Piaget's Four Stages Of Cognitive Development

Ch 6

According to Piaget, how does cognition develop?

Infants use their perceptual and motor activities to build and refine psychological structures. Children select and interpret experiences using the current structures and modify those structures to take into account more subtle aspects of reality. Piaget believed that children moved through four stages of cognitive development. The first stage is sensorimotor, children learn the world through their senses and motor movements. The second stage is pre operational, children utilize symbolic play and manipulate symbols. The third stage is concrete operational, children start to think more logically about events that are set in concrete. The fourth stage is formal operational, in this stage

children are able to gain hypothetical understanding and have abstract thought.

Ch 7

Describe the development of attention, including sustained, selective, and adaptable strategies.

The development of attention for humans begin during the first year when an infants attention to novel and eye catching events orienting to them more quickly and tracking their movements more effectively. Attraction to novelty declines But sustained attention improves.
Sustained attention is the ability to direct and focus cognitive activity on specific stimuli. In order to complete any cognitively planned activity, any sequenced action, or any thoughtful activity one must have sustained attention. Sustained attention increases sharply between two and three and a half years of age.

Selective attention is the process of focusing on a particular object in the environment for a certain period of time. Selective attention depends on cognitive inhibition and attentional strategies. People who are skilled at cognitive inhibition able to concentrate on the task at hand and not let their mind stray to unimportant matters. Between the ages of three and four cognitive inhibition has a noticeable improvement.

Attentional strategies refer to the actions needed to move new information from short-term memory to a longer-term memory, where it is analyzed and added to new information. Attentional strategy usually occurs in four phases called, production deficiency, controlled efficiency, utilization efficiency, and effective strategy used.