PSYC 2450 Chapter Notes - Chapter 8: Inductive Reasoning, Ontogeny, Animism
27 Jun 2018
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Chapter 8 Cognitive Development:
Piaget’s Theory, Case’s Neo-Piagetian Theory, and Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Viewpoint
1
Chapter 8
Cognitive Development: Piaget’s Theory,
Case’s Neo-Piagetian Theory, and
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Viewpoint
Chapter 8 Outline and Summary
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
1. What is Intelligence?
Piaget defined intelligence as a basic life function that helps organisms adapt to their
environments. He believed that all intellectual activity was undertaken to produce cognitive
equilibrium among thought processes and the environment. People achieve this state of
equilibrium through a process that Piaget termed “equilibration.” When environmental
events produce a state of cognitive disequilibrium the individual makes mental adjustments
designed to restore cognitive equilibrium.
2. How We Gain Knowledge: Cognitive Schemes and Cognitive Processes
Schemes are the mental structures that underlie intelligence. They are created and modified
through the intellectual processes of organization and adaptation. Organization combines
existing schemes into new and more complex structures. Adaptation is the process of
adjusting to the demands of the environment and occurs through the complementary
activities of assimilation and accommodation.
When individuals try to interpret the world in terms of the schemes they already possess,
they are using the process of assimilation; in other words, they attempt to fit new experiences
into their existing mental structures. When new experiences cannot be understood using
existing mental structures, individuals must adapt to these new experiences using the process
of accommodation. When accommodation occurs, existing structures are modified or new
structures are created to account for the new experiences.
Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development
1. The Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to 2 Years)
From birth to the age of 2 children are in the sensorimotor stage of cognitive development,
and for most of this period they are using behavioural schemes to understand the world
around them. There are six substages to the sensorimotor stage.
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Chapter 8 Cognitive Development:
Piaget’s Theory, Case’s Neo-Piagetian Theory, and Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Viewpoint
2
a. Development of Problem-Solving Skills
During the reflex activity substage (0 to 1 month), the newborn is assimilating new objects
into reflexive behavioural schemes and showing evidence of modifying reflexive responses
to accommodate novel objects. During the substage of primary circular reactions (1 to 4
months), infants repeat actions that they can voluntarily control. At this stage the actions are
centred on the infant’s own body. During the secondary circular reactions substage (4 to 8
months), infants are repeating interesting voluntary actions that involve external objects.
Infants begin to intentionally combine or coordinate actions in order to achieve simple
objectives (the beginning of true problem solving) during the next substage (coordination of
secondary schemes), which lasts from 8 to 12 months of age. During the substage of tertiary
circular reactions (12 to 18 months), infants show evidence of active experimentation and
they begin to use familiar objects in novel ways. During the final substage (invention of new
means through mental combinations), which lasts from 18 to 24 months, the capacity of
mental representation is evident. Toddlers may now show evidence of “insight” as they solve
problems and interact with their environment.
b. Development of Imitation
Deferred imitation is the ability to reproduce a behaviour when the model is no longer
present. Piaget suggested this ability emerges during the last substage of the sensorimotor
period, when the capacity for mental representations first develops. Other researchers suggest
that the capacity for simple deferred imitation may be present as early as 6 months of age.
c. Development of Object Permanence
One of the major developments that occur during the sensorimotor stage is the emergence of
object permanence, the understanding that objects continue to exist when they are no longer
visible or detectable by the senses. Piaget suggested this concept emerges in a slow, invariant
sequence. He found that infants under the age of 4 months would not search for objects that
were hidden from their view. Between 4 and 8 months infants would search for objects that
were partially visible, but not for objects that were completely concealed. Between the ages
of 8 and 12 months he found that infants would make A-not-B errors in searching for hidden
objects; this means they searched for hidden objects where the objects had previously been
found, not where they were last seen. After 12 months of age A-not-B errors were no longer
made, but before the age of 18 months infants still did not understand invisible
displacements. Piaget suggested that only in the last substage of the sensorimotor period was
object permanence completely developed.
d. Challenges to Piaget’s Account of Sensorimotor Development: Neo-Nativism and Theory
Theories
Other researchers have questioned Piaget’s conclusions, claiming that the use of active
search to assess knowledge of object permanence is inappropriate in young infants. A
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Chapter 8 Cognitive Development:
Piaget’s Theory, Case’s Neo-Piagetian Theory, and Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Viewpoint
3
number of researchers who have used techniques that don’t involve active search have
concluded that (1) object permanence is present much sooner than Piaget suggested, and (2)
Piaget had misinterpreted the reason that infants make A-not-B errors.
Neo-nativists believe that babies enter the world with substantial knowledge and are innately
prepared to make sense of certain aspects of their physical world. Some research suggests
that babies may have much more symbolic knowledge than Piaget proposed. Neo-nativism
theory, however, has been criticized by others who offer more simple explanations of the
research results. “Theory” theorists combine neo-nativism and Piaget’s constructivism and
maintain that cognitive development progresses by children generating, testing, and
modifying theories about the physical and social world. Both approaches assume, counter to
Piaget, that infants possess innate knowledge that guides their development.
2. The Preoperational Stage (2 to 7 Years) and the Emergence of Symbolic Thought
During the preoperational stage (2 to 7 years), children are able to use mental symbols to
represent objects, events, and situations. Piaget divided this stage into the preconceptual
period (2 to 4 years) and the intuitive period (4 to 7 years).
During the preconceptual period, the capacity for symbolic thought emerges. The clearest
evidence of this capacity is seen in a child’s developing language skills, and it is also evident
in the blossoming of symbolic (or pretend) play. DeLoache suggests that dual representation,
the ability to recognize the relationship between a symbol and its referent, improves during
the preconceptual period and continues to improve dramatically during the preschool years.
a. Deficits in Preconceptual Reasoning
Some of the deficits in reasoning that Piaget identified in preconceptual children include
animism (a willingness to attribute motives and intentions to inanimate objects), transductive
reasoning (a belief that whenever two events occur together, one of the events causes the
other to occur), egocentrism (difficulty recognizing how things would appear from the point
of view of other people), and difficulty distinguishing between appearance and reality.
During the intuitive period Piaget suggested that children are somewhat less egocentric, but
that their understanding of objects and events still centres on their single most salient feature.
Piaget found that children at this age have difficulty solving class-inclusion problems and
they also fail to display conservation. Conservation is an understanding that certain
properties of objects remain unchanged when the appearance of the object is superficially
altered. Piaget attributed children’s failure at solving conservation problems to a lack of
reversibility and the inability to decentre their thinking.
b. Did Piaget Underestimate the Preoperational Child
Other researchers have found that children in the preoperational stage are less egocentric
than Piaget concluded, and that children display less animistic thinking than Piaget had
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Document Summary
Piaget defined intelligence as a basic life function that helps organisms adapt to their environments. He believed that all intellectual activity was undertaken to produce cognitive equilibrium among thought processes and the environment. Schemes are the mental structures that underlie intelligence. They are created and modified through the intellectual processes of organization and adaptation. Organization combines existing schemes into new and more complex structures. Adaptation is the process of adjusting to the demands of the environment and occurs through the complementary activities of assimilation and accommodation. When individuals try to interpret the world in terms of the schemes they already possess, they are using the process of assimilation; in other words, they attempt to fit new experiences into their existing mental structures. When new experiences cannot be understood using existing mental structures, individuals must adapt to these new experiences using the process of accommodation.
