Cognitive Development

Cognitive developmental view

Information processing view

Psychometric/intelligence view

Social cognition

Piaget’s theory

Piaget said adolescents are motivated to cognitively understand their world because it is biologically adaptive

Adolescents actively construct their world employing various cognitive organizational skills. These are:

schema, assimilation, accommodation, equilibration

What is a schema?

A concept or framework that exists in an individual’s mind to organize and interpret information.

How do you make sense of the world? What is the general organizational

framework that denote how you view the world?

Weltenschauung… a German term

What is assimilation?

The process of incorporating new information into existing knowledge

You are synthesizing what you don’t know into what you already know

e.g., Charles Darwin’s father was a preacher.

Who is Darwin? What is father? What is preacher? … the synthesis

What is accommodation?

Occurs when individuals adjust to new information.

It is not a synthesis but is a reorganization of knowledge.

Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” is a great book about this

Upsetting your world view...

What is equilibration?

Think of Steven Gould’s concept of punctuated equilibrium.

Things remain stable until there is a sudden and dramatic shift, then there is stability again: this is equilibration

Equilibration is a cognitive punctuated equilibrium

Piagetian Stages of Cognitive Development Stage 1: Sensorimotor Stage (0-2) Stage 2: Preoperational Stage (2-7) Stage 3: Concrete Operations Stage (7-

11) Stage 4:Formal Operations Stage (12+)

Sensorimotor stage

Infants construct an understanding of the world by coordinating sensory experiences with physical motoric actions.

There are six substages of the sensorimotor stage of cognitive development; stage ends with emergence of object permanence

Preoperational period

In this stage of cognitive development, children begin to represent their world with words, images, and drawings.

Appearance of symbolic thought Reality and fantasy are indistinguishable Animistic thinking, transductive

reasoning

Concrete operations

In this stage children can perform operations, that is, mental actions that allow the individual to do mentally what had formerly been done before physically

Logical reasoning replaces intuitive thought; conservation tasks are beginning to be solved

Conservation task (volume)

Classification: an important ability in concrete operational thought Class inclusion reasoning

Formal operations

Characterized by abstract, idealistic, and logical thought

emerges at approximately 11 to 15 years of age (if at all)

harmony, melodious, quaint… what do these mean?

Emergence of hypothetical-deductive reasoning

Concrete operations...

Formal operations

Deductive reasoning “Bob left the hotel and walked toward

the parking lot. Without the benefit of moonlight or any artificial light, he was able to spot his black car 100 meters away. How was this possible?”

Formal Operations and Teens

Early formal operational thought

Adolescents’ think in hypothetical ways producing unconstrained thoughts with unlimited possibilities.

There is an excess of assimilation as the world is perceived too subjectively and idealistically

“We can change the world!”

Early formal operational thought

Late formal operational thought

Involves a restoration of intellectual balance

Teens now test out the products of their reasoning against experience and a consolidation of formal operational thought takes place.

An intellectual balance is achieved by accommodation to the assimilation

Late formal operational thought

Tested Compared What is real? What is trash? Does this jive? Who am I?

Information processing view of cognition

Information-Processing Approach 3 main characteristics

– thinking: highly flexible, adaptations and adjustments; task-oriented; goal-directed

– change mechanisms: encoding, automaticity; strategy construction

– self-modulation: using the above two characteristics to actively regulate the self and refine thinking processes

Information processing requirements Attention: concentration and focusing of

mental efforts; attention is selective and shifting– 12 year olds’ attention is much better than

an 8 year olds’ attention– attention span is about 20-50 minutes for

teens– many adults have trouble attending for more

than 50 minutes

Information processing requirements Memory: the retention of information

over time Short-term memory: limited capacity to

about 7 items and lasts for around 30 seconds

Long-term memory: relatively permanent memory that can last for decades

Important adolescent thinking skills: Decision Making Decision making: adolescents need

practice in decision making; how do you teach a teen to make good decisions?

How does the role of the parent change when teaching decision making to adolescents?

What is the appropriate method to use to make decisions?

Important adolescent thinking skills: Critical thinking Critical thinking: thinking reflectively,

productively, and evaluating the evidence

There is a lot of non-critical thinking in early teens, even some adults

How do you teach someone to become a critical thinker?

