® Registered trade-mark of the Canadian Mothercraft Society

Child Development 1

Cognitive development

® Registered trade-mark of the Canadian Mothercraft Society

Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

• Schemes – Actions or mental representations that organize knowledge

• Assimilation – Incorporating new information into existing knowledge

• Accommodation – Adjusting schemes to fit new information and experiences

( Santrock, p. 173, 2012)

® Registered trade-mark of the Canadian Mothercraft Society

Equilibration

• Assimilation and accommodation produce cognitive change

• Equilibration is a term used by Piaget to define the mechanism by which children shift from one stage of thought to the next

• Cognition is qualitatively different from one stage to the other

( Santrock, P. 173, 2012)

® Registered trade-mark of the Canadian Mothercraft Society

Sensorimotor Development

• First Piagetian stage

• Birth to 2 years

• Construct knowledge of world through

sensory experiences that are coordinated

with physical actions

® Registered trade-mark of the Canadian Mothercraft Society

How it started…

• Clinical study on his 3 children

• Strengths: observations and longitudinal

study on the same child throughout

continuum

® Registered trade-mark of the Canadian Mothercraft Society

Six Substages of Sensorimotor

Internalization

Of Schemes

Tertiary

Circular

ReactionsCoordination

Of Secondary

Circular Reactions

Secondary

Circular

Reactions

Primary

Circular

Reactions

Simple

Reflexes

SENSORIMOTOR

AnotB error – Select familiar

hiding spot rather than

new hiding spot

® Registered trade-mark of the Canadian Mothercraft Society

The six Substages

• Substage 1: Exercising reflexes ( birth to 1

month)

• Please review basic reflexes

• Assimilation of new information change

the behaviour in response to these new

experiences as they begin to

accommodate

® Registered trade-mark of the Canadian Mothercraft Society

Substage 2

• Developing schemes ( 1- 4 months)

• Reflexes to sensorymotor schemes =

cognitive structures of infancy

• Role of action in intelligence- very

important!

® Registered trade-mark of the Canadian Mothercraft Society

• Schemes undergo two sorts of

development during the second substage:

1.Individual schemes become progressively

refined

2.Coordination of initially independent

schemes ( coordination of hearing and

vision- involvement of sensory modes:

sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell)

® Registered trade-mark of the Canadian Mothercraft Society

Substage 3

• Discovering procedures ( 4 to 8 months)

The infant discovers procedures for

reproducing interesting events.

The infant is beginning to develop a kind of

knowledge- What he can do to produce

desirable outcomes, implied by the term

accidentally.

® Registered trade-mark of the Canadian Mothercraft Society

Substage 3

• Experience after the fact grasp of

causality, reproduction of “accidental”

outcome

• The infant cannot figure out in advance

how to produce interesting effects.

® Registered trade-mark of the Canadian Mothercraft Society

Substage 4

Intentional behaviour (8 to 12 months)

• The infant demonstrates the first genuinely

intentional behaviour

• Intentional behaviour involves the ability to

separate means and end ( the infant must

be able to use one scheme as a means to

lead to some other scheme, which then

becomes the goal) – Adler and Miller (

2009)

® Registered trade-mark of the Canadian Mothercraft Society

Substage 5

Novelty and exploration (12 to 18 months)

“the discovery of new means through active

exploration”

• Trial and error is a very active process

• The high chair experiment: the child drops

the spoon again and again- active

experimentation helps them to learn about

the world

® Registered trade-mark of the Canadian Mothercraft Society

Object permanence

• The child still has limitations but if he/she

can see the movement of the object will

handle it!

® Registered trade-mark of the Canadian Mothercraft Society

Substage 6 ( 18- 24 Months)

• Before this stage, adaptation played an

important role

• Gaining capabilities of mental

representation or symbolic functioning

emerges

• Mental problem solving begins to replace

overt trial and error

® Registered trade-mark of the Canadian Mothercraft Society

Object permanence

• If the movements are not visible- invisible

displacement ( as labelled by Piaget)

• OP is an important kind of physical

knowledge

• Infants also have some appreciation of the

laws of inertia and gravity ( Baillargeon’s

study, 1994)

® Registered trade-mark of the Canadian Mothercraft Society

Imitation• Begins with rudimentary and limited forms

• Between 6-8 months imitation is limited

• Imitation will relate to behaviours that are

already produced spontaneously - Piaget

• Modern research reveals that infants are

able to imitate mouth opening and tongue

protrusion ( Meltzoff and Moore, 2002)

® Registered trade-mark of the Canadian Mothercraft Society

Concept formation achieved through:

• Direct and/or indirect instruction play

• Experiential learning play

• Interactive instruction play

• Instructional skills play

• Instructional methods play based

Highly motivational (active participation in

own learning, reasoning, discovering)

® Registered trade-mark of the Canadian Mothercraft Society

Individual differences in infant intelligence-

group work

•Predicting intelligence

•Nutrition

•Poverty

® Registered trade-mark of the Canadian Mothercraft Society

Compiled and presented by:

Minodora Grigorescu, MEd, RECE

Faculty, Internship Coordinator

Mothercraft College

646 St. Clair Ave. W

416 483 0644 x 206

minodora@mothercraft.org