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The development of motor skills can be a fun experience for children and their
parents.
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Cognitive Development
You don’t have to be a psychologist to notice physical growth or the development
of motor skills. The real challenge is to unravel the mystery of how children of
different ages think—not just what they know but how they come to know it and the
mistakes they make along the way (Siegler, 1998). To understand this aspect of
development, we turn to Jean Piaget (1896–1980), the most influential figure in the
study of cognitive development.
Piaget’s Theory
Born in Switzerland, Jean Piaget was a precocious boy interested in seashells,
birds, and mechanics. He published his first article at the age of 10 and was offered a
curator-ship at a natural history museum in Geneva while in high school. At 21,
Piaget earned a doctorate in biology. Then he studied psychology in Paris and took a
job administering intelligence tests to schoolchildren. As luck would have it, this
experience proved to be a turning point—for Piaget and for psychology.
While testing, Piaget became intrigued by the mistakes children made. Far from
being random or idiosyncratic, he realized, these errors signaled that young children
use a logic that is foreign to adults. To understand this logic, Piaget had children
explain their answers, a simple but informative method. From these interviews, Piaget
published a series of articles, and in 1921 he was named director of a child
development institute in Geneva. The seed was planted. In the years that followed,
Piaget studied thousands of children, including his own. By the time he died in 1980,
he had written more than 40 books on how children think about people, nature, time,
morality, and other aspects of the world (Ginsburg & Opper, 1988; Piaget & Inhelder,
1969). Today, anyone interested in cognitive development—parents, educators, or
philosophers—begins with Piaget.
Piaget’s theory rests on the assumption that children are curious, active, and
constructive thinkers who want to understand the world around them. According to
Piaget, infants and children form schemas, or mental representations of the world, in
order to make sense of it. Through a process of assimilation, he said, children try to
fit new information into their existing schemas. Through the process of
accommodation, they modify existing schemas to fit new information. Viewed in this
way, development is not a process by which children merely “copy and paste” what
they are told. Rather, the creation of knowledge occurs “through a complex interplay
between preexisting knowledge and new information gathered through interaction
with the external world” (Siegler & Ellis, 1996, p. 212).
schemas. In Piaget’s theory, mental representations of the world that guide the
processes of assimilation and accommodation.
assimilation. In Piaget’s theory, the process of incorporating and, if necessary,
changing new information to fit existing cognitive structures.
accommodation. In Piaget’s theory, the process of modifying existing cognitive
structures in response to new information.
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Jean Piaget
Staff/AFP/Getty Images
In a study that illustrates how children form and revise their conceptions in light of
new information, Stella Vosniadou and William Brewer (1992) asked children of
varying ages about the shape of the earth. Seeing that the ground they walk on is flat,
preschoolers believe the earth as a whole is flat—either rectangular or disk-shaped.
What happens when they’re told that the earth is spherical? Rather than shed their
incorrect schemas for an accurate representation, they incorporate the sphere into
their beliefs that the earth is flat by constructing the synthetic models shown in Figure
9.9. Many first-graders adopt the “dual earth” notion that the earth is round but that
humans live on a flat surface. By the third grade, many children see the world as a
“flattened sphere” or as a “hollow sphere”—like a fishbowl with people living on the
bottom. By fifth grade, most have adopted the correct “sphere” model. Gradually,
then, through a dynamic interplay of assimilation and accommodation, children form
new and accurate conceptions of, quite literally, the world.
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Description
Figure 9.9 Changing Schemas of the Earth
Another assumption made by Piaget is that as children get older, they advance
through a series of chronological cognitive stages, each distinguished by a specific
kind of thinking. For Piaget, cognitive development is like climbing a staircase, one
step at a time. This view has two implications. First, even though some children
advance more quickly than others, the sequence is universally the same: The first
stage must precede the second, which must precede the third, and so on. In this way,
each stage holds both the fruits of the past and the seeds of the future. Second, even
though the cognitive stages build on one another, the increments are seen as
qualitative and abrupt, not quantitative and gradual—in other words, like climbing
stairs, not a ramp. As shown in Figure 9.10, Piaget described four stages in cognitive
development: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal
operational.
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Description
Figure 9.10 Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development
Sensorimotor Stage
Beginning at birth and lasting about two years, infants come to know the world by
touching, grasping, smelling, sucking, chewing, poking, prodding, banging, shaking,
and manipulating objects. Piaget called this the sensorimotor stage of development.
