Children's Cognitive Development

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McCarthy Scales of Children’s Abilities (MSCA) Workshop

Yayasan Penduduk Kuala Terengganu (YPKT), 18-19 April 2006

By

Dr. Shamsul Bahari Shamsudin (Ph.D)

COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

Environmental Health Unit,

Department of Community Health,

Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences,

University Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor,

MALAYSIA



Stages of Cognitive Development

Sensory-motor (birth - 2 years)

Pre-operational (2 - 6 years)

Concrete Operational (7 - 11 years)

Formal Operational (11+)

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Sensorimotor Stage (birth - 2 yrs)

How does Piaget see the young infant?

– Active

– Initiates behavior

– Learns to distinguish among the features in the

environment

– Learns to modify own behavior to fit the

demands of the situation



Special Qualities of Sensorimotor

Egocentrism

– inability to perceive a situation or person except

in relation to the self

Lack of object permanence

– lack of understanding that objects continue to

exist even when they are out of sight

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Sensory-motor Stage: 6 sub-stages

1. Reflexive Schemas

2. Primary Circular Reactions

3. Secondary Circular Reactions

4. Coordination of Sec. Circ. Reactions

5. Tertiary Circular Reactions

6. Representation



Reflexive Schemas - (birth-1 month)

Infant exercises innate reflexes

automatic and involuntary

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Primary Circular Reactions (1-4 months)

• Infant repeats a chance behavior

• Behavior involves baby’s body

• Behavior has pleasurable outcome



Secondary Circular Reactions (4-8 months)

• Infant directs attention to objects

• Repeats chance behavior

• Behavior involves objects

• Behavior has pleasurable outcome

• Behavior is not fully intentional

• Behavior is conservative

• Understanding of Object Permanence

- begins searching for objects that are partially hidden

- quickly forgets/ignores objects that cannot be seen

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Coordination of Secondary

Circular Reactions (8-12 months)

Intentional

Goal-directed

Original

Intelligent behavior

Understanding of Object Permanence –AB error

example :

- looks for object in the last place object was found

- even when s/he saw object being moved to a new

place



Tertiary Circular Reactions (12-18 months)

Trial and Error

Understanding of Object Permanence:

- no longer make the AB error when they see

the object being moved to new place.

- if they don’t see the object moved, will

continue to search in the last place it was

found

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Representation (18-24 months)

• Mentally represent object/event in mind

• Symbolic problem solving

• Well-developed object permanence

• Deferred Imitation

– ability to remember and copy the behavior of

models that are not present



Pre-operational Stage (2 - 6 years)

1. Emergence of the Symbolic Function

2. Forms of Play

3. Development of Pretend Play

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Emergence of the Symbolic Function

Children are able to form and use

symbols

Language

Pretend play



Forms of Play

Sensorimotor play

Functional play

Pretend play

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Development of Pretend Play

• Increasingly detached from real-life

• Increasingly detached from the self

• Increasingly complex combinations of schemes

of action

• Serves an emotionally integrative function

• Familiarity with social role possibilities

• Fun and useful!!!



Limitations to Pre-operational

• Egocentric

• Perception bound

• Centered and rigid

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Egocentrism

• Sensory-motor

- inability to distinguish the self from others

• Pre-operational

- inability to distinguish one’s mental representations from others’ mental representations

• Perspective taking

• Animism

- belief that inanimate objects have life-like qualities



Thinking is perception bound

Centred and Rigid Thinking

- Centres on a single, salient, feature and ignores less

salient features

- Lacks the ability to mentally retrace through a series of

steps

- Centres on a single, salient, feature and ignores less

salient features

Lacks the ability to mentally retrace through a series of

steps

Lack of Conservation

- Pre-operational children lack conservation!

Conservation = the knowledge that an underlying physical

dimension remains the same despite superficial changes in

its appearance

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Correlation between GCI with confounding factors for urban area

(Kuala Lumpur and Johor Baharu)

Dependent variable

(GCI)

Coefficient regression

t

value

p

value

(Constant) 110.092 26.138 <0.001

Blood lead concentration -0.232 -3.724** <0.001

Fathers’ education -0.058 -0.650 0.516

Mothers’ education -0.206 -2.399* 0.017

Household income -0.038 -0.522 0.602

Number of siblings 0.043 0.435 0.664

Sequence in family -0.063 -0.633 0.527

N=251

** Significant at p0.01

* Significant at p0.05

r = 0.356 ; R2 = 0.127



Correlation between GCI with confounding factors for sub-urban area

(Kemaman and Setiu)

Dependent variable

(GCI)

Coefficient regression

t

value

p

value

(Constant) 126.435 30.342 <0.001

Blood lead concentration -0.795 -13.496** <0.001

Fathers’ education -0.159 -2.069* 0.042

Mothers’ education 0.147 1.897** 0.002

Household income 0.191 2.825** 0.006

Number of siblings -0.339 -2.723** 0.008

Sequence in family 0.285 2.221* 0.030

N=80

** Significant at p0.01

* Significant at p0.05

r = 0.894 ; R2 = 0.799

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Conclusions

Children think about the world differently

than adults.

Children actively construct their knowledge

about the world.

Cognitive development follows an invariant

and universal sequence.

Documents

Children's Cognitive Development