I. Factors affecting development
Cognitive development is not a simple process of adding new facts and ideas to existing knowledge storage. Piaget believes that the human thinking process is undergoing a fundamental change from birth to maturity. There are four factors-physical maturity, activity, social experience and balance. It is their interaction that affects the change of thinking.
A very important factor affecting our understanding of the world is maturity, which mainly refers to the physiological changes shown by individuals, and these changes are determined by heredity. Parents and teachers have little influence on mature cognitive development except to ensure that their children get enough nutrition and care about their health.
Activity is another influencing factor. With the maturity of the body, children's ability is constantly enhanced, and they can learn through interaction with the environment.
In the process of development, we constantly try to interact with people around us, and social transmission or learning from others will affect the development of cognition.
Second, the basic tendency of thinking
Piaget pointed out that all species acquire two basic tendencies or "constant functions" through heredity according to early biological research. The first trend is to organize-combine-arrange-reorganize-rearrange behaviors and ideas into a coherent system. The second trend is adaptation-making adjustments according to environmental changes.
Organization: Everyone is born with a tendency to internalize the thinking process into a psychological structure, which is the system for us to understand and interact with the world. The original simple structure will become more and more complex and effective after continuous combination and adjustment. Piaget called these structures "schema" (psychological system or category of perception or experience), and he believed that schema was the cornerstone of thinking. Schemas may be small and specialized, such as sucking things through straws or recognizing roses; Patterns can also be large and generalized, for example, drinking maps or gardening maps. As the thinking process becomes more and more organized, new schemas are constantly established, and individual behavior becomes more complicated and more adaptable to the environment.
Adaptation: In addition to the integration tendency of psychological structure, human beings are also naturally inclined to adapt to the surrounding environment. This adaptation includes two basic processes: assimilation and adaptation. Assimilation occurs when people use the existing schema to understand the events in the world around them. It refers to the process that people try to understand things by integrating new knowledge into the original knowledge system. However, the process of integrating new knowledge into the original schema is often a process of distorting new knowledge. Adaptation occurs when people have to change the original schema in order to adapt to the new environment. If the new information does not match any existing pattern, a more suitable pattern must be generated. Different from adjusting information to adapt thinking, now we adapt to information by adjusting thinking.
Generally speaking, we adapt to the increasingly complex environment through assimilation and adaptation. The process of assimilation includes partial adaptation. Of course, there are cases that are neither assimilated nor adapted. If the information encountered is too strange, people will choose to ignore them. In a certain period of time, people will filter information to make it suitable for their way of thinking at that time.
Balance: According to Piaget's theory, organization, assimilation and adaptation can all be regarded as a complex balancing behavior. He believes that the change of thinking is actually achieved through a balanced process. People constantly test whether their thinking process is appropriate to achieve balance.
Three, the four stages of cognitive development
Piaget believes that all people have gone through the same four stages of development in the same order. Knowing a student's age never means that you know his way of thinking.
1. perceptual motor stage
The initial stage of cognitive development is called perceptual movement stage, because children in this period think through watching, listening, moving, touching and tasting. At this stage, children gradually develop the concept of "object permanence" (being able to realize that the existence of an object is independent and permanent), which shows that individuals begin to have the ability to construct psychological representations.
The second great progress in nastic movement stage is the appearance of logical purposeful action, and learning reverse action is a basic progress in nastic movement stage.
2. Pre-operation stage
The so-called operation refers to actions that can be completed and reversed psychologically rather than physically. In the pre-operation stage, children have not mastered this psychological operation, but they are gradually mastering it. Piaget believes that the initial way of thinking out of action is to symbolize the action schema, and this ability to form and use symbols is the main progress in the pre-operation stage. Symbol function-the ability to use symbols (language, pictures, signs, gestures) to psychologically express actions or objects. It is difficult for children in the pre-operation stage to get rid of thinking from the direct perception of the external performance of objects, and it is also difficult to achieve decentralization (paying attention to many aspects of things at the same time). Piaget believes that children in the pre-operation stage tend to be self-centered (assuming that others experience the world in the same way as themselves), and they always tend to look at the world and experience in the eyes of others from their own ideas. Piaget pointed out that egoism does not mean selfishness, but children often think that others' feelings, reactions and opinions should be the same as their own. Research shows that children are not completely self-centered in all cases.