As far as infants are concerned, an object exists only for the moment and only when
it is in direct sensory contact. In fact, research shows that the way infants explore
objects changes predictably with age. Beginning at 1 month old, they learn about the
shape, texture, and substance of objects with the mouth (Gibson & Walker, 1984). At
5 months, they also acquire information with their hands (Streri & Pecheux, 1986) or
by coordinating movement of the hands, eyes, and mouth together (Rochat, 1989).
This sensorimotor mode can be seen in the way young babies try to stuff crayons,
toys, and limbs into the mouth—and in the way they pull, push, shake, squeeze, and
bang everything they can get their fingers on.
sensorimotor stage. Piaget’s first stage of cognitive development, from birth to 2
years old, when infants come to know the world through their own actions.
According to Piaget, the crowning cognitive achievement of the sensorimotor
stage is the development of object permanence, an awareness that objects continue
to exist even after they disappear from view. This may not seem to be much of an
accomplishment, but Piaget (1936) noticed that whenever he covered a toy with his
beret or a handkerchief, babies younger than 8 months old did not protest, made no
effort to retrieve it, and were unaware of its absence—even when the toy made noise.
Quite literally, out of sight means out of mind. Given this lack of object permanence, it
is no wonder that until babies approach their first birthday, they never seem to tire of
playing peek-a-boo, a game in which each round is met with a fresh look of surprise.
object permanence. Developing at 6 to 8 months of age, an awareness that
objects continue to exist after they disappear from view.
Object permanence may be linked to important aspects of social development. It
is probably not a coincidence that just as babies become capable of recalling objects
that are out of view, they also begin to experience separation anxiety, a fear
reaction to the absence of their primary caregiver. The baby who is not aware of its
mother when she isn’t perceptible will not seem distressed by her absence. However,
the baby who has achieved object permanence is capable of missing its mother and
cries frantically the moment she slips out of sight. As with other aspects of
sensorimotor development, this pattern—of object permanence accompanied by
several months of separation anxiety—can be seen in cultures all over the world
(Moore & Meltzoff, 1999; Whiting & Edwards, 1988).
separation anxiety. Among infants with object permanence, a fear reaction to the
absence of their primary caregiver.
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By uncovering the hidden toy, this baby is demonstrating object permanence.
Doug Goodman / Science Source
Preoperational Stage
Sometime during the second year, developments in memory lend permanence to
people no longer in view, and peek-a-boo games give way to hide-and-seek. At 8
months old, a delay of 2 or 3 seconds is enough for babies to become distracted from
the location of a hidden object. At 10 months, they can wait 8 seconds, and at 16
months, 20 to 30 seconds (Kail, 1990). At 20 months old, babies who watched an
adult hide a Big Bird doll in a desk drawer or behind a pillow were able to find the toy
even on the next day (DeLoache & Brown, 1983). The second year is also a time
when children become more verbal and more abstract in their thinking. For the first
time, words and images are used to symbolize objects. And one object may be used
as a symbol for another. Thus, children pretend that the spoon is an airplane and
their mouth a runway, and they understand that when an adult pretends to pour tea
over a toy monkey, the monkey becomes “wet” (Harris & Kavanaugh, 1993;
Kavanaugh, Eizenman, & Harris, 1997).
Despite enormous cognitive gains, the 2-year-old does not think like an adult or
even like a school-age child. According to Piaget, preschoolers are in a
preoperational stage, during which they reason in an intuitive, prelogical manner,
unable to perform mental operations. Preoperational thought has two key features.
The first is that the child is egocentric, or self-centered—unable to adopt the
perspective of another person. At this stage of development, children tend to assume
that you can tell what they are thinking, that you know all the people in their lives, or
that you can see a picture in a book they are reading. Play a hiding game with 3-yearolds, and they’ll stand in full view and cover their eyes—assuming that if they cannot
see, then they cannot be seen. Or eavesdrop on a conversation between 4-year-olds
and you will hear each of them jabbering away and taking turns—oblivious to what
the other is saying. These “collective monologues” are also evidence of egocentrism.
preoperational stage. Piaget’s second stage of cognitive development, when 2-
to 6-year-olds become capable of reasoning in an intuitive, prelogical manner.
egocentric. Self-centered, unable to adopt the perspective of another person.
A second limitation at this stage is that the preoperational child does not
understand conservation, the idea that physical properties of an object stay the
same despite superficial changes in appearance. To illustrate, take a tall, thin 8ounce glass of lemonade and pour it into an 8-ounce cup that is shorter and wider.
