Cognitive Development - Piaget's Theory

OUTLINE

Piaget's theory was mostly based on observation.

He went on to put together a general stage theory of cognitive development.

This theory stated that development follows a fixed (invariant) order, and that the behaviour in question gets better by the stage. Additionally, the order is the same for everyone - it is universal.

Piaget came to the conclusion that children begin to explore the world around them from the moment they first open their eyes and. They are NOT passive observers, instead they are actively involved.

STAGES

1 - SENSORI-MOTOR STAGE (0-2 YEARS)

  

  - Thoughts and behaviour are generally the same

• They examine their surroundings and place objects into schemas in their minds
• The baby gradually learns to make sense of the information coming in through the senses

Features include

 - Body schema(s)

• The infant recognises that it exists physically, it can recognise itself in a photograph or mirror

- Motor co-ordination

• The infant learns to co-ordinate different body parts, such as moving their hand to their mouth for eating or moving their knees and hands so that they can crawl

- Object permanence

• The infant knows that an object or person still exists even if they cannot be seen
• When a newborn baby cannot see that thing or person, they assume they do not exist
• Towards the end of the first year, perhaps as early as 8 months, babies will look for hidden objects because they have developed object permanence

2 - PRE-OPERATIONAL STAGE (2-7 YEARS)

Cognitive development gets better by the year. However, they are still limited.

- Animism

• They treat inanimate objects as if they are alive

- Reversibility

• They are unable to work backwards in their thinking
• For example, if you ask a child in the pre-operation stage who has a sibling if they have a sibling they will say yes. But if you ask them if that sibling has a sibling, they will say no

- Egocentrism

• They cannot see others viewpoints

3 - CONCRETE OPERATIONAL STAGE (7-11 YEARS)

 - The child can do what they couldn't in the previous stage, and they also develop other abilities

- Linguistic humour

• They start understanding and enjoying word games and double meanings

- Seriation

• The ability to rank things

- Conservation

• They know properties of certain objects remain the same
• They can conserve volume,number and mass

4 - FORMAL OPERATION STAGE (11 YEARS +)

- Hypothetical thinking

• Thinking without physical prompts
• It allows you to 'see the big picture' and develop general principles you can apply to other situations. 

CRITICISMS

1 - The cognitive stages are not as fixed or rigid as Piaget proposed

• Sine children flick into different stages depending on circumstances, sometimes thining egocentrically, and at other times having grand ideas of right and wrong

2 - There is no guarantee that people develop through all the stages

• Some researchers argue that only about 50% of adults make it to the formal operational stage

3 - Development is not an automatic biological process

• Piaget may have underestimated the role that parents and other people play in a child's intellectual development. 
• Some psychologists believe that we can 'hothouse; children so they develop at a quicker rate

4 - Piaget ignored different types of thinking

• Not all thinking is an exercise in logic or problem solving

5 -  Thinking does not develop in the same way for children everywhere

• Aboriginal children develop concrete operational thinking earlier than European children as it is useful for physical survival

6 - Piaget only describes the kind of thinking a child can/cannot do, he does not explain how the changes in thinking occurs

• Some critics would say that this does not make it a proper theory as theories should offer reasons for why things happen

Cognitive Development - Key Concepts

Cognitive development is age related changes such as how children think and behave differently as they get older.
This is built on processes or schemas.
Whereas some are present from birth (eg- sucking) others are not. They follow a pattern of assimilation and accommodation, which is learning new information and fitting it in with what is already known.

Schemas or though processes are what every child uses as they interact with the world around them. All ideas, memories and information about a particular object/situation etc that a child comes into contact with are sorted into patterns. These are like mental blueprints which link things and behaviours.

