What is cognition? Cognition is conscious thinking that encompasses the complex “processes that involve perception, knowledge, problem-solving, judgment, language, and memory” (Spielman, Jenkins, & Lovett, 2020, p. 226). Cognition is vitally important to the way humans interact with the world and others. Furthermore, the ability to perceive the world, solve problems, and make sound judgments allows humans to thrive and survive on planet Earth.

In this chapter, readers will investigate Piaget’s theory of cognitive development and explore the specifics of this stage theory. Next, the discussion will also include discovering the major tenets of Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory and Bandura’s Social Cognitive theory, which attempt to explain how humans learn and develop their cognitive skills. Finally, this chapter will review the cognitive trends found in adolescence and adulthood. Let’s dive in!

9.1 Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was one of the most influential cognitive theorists in human development. He was inspired to explore children’s ability to think and reason by watching his own children’s development. He was one of the first to recognize and map out how children’s intelligence differs from that of adults (Piaget, 1929).

Piaget believed that children, even infants, actively try to make sense of their environments. He viewed intelligence, not as knowledge or facts we acquire, but as the processes through which we adapt to our environment. He argued that differences between children and adults are not based on the fact that children know less than adults, but because they think in different ways the adults do. Piaget used the clinical method in which he closely observed individual children in great detail over long periods of time in their natural environment. From these observations, he developed his theory of cognitive development, which posits four qualitatively different stages (Piaget, 1954). You review the four major stages  of his theory on cognitivie development in the table below.

Piaget's Major Stages of Cognitive Development

Adapted from Lally & Valentine-French, 2022

Schema, Assimilation, and Accommodation

In addition to descriptions of different stages, Piaget was also very interested in the processes by which people come to understand the world (and in the process, to understand themselves). He was focused on universal physical properties of environments, like time, space, and causality, which he called logic-mathematical thought. He argued that people make sense of the world by interacting with it. He assumed that all people, even infants, are active, curious, energetic, and intrinsically motivated, and it is through their active attempts to “make things happen” that they learn about natural laws. Piaget saw children as “little scientists” who are constantly exploring the world be continually experimenting with the environment. Piaget held that, as they go, infants and children construct models of how the world works, which are partial, incomplete, and not totally correct. He called these models, schema, which can be thought of as frameworks for organizing information. As we continue interacting with the world, we keep trying out our mental models and eventually encounter experiences that contradict them. These contradictions allow us to revise our models so that they can better account for the interactions we are experiencing. As models are revised, they are more adaptive – meaning that they guide our actions more effectively as we try to reach our goals.

Children develop their models, that is, their schemata, through processes of assimilation and accommodation. When faced with something new, a child may demonstrate assimilation, which is fitting the new information into an existing schema, such as calling all animals with four legs “doggies” because he or she has the concept of doggie. When it becomes clear that the new information no longer fits into the old schema, instead of assimilating the information, the child may demonstrate accommodation, which is expanding the framework of knowledge to accommodate the new situation and thus learning a new concept to name the animal more accurately. For example, recognizing that a horse is different from a zebra means the child has accommodated, and now the child has both a zebra schema and a horse schema. Even as adults we continue to try and “make sense” of new situations by determining whether they fit into our old way of thinking (assimilation) or whether we need to modify our thoughts (accommodation).

Piaget also described a process of organization, in which we combine existing schemes into new and more complex ones. By grouping and re-arranging schemas, and connecting them, we can grow and refine our knowledge structures. Finally, he pointed to the process of disequilibration, where we detect discrepancies or contradictions between the models we are constructing and the experiences we are having in our interactions with the world. These contradictions can produce confusion or frustration, but they are developmentally helpful, because they lead to attempts to readjust actions and models, so they are in better alignment, through a process called equilibration. Disequilibration and equilibration can also be applied to models themselves, as we detect that sub-parts of models contradict each other or are not in alignment. Through processes of equilibration, we can re-organize models so that they are more internally consistent and coherent.

Stage 1 – Sensorimotor Stage

Piaget’s theories revolutionized the way that developmentalists thought about infants. He was one of the first researchers to argue that infants are intelligent and are busily constructing their own understandings of the world through their interactions with the environment. According to the Piagetian perspective, infants learn about the world primarily through their senses and motor abilities (Harris, 2005). These basic motor and sensory abilities provide the foundation for the cognitive skills that will emerge during the subsequent stages of cognitive development. The first stage of cognitive development is referred to as the sensorimotor stage and it occurs through six substages. The table below illustrates the sub-stages of the sensorimotor stage.

Infant Ages for the Six Substages of the Sensorimotor Stage

Adapted from Lally & Valentine-French, 2019

Substage 1: Reflexes

Newborns learn about their world using their reflexes, such as when sucking, reaching, and grasping. Eventually, the use of these reflexes becomes more deliberate and purposeful.

Substage 2: Primary Circular Reactions

During these next 3 months, the infant begins to actively involve his or her own body in some form of repeated activity. An infant may accidentally engage in a behavior and find it interesting such as making a vocalization. This interest motivates the infant to try to do it again and helps the infant learn a new behavior that originally occurred by chance. The behavior is identified as circular because of the repetition, and as primary because it centers on the infant’s own body.

