4 Cognitive development – Piaget’s theory and information processing

1. INTRODUCTION

Children make sense of their amazing multifaceted world. They constantly explore, analyze and integrate the stimulus all around them. They also gain knowledge and get new understandings through observing and imitating people around them. They are found to possess an inquisitive mix of fantasy, common sense, interpretation and reasoning. They are found to actively construct their thinking at various levels and their intellectual capacities keep on changing as an infant, as a child, as an adolescent and as an adult.

This module focuses on how the children in their early years could organize their thinking and how this thinking changes from one stage of life span to the other stage. This complexity of thinking is explained to you through Piaget’s cognitive approach and Information Processing approach.

2. LEARNING OBJECTIVES

At the end of this lesson you will be able to

• Describe the children’s complexity of thinking during their early years as proposed by two major cognitive theories
• Realize the implications of these cognitive approaches towards learning and early years setting in such a way that it could assist the learners to take up the responsibility of providing children with needed opportunities

    3.  CONCEPT OF COGNITION

Before getting into the cognitive approaches, it is important to understand what cognition is.

Cognition – refers to the inner processes and products of the mind that lead to ‘knowing’. It includes all mental activity – attending, remembering, symbolizing, categorizing, planning, reasoning, problem solving, creating and fantasying (Berk, 2008).

4.  PIAGET’S COGNITIVE APPROACH

With a biology background, Jean Piaget, became a cognitive theorist by observing his own three children. He presumed that every child born in this world acquires the knowledge of their environment, be in terms of exploring, discovering and even constructing the Early Childhood Care, Education and Development: H10EC04; Cognitive development – Piaget’s theory and information processing stimulus through his/her own activities. He also found that their thinking systematically changes from one point of their development to the other.

4.1 Processes of cognitive development

As per Jean Piaget, the development of thinking and its active construction is made possible by five processes namely

• Schemas
• Adaptation – Assimilation and Accommodation
• Organization
• Equilibration – Equilibrium and Disequilibrium

   4.1.1 SCHEMAS

Schemas are referred to as the basic building blocks of thinking. They are specific psychological structures helping us to organize the ways of making sense of experience. The schemas change with age. Initially the schemas are sensori-motor actions and later followed by mental representations.

For example, an infant when given a rattle just drops it down accidently. But by 1 ½ years, the action of dropping down the rattle become voluntary, as he wants to discover the effect of dropping it from various heights, dropping it on various surfaces, throwing it on air or against the wall etc.

4.1.2 ADAPTATION – ASSIMILATION AND ACCOMMODATION

Have you noticed a child tirelessly repeating certain actions to discover an interesting outcome? This is nothing but an illustration of Piagetian process of adaptation.

Adaptation is a key piagetian term that refers to the process of changing schemas by acting directly on the environment and being influenced by it as a result. Adaptation involves two balancing processes namely

1. Adaptation

2. Accommodation

Assimilation – it refers to the process of applying the already learnt concept to a new concept.

For example, a toddler trying to apply the already learnt concept of his own car and referring a bus on the road as car.

Accommodation – it refers to a process of revising the learnt concept to fit the new information received Early Childhood Care, Education and Development: H10EC04; Cognitive development – Piaget’s theory and information processing

For example – the toddler while referring the bus as car might be assisted by his parent that cars are small, but buses are big. Now the toddler learns a new schema and fits the information into the already learnt schema and excludes the schema of bus from car.

4.1.3 EQUILIBRATION – EQUILIBRIUM AND DISEQUILIBRIUM

When the process of assimilation is more than the process of accommodation (ie) the toddler still incorporating new elements such as motorcycles, trucks and vans to the already existing schema ‘car’ is said to be in a state of cognitive equilibrium.

Cognitive equilibrium – it is a comfortable state of the child in learning things

At the same time, if the toddler shifts from assimilation to accommodation, the thought completely shifts from one stage to the next. At this point of time, they undergo a cognitive conflict or discomfort which is referred to as disequilibrium.

As in the previous example, when told that the buses are big and the cars are smaller than it, the child faces a cognitive discomfort in understanding it.

Overall, the term equilibration refers to the overall movement from assimilation to accommodation and then back to assimilation.

