Human Growth and Development

Developmental theories Part Two

Presented by:

Dr. Doria Hassan Abd Elrahim

Objectives: At the end of this lecture the paramedic will be able to:

Objectives

At the end of this lecture the students will be

able to:

•Define cognitive development.

•Identify Piaget's theory of cognitive

development.

•Explain stages of Piaget's theory of cognitive

development.

Outlines: Outlines

•Introduction.

•Piaget's theory of cognitive

development:

•Stages characteristics

Introduction

-Cognitive development refers to the manner in which people learn to think, reason, and

use language.

-It involves: person intelligence, perception ability and ability to process information.

- It represents a progression of mental

abilities from illogical to logical thinking,

from simple to complex problem solving

and from understanding concrete ideas to

understand abstract concepts.

Piaget's theory of cognitive development:

- According to piaget, Cognitive development

is an orderly, sequential process in which a

variety of new experiences (stimuli) must

exist before intellectual abilities can develop.

Piaget's Cognitive developmental process is divided into major four phases:

-A person develops through these phases, each phase has its own unique characteristics. In each phase, the person uses three primary abilities:

•Assimilation is the process through which humans encounter and react to new situation by using mechanisms they already possess.

•In this way, people acquire knowledge and skills as well as insight into the world around them.

•Accommodation is a process of change whereby cognitive processes mature sufficiently to allow the person to solve problems that were unsolvable before.

• The adjustment is possible chiefly because new knowledge has been assimilated.

•Adaptation (coping behavior)

•is the ability to handle the demands made by the environment.

Stages of Cognitive Development:

•Characteristics of Stage Sensori-motor:

•Ages birth – 2 years:

-The infant uses his senses and motor

abilities to understand the world .

* Initially sucking/grasping reflex and

moving onto reaching for objects out of

reach.

- Begins with reflexive responding and ends

with using symbols.

* Object permanence: understanding that

objects exist independently.

Object permanence

-Major development within this stage.

-Initially the baby cannot understand a object exists out of sight.

-As the baby reaches around 7/8 months a child will begin to understand the object/person still exists when out of sight.

(Example of object permanence)

2- Pre-operational: •Age: (2-6 years): Learns to use language and to represent objects by images and words. •Thinking is still egocentric: has difficulty taking the viewpoint of others .

•Classifies objects by a single feature: e.g.

groups together all the red blocks regardless

of shape or all the square blocks regardless of

color.

3- Concrete operational :

* age: (7-11 years) Can think logically about objects and events.

•Achieves conservation of number (age 6),

mass (age 7), and weight (age 9).

- The children are now able to conserve,

They understand that although the

appearance has changed the thing it self does

not.

What is conservation

“ the awareness that a quantity remains the same

despite a change in its appearance”

* Classifies objects according to several features

and can order them in series along a single

dimension such as size.

Formal operational:

* age (11 years and up) can think logically

about abstract propositions and test

hypotheses systematically .

* Becomes concerned with the hypothetical,

the future, and ideological problems.