Substage 3: Secondary Circular Reactions

The infant begins to interact with objects in the environment. At first, the infant interacts with objects (e.g., a crib mobile) accidentally, but then these contacts with the objects are deliberate and become a repeated activity. The infant becomes more and more actively engaged in the outside world and takes delight in being able to make things happen. Repeated motion brings particular interest as, for example, the infant can bang two lids together from the cupboard when seated on the kitchen floor.

Substage 4: Coordination of Secondary Circular Reactions

The infant combines these basic reflexes and simple behaviors and uses planning and coordination to achieve a specific goal. Now the infant can engage in behaviors that others perform and anticipate upcoming events. Perhaps because of continued maturation of the prefrontal cortex, the infant becomes capable of having a thought and carrying out a planned, goal-directed activity. For example, an infant sees a toy car under the kitchen table and then crawls, reaches, and grabs the toy. The infant is coordinating both internal and external activities to achieve a planned goal.

Substage 5: Tertiary Circular Reactions

The toddler is considered a “little scientist” and begins exploring the world in a trial-and-error manner, using both motor skills and planning abilities. For example, the child might throw her ball down the stairs to see what happens. The toddler’s active engagement in experimentation helps them learn about their world.

Substage 6: Beginning of Representational Thought

The sensorimotor period ends with the appearance of symbolic or representational thought. The toddler now has a basic understanding that objects can be used as symbols. Additionally, the child can solve problems using mental strategies, to remember something heard days before and repeat it, and to engage in pretend play. This initial movement from a “hands-on” approach to knowing about the world to the more mental world of substage six marks the transition to preoperational thought.

Development of Object Permanence

A critical milestone during the sensorimotor period is the development of object permanence. Object permanence is the understanding that even if something is out of sight, it still exists (Bogartz et al., 2000). According to Piaget, young infants cannot represent objects mentally, so they do not remember them after it has been removed from sight. Piaget studied infants’ reactions when a toy was first shown to them and then hidden under a blanket. Infants who had already developed object permanence would reach for the hidden toy, indicating that they knew it still existed, whereas infants who had not developed object permanence would appear confused. Piaget emphasizes this construct because it is an objective way for children to demonstrate how they mentally represent their world. Children have typically acquired this milestone by 8 months. Once toddlers have mastered object permanence, they enjoy games like hide and seek, and they realize that when someone leaves the room they are still in the world. Toddlers also point to pictures in books and look in appropriate places when you ask them to find objects.

In Piaget’s view, around the same time, children develop object permanence, they also begin to exhibit stranger anxiety, which is a fear of unfamiliar people (Crain, 2005). Babies may demonstrate this by crying and turning away from a stranger, by clinging to a caregiver, or by attempting to reach their arms toward familiar faces, such as parents. Stranger anxiety results when a child is unable to assimilate the stranger into an existing schema; therefore, she cannot predict what her experience with that stranger will be like, which results in a fear response.

Stage 2 – Piaget’s Preoperational Stage

Building on the accomplishments of the first stage of cognitive development, which takes place during infancy and involves sensorimotor regulations, preschoolers enter the second stage of cognitive development, called the preoperational stage, which is organized around symbolic regulations. According to Piaget, this stage occurs from the age of 2 to 7 years. In the preoperational stage, children use symbols to represent words, images, and ideas, which is why children in this stage engage in pretend play and work on building language skills. A child’s arms might become airplane wings as she zooms around the room, or a child with a stick might become a brave knight with a sword. Children also begin to use language in the preoperational stage, but they cannot understand adult logic or mentally manipulate information. The term operational refers to the logical manipulation of information, so children at this stage are considered pre-operational. Children’s logic is based on their knowledge of the world so far, rather than on conventional knowledge.

The preoperational period is divided into two stages:

1. Symbolic function substage – This stage occurs between 2 and 4 years of age and is characterized by gains in symbolic thinking, in which the child can mentally represent an object that is not present, and a dependence on perception in problem-solving.
2. Intuitive thought substage – The stage typically lasts from 4 to 7 years and is marked by greater dependence on intuitive thinking rather than just perception (Thomas, 1979). This implies that children think automatically without using evidence. At this stage, children ask many questions as they attempt to understand the world around them using immature reasoning. Let us examine some of Piaget’s assertions about children’s cognitive abilities at this age.

(1) Symbolic Function Substage (age 2-4 years)

The symbolic function substage, spans roughly from ages 2 to 4, marks a leap in cognitive abilities as children move beyond direct sensory and motor interactions with their environment. During this period, children develop the ability to use symbols, termed symbolic representation or symbolic thought to represent objects, people, and events that are not physically present. As you can see, symbolic representation builds on the cognitive skills demonstrated by object permanence. This newfound capacity for symbolic thought is evident in their growing language skills, where words stand for concepts, and in their imaginative pretend play, where a block might become a car or a blanket transforms into a superhero cape. This symbolic representation is fundamental for the development of more complex cognitive processes.