4.1.4.ORGANIZATION

Children also change their schemas by organization. Organization refers to the internal rearrangement of schemas and exploring the links and associations between the schemas, to develop a strongly interconnected cognitive system. Piaget refers organization as a higher order cognitive system.

For example, the child eventually will learn the difference between the car and bus and could pick out the similarities and differences between them easily.

4.2 Stages of cognitive development

According to Piaget, individuals go through four stages of cognitive development as a result of the above mentioned cognitive processes. The four stages are

1.      Sensorimotor stage (0-2 years)

2.      Preoperational stage (2-7 years)

3.      Concrete operational stage (7-11 years)

4.      Formal Operational Stage (beyond 11 years)

4.2.1 Characteristics of Piaget’s stages

• Each stage is a structured whole. In other words, the stages are qualitative within the schemas and quantitative between schemas
• Each stage is a continuation of previous stage. In other words, every stage prepares and leads the individual to the next stage (no going back) Early Childhood Care, Education and Development: H10EC04; Cognitive development – Piaget’s theory and information processing
• The stages follow an invariant sequence and none of these stages could be skipped
• Irrespective of other variables, the stages are universal, since it characterizes children everywhere.
• Cognitive changes progress gradually from one stage to the other

The first two stages of Piaget’s cognitive development is discussed here

4.2.2Sensori-Motor Stage

This stage extends over the first two years of life. Piaget assumed that toddlers explore the environment with their senses and motor skills. Hence the first stage of cognitive development is termed as sensorimotor stage. Piaget observed his own children and found drastic advance in their thinking skills every day in general and in their first two years n particular. Hence he divided this stage into six substagesas given below

                     SUBSTAGES OF SENSORIMOTOR STAGE

4.2.2.1 Simple reflexes

It is the first stage and is found during the first month of life. Piaget considered reflexive behaviours as the building blocks of intelligence. After few days of birth, the infant is found to produce the same reflexive behaviour in the absence of the usual stimulus.

For example, a new born initially sucks the nipple or bottle only when placed on its mouth directly, later, the infant starts sucking when the stimulus is present nearby. Hence it is understood that the infant has started to structure its experience.

4.2.2.2 Primary circular reaction

Between 1 and 4 months of age, the infant’s motor activities are centred on its own body. The activities that initially occurred by chance are reproduced repeatedly.

Early Childhood Care, Education and Development: H10EC04; Cognitive development – Piaget’s theory and information processing For example, an infant sucks its thumb by chance initially. Later he searches for the thumb and tries to even put a part of his hand into the mouth due to poor coordination

Also the second substage is crucial in establishing first habits. Similar reflexive response elicited even when completely separated from the reflexive stimulus is called as habits.

For example the infant towards the end of stage 1 was able to suck at the sight of the bottle, but in stage 2, he shows the sucking response even when the bottle is not present.

4.2.2.3 Secondary circular reaction

This stage develops between 4 and 8 months of age. In this stage, infants become more focussed on the environment. Their motor activity involves environmental stimulus rather than self. Gradually they begin to intentionally repeat an action in order to trigger a response around them.

For example, an infant picking up a toy purposefully and putting it in his mouth/Shaking a rattle again and again to hear the sound.

Though the infant of this stage repeats certain activities the schemas are not intentional or goal directed

4.2.2.4 Coordination of secondary circular reaction

The fourth substage extends from 8-12 months of age. Coordination of vision and manual actions occurs. The actions become more intentional and goal directed For example, a baby crawling after his mother, when she is putting on her slippers to

step outside the house.

Also during this substage, the infant starts developing imitation. Hence their activities become intentional, deliberately changing schemas to fit an observed action.

For example, a toddler stirring something with a spoon watching his mother    do it.

4.2.2.5 Tertiary circular reaction

Between 12-18 months of age, the infant will be able to intentionally explore new outcomes or variations as they become familiar by the properties of the object. For example, infant dropping an object from stairs, on walls on air etc. as it provokes

various outcomes.

Piaget also concluded that this stage sets a beginning to the creativitt and novelty of any human being. Early Childhood Care, Education and Development: H10EC04; Cognitive development – Piaget’s theory and information processing

4.2.2.6 Mental representation

Towards the end of sensori motor stage (ie.) from 18-24 months of age, the infant possess the ability to represent objects mentally by using primitive symbols. The use of these symbols helps them to solve their problems suddenly without even trial and error behaviour.

