COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

 

1.1 COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

Meaning:

         Cognition is "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses”. It encompasses processes such as attention, the formation of knowledge, memory and working memory, judgment and evaluation, reasoning and "computation", problem solving and decision making, comprehension and production of language. Cognitive processes use existing knowledge and generate new knowledge.

         Cognitive psychology is the scientific investigation of human cognition, that is, all our mental abilities – perceiving, learning, remembering, thinking, reasoning, and understanding. The term “cognition” stems from the Latin word “cognoscere” or "to know". Fundamentally, cognitive psychology studies how people acquire and apply knowledge or information. It is closely related to the highly interdisciplinary cognitive science and influenced by artificial intelligence, computer science, philosophy, anthropology, linguistics, biology, physics, and neuroscience.

Ø  Cognitive psychology is the study of mental processes such as "attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and thinking.

Ø  Cognitive Psychology is the school of psychology that examines internal mental processes such as problem solving, memory, and language.

Ø   It had its foundations in the Gestalt psychology of Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler, and Kurt Koffka, and in the work of Jean Piaget, who studied intellectual development in children.

Ø  Cognitive psychologists are interested in how people understand, diagnose, and solve problems, concerning themselves with the mental processes which mediate between stimulus and response.

Benefits of Cognitive Psychology

1.       Improves Comprehension: Cognitive learning encourages students to take a hands-on approach to learning. This allows them to explore the material and develop a deeper understanding.

2.       Develops problem-solving skills: The cognitive learning approach teaches students the skills they need to learn effectively. This helps students build transferable problem-solving and study skills that they can apply in any subject.

3.       Promotes long-term learning: Developing cognitive skills allows students to build upon previous knowledge and ideas. This teaches students to make connections and apply new concepts to what they already know.

4.       Improves confidence: With a deeper understanding of topics and stronger learning skills, students can approach school work with enthusiasm and confidence

5.       Installs a love of learning: Giving students the chance to actively engage in learning makes it fun and exciting. This helps students develop a lifelong love for learning outside of the classroom.

 

Importance of Cognitive Psychology

1.      Developing cognitive skills allows students to build upon previous knowledge and ideas. This teaches students to make connections and apply new concepts to what they already know. With a deeper understanding of topics and stronger learning skills, students can approach schoolwork with enthusiasm and confidence.

2.     Cognitive development theories and psychology help explain how children process information and learn. Understanding this information can assist educators to develop more effective teaching methods.

3. Cognitive Learning Theory explains how we process information when we learn. ... This type of teaching and learning, where the learner is mostly passive, sitting down and listening, while the active participant – the teacher – imparts their knowledge is linked to the Behaviorist Learning Theory.
4. The work of cognitive psychologists is essential for helping people who have experienced issues with mental processes. ... With the help of cognitive psychologists, people are often able to find ways to cope and even overcome such difficulties.
5. Research has shown that cognitive skills are a determining factor of an individual's learning ability. ... When cognitive skills are weak, learning becomes a struggle. Many children become frustrated and find schoolwork difficult because they do not have the cognitive skills required to process information properly.

 Cognitive development according to Piaget

       Piaget's theory of cognitive development is a comprehensive theory about the nature and development of human intelligence. It was first created by the Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget (1896–1980). The theory deals with the nature of knowledge itself and how humans gradually come to acquire, construct, and use it. Piaget's theory is mainly known as a developmental stage theory.

          To Piaget, cognitive development was a progressive reorganization of mental processes resulting from biological maturation and environmental experience. He believed that children construct an understanding of the world around them, experience discrepancies between what they already know and what they discover in their environment, then adjust their ideas accordingly. Moreover, Piaget claimed that cognitive development is at the center of the human organism, and language is contingent on knowledge and understanding acquired through cognitive development.

Ø  Child-centered classrooms and "open education" are direct applications of Piaget's views

Ø  Piaget's (1936) theory of cognitive development explains how a child constructs a mental model of the world. He disagreed with the idea that intelligence was a fixed trait, and regarded cognitive development as a process which occurs due to biological maturation and interaction with the environment.

         Piaget was employed at the Binet Institute in the 1920s, where his job was to develop French versions of questions on English intelligence tests. He became intrigued with the reasons children gave for their wrong answers to the questions that required logical thinking. He believed that these incorrect answers revealed important differences between the thinking of adults and children.

             Piaget (1936) was the first psychologist to make a systematic study of cognitive development. His contributions include a stage theory of child cognitive development, detailed observational studies of cognition in children, and a series of simple but ingenious tests to reveal different cognitive abilities.

