Notes on Developmental Psychology: Piaget's Cognitive Development Theory

I. Research direction

Piaget received his doctor's degree in natural science from the University of Nachate in 19 18. Interested in biology, philosophy and logic. After studying biology and epistemology, it is found that epistemology and biology-psychology are related.

1. Philosophical thoughts are mainly influenced by Kantianism.

The concept of "schema" originated from Kant's "innate schema". But Piaget is not a congenital theorist, but a constructivist view.

2. Structuralism has a great influence on Piaget.

Structure: integrity, transformation and self-discipline.

3. The concepts of "assimilation" and "adaptation" come from biology.

4. Influenced by psychoanalysis, such as "egocentric tendency".

5. Symbolic logic (mathematical logic) is used to describe children's intellectual activities.

1920 I work in Bina laboratory and devote myself to standardizing children's reasoning. I am more interested in the cognitive (thinking) process behind children's standard answers: how children's understanding develops step by step, and what changes have taken place in their hearts when thinking about problems.

Piaget transplanted the traditional problem of epistemology into children's psychology and began to solve it through experiments from the scientific goal of establishing genetic epistemology about the occurrence and development of scientific knowledge.

1955, he established the genetic epistemology International Center, which brought together psychologists, biologists, logicians, philosophers and cybernetics scholars from all over the world to study genetic epistemology.

Second, the general view of cognitive development

The essence of wisdom is adaptation: the formation of adaptation is the balance of assimilation and adaptation in biology and the balance of interaction between subject and object in psychology. Assimilation and adaptation are two inseparable aspects in the same basic adaptation process.

Realize intelligent operation in a holistic manner.

Children's wisdom does not simply come from the object, nor from the subject, but from the role of the subject on the object, which is the result of the interaction between the subject and the object.

The stage of wisdom development can be explained as the whole stage of psychological development, because the development of psychological function depends on wisdom.

Third, the stage of wisdom development.

Psychological development can be divided into different levels of continuous stages, and there are qualitative differences between stages. The behavior pattern of the previous stage is always integrated into the next stage, and the stages of development are not stepped, but overlap to a certain extent. The age of each stage is slightly different due to the influence of wisdom and social environment, but the order remains unchanged.

Perceived motor stage (0 ~ 2 years old),

Preoperative stage (2 ~ 7 years old),

Specific operation stage (7 ~ 1 1, 12 years old),

Formal operation stage (1 1, 12 ~).

1, nastic movement stage

Children rely on perceptual actions to adapt to the outside world, construct action formats, begin to understand Objectpermanent, and finally, intelligent structures appear. I began to distinguish myself from objects, gradually understood the relationship between action and effect, and gained a preliminary concept of time and space.

The first stage (birth ~ 1 month)

After the child is born, he adapts to the external environment with innate unconditional reflex, and strengthens the innate reflex structure through reflex exercises (such as making the action of sucking nipples more certain), and at the same time expands the original reflex (such as expanding from instinctive sucking to sucking thumbs and toys, sucking when things don't touch his mouth, etc.). ). This stage is called the reflective practice period.

The second stage (1~ April and May)

On the basis of innate reflex, children link individual actions through integration, forming some new habits, such as finding sound sources and following moving objects with their eyes. This stage is called habitual action period.

The third stage (4, 5 ~ 9 months)

Children form the coordination of vision and grasping action, and can touch and fiddle with the surrounding objects with their hands. Activities are no longer limited to the subject itself, but begin to involve the influence on things, which in turn further causes the subject to act on things. That is, there is a circular relationship between subject and object through the influence of action and action result, and finally the action (means) and action result (purpose) gradually differentiate, and the action to achieve a certain goal appears, and the intelligent action begins to sprout. The third stage is called the formative period of purposeful action.

The fourth stage (9 ~ 1 1, 12 months)

The purpose and means have been divided, and intelligent actions have emerged. Some action formats are used as ends, while others are used as means. Children can use different action formats to deal with new things, such as grasping, pushing, knocking and hitting. But at this stage, children will only use the existing action format, and will not create or find new actions to adapt to the world. This stage is called the differentiation and coordination period of means and ends.

Persistence of object

When an object disappears from sight, people still know its existence.

Stage 5 (1 ~ 1.5 years old)

Through trial and error after adding new action components, the new problem is solved purposefully through adjustment for the first time. But at this time, the child has not yet formed the ability to form new methods in a certain direction, and the discovery of new methods is purely accidental. "Trial and error period".

Stage 6 (1.5 ~ 2 years old)

The remarkable feature is that children not only use body and external movements to find new methods, but also begin to use "internal combination" to solve new problems in their minds. Using images to imitate other people's behavior to solve immediate problems marks the end of the period of perceptual action and the beginning of a new stage.

2. Pre-operation stage

Main features: the appearance of symbols, representations and intuitive thinking.

Two small stages:

(1) Pre-conceptual or symbolic thinking stage (2 ~ 4 years old)

(2) intuitive thinking stage (4 ~ 7 years old)

Symbolic games (pretend games) appear.

Postpone imitation and use language symbols flexibly

Symbol: there are obvious similarities with symbols,

Symbol: there is no objective similarity with the expressed object, but there is a close subjective connection, such as language.

Main intellectual characteristics

Self - centered doctrine

irretrievable

intuition

animism

Phenomenological causality (phenomenological causality)

Self-centered remarks

The experimenter took pictures from four angles: A, B, C and D, and the child stood in one of the above four positions. Show him the photos taken and ask him to pick out which photo the person in the opposite position saw. It means that children look at the whole world from their own perspective, not knowing that they can change their perspective, or realizing that others have different views. Example: Three Mountains Experiment refers to the lack of understanding of the relativity and coordination of understanding the world, and unconsciously imposing one's own qualities and opinions on things and other people's positions.