For example, an infant playing with a toy car, observes the car being stuck against the wall, and suddenly lifts the car and turns it to a new direction.

4.2.3 Other capacities developed during sensori motor stage

4.2.3.1 Object permanence

It is an understanding that an object exists even when not present. Object permanence awareness gets initiated during the fourth stage of sensorimotor stage. The sequence with which the awareness of object permanence occurs is as given below.

i. A – not B search error – An infant watches an object being moved from a place A to place B and continues to search for it in the same A place. In other words, the toddler is unable to possess the image of the object when hidden.

ii. Accurate A-B Search – By 18 months, the toddler search various possible locations to find a hidden object.

4.2.3.2 Deferred imitation

During the 6th sub stage of sensori motor stage, the mental representation permits the ability to copy the behaviour of others even when not present For example, a toddler showing love on a doll by patting, feeding or kissing it just like a mother doing for the baby

4.2.3.3 Make-believe play

An infant at the end of the 6th stage engages in make believe play rather than functional play. Functional play refers to the pleasant motor activity of infants and toddlers either with or without objects. Make believe play, otherwise called as pretend play, is where the toddler act out everyday activities.

For example a toddler pretending to go to sleep.

4.3 THE PREOPERATIONAL STAGE

The second stage of cognition, as per Piaget spans 2 to 7 years of life. The ability to represent things mentally rapidly increases at this stage, though the thought is not logical.

But, what is meant by the term operation in preoperational? Operations are nothing but mental actions that follow certain logical rules. However preoperational indicates that the Early Childhood Care, Education and Development: H10EC04; Cognitive development – Piaget’s theory and information processing children at this stage are rigid in their thinking, influenced by only one feature and limited to that situation and hence they are capable of operations.

4.3.1 Concepts developed during preoperational stage

As per Piaget the children in the age range of 2-7 years of life develop certain concepts. They are explained as follows

4.3.1.1 Egocentrism: This is the most important concept during this stage. The term ‘ego’ refers to self. Hence the child is said to be self-centred. Self-centred does not mean selfish. But the children believe that everyone around them thinks, feels, perceives things as the same way as they do. Piaget proved the development of this concept through a demonstration called ‘three mountains problem’.

A child was made to stand on one side of a display of three mountains of different height arranged on a table. A doll was made to sit on the other side. The child was allowed to go around the mountain display, after which he s asked to pick up a photograph from a pile of photos to show how the mountain would appear from the doll’s direction, the child will for sure pick up a photograph demonstrating his own point of view.

A practical example of egocentric approach is ‘a child nodding his head in response to a telephonic conversation’.

4.3.1.2.Animistic thinking

The concept of egocentrism develops animistic thinking among preschoolers. It is an assumption that every object they see has life, thoughts and feelings as they have. Putting in simpler way, it is giving human characteristics to even inanimate things.

Few examples of animistic statements that are commonly used by a preschooler are

• The sun goes to bed because it is tired
•  A child looks at a hole in the tree and says’ “Didn’t the tree cry when the hole was made?”

4.3.1.3.Transductive reasoning

An amazing capacity that the preschooler possesses is transductive reasoning, wherein they could connect disconnected facts and contradictions by linking two – Piaget’s theory and information processing events that occur close to each other either by space or time. However they lack the capacity to reason from general to particular and vice versa.

For example, a child pointing out that ‘the cloud moves when I walk’. Here the two disconnected facts are connected. Even when asked do the clouds move when you sleep, the child confidently says ‘Yes’, because the dogs and cats move around.

4.3.2 Concepts lacking in preoperational stage

Piaget, who described children in terms of what they can also to a large extent explained in terms of what they cannot. In that line, two major inabilities that a preschooler goes through are given below

4.3.2.1 Inability to conserve

The realization that certain physical characteristics of an object does not change, even when there is a observable change in their outward appearance is called conservation. The tasks of conservation involves number, length, mass, liquid and weight. Young children have trouble understanding that the same amount of liquid poured into containers of different shapes remains the same

The preschoolers’ inability to conserve characterizes another concept called centration among them. Centration is an idea of focussing on only one feature of a situation, neglecting others.