Pretend Play

Pretending is a favorite activity at this time. A toy has qualities beyond the way it was designed to function and can now be used to stand for a character or object unlike anything originally intended. A teddy bear, for example, can be a baby or the queen of a faraway land. Piaget believed that pretend play helps children practice and solidify new schemata they were developing cognitively. This play, then, reflected changes in their conceptions or thoughts. However, children also learn as they pretend and experiment. Their play does not simply represent what they have learned (Berk, 2007).

Symbolic Representation

In addition to ushering in an era of pretend play, the development of symbolic representation or symbolic thought revolutionizes the way young children think and act. Representational capacities underlie the emergence of language which opens channels of communication with others and provides young children with words and concepts for their inner experiences (like emotion labels). Symbolic capacities also scaffold the development of memory and allow young children to remember and discuss autobiographical events. They become very interested in two-dimensional representations, like photographs and computer screens, and can interact with grandparents and others using these tools.

As seen at the end of the sensorimotor period, toddlers begin to use primitive representations to solve problems in their heads. During the preschool years, cognitive advances allow them to get better and better at trying out strategies mentally before acting. Hence, planning, and problem-solving become central activities. Problem-solving can be used to facilitate physical play (e.g., planning how to build a castle), solve interpersonal conflicts (e.g., two children want the same toy), or figure out how to comfort oneself when one is sad.

Mental representations are also key to the advances in executive function and self-regulation described earlier. When children can hold goals in their minds that are different from the ones that spontaneously emerge, they use representations of what they are supposed to do to modulate or manage what they want to do. Young children show an outpouring of representational activities, including language, pretend play, storytelling, singing, drawing, looking at photos, and discussing the past and present. They love to engage in joint problem-solving and be read to, often asking for the same book or video repeatedly, pouring over and discussing the story, until they can repeat every word.

Despite the many advances that symbolic thought brings to young children, there are still several significant limitations to their thinking, including egocentrism, perceptual salience, and animism. When parents see behaviors typical of the preoperational stage, it is important that they correctly interpret their meaning. Young children are not being hard to get along with. These behaviors are the result of genuine limitations in their cognitive functioning. Young children can understand many ideas and follow rules, but for the best developmental outcomes, adults should temper their expectations and demands so that they are reasonable and explain their thinking using language that is developmentally attuned to children’s current cognitive capacities.

Egocentrism

Egocentrism in early childhood refers to the tendency of young children not to be able to take the perspective of others, and instead, the child thinks that everyone sees, thinks, and feels just as they do. Egocentric children are not able to infer the perspective of other people and instead attribute their perspective to everyone in the situation. For example, ten-year-old Keiko’s birthday is coming up, so her mom takes 3-year-old Kenny to the toy store to choose a present for his sister. He selects an Iron Man action figure for her, thinking that if he likes the toy, his sister will too.

Piaget’s classic experiment on egocentrism involved showing children a three-dimensional model of a mountain and asking them to describe what a doll that is looking at the mountain from a different angle might see (see image on the right). Children tend to choose a picture that represents their own, rather than the doll’s view. By age 7 children are less self-centered. However, even younger children when speaking to others tend to use different sentence structures and vocabulary when addressing a younger child or an older adult. This indicates some awareness of the views of others.

Perceptual Salience

Perceptual salience means that children reason, not based on what they know, but based on what they perceive (ie.g., see and hear) in the present local context. This cognitive limitation is on display every Halloween, when parents dress up, especially if they use masks. For a preoperational child, the mask is so perceptually salient that even if the parent continues to talk and the child can recognize their voice, their experience is overwhelmed by the transformation of the parent’s face, that they react to the masked parent as if they were a stranger. At this age, children’s understanding is halfway between reasoning based on an action of the sensorimotor period and reasoning based on the logic of the concrete operational period. During the preoperational period, reasoning is based on empirical reality, that is, information provided by the senses.

Animism

Animism refers to attributing lifelike qualities to objects. The cup is alive, the chair that falls and hits the child’s ankle is mean, and the toys need to stay home because they are tired. Cartoons frequently show objects that appear alive and take on lifelike qualities. Young children do seem to think that objects that move may be alive, but after age three, they seldom refer to objects as being alive (Berk, 2007).

(2) Intuitive Substage (age 4-7 years)

During the intuitive substage, children begin to move toward logical thinking. They show some signs of logical reasoning but can’t explain how or why they think as they do. This is an age filled with questions, as children begin to make sense of their worlds. Parents should know that children’s ceaseless “why?” questions do not require detailed explanations. They are looking for brief and simple explanations. For example, if children ask, “Why do I have to wear a helmet when I ride a bicycle?” they are not looking for a lecture on legal issues, but just a simple “To keep your head safe.” Likewise, if they come back from a bike ride and say “Well, I didn’t fall down, so now I don’t need to wear a helmet anymore”, you can explain the idea of risk through an everyday example, saying, “You have to wear it every time, because you could fall down.” If you want to try a metaphor, you could explain, ” Your head is like a glass, it could get broken. Does a glass break every time you drop it? No. But does that mean that it’s a good idea to drop it? No. We want to keep your head safe.”

