Cognitive and Language DevelopmentPertemuan 3

Matakuliah : E1122 - Psikologi PendidikanTahun : 2010

What is Development ?

• Development is the pattern of biological, cognitive, and socioemotional changes that begin at conception and continues through the life span.

• Most development involves growth, although it also eventually involves decay (dying)

Bina Nusantara University 2

Bina Nusantara University

3

Processes and Periods• Biological, cognitive, and

socioemotional processes• Biological processes produce changes in the

child’s body and underlie brain development, height and weight gains, motor skills, and puberty’s hormonal changes.

• Cognitive processes involve change in the child’s thinking, intelligence, and language.

• Socioemotional processes involve changes in the child’s relationships with other people, changes in emotion, and personality.

Bina Nusantara University

4

Processes and Periods• Periods of Development

• Infancy : birth – 18/24 month• Early childhood : 2 – 5 year• Middle and late childhood : 6 -11 year• Adolescene : 10/12 – 18/21 year• Early adulthood : 20 – 30 year

Developmantal Issues• Nature and Nurture

– Nature refers to an organism’s biological inheritance, nurture to it environmental influences.

– The “nature” proponents claim biological inheritance is the most important influence on development.

– The “nurture” proponents claim environmental experiences are the most important.

• Continuity and Discontinuity– The issue regarding whether development involves

gradual, cumulative change (continuity) or distinct stages (discontinuity)

Bina Nusantara University5

Developmantal Issues• Early and Later Experience

– The issue of the degree to which early experiences (especially infancy) or later experiences are the key determinants of the child’s development.

• Evaluating the Developmental Issues– Nature and nurture, continuity and discontinuity, and

early and later experiences all play a part in development through the human life span. Along with this consensus, there is still spirited debate about how strongly development is influenced by each of these factors.

Bina Nusantara University6

Development and Education• Splintered development

– The circumtences in which development is uneven across domains.

– One student may have excelent math skills but poor writing kills. Another student may have excellent verbal language skills, but not have good reading and writing skills.

– A special challenge is the cognitively advanced student whose socioemotional development is at a level expected for a much younger child

– The developmental changes can help you understand the optimal level for teaching and learning

Bina Nusantara University7

Cognitive Development• The Brain :

– The old view of the brain in part reflected the fact that scientists did not have the technology to detect and map sensitive changes in the brain as it develops.

– Today, sophisticated brain-scanning techniques allow better detection of these changes. Considerable progress is being made in charting developmental changes in the brain, although much is still unknown, and connections to children’s eduction are difficult to make

Bina Nusantara University8

The Brain• Brain cells and regions

– The number and size of the brain’s nerve endings continue to grow at least untill adolescence.

– Some of the brain’s increase in size also is due to myelination, the process of encasing many cells in the brain with a myelin sheath.

– The brain has four lobes; Frontal (voluntary, movement, and thinking), Parietal (body sensation, spatial location), Temporal (hearing, language), Occipital (vision)

Bina Nusantara University9

The Brain• Lateralization: the specialization of functions in each

hemispheres of the brain;– Verbal processing; language, speech and

grammar are localized at the left hemisphere.– Nonverbal processing; the right hemisphere is

usually more dominant in processing nonverbal information such as spatial perception, visual recognition, and emotion.

• Plasticity: the brain has plasticity, and its development depends on context

– Mark Rosenzweig experiment showed that the brain of the animals growing up in the enriched environment developed better than the brains of animal reared in standard or isolated conditions.

Bina Nusantara University10

The Brain and Children’s Education

• There is a critical or sensitive period – a biological window of opportunity- when learning is easy, effective, and easily retained.

• Although children’s brains acquire a great deal of information during the early years, most learning likely takes place after synaptic formation stabilizes, which is after the age of 10

Bina Nusantara University 11

Cognitive Development Theory

• Vigotsky’s Theory

Bina Nusantara University 12

• Piaget’s Theory

Piaget Theory : Cognitive Process• Schemas ; action or mental representations that

organize knowledge• Assimilation : Piagetian concept of the incorporation

of new information into existing knowledge (schemas).• Accomodation : Piagetian concept of adjusting

schemas to fit new information and experiences• Organization : piagetian concept of grouping isolated

behaviors into a higher-order, more smoothly functioning cognitive system; the grouping or arranging of items into categories.

• Equilibration: a mechenism that piaget proposed to explain how children shift from one stage of thought to the next.

Bina Nusantara University 13

Piagetian Stages• Sensorimotor stage ; the first stage, lasting from birth to

about 2 years of age, in which infants construct an understanding of the world by coordinating sensory experiences with motor actions.

• Preoperational stage : the second stage, lasting from about 2 to 7 years of age, symbolic thought increases but opertional thought is not yet present. The children begins to represent the world with words and images.

• Concrete operational stage : the third stage, occuring between 7 to 11 years of age.the child thinks opertionally and logical reasoning intuitive thought but only in concrete situation.

• Formal operational stage : the fourth stage, emerges between 11 to 15 years of age; thought is more abstract, idealistic, and logical in this stage.

Bina Nusantara University 14

Evaluating Piaget’s Theory• Contributions;

– The present field of children’s cognitive development– Masterful concept s : assimilation and accomodation, object

permanence, egocentrism, conservations, hypothetical reasoning.

– Vision of children as active, constructive thinkers., ect

• Criticisms:– Stimates of children’s competence– Stages– Training children to reason at a higher level– Culture and aducation.

Bina Nusantara University 15

Evaluating Piaget’s Theory

• Neo-Piagetians; developmental psychologists who believe that Piaget got some things right but that his theory needs considerable revision, emphasize how to process information through attention, memory, and strategies.

• Despite such criticism, Piaget’s theory is a very important. Information about his stages of development can be applied to teaching children.

Bina Nusantara University 16

Vygotsky’s Theory

• Zone of proximal development (ZPD); vigotsky’s term for the range of tasks that are too difficult forchildren to master alone but that can be materde wiht guidance and assistance from adult or more-skilled children.

• Scaffolding;,A technique that involves changing the level of support for learning. A teacher or more-advance peer adjust the amount of guidance to fit the students current performance.

• Language and Thougt : children use speech not only for social communication, but also to help them solve tasks.

Bina Nusantara University 17

Evaluating Vygotsky’s Theory

• Social constructivist approach; emphasizes the social contexts of learning and that knowledge is mutually built and contructed; .

• Some critics say Vigotsky overemphasized the role of language in thinking. Also his emphasis on collaboration and guidance has potential pitfalls. Might facilitator be too helpful in some cases, as when a parent becomes too overbearing and controlling? Further, some children’s might become lazy and expect help when they might have done something on theri own.

Bina Nusantara University 18

Comparison of Vygotsky’s and Piaget’s Theory

Topic Vygotsky Piaget

Sosiocultural Context

Strong Emphasis Little emphasis

Constructivism

Social constructivist Cognitive Constructivist

Stages No general stages Strong emphasis on stage

Key Processes Zone of proximal development, language. Dialogue. Tool of the culture

Schema, assimilation, acomodation, operations, conservations, clasification

Role Of Language

Language plays a powerful role in shaping thought

Language has minimal role, cognitive primarily direct language

View On Education

Plays central role, helping children learn the tools of the culture

Merely refines the child’s cognitive skills that have already emerged

Teaching Implication

The teacher is a facilitator and guide, not a director

Also view the teacher is a facilitator and guide, not a director

19