          What Piaget wanted to do was not to measure how well children could count, spell or solve problems as a way of grading their I.Q. What he was more interested in was the way in which fundamental concepts like the very idea of number, time, quantity, causality, justice and so on emerged.

Before Piaget’s work, the common assumption in psychology was that children are merely less competent thinkers than adults. Piaget showed that young children think in strikingly different ways compared to adults.

           According to Piaget, children are born with a very basic mental structure (genetically inherited and evolved) on which all subsequent learning and knowledge are based.

              To Piaget, cognitive development was a progressive reorganization of mental processes as a result of biological maturation and environmental experience. Children construct an understanding of the world around them, then experience discrepancies between what they already know and what they discover in their environment.

There are Three Basic Components to Piaget's Cognitive Theory:

1. Schemas (building blocks of knowledge).

2. Adaptation processes that enable the transition from one stage to another (equilibrium, assimilation, and accommodation).

3. Stages of Cognitive Development:

o sensorimotor,

o preoperational,

o concrete operational,

o formal operational.

1.Schemas

       Imagine what it would be like if you did not have a mental model of your world. It would mean that you would not be able to make so much use of information from your past experience or to plan future actions. Schemas are the basic building blocks of such cognitive models, and enable us to form a mental representation of the world. Piaget (1952, p. 7) defined a schema as: “a cohesive, repeatable action sequence possessing component actions that are tightly interconnected and governed by a core meaning."

          In more simple terms Piaget called the schema the basic building block of intelligent behavior – a way of organizing knowledge. Indeed, it is useful to think of schemas as “units” of knowledge, each relating to one aspect of the world, including objects, actions, and abstract (i.e., theoretical) concepts.

        Wadsworth (2004) suggests that schemata (the plural of schema) be thought of as 'index cards' filed in the brain, each one telling an individual how to react to incoming stimuli or information.

         When Piaget talked about the development of a person's mental processes, he was referring to increases in the number and complexity of the schemata that a person had learned.

       When a child's existing schemas are capable of explaining what it can perceive around it, it is said to be in a state of equilibrium, i.e., a state of cognitive (i.e., mental) balance.

          Piaget emphasized the importance of schemas in cognitive development and described how they were developed or acquired. A schema can be defined as a set of linked mental representations of the world, which we use both to understand and to respond to situations. The assumption is that we store these mental representations and apply them when needed.

         For example, a person might have a schema about buying a meal in a restaurant. The schema is a stored form of the pattern of behavior which includes looking at a menu, ordering food, eating it and paying the bill. This is an example of a type of schema called a 'script.' Whenever they are in a restaurant, they retrieve this schema from memory and apply it to the situation.

       The schemas Piaget described tend to be simpler than this - especially those used by infants. He described how - as a child gets older - his or her schemas become more numerous and elaborate.

Piaget believed that newborn babies have a small number of innate schemas - even before they have had many opportunities to experience the world. These neonatal schemas are the cognitive structures underlying innate reflexes. These reflexes are genetically programmed into us.

         For example, babies have a sucking reflex, which is triggered by something touching the baby's lips. A baby will suck a nipple, a comforter (dummy), or a person's finger. Piaget, therefore, assumed that the baby has a 'sucking schema.'

        Similarly, the grasping reflex which is elicited when something touches the palm of a baby's hand, or the rooting reflex, in which a baby will turn its head towards something which touches its cheek, are innate schemas. Shaking a rattle would be the combination of two schemas, grasping and shaking.

2.Assimilation and Accommodation

Jean Piaget viewed intellectual growth as a process of adaptation (adjustment) to the world. This happens through:

ü  Assimilation– Which is using an existing schema to deal with a new object or situation.

ü  Accommodation– This happens when the existing schema (knowledge) does not work, and needs to be changed to deal with a new object or situation.

ü  Equilibration–This is the force which moves development along.

       Piaget believed that cognitive development did not progress at a steady rate, but rather in leaps and bounds.

         Equilibrium occurs when a child's schemas can deal with most new information through assimilation. However, an unpleasant state of disequilibrium occurs when new information cannot be fitted into existing schemas (assimilation).

          Equilibration is the force which drives the learning process as we do not like to be frustrated and will seek to restore balance by mastering the new challenge (accommodation). Once the new information is acquired the process of assimilation with the new schema will continue until the next time, we need to make an adjustment to it.

Example of Assimilation

       A 2-year-old child sees a man who is bald on top of his head and has long frizzy hair on the sides. To his father’s horror, the toddler shouts “Clown, clown” .

Example of Accommodation

         In the “clown” incident, the boy’s father explained to his son that the man was not a clown and that even though his hair was like a clown’s, he wasn’t wearing a funny costume and wasn’t doing silly things to make people laugh.