4.3.2.2 Irreversibility

It refers to the inability of a preschooler to reverse direction. This is because of the reason that they cannot follow the series of steps that allows them to return back to the starting point. For example, a child will be able to answer the question of what is 2+3 as 5, but cannot understand the reverse of that equation.

4.3.2.3. Inability to classify things hierarchically

The illogical thinking of the preschooler do not allow them to possess the capability of organizing objects as per their classes or subclasses based on the similarities and differences. For example when a preschooler is showed 16 flowers od which most of them are blue and asked to answer the following question

“Whether there are more blueflowers or more flowers?”

  They would confidently choose the first choice of more blue flowers. The reason behind this is their inability to think apart from whole class of flowers to the subclass of yellow and blue flowers and back again.

4.4 APPLICATION OF PIAGET’S APPROACH TO EARLY YEARS SETTING

Piaget’s cognitive theory has got three major educational implications for children in their early years as elaborated below

4.4.1.Discovery learning – Piaget believed that every child acquires knowledge by directly acting on the environment. So the settings of the home or school environment should be in such a way that it provided wide opportunities for them to discover things for themselves by natural contact with the surroundings.

4.4.2 Do not impose new skills unless the child has the readiness to learn – Piaget stresses on the level of thinking of a child at various ages, and he also argues the unless a child is ready to learn a particular skill, he/she should not be imposed on it, because that becomes just a superficial memorization rather than a deeper understanding.

4.4.3 Individual differences exist – Though all children go through the similar series of development, the rate of varies from child to child. Hence children in their early years are to be provided with ample opportunities for development without enforcing them to learn.

5. INFORMATION PROCESSING

Information processing approach, just like Piaget supports the idea that every child is active and inquiring by nature. However the development is considered to be a continuous process. This approach views that mind is a computer wherein information from outside is taken in by encoding and stored in symbolic form by various other internal process like recoding/decoding in such a way that the individual is facilitated to make sense of their experiences out of the information received.

5.1. Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin model of Information Processing

Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin have proposed the most accepted store model of information processing in the form of flow chart for human beings. According to this sore model, each human mind has got three parts as specified below

Early Childhood Care, Education and Development: H10EC04; Cognitive development – Piaget’s theory and information processing

1. Sensory Register
2. Working or Short-term memory
3. Long term memory

  5.1.1 Sensory register

Any information enters to the human mind through the sensory register, but cannot be retained for long. For example, when looking into an image around you for a moment and closing your eyes after that, it is not possible to remember the image for a longer time unless you take up certain deliberate strategies to remember it.

5.1.2 Working or short term memory

This is referred as the conscious part of human mind. Certain amount of information can be stored and processed actively in this part of mental system.

For example certain memory strategies such as association or organization or repetition of items or the image will be adopted by us to remember that particular lot of items or image.

5.1.3 Long term memory

This is the third way station to the human mind and is referred to the permanent knowledge base. All the information entering into the human mind is shelved based on the content much like books shelved in the library. As the capacity of long term memory is limitless, the major problem encountered is the retrieval of information. Hence novel strategies has to be adopted to retrieve a piece of information from the long term memory to the second way station ie. short term memory for active processing.

5.2 Three major control processes

The control process or mental strategies that the human mind uses at every level of their mental system, increases the efficiency in their thinking ability as well as retaining the same for further processing and reference. The three commonly used major strategies are as follows

1.      Attention

2.      Memory

3.      Metacognition

The following section explains each in detail

5.2.1 Attention

Attention is the base to human thinking mechanisms, as it is foremost strategy that determines the extent of information to be fed into the mind. The young children in their infancy and toddlerhood stage have got minimum attention span and are distracted very easily. However during early and middle childhood, the span of attention improves drastically.

In their infancy stage, the child just focuses on novel and stimulating events. Then during toddlerhood, the goal directed behaviour increases and thereby their attention span improves gradually. However by the end of early childhood period their attention span extends upto seven minutes. It is also said that by the end of 6th year, planful attention sets in, though not matured

5.2.2 Memory

Mental activities that are carried out deliberately to improve the likelihood of remembering is called memory strategies. This particular strategy emerges during the preschool years, but improves drastically during middle childhood. The language skills gained during the early childhood years also aid in memory of preschoolers. Any information fed to the human mind is stored by means of three processes namely

1.Rehearsal – It is the repeating scheme of information to oneself

2.Organization – Refers to the grouping of related items in the information

3.Elaboration – it is the process of creating relationship between two or more information.