Irreversibility: thinking can only go in one direction, and the object cannot be restored in the mind.

Intuition: Image based on perception. Often only pay attention to some remarkable characteristics of things, but can't see that several dimensions of things are changing at the same time. Often only pay attention to the results and state, but not to the process of change.

Animism: Children think that moving but inanimate objects are alive, motivated and willing.

Reason: Self-projection can't distinguish psychological and physiological phenomena well.

Phenomenological causality refers to the reason why children will think that the first thing is the second thing if two things happen continuously.

Egocentric speech: Influenced by egocentric thinking, children often speak from their own perspective.

Divided into three stages (or three forms of expression):

Repeat: Feel the pleasure of speaking.

Narrator: Help yourself to think, accompany or strengthen children's thinking and actions.

Collective monologue: one child's speech seems to stimulate another child's speech, but in fact they all speak independently and have nothing to do with each other.

3, the specific operation stage

Acquired conservation

Formation of cluster structure

Operation: A series of conceptual operations.

protect

reversibility

systematicness

Conservation: refers to the change of the shape (mainly external characteristics) of an object, but the individual realizes that the quantity (or internal nature) of the object has not changed.

Ways: identity, compensation and reversibility

Basic principle: the spatial distance changes, and the number remains unchanged.

Gifts for children (1) Gifts for children (2)

alcoholic anonymous

Beihei

Ask the children: Are there as many beads in two rows? Not that much?

"There are many B lines (not conserved)"

"As much (conservation)"

Quantity conservation (6 ~ 7 years old)

Basic principle: No matter how the shape of plasticine changes, its size is the same.

Gifts for children (1) Gifts for children (2)

A is as big as B.

Ask the child: Are the two balls the same size?

"B is bigger" (not conserved)

"Same size" (conservation)

Conservation of matter (7 ~ 8 years old)

Length conservation (7 ~ 8 years old)

Basic principle: No matter how the shape or spatial arrangement of a line segment or rod changes, its length remains the same.

Gifts for children (1) Gifts for children (2)

alcoholic anonymous

Beihei

Ask the child: Are the two sticks the same length?

"B is longer" or "A is longer" (not conserved)

"Equal length" (conservation)

Basic principle: No matter how the shape of plasticine changes, its size is the same.

Gifts for children (1) Gifts for children (2)

Ask your child: Are the surface areas of the two pictures the same or different?

"B is bigger" (not conserved)

"Same size" (conservation)

Regional protection (8 ~ 9 years old)

Weight conservation (9 ~ 10 years old)

Basic principle: No matter how the shape changes, the weight of the object remains the same.

Gifts for children (1) Gifts for children (2)

A two pieces are stacked together, and B two pieces are placed on both sides.

Ask the child: Are these two piles of things the same weight?

"A is heavier" (not conserved)

"Equal weight" (conservation)

Basic principle: No matter how the shape of something put into the water changes, the volume of water in the cup remains the same.

Gifts for children (1) Gifts for children (2)

Two balls are placed in a cup, and the amount of water in the cup changes the shape of plasticine ball B.

The amount is the same, and children are ready to put it into the water when they see the horizontal plane.

Rise to the same height.

Ask children: If you put B into a cup, will the water level be higher than that of A cup? Same height? Less than a cup?

"Higher" or "Lower" (not conserved)

"Same height" (conservation)

Volume conservation (12 ~ 13 years old)

Cluster structure

Cluster structure is actually a classification system. Piaget believes that any operation is not isolated, it is only a part of cluster operation.

1, sequence: Arranges objects according to some quantifiable dimension.

2. Relational thinking: Understand the relationship of things rather than the absolute characteristics.

3. Category includes: the whole and part are considered at the same time (recognize the hierarchical relationship between categories).

Specific operation stage: summary

The understanding of most specific objects and relationships is still limited to the here and now. At this stage, children have formed the conservation of quantity and number, and can sort and classify physical objects, but they can't reason about abstract, hypothetical propositions or fictional events.

4. Formal operation stage

Children's thinking can get rid of the shackles of specific things, distinguish between content and form, and can reason according to various assumptions. They can imagine all kinds of possibilities that have not yet become a reality, believe in the conclusions drawn from deduction, and point their knowledge to the future.

Specific operation and formal operation

Specific operation: psychologically manipulate objects and events (thinking within propositions: being able to produce, understand and verify specific and single propositions)

Formal operation: manipulating propositions and concepts in hypothetical situations (thinking between propositions: being able to infer the logical relationship between two or more propositions)

Fourth, summary of development stages.

The stage of perceptual action is the bud of wisdom.

Representation and intuitive thinking appear in the early stage of operation.

Preliminary logical thinking appears in the specific operation stage.

Abstract logical thinking appears in the stage of formal operation.

Fifth, the challenges faced by Piaget's theory.

1. Can cognitive development be accelerated?

Can preschool children show concrete computing ability?

2. Is cognitive development general or specific?

Domain universality

Piaget believes that children use the same cognitive structure in different tasks, so the development stage covers a wide range of cognitive fields.

Horizontal lag

Committed to exploring and explaining the general mechanism of children's cognitive development.

Domain specificity

Children independently acquire knowledge in specific knowledge fields, such as graphics, space or temperature. The acquisition (or cognitive development) of one field does not always lead to the growth (or cognitive development) of another field.

Many cognitive abilities can only be used to process specific types of information, while many human cognitive abilities are domain-specific.

VI. Brief comments

The basic stages and mechanisms of children's intellectual development are described in detail for the first time.

Emphasize the role of individual initiative and enthusiasm.

It has greatly promoted the study of children's cognitive development.

Preference for cognitive development stages is not only a concrete expression and explanation of cognitive development process.

Too much emphasis on the role of biological factors.