Week 3 Topic 3

Theories of
ESD 1100
Adolescent & Cognitive
Adult
Development Development
Theories of Cognitive
Development
 Clarification of terminology and
concepts

Problem
 Cognition is the activity of Solving

knowing and the processes

through which knowledge is Reasoning
Decision
Making
acquired and problems are
solved
 Human cognition develops
Cognition
throughout the lifespan, but
changes in important ways Memory Creativity

 The study of human cognition is a

diverse field (see opp.)
Thinking
 Metacognition is the deliberate Intelligence Skills/
Styles
use of cognitive tools to achieve
a goals (strategic thinking), and
analysis of how effective these Major areas of research in
tools work (reflective thinking). human cognition
Piaget’s
Constructivist
Theory
Constructivist Approach to Intellectual
Development
 Piaget noticed that children of the
same age often made similar kinds
of mental mistakes
 Studied how children think, not
just what they know
 Piaget’s initial studies were his
naturalistic observations of his own
infant children
 Piaget also used a clinical method,
a flexible question-and-answer
technique, to discover how children
think about problems
View of Intelligence
 Piaget’s definition of intelligence: a basic life function
that helps an organism adapt to its environment.
 Piaget viewed infants as active agents, learning
about people and things by observing, investigating,
and experimenting.
 Through exploration, the brain responds by creating
schemes (schema singular, schemata plural).
 Cognitive structures – organized patterns of action or
thought that people construct to interpret their experiences
 Rules or procedures that structure our cognition
How does intelligence develop?
 Knowledge is created by building schemes from experiences
using two inborn functions, organization and adaptation:
 Organization – existing schemes are systematically combined into new
and complex schemes
 Adaptation – process of adjusting to the demands of the environment
that occurs through assimilation and accommodation
• Assimilation (fitting in) – an adaptive process through which we interpret new
experiences in terms of existing schemes or cognitive structures

• Accommodation – an adaptive process of modifying existing schemes in order

to better fit new experiences

• Equilibration: the process of achieving mental stability where out internal

thoughts are consistent with the evidence we are receiving from the external
world.
Sigelman, C. & Rider, E. (2009). Life-span
human development. Cognition. P. 189
How does intelligence develop?
 Humans progress through four invariant stages of cognitive
development:
 Sensorimotor Stage - birth to approximately 2 years of age

 Preoperational Stage - approximately 2-7 years of age

 Concrete Operations Stage - approximately 7-11 years of age

 Formal operations Stage - approximately 11 years of age and

beyond

 A child’s stage of development is determined by her

reasoning processes, not her age.
 STAGE 4
STAGE 3
STAGE 2 Formal
operational
STAGE 1 Concrete
stage
Preoperational operational
stage stage
Sensorimotor
SOME
stage PEOPLE
Mental Mental
NEVER
Coordination of Development of operations operations
REACH
sensory input & symbolic thought applied applied
THIS to
motor responses; marked by concrete events; abstract
STAGE ideas;
development of irreversibility, mastery of logical,
object centration & conservation, systematic
permanence egocentrism hierarchical thinking
classification.

Birth to 2 years 2 to 7 years 7 to 11 years Age 11 through

adulthood
The infant (birth to 2 years):
 The world is understood through the senses
and actions
 The dominant cognitive structures are the
behavioral schemes that develop through
coordination of sensory information and
motor responses (e.g. pick up objects, fall
backwards into a pillow, blow bubbles, clap
hands)
 “To think is to move” - infants mode of
thought is qualitatively different from that of
older children
 Use of symbols start to emerge (words,
gestures for objects and experiences)
The preschooler (2-7 years)
 Symbolic capacity is the critical
cognitive capacity at this stage
 Use of language
 Can refer to past and future
 Pretend/fantasy play emerges
 Imaginary companions

 Difficult with logic and reasoning

 Preoperational thinkers struggle with
conservation tasks
Why do preschoolers have difficulty with the conservation task?
 Unable to engage in decentration, the ability to focus on two or more
dimensions of a problem at once:
 Preoperational thinkers engage in centration, the tendency to
center attention on a single aspect of a problem
 Preschoolers lack reversibility, the process of mentally undoing or
reversing an action
 Preoperational thinkers engage in static thought, thought that is fixed
on end states rather than the changes that transform one state into
another:
 They lack transformational thought, the ability to conceptualize
transformations or processes of change from one state to another
The school-aged child (7-11 years)
 Concrete elements (objects, relations,
dimensions) + mental operations (e.g.
addition, subtraction)
 Increased capacity for logical reasoning
 Classify objects into categories based on quality
(class) of quantity (hierarchy/seriation) - size,
alphabetical order, age, colour, shape etc.
 Make transitive inferences – ‘If John is taller than
Mark, and Mark is taller than Sam, who is taller – John or
Sam?’