Centration

The primary limitation of thought during the intuitive substage is called centration. Centration means that understanding is dominated (i.e., centered on) a single feature – the most perceptually obvious or salient one. At this age, children cannot hold or coordinate two features of an object at the same time. Piaget demonstrated this aspect of preoperational thought in a series of experiments. They showed that young children do not yet have the logical notion of conservation, which refers to the ability to recognize that aspects like quantity remain the same, even when over transformations in appearance.

Inability to Conserve

Using Kenny and Keiko again, dad gave a slice of pizza to 10-year-old Keiko and another slice to 3-year-old Kenny. Kenny’s pizza slice was cut into five pieces, so Kenny told his sister that he got more pizza than she did. Kenny did not understand that cutting the pizza into smaller pieces did not increase the overall amount. This was because Kenny exhibited centration when he focused on only one characteristic (the number of pieces) to the exclusion of others (total amount). Kenny’s reasoning was based on his five pieces of pizza compared to his sister’s one piece even though the total amount of pizza each had was the same. Keiko was able to consider several characteristics of an object than just one. Because children have not developed this understanding of conservation, they cannot perform mental operations.

The classic Piagetian experiment associated with conservation involves liquid (Crain, 2005). As your can see in the image on the left, the child is shown two glasses that are filled to the same level and asked if they have the same amount (a). Usually, the child agrees they have the same amount. The experimenter then pours the liquid in one glass into a taller and thinner glass (b). The child is again asked if the two glasses have the same amount of liquid (c). The preoperational child will typically say the taller glass now has more liquid because it is taller (as shown on the right side). The child has centrated on the height of the glass and fails to conserve.

Classification Errors

Preoperational children also demonstrate centration when they have difficulty understanding that an object can be classified in more than one way. For example, if shown three white buttons and four black buttons and asked whether there are more black buttons or buttons, the child is likely to respond that there are more black buttons. They focus on the most salient feature (black buttons) and cannot keep in mind the general class of buttons, so they compare black versus white buttons, instead of part versus whole. Because young children lack these general classes, their reasoning is typically transductive, that is, making faulty inferences from one specific example to another. For example, Piaget’s daughter Lucienne stated she had not had her nap, therefore it was not afternoon. She did not understand that afternoons are a time period and her nap was just one of many events that occurred in the afternoon (Crain, 2005). As the child’s capacity to mentally represent and coordinate multiple features improves, the ability to classify objects emerges.

Critique of the Preoperational Stage of Piaget’s Theory

Similar to the critique of the sensorimotor period, several psychologists have attempted to show that Piaget also underestimated the intellectual capabilities of the preoperational child. For example, children’s specific experiences can influence when they are able to conserve. Children of pottery makers in Mexican villages know that reshaping clay does not change the amount of clay at much younger ages than children who do not have similar experiences (Price-Williams et al., 1969). Crain (2005) also showed that under certain conditions preoperational children can think rationally about mathematical and scientific tasks, and they are not always as egocentric as Piaget implied. Research on the theory of mind shows that some children overcome egocentrism by 4 or 5 years of age, which is sooner than Piaget indicated. As with sensorimotor development, Piaget seemed to be right about the exact sequence and the processes involved in cognitive development, as well as when these steps are typically observable under naturalistic conditions. However, current research has provided more accurate estimates of the exact ages when underlying capacities emerge, which could only be revealed by working with children in specific experimental conditions that removed barriers to their performance.

Stage 3 – Concrete Operational Thought

From ages 7 to 11, children are in what Piaget referred to as the concrete operational stage of cognitive development (Crain, 2005). This involves mastering the use of logic in concrete ways. The word concrete refers to that which is tangible; that which can be seen, touched, or experienced directly. The concrete operational child can make use of logical principles in solving problems involving the physical world. For example, the child can understand principles of cause and effect, size, and distance.

The child can use logic to solve problems tied to their own direct experience but has trouble solving hypothetical problems or considering more abstract problems. The child uses inductive reasoning, which is a logical process in which multiple premises believed to be true are combined to obtain a specific conclusion. For example, a child has one rude friend, and another friend who is also rude, and the same is true for a third friend. The child may conclude that friends are rude. We will see that this way of thinking tends to change during adolescence as deductive reasoning emerges. We will now explore three of the major capacities that the concrete operational child exhibits.

Decentration

Concrete operational children no longer focus on only one dimension of any object (such as the height of the glass) and instead can coordinate multiple dimensions simultaneously (such as the width of the glass). (That is, they are no longer limited by centration, which is why this gain is also known by the term “decentration”). Multidimensionality allows children to take multiple perspectives at the same time, to understand part-whole relationships, and to cross-classify objects using multiple features.

Classification

As children’s experiences and vocabularies grow, they build schemata and are able to organize objects in many different ways. They also understand classification hierarchies and can arrange objects into a variety of classes and subclasses.

Identity

One feature of concrete operational thought is the understanding that objects have qualities that do not change even if the object is altered in some way. For instance, the mass of an object does not change by rearranging it. A piece of chalk is still chalk even when the piece is broken in two.