3. Specific operation stage
Piaget described the "hands-on" thinking at this stage with specific operations (psychological processing associated with specific objects or situations). The basic feature of this stage is to realize the logical stability of the physical world and that the changed or transformed elements still retain their original characteristics, and these changes are reversible. Identity-the law that people or things do not change with time; Compensatory-the law that changes in one dimension may be eliminated by changes in another dimension; Reversibility-a characteristic of logical operation, the ability to think about a series of steps, and then psychologically reverse these steps and return to the starting point, also known as reverse thinking; Classification-Classify objects. The ability to reverse a process psychologically can help students realize that we can classify objects from multiple angles. Understanding the order relation helps students to establish logical order. After mastering the operation abilities of conservation, classification and sequencing, the students in the specific operation stage finally established a complete and very logical thinking system. However, this thinking system is still related to physical reality, and children at this stage have been able to organize, classify and operate logic according to specific situations. However, children at this stage are still unable to reason about assumptions and abstract problems.
4. Formal operation stage
What happens when multiple variables interact, which requires a psychological system to control these variables and play a role in various possibilities. This is Piaget's formal operation (involving abstract thinking and the psychological task of coordination between variables). At the formal operational level, the focus of thinking can be shifted from what is to what may be. Hypothesis-deductive reasoning: a problem-solving strategy in the formal operation stage. Individuals first determine the factors that may have an impact on the problem, and then conduct deductive reasoning to systematically evaluate specific solutions. Formal operations also include induction (induction of general laws through special cases) reasoning. The systematic and scientific thinking of formal operation requires students to find out the possibilities of generating specific situational systems. Another feature of this stage is adolescent egoism (thinking that others have the same thoughts, feelings and concerns as themselves).
Having the ability of hypothetical thinking, selective thinking, confirming all possible combinations and analyzing one's own thinking will have many interesting influences on teenagers.
5. Only 30%-40% of high school students can complete Piaget's formal operation task. The hypothetical thinking of junior high school students or senior high school students is normal. Sometimes, students find some shortcuts, such as memorizing formulas or solving problems, which are beyond their ability. But this method is only helpful for exams, not for real understanding. Only when students can transcend the simple memory and shallow application of knowledge can real understanding take place.
Teachers can provide a situation to challenge children's thinking and expose their logical thinking defects, and promote the development of students' formal thinking ability. Some developmental psychologists put forward a new Piaget theory. They kept Piaget's profound insights on children's knowledge construction and the development trend of children's thinking, but added new discoveries on how attention, memory and strategies can promote development in information processing research. Piaget's theory has its limitations. First, a problem with the stage model is the lack of consistency in children's thinking. It ignores the important influence of cultural and social environment on children; Third, children's cognitive ability is underestimated.
The following is another version of the stage theory of cognitive development:
Perceptual motor stage (0-2 years old)
At this time, children have not mastered the language, mainly through the interaction between sensory motor schema and the outside world (assimilation and adaptation), and achieve balance with it. Cognitive activities mainly gain action experience by exploring the relationship between perception and movement. The sign of this stage is that children gradually acquire the permanence of objects, that is, when an object gradually disappears from children's field of vision, children know that this object does not exist. For example, if the mother goes to work, the baby won't be unhappy, because he knows that although she can't be seen now, she doesn't exist. She just leaves temporarily and will come back.
Children in this period know the world around them mainly through feelings and actions. They can't distinguish between subject and object, thus "showing a fundamental egoism" (Piaget, 198 1 year). In Piaget's words, children have not yet reached the level of performance in this period, and all they have is a kind of graphic knowledge, that is, only exciting knowledge. When a baby sees an irritant, such as a bottle, it begins to suck. The knowledge of pattern depends on the recognition of stimulus shape, not through reasoning.
Pre-operation stage (2-7 years old)
At this time, children's perceptual movement schema began to internalize and become a representation. With the appearance and development of language, children can replace things with image symbols and describe things with images and language. But at this time, the child's "self-centeredness" is highlighted, that is, he only considers everything from his own point of view, takes himself as the center, and always observes things from one angle without considering other people's opinions. To this end, Piaget once conducted the famous "Three Mountains Experiment".
