The Cognitive basis

of Language
1.Information
Processing Theory
2.Piaget’s theory of
Cognitive
Development(4
STAGES)
3.Theories of
Information
Processing Theory
Cognition is the
software
Encoding
Storage
Retrieval
1. Sensory Memory
The five senses
Sensory register
Capacity: large
Duration: brief
Contents
Roles of attention and
perception
 Memory
Short term
memory (STM) and
working memory
(WM)
Capacity: 5 to 9
separate items
3. Long Term Memory
Storage takes more time &
effort
Capacity: unlimited
Duration: unlimited
Contains visual or verbal or
a combination of codes
Retrieval may be
troublesome
 Processing
During Childhood
Gradual changes in
children’s mental capabilities
with maturation and
experience:
Information-processing skills
improve
Attention spans increase
Memory storage capacity
improves
Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was one of the
20th century's most influential
researchers in the area of developmental
psychology.
 Piaget wanted to know how children
learned through their development in the
study of knowledge.
He administered Binet's IQ test in Paris
and observed that children's answers
were qualitatively different.
Piaget's theory is based on the idea that
the developing child builds cognitive
structures.
 What is Cognition?

The term cognition is
derived from the latin
word "cognoscere" which
means "to know" or "to
recognise" or "to
conceptualise".
 Cognition is "the mental
action or process of
How Cognitive Development
occurs?

Cognitive Development is gradual
and orderly changes by which
mental process becomes more
complex and sophisticated.
 The essential development of
cognition is the establishment of
new schemes.
 Assimilation and Accommodation
are both the processes of the ways
of Cognitive Development.
Piaget’s theory
of Cognitive
Development
Piaget’s Theory of
Cognitive Development
Schemas
Adaptation
Assimilation
Accommodation
Equilibration
Equilibrium and
disequilibrium
 1. Schemas
• Organized patterns or units of action or thought that we
construct to make sense of our interactions with the
world.
• Schemas can be files in which we store information.
• An individual interacts with and explores the
environment around him and it is this physical
interaction that becomes internalized to create thought.

• Building blocks of knowledge For example, my

schema for Christmas includes: Christmas trees,
presents, giving, money, green, red, gold, winter, Santa
Claus etc.
• Someone else may have an entirely different schema,
such as Jesus, birth, Church, holiday, Christianity etc
 Assimilation :
It is using an existing schema to
deal with a new object or
situation.
Here, the learner fits the new
idea into what he already knows.
In Assimilation, the schema is not
changed, it is only modified.
Example : A 2 year old child sees
a man who is bald on top of his
head and has long frizzy hair on
 Accommodation
This happens when the existing schema
(knowledge) does not work and needs to
be changed to deal with a new object or
situation.
In Accommodation, the schema is
altered; a new schema may be
developed. Example : 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
 Equilibration
 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.
As a child progresses through the stages
of cognitive development, it is important
to maintain a balance between applying
previous knowledge ( assimilation) and
changing behavior to account for new
 Accommoda
Assimilation When existing
When the tion
2. Adaptation
individual’s
perception of the
schemas cannot
deal with new
A term
world used
fits into by Piaget to describe changes
experiences, an
there
Taking in new
is dis-equilibrium.
individual
existing
information schemas, makes
and trying
to fit this information
in response
Changing/modifying
existing schemas to fit to the
then there is the new information
environment.
into existing schemas
equilibrium or
balance
Responding to the
Responding to the
environment in a new
environment in terms
manner, as previously
of previously learned
learned patterns of
patterns of behaviour
behaviour or schemas
or schemas
are not sufficient
Piaget Theory of Child
Development
A stage theory
The stages of cognitive development are:
1. Sensory-motor stage (birth to age 2)
2. Pre-operational stage (ages 2 - 7)
3. Concrete operational stage (ages 7 –
11)
4. Formal operational stage (ages 12_
Adulthood )
All individuals pass through these stages of
development regardless of race or culture.
All children go through the stages in the same
order, but they do not necessarily pass through
them at the same age.
At no point could an individual miss or skip a
stage
Passing through the earlier stages of
development is a prerequisite for the later
stages.
Many individuals never reach the highest
cognitive level
Piaget’s stages of child development
 Sensorimotor Stage

Age range: Birth–2

years(Infancy)
Characteristics:
Infants construct an
understanding of the world by
Sensory experience,Learning
through five
senses(seeing,hearing) with
 Sensorimotor stage
Emergence Object General
of schema permanence Symbolic
The child uses The ability to function
his senses realize the The child
and his objects/peopl begins to use
increasing e exist even language to
motor skills to though they imitate and
explore the are out of represent the
environment sight. environment
Preoperational
Stage
Age range: 2—7 years old
Difficulty with
Characteristics
centering and
Language develops
conservation
Egocentrism
Preoperational Stage (2-7 yrs)
-Toddler and Early Childhood
This stage begins when the child starts to use
symbols and language. This is a period of
developing language and concepts. So, the child
is capable of more complex mental
representations (i.e, words and images). He is
still unable to use 'operations', i.e,logical mental
rules, such as rules of arithmetic. This stage is
further divided into 2 sub-stages :
 Preconceptual stage (2-4 yrs) : Increased use of
verbal representation but speech is egocentric.
The child uses symbols to stand for actions; a toy
doll stands for a real baby or the child role plays
mummy or daddy.
 Intuitive stage (4-7 yrs) : Speech becomes more
Key features of this stage
Egocentrism
the tendency of a child to only see
his point of view and assume that
everyone else also has his same point of
view
Children are unable to see things from
another person’s point of view, they
think that the world revolves around
them.
 Centration – the tendency of the child
to only focus on one thing or event and
exclude other aspects
Children are unable to focus on more
than one dimension of a problem
Lack of Conservation – the inability to
realize that some things remain
unchanged despite looking
different(knowledge that quantity is
unrelated to the arrangement and
physical appearance of objects)
Pour one cup into a tall, skinny cup and
the other into a short, fat cup
a child would
conclude
that the tall skinny class had more water
because the level of water was higher.
He will not recognize that the change in the
height of the glass did not change the amount
of liquid in the glass. The child has centered
on the height of the glass.
Animism – the tendency of the child to
attribute human like traits to inanimate
objects e.g children dressing and feeding
their dolls as if they are alive.
Realism – Treating inanimate objects as
living ones e.g children dressing and
feeding their dolls as if they are alive,
believing that psychological events, such
as dreams, are real, Santa will give
gift ,tooth fairy etc.
Irreversibility – Pre-operational children
still have the inability to reverse their
thinking.

