cognitive development in middle childhood and adolescence
- Piaget- Concrete and Formal Operations
- Brain development
- Synaptogenesis
- Myelination
- The prefrontal cortex
cognitive limitations of the pre-operational stage
- Centration
- Focusing on one aspect of a problem or object
- Irreversible thought
- Cannot mentally undo an action
- Static thought
- Focusing on the end state rather than the changes that transform one state into another
cognitive development in middle childhood.
- In middle childhood, children move from preoperational to concrete operational stage
- Non-conserving, transitional, conserving
- Demonstrate the ability to perform operations
- Mental actions on concrete situations/objects
- 7- 11 years
the concrete operations stage
- Decentration
- Can focus on two or more dimensions of a problem at once
- Reversibility of thought
- Can mentally reverse or undo an action
- Transformational thought
- Can understand the process of change from one state to another
- In this stage we see a shift from understanding being driven by perceptual salience to logical reasoning
- Seriation:
- The ability to arrange items mentally along a quantifiable dimension such as weight or height
- Ordering
- Pre-operational children may eventually solve a task but only if the numbers are small.
○ Done via trial and error.
- Transivity:
- is the understanding of relationships among elements in a series
- i.e. who is taller question.
- Less egocentrism
- Classification abilities improve:
• Can classify objects by multiple dimensions and can grasp class inclusion
formal operations stage
- In adolescence, individuals move from the concrete operational stage to the formal operational stage
- This takes place gradually over years
- Formal operations are mental actions on ideas
• They permit systematic and scientific thinking about problems, hypothetical ideas, and abstract concepts
• Goes from formal to abstract
○ Example is where the children would put their third eye.
formal operations and adolescent development
- Formal operations contribute to positive aspects of adolescent development.
• Sense of identity, complex thinking, appreciation of humour- Formal operations contributes to not-so-positive aspects of adolescent development
• Confusion, adolescent idealism and rebellion against ideas that are not logical
• Formal operational thought can also lead to adolescent egocentrism
- Formal operations contributes to not-so-positive aspects of adolescent development
rebellion in adolescence
• In adolescence we see a rebellion against illogical thought because now we are able to develop thoughts ourselves.
○ This can create new egocentrism.
○ We start to believe that the way we think is the way all people think.
adolescent egocentrism
(Elkind, 1967)
• Imaginary audience
○ The belief that everyone in the world is looking at you.
• Personal fable
○ The idea that our situation is unique and that no one has encountered this before.
brain development
The nervous system is not a static network of interconnected elements; rather, it is a plastic (changeable), living organ that grows and changes continuously in response to its genetic programs and its interactions with the environment.
neurons
- Neurons are the basic functional units of the nervous system. They take in information from other neurons (reception), integrate those signals (conduction), and pass signals to other neurons (transmission).
Producers of information
glial cells
- Glial cells nourish, protect, and physically support neurons and are thought to be particularly critical in brain development. One type of glial cell, the oligodendrocyte, covers the axons of neurons with myelin, a substance critical to the effective functioning of the brain.
• Support systems
Provide support to the neurons.
oligodendrocyte
a glial cell similar to an astrocyte but with fewer protuberances, concerned with the production of myelin in the central nervous system.
cell overview
- Dendrites receive information
- Collated at cell body
- Transferred by axon to terminal buttons
- There is a gap between the buttons and the dendrites of another neuron, this is the synapse.
signal transfer
- The transfer the signal is not one action but rather a series of shifts.
- In between the gaps of myelin are the nodes of ranvier
speed and propagation of the action potential
determined by:
- dimeter of the axon (bigger=faster)
presence or absence of the myselin sheath. `
myelination
- achieved by the Schwann cells in the PNS and the oligodendrocyte in the CNS.
structural brain changes
cortical changes and white matter changes
cortical changes
- Infancy and early childhood is characterised by a dramatic period of synaptogenesis, following by an adaptive process of cell death and pruning. There is another notable surge of synapse growth just before puberty.
- The strengthening or elimination of synapses is dependent on environmental demands or experience; those that are more often used are strengthened and those that are rarely used are eliminated.
- Overall, grey matter (neuronal cell bodies, dendrites, and glial cells) development follows an inverted-U pattern of growth, first thickening in volume, peaking, and then thinning
white matter changes
• White matter is myelinated axons
• The corpus colosum is white matter.
• White matter increases in a roughly linear pattern throughout childhood, adolescence, and into early adulthood
• However, different brain structures myelinate at different times: myelogenetic cycles
○ Sensory/motor pathways myelinate early
○ Regions mediating higher-order functions myelinate late (e.g. the prefrontal cortex)
prefrontal cortex
- Prefrontal cortex is very susceptible to damage.
- Synaptic density- reaches adult levels in adolescence
- Myelination- thought to be complete in the early 20s
- Therefore there is relatively ‘late’ maturation of the prefrontal cortex
• What are the implications of this?
○ To answer this, we need to know that the PFC does!
functions of the prefrontal cortex
- These are aspects of development that we cant expect to develop in childhood, adolescence or even early childhood.
- ‘Executive’ functions
- Working memory
- Planning and organisation
• Cognitively - in our head - Inhibitory control
• Prepotent- things we want to engage in but need to control oursleves. - Self-monitoring
• On error - Insight and judgement
- Cognitive flexibility
- Selective and sustained attention
• Sustained attention: Concentration- capacity to keep attention even though you re bored.
• Selective attention is paying attention to certain things.
the PFC can help with
These functions can help with:
- Getting and maintaining a job
- Memory and to do so in the presence of other cognitive distractions.
- A shift to less risky behaviour because we now think about the consequences and can inhibit these responses.
• We can now evaluate possible responses to our actions and respond accordingly.
pendulum task
can change the length of the strength, weight of object, height of drop
concrete will change all at one time
formal will consider each individually and change the variables to properly test which will result in the increased speed.