Reversibility

The child learns that some things that have been changed can be returned to their original state. Water can be frozen and then thawed to become liquid again, but eggs cannot be unscrambled. Arithmetic operations are reversible as well: 2 + 3 = 5 and 5 – 3 = 2. Many of these cognitive skills are incorporated into the school’s curriculum through mathematical problems and worksheets about which situations are reversible or irreversible.

Conservation

Remember the example in our last chapter of preoperational children thinking that a tall beaker filled with 8 ounces of water was “more” than a short, wide bowl filled with 8 ounces of water? Concrete operational children can understand the concept of conservation which means that changing one quality (in this example, height or water level) can be compensated for by changes in another quality (width). Consequently, there is the same amount of water in each container, although one is taller and narrower, and the other is shorter and wider.

Seriation

Arranging items along a quantitative dimension, such as length or weight, in a methodical way is now demonstrated by the concrete operational child. For example, they can methodically arrange a series of different-sized sticks in order by length, while younger children approach a similar task in a haphazard way.

In the image on the left is an example of seriation, the shapes are arranged by size from largest to smallest and each row contains the same shapes and colors.

These new cognitive skills increase the child’s understanding of the physical world, however, according to Piaget, they still cannot think in abstract ways. Additionally, they do not think in systematic scientific ways. For example, when asked which variables influence the period that a pendulum takes to complete its arc and given weights they can attach to strings to do experiments, most children younger than 12 perform biased experiments from which no conclusions can be drawn (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958).

Stage 4 – Piaget’s Formal Operational Stage

During the formal operational stage, adolescents can understand abstract principles that have no physical reference. They can now contemplate such abstract constructs as beauty, love, freedom, and morality. The adolescent is no longer limited by what can be directly seen or heard. Additionally, while younger children solve problems through trial and error, adolescents demonstrate hypothetical-deductive reasoning, which is developing hypotheses based on what might logically occur. They can think about all the possibilities in a situation beforehand, and then test them systematically (Crain, 2005). Now they can engage in true scientific thinking.

Formal operational thinking also involves accepting hypothetical situations. Adolescents understand the concept of transitivity, which means that a relationship between two elements is carried over to other elements logically related to the first two, such as if A<B and B<C, then A<C (Thomas, 1979). For example, when asked: If Maria is shorter than Alicia and Alicia is shorter than Caitlyn, who is the shortest? Adolescents can answer the question correctly as they understand the transitivity involved.

Does everyone reach formal operations? 

According to Piaget, most people attain some degree of formal operational thinking but use formal operations primarily in the areas of their strongest interest (Crain, 2005). In fact, most adults do not regularly demonstrate formal operational thought, and in small villages and tribal communities, it is barely used at all. A possible explanation is that an individual’s thinking has not been sufficiently challenged to demonstrate formal operational thought in all areas

Critique of the Sensory Stage of Piaget’s Theory

Piaget thought that children’s ability to understand objects, such as learning that a rattle makes a noise when shaken, was a cognitive skill that develops slowly as a child matures and interacts with the environment. Today, developmental psychologists question the timetables Piaget laid out. Researchers have found that even very young children understand objects and how they work long before they have experience with those objects (Baillargeon, 1987; Baillargeon, Li, Gertner, & Wu, 2011). For example, Piaget believed that infants did not fully master object permanence until substage 5 of the sensorimotor period (Thomas, 1979). However, infants seem to be able to recognize that objects have permanence at much younger ages. Diamond (1985) found that infants show earlier knowledge if the waiting period is shorter. At age 6 months, they retrieved the hidden object if their wait for retrieving the object is no longer than 2 seconds, and at 7 months if the wait is no longer than 4 seconds.

Adolescent Egocentrism

Once adolescents can understand abstract thoughts, they enter a world of hypothetical possibilities and demonstrate egocentrism or a heightened self-focus. The egocentricity comes from attributing unlimited power to their own thoughts (Crain, 2005). Piaget believed it was not until adolescents took on adult roles that they would be able to learn the limits of their own thoughts.

David Elkind (1967) expanded on the concept of Piaget’s adolescent egocentricity. Elkind theorized that the physiological changes that occur during adolescence result in adolescents being primarily concerned with themselves. Additionally, since adolescents fail to differentiate between what others are thinking and their own thoughts, they believe that others are just as fascinated with their behavior and appearance. This belief results in the adolescent anticipating the reactions of others, and consequently constructing an imaginary audience. “The imaginary audience is the adolescent’s belief that those around them are as concerned and focused on their appearance as they themselves are” (Schwartz et al., 2008, p. 441). Elkind thought that the imaginary audience contributed to the self-consciousness that occurs during early adolescence. The desire for privacy and reluctance to share personal information may be a further reaction to feeling under constant observation by others. Alternatively, recent research has indicated that the imaginary audience is not imaginary. Specifically, adolescents and adults feel that they are often under scrutiny by others, especially if they are active on social media (Yau & Reich, 2018).