Important adolescent thinking skills: Creativity Creativity: the ability to think in novel

ways “outside of the box” and develop new solutions to problems

Convergent thinking: how are 2 different things alike?

Divergent thinking: how are 2 alike things different?

Creativity: Brainstorming

A technique in which persons can come up with new, creative ideas wherein practicality is not immediately considered.

This is teaching problem solving. Parents would do well to foster brainstorming then to offer a solution to their teens.

Important adolescent thinking skills: Metacognition “thinking about thinking” How can you improve your thinking? Do you think your thinking is a good as

the person next to you; do you think your thinking is better than it was 5 years ago?

Do you know how to learn and how to be your own teacher?

Self-regulation

1) Goal setting and strategic planning 2) Putting a plan into action and

monitoring the activities of the plan 3) Monitoring the outcomes of the

activities and refining the strategies employed

4) Self-evaluation and monitoring

Self-regulation

Most high-achieving students are self-regulatory learners.

They set goals and strategies for achieving those goals

They perform the activities necessary to enact these strategies

They monitor their activities and adjust as is necessary until goal is reached

The psychometric/intelligence view of cognition

Psychometric view

Emphasizes the importance of individual differences in intelligence

Emphasizes that intelligence should be quantified through the use of intelligence tests

Intelligence: verbal ability, problem-solving, adaptation, and learning from experience

Intelligence tests

The Stanford-Binet IQ test IQ = MA/CA x 100 Mental age: at what age level

intellectually are you performing relative to the general population?

Chronological age: how old are you? A Ratio index of relative intelligence

Intelligence tests: Normal Dist

Stanford-Binet IQ test

Stanford: Stanford University; Louis Terman at SU

Wechsler IQ tests

David Wechsler WPPSI-R (ages 4 to 6.5) WISC-R (ages 6 - 16) WAIS-R (ages > 16) The tests produce a verbal IQ, a

performance IQ, and an overall IQ score Average IQ = 100, SD=15

Various Theories of multiple intelligences

Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory

Analytical intelligence Experiential/creative intelligence Contextual/practical intelligence Analytical: analyze, judge, evaluate,

compare, contrast Creative: establish new, “look differently”,

artistic/musicians Practical: what works best

Triarchic theory

Those who are creative may not necessary be very practical and vice versa

Those who are good at analysis may not be very practical nor be very creative

Those who are practical may not be very analytical or very creative

Howard Gardner’s 8 frames of mind and intelligences (plural) Verbal skills Mathematical skills Spatial skills Bodily-kinesthetic skills Musical skills Interpersonal skills and Intrapersonal skills Naturalistic skills/observers

Further types of intelligence

Emotional intelligence– developing emotional self-awareness– managing emotions– reading emotions in others– handling relationships

Social intelligence (we’ll talk about it) Political intelligence

Controversies on intelligence measurement The “bell curve” and racist views about

intelligence The influences of heredity and

environment on intelligence Culture-fair IQ tests vs culture-biased IQ

tests What does an IQ test test anyway? Misuses of IQ test scores

Social Cognition

Reasoning about the social world

Social Cognition

How individuals conceptualize and reason about the people they watch, interact with, have relationships with as well as groups

How individuals perceive themselves within the context of these other people and these other groups

This is social cognition

Social Cognition: Adolescent egocentrism Heightened self-awareness of

adolescents; the belief that others are as interested in them as they are interested in themselves

Heightened sense of self-uniqueness “I am different, I am me!!” (and then

they will dress to look cool)

Adolescent egocentrism

Imaginary audience: teens will play to an imaginary audience to get attention, to be noticed, histrionic behavior

Kewl green hair… :-)

Adolescent egocentrism

Personal Fable: How I am different from everyone else; no one can understand me because I am me and not you and you can’t understand what is like to be me!

Perspective taking

"Put yourself in her position and think how you'd feel."

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

"Put yourself in his shoes" "Walk a mile in his moccasins" "See yourself through others' eyes.”

Perspective taking

This is the extension of development of empathy

Moving outside of the self into the shoes of others is the foundation upon which better self-understanding can be laid.

This can be taught by modeling; by concern for animals in early childhood, and by service projects in older children

Questions on Chapter 4?

Test coming up! Prepare for tests by reading the

chapters twice, be able to be accountable for any learning objective, do the study guide, check the web, revisit the notes notes on the web, ask any questions you have before the test.