 Can solve conservation tasks

 Less egocentric and better at recognizing the
perspectives of others than preschoolers
The adolescent (12+ years)
 Formal operations are mental actions
on ideas - more abstract than concrete
operations

 Formal operations permit systematic

and scientific thinking about problems,
hypothetical ideas, and abstract
concepts
 Concrete operators deal with realities,
whereas formal operators can deal
with possibilities, including those that
contradict known reality
 Where would you put a third eye?

Tanya (9) Ken (11) John (11)

 Formal operations also permit systematic and scientific thinking.
 Piaget’s pendulum task illustrates the use of hypothetical-deductive reasoning

 The transition from concrete operations to formal operations takes place

gradually
 Adolescents may show an awareness of scientific reasoning, but may not be
able to produce logical reasoning until later (or not at all)
 With age, adolescents are able to decontextualize, or separate prior
knowledge and beliefs from the requirements of the task at hand.
The formal operations stage – positives and challenges
 Positive aspects of adolescent development:
 Sense of identity, complex thinking, appreciation of humor.

 Challenging aspects of adolescent development:

 Idealism - ability to grasp what is and what might be, critical observers,
rebellion against ideas that are not logical, hypercritical of adults, can
lead to service to benefit others, change the world!
 Hypocrisy: discrepancy between their idealism and their behaviour (e.g.
worries about climate change but turns the aircon up or drives a ‘gas
guzzler’)
 Pseudostupidity: approach simple problems in an overly complex
manner, over-analysis (e.g. choosing what to eat or wear), bright but not
experienced
  Egocentrism - difficult differentiating one’s own thoughts and feelings
from those of other people. Two forms of adolescent egocentrism:
 Imaginary audience – confusing one’s own thoughts with those of an
hypothesized audience for your behavior;
 Personal fable - tendency to think that you and your thoughts are
unique
 Introspection: fascination with own thoughts and feelings

 High scores on measures of adolescent egocentrism are

associated with risky behavior.
 Adolescent egocentrism may persist when adolescents have
insecure relationships with their parents.
Major aspects of formal thinking
Introspection – thinking about thought
Abstract thinking – going beyond the tangible
Combinatorial thinking – being able to
consider important facts and ideas
Logical reasoning – the ability to correct
conclusions using induction and deduction
Hypothetical reasoning – formulating
hypotheses and examining evidence for them,
considering numerous variables
Example
“I wonder if anyone else spends time thinking
about how big the universe is?”
“What makes a photograph quality as art?”
“If I have four cards – a blue one, a red one, a
yellow one and a green one – I can arrange
them in 24 different ways.”
“If all the trees have leaves, then that bare
thing over there that seems to be a tree must
develop leaves in spring.”
“in order to figure out why my cookies came
out better this time, I’m going to remake the
recipe and only add more cinnamon, not add
more cinnamon and bake them longer.”
 Research has revealed
limitations in adult cognitive
performance
 Only about half of all college
students show firm and consistent
mastery of formal operations on
Piaget’s scientific reasoning tasks
 There are some societies in which
no adults solve formal-operational
problems

 Adults are likely to use formal

operations in a field of expertise
and to use concrete operations
on unfamiliar problems
Positives:
 Piaget’s theory has stimulated much research and
continues to guide the study of human development.
 Piaget showed us that infants are active in their own
development.
 Piaget showed us that infants and children think
differently at each stage of development.
 Piaget’s account of the direction of cognitive
development (sequence) was basically correct, even
though cultural factors may influence the rate of
cognitive growth.
Criticisms:
 Underestimated the cognitive abilities of young minds.
 Failed to distinguish between competence and performance;
 Overemphasized the idea that knowledge is an all-or-nothing concept.

 Wrongly claimed that broad stages of development exist;

 That thinking within a stage is coherent or consistent and that transition
between stages is swift and abrupt.