Another important consequence of adolescent egocentrism is the personal fable or belief that one is unique, special, and invulnerable to harm. Elkind (1967) explains that because adolescents feel so important to others (imaginary audience) they regard themselves and their feelings as being special and unique. Adolescents believe that only they have experienced strong and diverse emotions, and therefore others could never understand how they feel. This is why teens think that their parents do not understand them at all. This uniqueness in one’s emotional experiences reinforces the adolescent’s belief of invulnerability, especially to death. Adolescents will engage in risky behaviors, such as drinking and driving or unprotected sex, and feel they will not suffer any negative consequences. Elkind believed that adolescent egocentricity emerged in early adolescence and declined in middle adolescence, however, recent research has also identified egocentricity in late adolescence (Schwartz, et al., 2008).

Consequences of Formal Operational Thought

As adolescents are now able to think abstractly and hypothetically, they exhibit many new ways of reflecting on information (Dolgin, 2011). For example, they demonstrate greater introspection or thinking about one’s thoughts and feelings. They begin to imagine how the world could be which leads them to become idealistic or insisting upon high standards of behavior. Because of their idealism, they may become critical of others, especially adults in their lives. Additionally, adolescents can demonstrate hypocrisy or pretend to be what they are not. Since they can recognize what others expect of them, they will conform to those expectations for their emotions and behavior seemingly hypocritical to themselves. Lastly, adolescents can exhibit pseudostupidity. This is when they approach problems at a level that is too complex, and they fail because the tasks are too simple. Their new ability to consider alternatives is not completely under control and they appear “stupid” when they are bright, just not experienced.

9.2 Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory of Cognitive Development

Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) was a Russian psychologist who argued that culture has a major impact on a child’s cognitive development. Piaget and Gesell believed development stemmed directly from the child, and although Vygotsky acknowledged intrinsic development, he argued that it is the language, writings, and concepts arising from the culture that elicit the highest level of cognitive thinking (Crain, 2005). He believed that social interactions with adults and more learned peers can facilitate a child’s potential for learning. Without this interpersonal instruction, he believed children’s minds would not advance very far as their knowledge would be based only on their own discoveries.

Zone of Proximal Development and Scaffolding

Vygotsky’s best-known concept is the zone of proximal development (ZPD). Vygotsky stated that children should be taught in the ZPD, which occurs when they can almost perform a task, but not quite on their own without assistance. With the right kind of teaching, however, they can accomplish it successfully. A good teacher identifies a child’s ZPD and helps the child stretch beyond it. Then the adult (teacher) gradually withdraws support until the child can perform the task unaided. Researchers have applied the metaphor of scaffolds (the temporary platforms on which construction workers stand) to this way of teaching. Scaffolding is the temporary support that parents or teachers give a child to do a task.

Private Speech

Do you ever talk to yourself? Why? Chances are, this occurs when you are struggling with a problem, trying to remember something, or feeling very emotional about a situation. Children talk to themselves too. Piaget interpreted this as egocentric speech or speech that is focused on the child and does not include another’s point of view.

Vygotsky, however, believed that children talk to themselves to solve problems or clarify thoughts. As children learn to think in words, they do so aloud before eventually closing their lips and engaging in private speech or inner speech. Thinking out loud eventually becomes thought accompanied by internal speech and talking to oneself becomes a practice only engaged in when we are trying to learn something or remember something. This inner speech is not as elaborate as the speech we use when communicating with others (Vygotsky, 1978).

Contrast with Piaget

Piaget was highly critical of teacher-directed instruction believing that teachers who take control of the child’s learning place the child into a passive role (Crain, 2005). Further, teachers may present abstract ideas without the child’s true understanding, and instead, they just repeat back what they heard. Piaget believed children must be given opportunities to discover concepts on their own. As previously stated, Vygotsky did not believe children could reach a higher cognitive level without instruction from more learned individuals. Who is correct? Both theories certainly contribute to our understanding of how children learn.

9.3 Cognition in Adulthood

Beyond Formal Operational Thought: Postformal Thought 

According to Piaget’s theory, adolescents acquire formal operational thought. The hallmark of this type of thinking is the ability to think abstractly or to consider possibilities and ideas about circumstances never directly experienced. Thinking abstractly is only one characteristic of adult thought, however. If you compare a 15-year-old with someone in their late 30s, you will probably find that the latter considers not only what is possible, but also what is likely. Why the change? The adult has gained experience and understands why possibilities do not always become realities. They learn to base decisions on what is realistic and practical, not idealistic and can make adaptive choices. Adults are also not as influenced by what others think. This advanced type of thinking is referred to as Postformal Thought (Sinnott, 1998).

Dialectical Thought

In addition to moving toward more practical considerations, thinking in early adulthood may also become more flexible and balanced. Abstract ideas that the adolescent believes in firmly may become standards by which the adult evaluates reality. Adolescents tend to think in dichotomies; ideas are true or false; good or bad; and there is no middle ground. However, with experience, the adult comes to recognize that there is some right and some wrong in each position, some good or some bad in a policy or approach, some truth and some falsity in a particular idea. This ability to bring together salient aspects of two opposing viewpoints or positions is referred to as dialectical thought and is considered one of the most advanced aspects of postformal thinking (Basseches, 1984). Such thinking is more realistic because very few positions, ideas, situations, or people are completely right or wrong. So, for example, parents who were considered angels or devils by the adolescent eventually become just people with strengths and weaknesses, endearing qualities, and faults to the adult.