       With this new knowledge, the boy was able to change his schema of “clown” and make this idea fit better to a standard concept of “clown”.

Piaget's 4 Stages of Cognitive Development

           Piaget proposed four stages of cognitive development which reflect the increasing sophistication of children's thought:

1. Sensorimotor stage (birth to age 2)

2. Pre-operational stage (from age 2 to age 7)

3. Concrete operational stage (from age 7 to age 11)

4. Formal operational stage (age 11+ - adolescence and adulthood).

           Each child goes through the stages in the same order, and child development is determined by biological maturation and interaction with the environment. Although no stage can be missed out, there are individual differences in the rate at which children progress through stages, and some individuals may never attain the later stages.

Piaget did not claim that a particular stage was reached at a certain age - although descriptions of the stages often include an indication of the age at which the average child would reach each stage.

1.Sensorimotor stage (birth to age 2)

        The sensorimotor stage is the earliest in Piaget's theory of cognitive development. He described this period as a time of tremendous growth and change.

During this initial phase of development,

Ø children utilize skills and abilities they were born with (such as looking, sucking, grasping, and listening) to learn more about the environment. In other words, they experience the world and gain knowledge through their senses and motor movements.

      As children interact with their environments, they go through an astonishing amount of cognitive growth in a relatively short period of time—the sensorimotor stage lasts from birth to approximately age 2.

Substages

The sensorimotor stage can be divided into six separate sub-stages that are characterized by the development of a new skill:

1. Reflexes (0-1 month): During this substage, the child understands the environment purely through inborn reflexes such as sucking and looking.

2. Primary Circular Reactions (1-4 months): This substage involves coordinating sensation and new schemas. For example, a child may suck his or her thumb by accident and then later intentionally repeat the action. These actions are repeated because the infant finds them pleasurable.

3. Secondary Circular Reactions (4-8 months): During this substage, the child becomes more focused on the world and begins to intentionally repeat an action in order to trigger a response in the environment. For example, a child will purposefully pick up a toy in order to put it in his or her mouth.

4. Coordination of Reactions (8-12 months): During this substage, the child starts to show clearly intentional actions. The child may also combine schemas in order to achieve a desired effect. Children begin exploring the environment around them and will often imitate the observed behavior of others. The understanding of objects also begins during this time and children begin to recognize certain objects as having specific qualities. For example, a child might realize that a rattle will make a sound when shaken.

5. Tertiary Circular Reactions (12-18 months): Children begin a period of trial-and-error experimentation during the fifth substage. For example, a child may try out different sounds or actions as a way of getting attention from a caregiver.

6. Early Representational Thought (18-24 months): Children begin to develop symbols to represent events or objects in the world in the final sensorimotor substage. During this time, children begin to move towards understanding the world through mental operations rather than purely through actions.

Object Permanence

        According to Piaget, developing object permanence is one of the most important accomplishments at the sensorimotor stage of development. Object permanence is a child's understanding that objects continue to exist even though they cannot be seen or heard.

       Imagine a game of peek-a-boo, for example. A very young infant will believe that the other person or object has actually vanished and will act shocked or startled when the object reappears. Older infants who understand object permanence will realize that the person or object continues to exist even when unseen.

        This is a classic example of how, during this stage, an infant's knowledge of the world is limited to his or her sensory perceptions and motor activities and how behaviors are limited to simple motor responses caused by sensory stimuli.

1.Pre-operational stage (from age 2 to age 7)

         The preoperational stage is the second stage in Piaget's theory of cognitive development. This stage begins around age 2, as children start to talk, and lasts until approximately age 7.

During this stage, children begin to engage in symbolic play and learn to manipulate symbols. However, Piaget noted that they do not yet understand concrete logic.

Major Characteristics

The preoperational stage occurs roughly between the ages 2 and 7.

Ø Language development is one of the hallmarks of this period.

Ø children in this stage do not yet understand concrete logic

Ø cannot mentally manipulate information,

Ø are unable to take the point of view of other people, which he termed egocentrism.

Ø children also become increasingly adept at using symbols, as evidenced by the increase in playing and pretending. For example, a child is able to use an object to represent something else, such as pretending a broom is a horse.

Ø Role-playing also becomes important— Children often play the roles of "mommy," "daddy," "doctor," and many other characters.

2.Concrete operational stage (from age 7 to age 11)

     The concrete operational stage is the third stage in Piaget's theory of cognitive development. This period spans the time of middle childhood—it begins around age 7 and continues until approximately age 11—and is characterized by the development of logical thought.