You and I know that the quantity of liquid stays the same regardless of changes in the
container’s shape, but to the preschooler the tall, thin glass holds more to drink.
Figure 9.11 illustrates additional examples. Flatten a ball of clay and the
preoperational child will think there is less. Roll the clay into a long thin snake, and
the child will think there is more. Or if you use a handful of pennies, the child will think
there are more if you spread them out than if you push them close together. What
these demonstrations show is that, until the age of 7, children can’t seem to center on
two object features at a time (height and width, for example) or mentally reverse such
operations as pouring, rolling, flattening, or spreading. Very simply, “What you see is
what you get.”
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conservation. The concept that physical properties of an object remain the same
despite superficial changes in appearance.
Figure 9.11 Tasks Used to Test Conservation
Concrete Operational Stage
At about the age of 7, children advance to what Piaget called the concrete
operational stage, becoming capable of logical reasoning. By their first few years of
schooling, children are able to take the perspective of another person and understand
that various object properties can stay the same despite surface changes in their
appearance. They can now group similar objects into categories, order the objects
according to size or number, and appreciate the logic that if A is greater than B, and
B is greater than C, then A is greater than C. Capable of performing concrete
operations, the first-grader can also be taught to add and subtract without counting
(Resnick, 1989).
concrete operational stage. Piaget’s third stage of cognitive development, when
children become capable of logical reasoning.
In the concrete operational stage, a child can be taught to add and subtract
without counting.
iStock.com/FlamingoImages
Piaget believed that conservation marks the beginning of a major advance in
cognitive development, one that lasts to the age of 11 or 12. However, even though
concrete operational children appear to reason like adults do in response to specific
problems, they do not think on an abstract level. Children may know that 2 is an even
number and that 2 + 1 is an odd number, and they may well realize the same for 4 +
1, 6 + 1, and 100 + 1—but they will not necessarily put the pieces together to form
the more general principle that any even number plus one yields an odd number. The
ability to use methods of logic—inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning, and
systematic hypothesis testing—is the hallmark of Piaget’s next stage, the formal
operational stage of cognitive development.
Formal Operational Stage
What distinguishes Piaget’s third and fourth levels of development is the ability to
formulate solutions in advance and to reason on a logical, hypothetical level. To
illustrate, imagine how you might approach the following test. You have four beakers,
each containing a colorless chemical, and a dropper filled with potassium iodide. You
are then told that when the potassium iodide is mixed with one or more of the four
chemicals, it produces a bright yellow solution. Your task is to determine which
chemicals to mix. Faced with this problem, the typical 9- or 10-year-old child will
arbitrarily begin to mix chemicals, trying one combination after another until stumbling
upon the solution. In contrast, the typical 13-year-old will plan a systematic course of
action, first adding potassium iodide to each beaker, then trying other combinations of
chemicals and keeping track of outcomes until the problem is solved (Inhelder &
Piaget, 1958).
Unlike Piaget’s first three stages, which appear roughly on schedule in different
cultures, the formal operational stage does not characterize all adults. Many
Western adults are not necessarily formal operational in their problem solving, often
falling back on rules of thumb known as heuristics. Piaget’s point, however, is that
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adolescents and adults are cognitively capable of formal operations, whereas
children are not. It’s interesting that, in France, adolescents tested in the 1990s
scored higher on measures of formal operational thought than those tested 20 to 30
years earlier—when fewer teenagers attended secondary school. Piaget may have
been right about the age at which children first become capable of formal operational
thought, but performance is also influenced by schooling, culture, and other variable
experiences (Flieller, 1999).
formal operational stage. Piaget’s fourth stage of cognitive development, when
adolescents become capable of logic and abstract thought.
Piaget’s Legacy
Piaget was an astute observer of children, and his writings brought the study of
cognitive development to life (Beilin, 1992; Flavell, 1996; Piaget, 1976). Important
practical lessons also stem from his theory—like the idea that a child may not be
developmentally “ready” for reading, writing, arithmetic, taking turns, and other
cognitive and social tasks. Today, many caregivers try to “jump-start” their children by
enrolling them in academically rigorous preschools or by training them for athletics
and other types of competition. Thanks to Piaget, however, many child development
experts are quick to warn that children should not be pushed too early—before they
have matured to the necessary stage of development (Elkind, 1989; Zigler, 1987).