Piaget's Three Mountains Experiment
The models of the three mountains on the table are obviously different in height, size and position. In the experiment, let a three-year-old child sit aside first, and then put a doll on the opposite side. At this time, the experimenter asked the child two questions. The first question is: "What are the three mountains you see?" The second question is: What are the three mountains the doll sees? "
It turns out that no matter what the question, the child's answer is the same. Children will only look at the relationship between the three mountains from their own perspective (for example, there are two mountains behind the mountain) and will not put themselves in the position of the opposite doll. This experiment proves that children adopt a self-centered self-oriented thinking and are in the pre-operation stage. It is normal for children to start from their own feelings and experiences in life. Therefore, when children are crying, when you think they are unreasonable, don't expect children to understand you and understand you. They really can't do it.
They can't grasp the conservation and reversibility of the concept of things from the changes of things. For example, you ask children at this stage: "Do you have a sister?" The child will answer, "Yes, Guoguo." You ask again, "Does that fruit have sisters?" The child will not be able to respond. That is, children's thinking is irreversible in this period.
During this period, children developed the ability to express objective objects with symbols, and the concept of speech developed at an alarming rate. Unable to understand the conservation principle, thinking has the characteristics of centralization (only paying attention to one aspect), irreversibility and only paying attention to the state; Animism; Egocentric tendency.
Specific operation stage (7- 12 years old)
Have a specific operational schema, and you can make a preliminary logical thinking. The concept of "operation" was introduced by Piaget from logic. He believes that operation is a reversible operation of internalization. At this stage, children's thinking is characterized by reversible and conservative concepts (such as matter, weight, length, area, volume, etc. ), get the classification, order and relationship, marking a leap in thinking level. However, the operational thinking in this period relied on the help of specific things to solve problems smoothly.
Children began to have "conservation" and began to independently organize various methods to perform correct logical operations (such as classification). ), but they cannot do without the help of concrete things or images. The operation in this period mainly belongs to the stage of cluster operation (that is, classification and sequence).
Piaget gave an example: Edith's hair is lighter than Susan's, and Edith's hair is darker than Lisa's. He asked the children, "Who has the darkest hair among the three people?" If this question appears in the form of language, it is difficult for children to answer it correctly in the specific operation stage. However, if you take three dolls with different black and white hair and name them Edith, Susan and Lisa respectively, and show them to the children in pairs according to the order of the questions, after the children have seen them, the questioner will put them away and let the children say who has the darkest hair, and they will easily point out that Susan has the darkest hair.
In the specific operation stage, children's thinking is reversible and conservative, but this kind of thinking cannot be separated from the support of specific things.
Formal operation stage (12 years old to adulthood)
At this time, children's thinking is close to that of adults. Formal operation, that is, "separation of form and content". Simply put, at this time, children can use abstract symbols for logical thinking and propositional operation, forming the whole system of cognitive structure, which belongs to the advanced form of children's thinking.
At this stage, children's thinking has transcended the dependence on concrete perceptible things, liberated form from content and entered the stage of formal operation. This ability will last into adulthood. At this stage, the individual's reasoning ability is improved, and the abstract nature can be considered from multiple dimensions. Their thinking is carried out in the form of propositions, and they can find the relationship between propositions; Ability to think hypothetically and solve problems through logical reasoning, induction or deduction; Can * * * make logical reasoning on various propositions according to assumptions, and begin to approach the thinking level of adults.
/kloc-At the age of 0/2, children begin to make logical representations on abstract and concrete materials instead of relying on concrete things. Piaget believes that the highest form of thinking is formal operation. The main feature of formal operations is their ability to deal with assumptions, not just objects. Moreover, by this time, children have been able to separate form from content and replace other things with expressive symbols.
To sum up, the bud of thinking appeared in nastic movement stage; There are image thinking and intuitive thinking in the early operation stage; Preliminary logical thinking appears in the specific operation stage; It was not until the formal operation stage that more complex logical thinking appeared.
When Piaget summed up his theory of cognitive development stages, he emphasized that although the general age of each stage may be different due to different intellectual level or social environment, the order of each stage will not change. Moreover, as a whole structure, each stage cannot be interchanged (Piaget, 1980).
Understanding children's development stages and according to their characteristics can better promote their development. Otherwise, it is a waste of children's development opportunities and a lifelong regret.