 Failed to adequately explain development.

 Perhaps a better job of describing development than explaining
development?

 Gave inadequate attention to the social influences upon cognitive

development.
 Vygotsky’s
Sociocultural
Perspective
Culture and society are pivotal in Vygotsky’s theory:
 Knowledge depends on social experiences;
 Cognitive development varies from society to society depending
upon the mental tools such as language that the culture values and
makes available
 Children acquire mental tools through interaction with parents and
other more experienced members of society and by adopting their
language and knowledge
 Private speech helps children think their way through challenging
problems. Private speech allows children to incorporate into their
own thinking the strategies that they learn through collaborations
with others
 Zone of proximal development
 The gap between what a learner
can accomplish independently and
what she can accomplish with the
guidance and encouragement of a
more skilled partner
 Guided participation:
 Children’s active participation in
culturally relevant activities with the
aid and support of parents and
other knowledgeable guides;
 Parents provide scaffolding when
they give structured help and
gradually reduce the help as the
child becomes more competent.

http://www.education.vic.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx
THE GOLDILOCKS
PRINCIPLE
Sigelman, C. & Rider, E. (2009). Life-span human development. Cognition. P. 213
Impact on teaching:
1. Readiness for learning
 KWL – what I know, what I want to know, what I learnt

2. Constructivism
 Inquiry based learning

3. Collaborative learning
 Group learning

4. Scaffolding/Brainstorming
5. Guided participation
6. Higher order thinking
Information Processing Approach
Piaget v. Information Processing
Piaget
Focus on macro-level
Emphasis on discontinuous
development
Cognitive skills once learned
can be applied widely
(general rather than specific)
Abstract thinking a central
feature of adolescent
development
Information Processing Approach
Focus on micro-level
Emphasis on more gradual and
continuous development
Cognitive skills once learned are
generally domain specific (specific
rather general)
Executive control (ability to monitor
working memory and update
information as required) is a central
feature of adolescent development
Information Processing Approach
Computer analogy
Information Processing Approach
Important terminology

 Sensation – process by which information is detected

using senses and transmitting to the brain
 Perception – the interpretation of sensory input
 Attention – how do we focusing perception and
cognition on a stimulus
 Memory (retrieval) – the ability to store and later
retrieve information about past events
 Decision-making – process of choosing between
different alternatives while pursuing a goal
 Information Processing Approach
Sight accounts for
between 70-80% of the ENCODING process WORKING MEMORY CONSOLIDATION: processing & organisation
information we take in of getting a memory store often of information in a form suitable for long-
about the world. information in a referred to as a term storage
form suitable for mental ‘scratch pad’ RETRIEVAL process of
short-term storage that temporarily holds Rehearsal retrieving information
information when it is from long-term
being actively memory when it is
operated upon needed

WORKING MEMORY
Consolidation
Environmental SENSORY SHORT-TERM LONG-TERM
Stimuli Encoding
(Sensory Input) REGISTER MEMORY MEMORY
(Attention) Retrieval

Information lost if Information lost Information lost due to retrieval

not encoded if not encoded failure, interference, decay

SENSATION: the process by SENSORY REGISTER SHORT-TERM MEMORY LONG-TERM MEMORY:

which information is detected
by the sensory receptors &
transmitted to the brain.
PERCEPTION: the interpretation
of sensory input
first memory store in information memory store in which memory store in which
processing in which stimuli are limited amounts of information that has
noticed & are briefly available for information are been examined &
further processing temporarily held interpreted is stored
relatively permanently
ATTENTION: focusing perception &
cognition on a stimulus
 Information Processing Approach
Sight accounts for
between 70-80% of the ENCODING process WORKING MEMORY CONSOLIDATION: processing & organisation
information we take in of getting a memory store often of information in a form suitable for long-
about the world. information in a referred to as a term storage
form suitable for mental ‘scratch pad’ RETRIEVAL process of
short-term storage that temporarily holds Rehearsal retrieving information
information when it is from long-term
being actively memory when it is
operated upon needed

WORKING MEMORY
Consolidation
Environmental SENSORY SHORT-TERM LONG-TERM
Stimuli Encoding
(Sensory Input) REGISTER MEMORY MEMORY
(Attention) Retrieval