But it can be
reformed into
a ball of clay Can be made into a clay
A ball of clay ball
 Concrete Operations
Age range: 7—11 years old
Childhood and Early Adolescence
Characteristics
Perform concrete operations or
“hands on” thinking
Reversibility
Logical thinking emerges
Conservation
Develop seriation, transitivity,
 Important process of this stage
Seriation: the ability to
sort objects in an order
according to size, shape
or any other
characteristic. Eg.: if
given different-sized
objects, they may make
place them accordingly.

Transitivity: the ability

to recognize logical
relationships among
elements in a serial order.
Eg.: if A is taller than B
and B is taller than C,
then A must be taller than
Seriation

Transitivity
Reversibility: the ability of the child
to follow that certain operations can be
done in reverse.

8 + 5 = 13
THEREFORE
5 + 8 = 13
 Classification
The ability to group objects
together on the basis of
common features.
The child also begins to get
the idea that one set can
include another. Eg.: there is a
class of objects called dogs.
There is also a class called
animals.
Decentring

The ability to take
multiple aspects of a
situation into account.
Eg.: the child will no
longer perceive an
exceptionally- wide but
short cup to contain
 Conservation
Understanding that


the quantity, length or

number of items is
unrelated to the
arrangement or
appearance of the
 Elimination of
Egocentrism
The ability to view things from
another's perspective.
 The child performs operations:
combining, separating,
multiplying, repeating, dividing
etc
Formal Operations stage
-Adolscence

and Adulthood
Age range: 11—15 years old
Characteristics
“Scientific” reasoning
Hypothetico-deductive
reasoning
Adolescent egocentrism
Imaginary audience
Personal fable
Not all individuals reach
this stage
He is able to use logic and abstract
thinking
The thought becomes increasingly
flexible and abstract, i.e, can carry out
systematic experiments.
 The ability to systematically solve a
problem in a logical and methodological
way.
 Understands that nothing is absolute;
everything is relative. • Develops skills
such as logical thought, deductive
reasoning as well as inductive reasoning
and sytematic planning etc.
 Understands that the rules of any game
or social system are developed by a
 1. Hypothetico-deductive reasoning
Hypothetical Reasoning –
ability to come up with
different hypothesis about
a problem and weight
data to make judgment.
Deductive reasoning
ability to think logically by applying a
general rule to a particular
situation.
2. Abstract thought
“Thought about things that are not real
or tangible”
 3. Combinational logic
Thinking about multiple aspects and
combining
them logically to solve problems
4. Reflective Thinking
Thinking about your own thinking
WHAT IF A CHILD DOES NOT
DEVELOP AS PIAGET EXPLAINED?

IN MOST CASES, CHILDREN

WITH COGNITIVE
DISABILITIES, IMPAIRED
CHILDREN(BLIND, DEAF, DUMB)
DO NOT SUCCESSFULLY
COMPLETE ALL OF PIAGET’S
STAGES OF COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT
Piaget
Limitations
•Stage theory
inconsistencies
•Underestimation
of preschool
children’s abilities
•Overestimation
of adolescents’
abilities
•No discussion of
cultural impacts
Modifying Piaget’s
Theory
Changes from one stage to the next
are less reliable and global than Piaget
suggested.
Children are not always egocentric.
Children’s knowledge and mental
strategies develop at different ages in
different areas.
Cognitive development as changing
frequencies in children’s use of
different ways of thinking, not sudden,
permanent shifts from one way of
 A different point of view…..
Piaget's theory differed from empiricist
theories of development, which suggest
that children learn through experience,
and nativist theories that maintain we
are born with innate knowledge that
gradually comes to maturation.
Modern developmentalists have
frequently referred to experimental
research that contradicts certain aspects
of Piaget's theories. For example,
cognitive theorists like Robert Siegler
have explained the phenomenon of
Other researchers have shown that
younger and older children develop by
progressing through a continuum of
capacities rather than a series of
discrete stages. In addition, these
researchers believe that children
understand far more than Piaget
theorized. With training, for instance,
younger children may perform many
of the same tasks as older children.
Researchers have also found that
children are not as egocentric,
suggestible, magical, or concrete as
Conclusion
Irrespective of the
criticisms, Piaget’s theory of
Cognitive Development is a
comprehensive theory
about the nature and
development of human
intelligence.
One’s childhood plays a
 “The principal goal of
education in the schools
should be creating men and
women who are capable of
doing new things, not
simply repeating what
other generationd have
done.”