical-mathematical

Kinesthetic
(athletic)
Interpersonal
(social skills)
Linguistic
 Mental retardation – IQ of 70 or below
› Wide range of conditions resulting from
genetics, trauma, and maternal infections
› (mentally challenged)
 Mild – IQ of 50 to 70
 Moderate – IQ of 35 to 49
 Severe – IQ of 20 to 34
 Profound – IQ under 20
 Gifted – high IQ and high creativity
› High achievers and highly successful in life
 Contributing factors
› Combination of heredity and experience
 Monozygotic twins – evidence of
heredity
› Intellectual environment one is raised in
 Enriched environments can increase IQ