With these processes the information fed passes on from sensory register to short term memory and then to long term memory. Once the information is shelved in the long term memory, it has to be retrieved to use it for future, which is again possible by three ways namely

1.Recognition – it is the strategy of realizing that an information received is similar to the one previously experienced

2.Recall – This refers to the capacity to generate a mental representation of an absent stimulus

3.Reconstruction – An information is said to be reconstructed by adding or condensing or integrating the stored information.

5.2.3 Metacognition

Metacognition is defined as the awareness and understanding of various aspects of thought. This strategy starts during early childhood and expands greatly in the middle childhood just like memory. The two major facets of metacognition experienced by children in their early years are

• Mind reading – this involves the ability to detect their own as well as others feelings, desires etc.
• What it means to think – this facet allows the child to aim at certain realizations such as ‘The word – Umbrella- is too big to pronounce, I would syllabify and then pronounce’ .

5.3 APPLICATIONS OF INFORMATION PROCESSING TO LEARNING

But how could the theory on information processing be applied to children of early years in their learning process? Look into the example and realize the answer.

Example – Arun is reading a book. In other words information from outside enters ninto his sensory register in the form of a book. While reading, the size and shape of the letters, the grouping of word into sentences and even how the page looks when taken as a whole get registered in Arun’s mental system. While continuing reading, Arun could remember only certain information that he read a few seconds ago because the information from the bookEarly Childhood Care, Education and Development: H10EC04; Cognitive development – Piaget’s theory and information processing had got into the short term /working memory. As you know the storage capacity of the working memory is much limited. However if everything happens rightly, the information already received by Arun would be pushed into the long term memory and has a chance of getting access to it later. Therefore the information has moved from sensory to short term/working memory and then to long term memory.

So, how a teacher could apply this approach to help their children learn? For this, first and foremost, a teacher should recognize that many children face problems in pushing the information from short term memory to long term memory. Cognitive load is a term used for having too much of information in the short term memory of a human mind. This cognitive load doesn’t allow the child to remember anything for that matter. So in order to help the children to pass the acquired information to the long term memory certain strategies had be adopted by teachers as given below

5.3.1 Encourage attention and rehearsal

When a child is able to be attentive, the likeliness of the information being sent to long term memory increases. Also rehearsing certain facts helps them to store information.

5.3.2 Present only a few things at a time

When too many things are taught/fed at a time, the working memory exceeds its capacity and does not allow children to remember anything. Hence time should be given for the child to pass the learnt information to the long term memory

5.3.3 Provide information in chunks

Nobody could remember a ten digit number say 9843114463 at a stretch. However when this number is split into chunks like 984,311,4463 and pronounced, it is easy to remember. Chunking in other words is grouping of information. His process helps a child to unload the cognitive load and thereby facilitating them to pass on the information into the long term memory.

6. SUMMARY

On the whole, Piaget in his cognitive theory had explained of how schemas change over the different stages of development in general and the first two stages – sensori motor and preoperational stage in particular. Also the theory describes the changes that happens in Early Childhood Care, Education and Development: H10EC04; Cognitive development – Piaget’s theory and information processing the domain of cognition from sensorimotor to preoperational level, and makes us realize the limitations of thinking among children during their early years. The educational principles that had been derived from Piagets’ theory namely, learning through discovery, identifying readiness to learn, and realization of the individual differences had been discussed.

Also the general model of information processing through sensory register, short term memory and long term memory had been discussed elaborately. The changes that take place in the control process or mental strategies like memory, attention and metacognition were also traced. Thought the information processing approach had not completely explained about the thinking process of children, it could provide the learner certain tips of how to deal children in their early years with reference to their cognitive development.

Web links

• Boundless. “Cognitive Development in Childhood.” Boundless Psychology. Boundless, 27Jun. 2014
• https://www.boundless.com/psychology/textbooks/boundless-psychology-textbook
• http://www.cliffsnotes.com/sciences/psychology/development-psychology/physical-cognitive-development-age-02/cognitive-development-age-02
• http://www.cliffsnotes.com/sciences/psychology/development-psychology/physical-cognitive-development-age-26/cognitive-development-age-26
• http://www.psychologynoteshq.com/piagetstheory/