Key Concepts

Hello.

I'm Dr Richard O'Connor from the University of Whole.

And in this course I'm going to be talking to

you about the theory of cognitive development from P.

R. J.

Now my research background is in developmental psychology

and developmental psychology is the study of the

psychological changes that happen throughout the lifespan,

and it tries to describe what these changes are

and explain why they occur and what the mechanisms are behind them

and within developmental psychology.

There's a sub field of cognitive development,

cognitive developmental psychology, and that is my particular specialty.

And this is the study of changes in cognitive processes across the life span,

things like attention or memory,

and also changes in our knowledge and understanding of

the world and ourselves and people around us.

Now

Asia is arguably the most influential

theorist and researcher in developmental psychology,

and so he's certainly the most influential

in the area of cognitive development.

Piaget was born just before the turn of the century search just before 19 hundreds,

and he lived for about 80 years and during this time produced

a large body of work but perhaps his most influential area,

And what I'll be talking about in this

course is specifically his theory of cognitive development,

often called his stage theory of cognitive development.

Now, as far as his theory goes,

there are a few key things that I want to talk to you about first,

before going into more detail on the specific stages within his theory.

And the first critical thing to understand is that for Piaggio,

Children were not just little adults.

They were something completely different.

Now you could have an idea about what Children's thinking is like where

you imagine that perhaps they're They're kind of just the same as adult,

but they're less develops there, maybe have shorter attention spans.

They know fewer words. They know less about the world.

They're physically less able.

But fundamentally, they're just like little adults.

And indeed, be forgiven,

thinking this is the way that many adults actually talk to Children.

However, this was not the view that Ph had,

and what Ph recognised was that Children's thinking.

Their way of thinking about the world seems to be fundamentally different

to that of adults.

There's what's called a difference in the quality of

their thought or qualitative change or a qualitative difference.

It's not a matter of the merely by being less developed, having less knowledge,

they have a fundamentally different type of knowledge that stems

from their different way of thinking about the world.

And it is these differences in Children's way of thinking and how this affects

the expression of their knowledge that Ph tried to explain in his stage theory.

And further,

though it's not just a distinction between Children and between adults,

PSG argued that there are multiple,

different stages of development throughout the first about

15 or so years of a person's life.

He argued for four different stages

the sensory motor,

the pre operational

concrete operations

and formal operate. National stage is those four stages,

and he argued that each of these stages

is characteristic

by a different way of thinking about

the world and particularly characterised by some

fundamental limits on the types of thoughts and the types of ways of thinking

that Children can have.

And his theory aims to describe what these

different types thinking are like across these stages

and explain how the change occurs

now, as far as

the key process that underlies change across these stages.

For Ph, there was one fundamental developmental process,

and that was the process by which the child adapts. They're schemers

through accommodation and assimilation.

What does that mean? Well, firstly, a schemer

is, if you like the single unit of thought. Within PSG's theory,

the schemer is a way of organising experience and producing a response to that.

So try to put some flesh on that So say a child might have a schema about what a cat is.

And this might be their mental representation of the properties of a cat.

And also what you should do actually interact with a cat.

And that's something maybe quite complicated.

Needs to hold things in mind, perhaps for a much younger child. For a baby,

they're schemers.

Might more be simply linked to a certain sensation and a certain response, say,

Schemer of Upon seeing what I recognise as my mother, I hold my arms out to water.

It would be a very simple scheme

and schemes,

as well as being say these about actions in response to sensations or as being

a representation of a certain object to prevent

schemers can also be what are called operations,

which are like mental actions,

like a schemer of, say,

being knowing what to do when you have to subtract one number from another.

That will be a mental operation of how you manipulate

the information in your head,

the actions if you like the mental actions that you do upon those.

So that is what a schemer is and piano.

She argued that the scheme has change through

these processes of adapting to the world through,

say, accommodation and assimilation.

And the fundamental thing in this is that for Piaggio,

developmental change or changing cognitive development

was about the child actively trying to

construct and build their schemers to

adapt to the incoming experiences around them

and these two process of apt adaptation.

So if a child has got a current schemer, for example,

the classic example of a young baby has a scheme of if they see an object,

they grab it and they put it in their mouth and they suck on it.

We've seen

young babies doing this all the time

and

an act of assimilation would be if the baby

sees a new object that they haven't seen before,

a new experience

and they assimilate that object into that scheme that they

pick that object up put it in their mouths.

It has become part of that overall scheme,

and now that is an object on which they how is part in which they do that action upon,

whereas accommodation would be if the child has to change their schemer

to adapt to a new piece.

Incoming information,

Let's say if the child comes across a beach ball that is too big to put in their mouth,

might instead punkers in front of their face and try to lick it instead.

And now they've had to change their scheme

to a new experience that didn't fit with their previous scheme.

This example that I've given you is very basic.

It's just about, say, sensations and actions, but

felt that the same fundamental process of adapting and changing your schemer,

your units of understanding the world around you was

the fundamental part of cognitive development throughout the lifespan.

Now, what is critical about this this process is that it is an active one.

The child isn't just a passive recipient of knowledge.

The child is not just a vessel in which other people in society pause

knowledge and understanding in them.

The child instead is an active participant in building up

their own knowledge and their own understanding of the world.

And as I'll talk in late lectures, this has had

some quite a lot of influence on theories of

education and how Children should be taught in schools.

Now for the remaining modules,

I'm going to be going step by step through the different four stages in PSG's theory,

and in the next

section I will start by looking at his

thoughts on the very earliest stage in development,

the sensory motor stage.