Does everyone reach postformal or even formal operational thought? 

Formal operational thought involves being able to think abstractly; however, this ability does not apply to all situations or all adults. Formal operational thought is influenced by experience and education. Some adults lead lives in which they are not challenged to think abstractly about their world. Many adults do not receive any formal education and are not taught to think abstractly about situations they have never experienced. Further, they are also not exposed to conceptual tools used to formally analyze hypothetical situations. Those who do think abstractly may be able to do so more easily in some subjects than others. For example, psychology majors may be able to think abstractly about psychology but be unable to use abstract reasoning in physics or chemistry. Abstract reasoning in a particular field requires a knowledge base we might not have in all areas. Consequently, our ability to think abstractly often depends on our experiences.

9.4 Cognition in Middle Adulthood

The brain at midlife has been shown to not only maintain many of the abilities of young adults but also gain new ones. Some individuals in middle age have improved cognitive functioning (Phillips, 2011). The brain continues to demonstrate plasticity and rewires itself in middle age based on experiences. Research has demonstrated that older adults use more of their brains than younger adults. In fact, older adults who perform the best on tasks are more likely to demonstrate bi-lateralization than those who perform worst. Additionally, the amount of white matter in the brain, which is responsible for forming connections among neurons, increases into the 50s before it declines.

Emotionally, the middle-aged brain is calmer, less neurotic, more capable of managing emotions, and better able to negotiate social situations (Phillips, 2011). Older adults tend to focus more on positive information and less on negative information than do younger adults. In fact, they also remember positive images better than those younger. Additionally, the older adult’s amygdala responds less to negative stimuli. Lastly, adults in middle adulthood make better financial decisions, a capacity that seems to peak at age 53 and show better economic understanding. Although greater cognitive variability occurs among middle-aged adults when compared to those both younger and older, those in midlife who experience cognitive improvements tend to be more physically, cognitively, and socially active.

Crystalized Versus Fluid Intelligence

Intelligence is influenced by heredity, culture, social contexts, personal choices, and certainly age. One distinction in specific intelligences noted in adulthood is between fluid intelligence, which refers to the capacity to learn new ways of solving problems and performing activities quickly and abstractly, and crystallized intelligence, which refers to the accumulated knowledge of the world we have acquired throughout our lives (Salthouse, 2004). These intelligences are distinct and show different developmental pathways as pictured in Figure 10.22. Fluid intelligence tends to decrease with age (starting in the late 20s to early 30s), whereas crystallized intelligence generally increases all across adulthood (Horn et al., 1981; Salthouse, 2004).

Fluid intelligence, sometimes called the mechanics of intelligence, tends to rely on the perceptual speed of processing, and perceptual speed is one of the primary capacities that shows age-graded declines starting in early adulthood, as seen not only in cognitive tasks but also in athletic performance and other tasks that require speed. In contrast, research demonstrates that crystallized intelligence, also called the pragmatics of intelligence, continues to grow during adulthood, as older adults acquire additional semantic knowledge, vocabulary, and language. As a result, adults generally outperform younger people on tasks where this information is useful, such as measures of history, geography, and even on crossword puzzles (Salthouse, 2004). It is this superior knowledge, combined with a slower and more complete processing style, along with a more sophisticated understanding of the workings of the world around them, that gives older adults the advantage of “wisdom” over the advantages of fluid intelligence which favor the young (Baltes et al., 1999; Scheibe et al., 2009).

These differential changes in crystallized versus fluid intelligence help explain why older adults do not necessarily show poorer performance on tasks that also require experience (i.e., crystallized intelligence), although they show poorer memory overall. A young chess player may think more quickly, for instance, but a more experienced chess player has more knowledge to draw upon.

Seattle Longitudinal Study

The Seattle Longitudinal Study has tracked the cognitive abilities of adults since 1956. Every seven years the current participants are evaluated, and new individuals are also added. Approximately 6000 people have participated thus far, and 26 people from the original group are still in the study today.

Current results demonstrate that middle-aged adults perform better on four out of six cognitive tasks than those same individuals did when they were young adults. Verbal memory, spatial skills, inductive reasoning (generalizing from particular examples), and vocabulary increase with age until one’s 70s (Schaie, 2005; Willis & Shaie, 1999). In contrast, perceptual speed declines starting in early adulthood, and numerical computation shows declines starting in middle and late adulthood (see image on the left).

Cognitive skills in the aging brain have been studied extensively in pilots, and similar to the Seattle Longitudinal Study results, older pilots show declines in processing speed and memory capacity, but their overall performance seems to remain intact. According to Phillips (2011) researchers tested pilots aged 40 to 69 as they performed on flight simulators. Older pilots took longer to learn to use the simulators but subsequently performed better than younger pilots at avoiding collisions.

