Cognitive Development

1. Cognitive Development Cognitive developmental view Information processing view Psychometric/intelligence view Social cognition

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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...

6. 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

7. 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+)

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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

11. Conservation task (volume)

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

13. 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

14. Concrete operations...

15. 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?”

16. Formal Operations and Teens

17. 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!”

18. Early formal operational thought

19. 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

20. Late formal operational thought • Tested • Compared • What is real? • What is trash? • Does this jive? • Who am I?

21. Information processing view of cognition

22. 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

23. 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

24. 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

25. 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?

26. 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?

27. 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?

28. 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.

29. 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?

30. 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

31. 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

32. The psychometric/intelligence view of cognition

33. 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

34. 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

35. Intelligence tests: Normal Dist

36. Stanford-Binet IQ test • Stanford: Stanford University; Louis Terman at SU

37. 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

38. Various Theories of multiple intelligences

39. 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

40. 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

41. 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

42. 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

43. 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

44. Social Cognition Reasoning about the social world

45. 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

46. 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)

47. Imaginary audience: teens will play to an imaginary audience to get attention, to be noticed, histrionic behavior Kewl green hair… :-) Adolescent egocentrism

48. 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! Adolescent egocentrism

49. 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.”

50. 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