Many of Piaget’s writings have stirred both criticisms and vigorous defenses of his
theory (Hammond, 2014; Lourenco & Machado, 1996) Neo-Piagetian researchers are
revising and extending his work in important ways. One criticism is that Piaget’s
interview method was crude by today’s standards. As a result, he underestimated
young children’s cognitive abilities and taxed their capacity to process task-relevant
information (Case, 1992). Some studies have shown that babies even have an
intuitive grasp of simple laws of physics. For example, they look longer at a ball that
appears to roll through a solid object or at one that appears to stop in midair than at
one that does not produce an unexpected physical outcome (Baillargeon, 1994;
Spelke, Breinlinger, Macomber, & Jacobson, 1992).
Other examples illustrate the point. Piaget said that object permanence did not
develop until 8 months of age, when babies first try to retrieve toys that have been
hidden from view. But what if a more sensitive measure were used? Renee
Baillargeon (1986) recorded eye movements and found that 6-month-olds reacted
with surprise when an object temporarily hidden from view seemed to disappear. This
experiment, and others like it, suggests that an out-of-sight object may not be out of
mind at this age (Meltzoff & Moore, 1998). Similarly, Piaget thought that 3- and 4year-olds are egocentric, unable to take the perspective of another person. Yet
children at these ages speak more simply to babies than to adults and show pictures
to others with the front side facing the viewer (Gelman, 1979). They also understand
that someone else will see a visible object only if that person’s eyes are open and
aimed in the right direction—and only if there are no vision-blocking obstacles in the
way (Flavell, 1999).
Although Piaget estimated the ages at which certain cognitive skills develop,
experience plays an important role. For example, teaching children about
measurement, such as needed with baking, can help to develop their understanding
of the concept of conservation.
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iStock.com/ FatCamera
Were Piaget’s timetables wrong? Yes and no. Yes, it’s clear that young children
are more precocious than Piaget had realized. But no, his developmental sequences
—for example, the hypothesis that object permanence precedes conservation, which
in turn precedes formal logic—have stood up well. Piaget may have underestimated
the overall rate of development, but he was right about the sequence of
achievements.
A second question is often raised that goes right to the heart of Piaget’s theory:
Does cognitive development progress through distinct stages, like a staircase, or is it
more gradual, like a ramp? Or, as Robert Siegler (1996) has suggested, should
cognitive development be depicted in waves, with the flow of new strategies
overlapping with the ebb of old strategies? Robert Thatcher and others (1986)
measured electrical brain activity in 577 humans ranging from 2 months old to young
adulthood and spotted distinct growth spurts that corresponded roughly to the
challenged inasmuch as children often master a concept in some tasks but not in
others. Four-year-olds can order colors from light to dark, but they can’t order sticks
by length. Six-year-olds understand conservation in the pennies problem before they
can solve the liquid and clay problems. These kinds of inconsistencies tell us that
cognitive concepts don’t burst into mind all at once but, instead, are used for one task
at a time. What, then, are we to conclude? Once again, Piaget was only partly
correct. The pace of development is more rapid at some ages and in some cultures
than others. But within these periods of rapid growth, it takes time for new skills to
reach their full maturity.
LEARNING CHECK
Stage Managing
Now that you’ve been born, you are ready to go through Jean Piaget’s theoretical
four stages of cognitive development. But at which stage does each of the
developments below occur? Answer S for Sensorimotor, P for Preoperational, C for
Concrete Operational, or F for Formal Operational.
(Answers: 1. C; 2. F; 3. S; 4. P; 5. C; 6. P; 7. F; 8. S.)
Social Development
Born completely helpless, equipped with reflexes that orient them toward people,
responsive to human faces and voices, and prepared to mimic facial expressions on
cue, the newborn is an inherently social animal. For eager parents, the baby’s first
smile is the warmest sign of all. It’s funny sometimes how nature finds ways to
lubricate a parent-newborn bond. If you gently stroke or blow on a newborn baby’s
face, it reacts to this stimulation by contracting its muscles and pulling back its mouth
into what looks like—you guessed it—a smile (Emde, Gaensbauer, & Harmon, 1976).
Like adults, infants exhibit different types of smiles—some that last longer than
others, and some with the mouth open rather than closed (Messinger, Fogel, &
Dickson, 1999; Mireault, 2017). In fact, babies don’t crinkle up their eyes and flash
“social smiles” at people until they are at least six weeks old (Bower, 1982).
