Cognitive Theory
Created | Updated Mar 30, 2002
The Human
Computer - or - The Whole Enchilada
On
Child Egocentrism (Phillips 1969)
Phillips: "Do you have a
brother?"
Child: "Yes."
Phillips: "What's his name?"
Child: "Jim"
Phillips: "Does Jim have a
brother?"
Child: "No."
The
newest of the theories, this idea tries to do it all. It takes
cognition, or overall thinking, and turns it into the most
important acting force in personality.
The
cognitive theory prides itself on taking into consideration all
parts of the mind - thinking, knowing, memorizing, and
communicating - and how they work together. In this sense, they
see the mind as a computer, hardware and software interacting to
form the personality. This perspective also points to general
learning and how it is handled, rather than individual
experience, as the main factor in shaping the personality. It
sees the mind as a set out frame waiting to be filled, rather
than one shaped by experience. It is most like the behavioural
view, but has humanised it by including the idea of individual
thinking, personal reward, anticipated reinforcment, and social
relationships. In this way it provides an empirical perspective
while taking into consideration the fact that humans
are...well...human.
Furthermore,
the cognitive theory is the only one to clearly state that a
person's behaviour is certainly shaped by surroundings, not only
internal drives. What one would do surrounded by peers is
completely different from what the same person would do in a
strange setting.
Developed
by Julian Rotter, this theory is usually used in studying child
development, therefore the most well-known cognitive therapist
isn't Rotter, but developmental psychologist Jean Piaget (pee-ah-zhay).
He is most known for his four stages of cognitive development,
and his ability to prove that children aren't just adults who
know less; they actually think differently. Piaget's stages of
cognitive devlopment are:
| Typical Age Range | Description of Stage | Developmental Phenomena |
| Birth to 2 Years | Sensorimotor Learn about the world through feeling, touching, tasting, etc. | Object permanence Distinguishing strangers from friends |
| 2 to 6 Years | Preoperational Being able to communicate using words and images, but lacking basic logic and reasoning skills. Believe that what they see is exactly what others see. | Acting out roles of adults |
| 7 to 11 Years | Concrete Operational Able to think logically about actual events, able to reverse arithmetic operations, understand matter conservation | Mathmatecal transformations Conservation |
| 12 to Adulthood + | Formal Operational Abstract reasoning, "if I were" situational thinking | Moral reasoning |
This theory is the most
widely accepted, 49% of psychologists operate under some form of
this perspective.