Perception - Advertising (Applications)

- Subliminal Advertising

• A subliminal message is a brief sound or image that is directed at us with a less than 50% chance of us spotting it
• This has been banned in Britain
• Supermarkets may put on French music to increase sales of French wine

- Advertising For The Brain

• What goes through the left eye goes to the right hemisphere of the brain and vice versa
• Emotional content should be on the left side of the screen
• Messages/words should be on the right side of the screen

- Context in Advertising

• Perception of an object can be affected by the context it is presented in. 
• For example, food will look better on a smaller plate as it makes the food appear bigger

Perception - Haber & Levin (2001)

OUTLINE

9 male college students (who had been tested for good eyesight) were driven out to large grassy field in the USA, which was surrounded by trees on three sides. It was separated into 4 sections, and the participants viewed from the middle.

This was a repeated measures study. The students were taken in a line to the centre of the field through the empty section,a n asked to face a certain field in groups of three. They guessed how far away the objects were. The groups turned around to each field until they were done.

RESULTS

Standard sized real world objects has good guesses for both near and far objects.Guesses for the other fields were not as accurate.

CRITICISMS

1 - The results cannot be generalised

• The sample was too small
• It is gender-biased

2 - It is an artificial task

• The task is not seen in real life
• The participants lived in cities

3 - Questionaire is still subjective

• People may not perceive an object in the same way
• The group could've grown tired of the task and not much as much effort into each field

Perception - Nativist Theory

This theory states that perception is a natural and instinctive process which believes that instinct and biology play an important role in perception.

 This supports bottom-up processing which is when perception is dominated by what enters through the eyes rather than what we expect to see. This means that perception is immediate,direct and data driven.

 It starts with independent information from the environment and works its way upwards to an interpretation of that information.

In this theory, the role of the brain is only to analyse and interpret the information coming through our eyes. This explains why we all have a similar view of the world, as we all evolved the same way.

Perception - Constructivist Theory

OUTLINE

This theory states that we construct our perception of the world not only based on what we see in front of us but also based on past experience. This supports top down processing and perceptual set

Top down processing - When perception is dominated by what we expect to see
Perceptual set - A tendency to perceive something in line with what you expect based n past experience

Numerous factors demonstrate the role of perceptual set in processing.

 - Expectations

• If you are looking for a friend in a crowd, you will easily see them as you expect to

- Motivation

• If you are hungry/thirsty, pictures of food/drink are likely to look brighter

CRITICISMS

1 - It ignores how people may perceive the world in a similar way despite individual differences

• This suggests that most information comes from our environment rather than our minds.

2 - It can't explain how a newborn baby perceives, as they don't have experience

• Studies have shown that newborns have some perceptual abilities early on
• At 2 months, some can recognize faces and complex patterns
• At 6 months, they will not crawl over an imaginary cliff despite limited environmental experience 

3 - Illusions disprove this theory

• If perception is about experience, then we should learn not to be fooled the second time

4 - It tends to ignore the fact that we are born to see and make sense of distance, movement,colour, and shape

Perception - Key Concepts

Sensation - The physical process of collecting data from the environment via the senses

Perception - The cognitive process of interpreting data once it has been senses

When there is a mismatch between sensation and preception, you experience an illusion.

Illusion  - The effect of misinterpreting data

CONSTANCES

Shape constancy

• The ability to perceive the shape of an object as constant even if it appears to change through movement eg- bending a book

Colour constancy 

• The ability to perceive the colour of an object as constant even if it appears to change with changes in lighting eg- a white top in a dark room 

TYPES OF ILLUSIONS

The Ponzo Illusion is a geometric illustion, as both of the yellow lines are the same length, but the bottom one appears shorter

The Necker Cube is an ambiguous figure as it can be seen in more than one way depending on which 'x' you look at 

The Kanzia Triangle is a fictions illusion as you can see a white triangle which not actually there

DEPTH CUES

Texture gradient

• When the further away something is, the smoother the texture seems

Linear perspective

• When things seem to converge at a distant point

Height in the plane

• If the object is higher than the horizontal halfway line, it seems further away

Relative size

• When bigger objects appear closer and smaller objects seem further away

Superimpositon

• When one image blocks another, the full object seems closer