Tacit knowledge is knowledge that is pragmatic or practical and learned through experience rather than explicitly taught, and it also increases with age (Hedlund et al., 2002). Tacit knowledge might be thought of as “know-how” or “professional instinct.” It is referred to as tacit because it cannot be codified or written down. It does not involve academic knowledge, rather it involves being able to use skills and to problem-solve in practical ways. Tacit knowledge can be seen clearly in the workplace and underlies the steady improvements in job performance documented across age and experience, as seen for example, in the performance of both white- and blue-collar workers, such as carpenters, chefs, and hairdressers.

9.5 Cognition in Late Adulthood

Attention changes in sensory functioning and speed of processing information in late adulthood often translate into changes in attention (Jefferies et al., 2015). Research has shown that older adults are less able to selectively focus on information while ignoring distractors (Jefferies et al., 2015; Wascher et al., 2012), although Jefferies and her colleagues found that when given double time, older adults could perform at the same level as young adults. Other studies have also found that older adults have greater difficulty shifting their attention between objects or locations (Tales et al., 2002).

Consider the implication of these attentional changes for older adults. How does maintenance or loss of cognitive ability affect older adults’ everyday lives? Researchers have studied cognition in the context of several different everyday activities. One example is driving. Although older adults often have more years of driving experience, cognitive declines related to reaction time or attentional processes may pose limitations under certain circumstances (Park & Gutchess, 2000). In contrast, research on interpersonal problem-solving suggests that older adults use more effective strategies than younger adults to navigate through social and emotional problems (Blanchard-Fields, 2007). In the context of work, researchers rarely find that older individuals perform more poorly on the job (Park & Gutchess, 2000). Similar to everyday problem-solving, older workers may develop more efficient strategies and rely on expertise to compensate for cognitive declines.

Problem-Solving

Declines with age are found on problem-solving tasks that require processing non-meaningful information quickly– a kind of task that might be part of a laboratory experiment on mental processes. However, many real-life challenges facing older adults do not rely on speed of processing or making choices on one’s own. Older adults resolve everyday problems by relying on input from others, such as family and friends. They are also less likely than younger adults to delay making decisions on important matters, such as medical care (Strough et al., 2003; Meegan & Berg, 2002).

What might explain these deficits as we age?

The processing speed theory, proposed by Salthouse (1996, 2004), suggests that as the nervous system slows with advanced age our ability to process information declines. This slowing of processing speed may explain age differences in a variety of cognitive tasks. For instance, as we age, working memory becomes less efficient (Craik & Bialystok, 2006). Older adults also need longer time to complete mental tasks or make decisions. Yet, when given sufficient time (to compensate for declines in speed), older adults perform as competently as do young adults (Salthouse, 1996). Thus, when speed is not imperative to the task, healthy older adults generally do not show cognitive decline.

In contrast, inhibition theory argues that older adults have difficulty with tasks that require inhibitory functioning, or the ability to focus on certain information while suppressing attention to less pertinent information (Hasher & Zacks, 1988). Evidence comes from directed forgetting research. In directed forgetting people are asked to forget or ignore some information, but not other information. For example, you might be asked to memorize a list of words but are then told that the researcher made a mistake and gave you the wrong list and asks you to “forget” this list. You are then given a second list to memorize. While most people do well at forgetting the first list, older adults are more likely to recall more words from the “directed-to-forget” list than are younger adults (Andrés et al., 2004).

While there are information processing losses in late adulthood, many argue that research exaggerates normative losses in cognitive functioning during old age (Garrett, 2015). One explanation is that the type of tasks that people are tested on tend to be meaningless. For example, older individuals are not motivated to remember a random list of words in a study, but they are motivated for more meaningful material related to their life, and consequently perform better on those tests. Another reason is that researchers often estimate age declines from age differences found in cross-sectional studies. However, when age comparisons are conducted longitudinally (thus removing cohort differences from age comparisons), the extent of loss is much smaller (Schaie, 1994).

A third possibility is that losses may be due to the disuse of various skills. When older adults are given structured opportunities to practice skills, they perform as well as they had previously. Although diminished speed is especially noteworthy during late adulthood, Schaie (1994) found that when the effects of speed are statistically removed, fewer and smaller declines are found in other aspects of an individual’s cognitive performance. In fact, Salthouse and Babcock (1991) demonstrated that processing speed accounted for all but 1% of age-related differences in working memory when testing individuals from ages 18 to 82. Finally, it is well established that hearing and vision decline as we age. Longitudinal research has found that deficits in sensory functioning explain age differences in a variety of cognitive abilities (Baltes & Lindenberger, 1997). Not surprisingly, more years of education, higher income, and better health care (which go together) are associated with higher levels of cognitive performance and slower cognitive decline (Zahodne et al., 2015).

Finally, it is well established that hearing and vision decline as we age. Longitudinal research has found that deficits in sensory functioning explain age differences in a variety of cognitive abilities (Baltes & Lindenberger, 1997). Not surprisingly, more years of education, higher income, and better health care (which go together) are associated with higher levels of cognitive performance and slower cognitive decline (Zahodne et al., 2015).