Information lost if Information lost Information lost due to retrieval

not encoded if not encoded failure, interference, decay

SENSATION: the process by SENSORY REGISTER SHORT-TERM MEMORY LONG-TERM MEMORY:

which information is detected
by the sensory receptors &
transmitted to the brain.
PERCEPTION: the interpretation
of sensory input
first memory store in information memory store in which memory store in which
processing in which stimuli are limited amounts of information that has
noticed & are briefly available for information are been examined &
further processing temporarily held interpreted is stored
relatively permanently
ATTENTION: focusing perception &
cognition on a stimulus
Information Processing Approach
Memory systems

Basics of information processing model of memory:

 The sensory register logs input, holds an environmental
stimulus for a fraction of a second.
 With attention, information is moved to short-term
memory:
 Holds about 7 (plus/minus 2) chunks of information;
 Short-term memory may be passive or active
 Active short-term memory is working memory
 Stores information while actively working on it.
 Remembered information is moved to long-term memory
Information Processing Approach
Memory systems

Moving from sensation to long-term memory – memory processes:

 Encoding – getting information into the system
 Consolidation – processing and organizing information in a
form suitable for long-term storage
 Consolidation transforms a sensory-perceptual experience into a
long-lasting memory trace
 Facilitated by sleep
 Storage – holding information in a long-term memory store
 Retrieval – information is obtained from long-term memory:
 Recognition memory is when a stimulus prompts you to remember
[e.g. multiple choice question]
 Recall memory is the active retrieval of information without cues
[e.g. writing an essay]
Information Processing Approach
Memory development in primary aged children

 Develop longer attention spans

– does not change much
beyond 8-9 years but greater
accuracy develops for tasks
requiring sustained attention
 More selective attention – less
susceptible to distraction,
perform better in absence of
distractions
 More systematic attention
Information Processing Approach
Memory development in primary aged children

Are the houses in each pair identical or different?

Information Processing Approach
Memory development in primary aged children

Why does memory improve in the primary years?

 Changes in basic capacities – higher powered ‘hardware; more
memory space, greater processing speeds
 Changes in memory strategies – better ‘software’; acquire more
effective methods of putting information into long-term memory
 Rehearsal – repeating the items to be remembered
 Organisation – grouping items into meaningful clusters
 Elaboration – creating links between items, telling a story
 Increased knowledge about memory – better strategies, better
match of strategy to task
 Increased knowledge about the world – more things become
familiar, familiar things are easier to remember,
Information Processing Approach
Memory development in adolescents

 Can perform cognitive operations (like

remembering) more quickly than children
 Linked to myelinization in brain – allows nerve
impulses to travel faster
 Maturational changes to brain enable
quicker processing of information and
simultaneous processing and more chunks of
information
 New strategies emerge:
 Elaboration mastered
 Notetaking and underlining
 Strategies used more deliberately and
selectively
Information Processing Approach
Memory development in adolescents

 Metacognitive skills develop – ‘thinking about

thinking’
 Tailor strategies to different purposes (e.g. skimming
vs. studying
 Elaboration better than rote learning
 Can monitor if study time is sufficient
 Short term memory
 Capacity, accuracy and speed increases
 Capacity + accuracy + speed  increased capacity
to think in abstract terms
 Long term memory
 Improves from childhood  adolescence 
adulthood
 Less likely to clutter the memory with irrelevant
information than children
Information Processing Approach
Higher order thinking in adolescents

Adolescents are capable of higher order

thinking processes
 Inference – increased ability to generate new
thoughts from old information
 Thinking – more conscious and deliberate. Better
use of negative information to refute an hypothesis
 Rely of negation rather than affirmation
 Use elimination rather than confirmation strategy
 Reasoning - ability to limit thinking to what is rational
and useful
 Analogy – finding similarities
 Deduction – following the rules of logic (if/then)
 Induction – draw general conclusions from series of
examples
Information Processing Approach
Decision making/Problem solving in adolescents

Decision Making/Problem solving

 Using the information-processing system to reach
a goal or make a decision.
 Five basic skills:
 Identifying alternate courses of action
 Identifying appropriate criteria for considering
alternatives
 Assessing alternatives by the criteria
 Summarising information about alternatives
 Evaluating the outcome of the decision making
process

 Older adolescents more aware than younger

adolescents (metacognition, greater
experience)
 Memory loss is most
The forgetting curve rapid immediately
after learning
50% loss after just 1
day!
Content Application