Ø While their thinking still tends to be very concrete, children become much more logical and sophisticated in their thinking during this stage of development.

      While this is an important stage in and of itself, it also serves as an important transition between earlier stages of development and the coming stage where kids will learn how to think more abstractly and hypothetically.

Ø While kids at this age become more logical about concrete and specific things, they still struggle with abstract ideas.

Ø Another key development at this stage is the understanding that when something changes in shape or appearance it is still the same, a concept known as conservation. Kids at this stage understand that if you break a candy bar up into smaller pieces it is still the same amount at when the candy was whole. This is a contrast to younger children who often believe that pouring the same amount of liquid into two cups means that there is more.

        For example, imagine that you have two candy bars of the exact same size. You break one candy bar up into two equally sized pieces and the other candy bar up into four smaller but equally sized sections. A child who is in the concrete operational stage will understand that both candy bars are still the same amount, whereas a younger child will believe that the candy bar that has more pieces is larger than the one with only two pieces.

Ø The concrete operational stage is also marked by decreases in egocentrism. While children in the preceding stage of development (the preoperational stage) struggle to take the perspective of others, kids in the concrete stage are able to think about things the way that others see them. In Piaget's Three-Mountain Task, for example, children in the concrete operational stage can describe how a mountain scene would look to an observer seated opposite them. In other words, kids are not only able to start thinking about how other people view and experience the world, they even start to use this type of information when making decisions or solving problems.

Ø Piaget determined that children in the concrete operational stage were fairly good at the use of inductive logic (inductive reasoning). Inductive logic involves going from a specific experience to a general principle.

3.Formal operational stage (age 11+ - adolescence and adulthood).

       The formal operational stage is the fourth and final stage of Jean Piaget'stheory of cognitive development. It begins at approximately age 12 and lasts into adulthood.

During this stage in development,

Ø Thinking becomes much more sophisticated and advanced.

Ø Kids can think about abstract and theoretical concepts and use logic to come up with creative solutions to problems.

Ø Skills such as logical thought, deductive reasoning, and systematic planning also emerge during this stage.

Ø The child begins to look at problems in many ways and explore many solutions but in a very systematic and logical way.

Ø Child’s thinking at this stage doesn’t remain only concrete, but becomes hypothetical, with consideration given to most unusual ideas

Ø Creative aspects in the child are very much visible.

      Piaget believed that what he referred to as "hypothetico-deductive reasoning" was essential at this stage of intellectual development. At this point, teens become capable of thinking about abstract and hypothetical ideas. They often ponder "what-if" type situations and questions and can think about multiple solutions or possible outcomes.

      While kids in the previous stage (concrete operations) are very particular in their thoughts, kids in the formal operational stage become increasingly abstract in their thinking. They also develop what is known as metacognition, or the ability to think about their thoughts as well as the ideas of others.

Educational Implications of piaget’s theory

       Child-centered classrooms and "open education" are direct applications of Piaget's views.

Piaget (1952) did not explicitly relate his theory to education, although later researchers have explained how features of Piaget's theory can be applied to teaching and learning.

Piaget has been extremely influential in developing educational policy and teaching practice. For example, a review of primary education by the UK government in 1966 was based strongly on Piaget’s theory. The result of this review led to the publication of the Plowden report (1967).

         Discovery learning – the idea that children learn best through doing and actively exploring - was seen as central to the transformation of the primary school curriculum.

'The report's recurring themes are individual learning, flexibility in the curriculum, the centrality of play in children's learning, the use of the environment, learning by discovery and the importance of the evaluation of children's progress - teachers should 'not assume that only what is measurable is valuable.'

Because Piaget's theory is based upon biological maturation and stages, the notion of 'readiness' is important. Readiness concerns when certain information or concepts should be taught. According to Piaget's theory children should not be taught certain concepts until they have reached the appropriate stage of cognitive development.

         According to Piaget (1958), assimilation and accommodation require an active learner, not a passive one, because problem-solving skills cannot be taught, they must be discovered.

Within the classroom learning should be student-centered and accomplished through active discovery learning. The role of the teacher is to facilitate learning, rather than direct tuition. Therefore, teachers should encourage the following within the classroom:

Ø Focus on the process of learning, rather than the end product of it.

Ø Using active methods that require rediscovering or reconstructing "truths."

Ø Using collaborative, as well as individual activities (so children can learn from each other).

Ø Devising situations that present useful problems, and create disequilibrium in the child.

Ø Evaluate the level of the child's development so suitable tasks can be set.

Ø A deemphasis on practices aimed at making children adult like in their thinking.

Ø Acceptance of individual differences in developmental progress.