CFD 1450 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Executive Functions, Heredity, Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging
CHAPTER 12- COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT IN MIDDLE CHILDHOOD
Piaget’s Theory: The Concrete Operational Stage
• Conservation
o Decentration
o Reversibility
• Classification
• Seriation
o Transitive inference: ability to seriate mentally
• Spatial reasoning
o Cognitive maps: mental representations of spaces
Limitations of Concrete Operational Thought
• Children’s mental operations
o Are most effective when dealing with concrete information.
o Work poorly with abstract ideas.
• Continuum of acquisition:
o Children master concrete operational tasks step by step, not all at once.
o Gradual mastery of logical concepts indicates limitations of concrete
operational thinking.
Follow-Up Research On Concrete-Operational Thought
• Impact of culture and schooling:
o Experience of attending school promotes mastery of Piagetian tasks.
o Certain informal, non-school experiences can also foster operational thought.
• Neo-Piagetian theories:
o Operational thinking represents expansion of information processing capacity.
o Central conceptual structures enable children to think effectively in wide range
of situations.
o Neo-Piagetian approaches account for unevenness in cognitive development.
Information-Processing Perspective
• Executive function
o Improves, supporting gains in planning, strategic thinking, and self-
monitoring.
o Is influenced by combination of heredity and environmental factors.
• Working-memory capacity
o Benefits from increased efficiency of thinking.
o Is often deficient in children with persistent learning difficulties in reading and
math.
o Can be increased through direct training.
Attention in Middle Childhood
• Attention becomes more
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