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Soon after hatching, ducklings will follow the first moving object they see. In this
photograph, the imprinted object was ethologist Konrad Lorenz.
Nina Leen / Contributor/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Social-Cultural Influences on Cognitive Development
When we consider the work of Piaget, we find a largely internal process of
maturation and development. Piaget proposed, in part, that cognitive development
was a process of maturation largely within the child. In this light, Piaget tended to
focus more so on the child than on the environment within which the child lives.
However, as with many aspects of psychology, it is difficult to define behavior outside
the context of the environment within which behavior occurs, and this includes our
cognitions. Contemporary researchers therefore also identify the need to focus on
social and cultural factors that can influence cognitive development.
The origins of this social-cultural focus on cognitive development can be traced, in
part, to Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky, who proposed that children develop
though a process of internalization. Through this process of internalization, children
absorb knowledge from the social-cultural context within which they live, and this can
impact their cognitive development. Indeed, there is good evidence from crosscultural studies on development to support the notion that cognitive development may
not be as biologically predetermined as Piaget initially proposed. Cross-cultural
studies on development evaluated the cognitive abilities of children from diverse
backgrounds and revealed that the universality of Piaget’s claims should be called
into question; for example, showing that people from many cultures failed to show
evidence that they had attained formal operations (Rogoff, 2002; Rogoff & Morelli,
1989). Piaget himself eventually acknowledged that achieving the abilities
characterized as formal operations may rely more on the type of children assessed
than on the unfolding of biologically predetermined cognitive stages of development
(Lourenco & Machado, 1996).
internalization. A process proposed by Vygotsky through which children absorb
knowledge from the social-cultural context within which they live that can impact
cognitive development.
The process of internalization helps to explain the effect culture can have on
cognitive development. Specifically, cross-cultural studies reveal that cognition is
dynamic in that children show evidence that their cognition develops to perform
culturally valued abilities (Serpell & Boykin, 1994). For example, the tasks that Piaget
invented for his studies were based on preconceived notions for what constituted
appropriate cognitive abilities. In other words, the tasks Piaget constructed were
biased toward his own conceptions for what abilities should be valued, particularly in
the latter stages he proposed. However, cross-cultural studies reveal that
performance on the tasks that Piaget invented are quite dependent on the type of
schooling that the children receive (Rogoff & Chavajay, 1995). If Piaget had evaluated
abilities to weave, for example, his children may have appeared to underperform in
their development compared to, say, Mayan children from Guatemala (Rogoff, 1990).
Psychologists today use these types of social-cultural findings to balance their
perspectives regarding the nature and nurture of cognitive development.
The Parent-Child Relationship
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Many developmental psychologists believe that a baby’s first relationship to the
mother or another caregiver sets the stage for social development. Clearly, it is critical
in certain species of animals. Newly hatched ducks and geese, for example, will
follow their mother automatically—an instinctive form of attachment called
imprinting, which serves the purpose of keeping the young birds in proximity to each
other and to their mother. Intrigued by how automatic the process is, Konrad Lorenz
(1937) suspected that any moving, honking stimulus (whether it is the mother or not)
will trigger this response. So he squatted, clucked, and moved about in front of birds
hatched in an incubator, and it worked like a charm. One of Lorenz’s favorite pictures
shows him strolling through high grass trailed by a line of geese imprinted by his
actions. In fact, geese will follow all sorts of first-seen moving objects—decoys,
rubber balls, wooden blocks, and even a striped metal pipe (Hess, 1959).
imprinting. Among newly hatched ducks and geese, an instinctive tendency to
follow the mother.
If baby birds are to follow the mother, they must be exposed to her within the first
day or so, during a critical period for the development of imprinting. In humans,
attachment is less automatic, the mother plays a more active role, and there is no
“critical” period. Still, the infant does form a very deep and affectionate emotional
bond called an attachment.
critical period. A period of time during which an organism must be exposed to a
certain stimulus for proper development to occur.
attachment. A deep emotional bond that an infant develops with its primary
caregiver.
The First Attachment
Beginning in the second half of the first year, accompanying the development of
object permanence, infants all over the world form an intense, exclusive bond with
their primary caregiver. This first relationship is highly charged with emotion and
emerges with consistency from one culture to the next. What motivates the infant?
Some years ago, psychologists assumed that infants would become attached to
anyone who feeds them and satisfies their basic physiological needs. That
assumption was then put to rest by a classic series of dramatic experiments by Harry
Harlow (1958, 1971).
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