right so next we have cognitive theory and this theory is the third of the three grand theories and uh it comes as a kind of a bridge between the psychoanalytic theory which proposes that we are driven by our unconscious mind and impulses and desires and the behaviors theory which proposes that our actions are a result of a conditioning process that we were subjected to so the cognitive theory kind of believes that there between the impulse and the action comes a thought process and we ought to focus on how people think because our thoughts shape our behavior the founder of the cognitive theory and the one that is perhaps considered the the the greatest developmental psychologist of all time is um john piaget who was a swiss scientist that was trained in biology and was hired by french institute to kind of translate the english version of the standardized iq test into a french one so he interviewed many school children and listened to their answers and what intrigued him the most was not whether the child got the right answer or the wrong answer but the reasoning behind the wrong answers so that kind of moved him into experimenting or examining how children think so when he proposed this crazy idea that um children um think uh from day one are actively thinking about their environment from day one and that they are not just uh you know born as you know a lump that just eats and drink and poops and uh sleeps um it was a revolutionary idea uh at the time and he he really did believe that children are born with a mental structure that is craving learning and that we build that structure as the child is exposed to their environment and improves their cognitive abilities the more they are interacting with their environment the three basic components to piaget's cognitive theory are schemas adaptation and the stages of cognitive development so let's look at schemas and what he means by that so as i said children are born according to piaget with basic uh structure that gets improved as they progress and that improvement happens uh through experimentation and exploration of the environment so the more they are confronted with dilemmas and experiences and conflicts the the more they try to resolve that conflict and this is what he called schemas so schemas are basically mental models of uh the world around the child and the more we increase the exposure the more experience we expose the child to the better the maps are the more maps the more files they have in their brain so in your brain for example you've already developed a schema for how to react in a certain situation or how to um conduct a transaction at a store or how does a dog look like so you already have a mental picture of a scenario because you were exposed to it the more you are exposed the better your knowledge base becomes the more you build on that knowledge when you are faced in a new experience or a new idea uh psja said that you are confronted with a state of disequilibrium equal equilibrium here means that you are living in a state of mental balance everything is is kind of sorted out in into the right file folder and uh you have a schema or a map or a way to answer every question that you're thinking of but then when you have a new idea or a new experience um you are in a state of uh confusion um you don't know how to react how to where to put this what to make of it and therefore you start to either um assimilate that into a pre constructed schema or accommodate it by developing kind of a new schema or a new structure or a new file folder for it so through the process of adaptation we resolve the state of this equilibrium that is created because of our new experience and we get back on the high road of new equilibrium now of course if we do not expose the child to new experiences then not much learning is going to take place because the brain is not involved in any state of adaptation so the more we experience the more we expose the child to experiences and [Music] objects and ideas and surroundings the better we develop their cognitive ability throughout this process piaget again went back to what the psychoanalytic theory proposed and that is that we learn through stages so ages and stages is another concept that is similar in the cognitive theory to that of the psychoanalytic theory um behaviorism uh was uh so far the only one that said that um no we we learn uh bit by bit it's a continuum it's not uh you know it's not stages or blocks that we move from one into the other so according to piaget in the first stage of cognitive development we are relying on our senses uh and this is how we learn about our environment we you know children at this stage they're putting things into their mouth they're touching uh so the uh the sensory motor reliance on senses is how they gain understanding of their world and their surrounding the next stage they become a little bit more independent and mobile so this is the stage of the pre-operational uh thinking and we we grow our intellect in this stage through the understanding of symbolic representation so now we can start to uh understand that the word cup stands for this object that looks like this and we can improve on our language as the the ultimate symbolic uh example and we also see the world at the stage from more of an egocentric mind so we are thinking of things from our perspective because we are not uh cognitively there yet to understand it from somebody else's perspective so we really rely on our own uh thoughts and our own [Music] concepts and perspectives uh in order to figure out why things happen around us and um during this stage we're also uh very much involved in uh pretend play this is why symbolic thinking um can take on the the uh the shape of you know pretending to be a princess or pretending to be a superhero so we engage in those uh um actions in order for us to understand our environment the next stage is a higher level of cognitive development now we're in the concrete operational stage and this is where children are going to start to apply logic their thinking is uh limited um by direct experience so we'd like to experiment this is the you know think of it as the uh elementary school years this is when we really like to see [Music] something done in front of us in order to believe that it could happen so you know experiencing how adding two things together can produce a third or how um you know the laws of physics uh apply is something exciting for our uh mind because we can actually understand the process [Music] the next stage and perhaps this is according to piaget uh the final stage of intellect this is the formal operational stage this is where we go beyond logic into uh being able to hypothesize about uh different scenarios what if uh so it doesn't have to be concrete it doesn't have to be well if i asked you if you were to have uh three hands uh what would you do with the third hand or where would you put the third hand if you're in the concrete operational you probably tell me that it's somewhere around uh you know the other hands area but uh if you are in the form of operational uh stage you can actually hypothesize and and think well you know um i can maybe put it on my foot uh so those um novel ideas come from the ability cognitively to hypothesize and think beyond kind of outside the box uh if you may um i've attached a video that goes through those stages in a little bit more detail so make sure that you uh watch that and we will as i mentioned before for all the theories explore uh all these stages and all these theories again and again as we progress throughout the semester um an extension of the um cognitive theory is and i said those three main theories that we talked about psychoanalytic and behaviorism and cognition and cognitive theory are the framework the basis that's why they're called grand theories uh that later on there were a lot of newer versions of them and new theorists came about that talked more about the basics but then with a little bit of more insight more extension in this case the behaviorist [Music] sorry the cognitive theory got expanded because we gained more insight into what happens in inside the brain due to uh technology so we were able to actually gain a better understanding of the thought process when we were able to use you know mris and fmri to see what happens between the the onset of a stimulus and an action so that thought process in the brain what is happening is uh a new insight that we gained and and the the basis behind the information processing theory so the information processing theory proposes that the brain is is the human brain is similar in a way to that of a computer both of them uh start with the concept of an input for a human we use our sensation to get the input into our brain so we touch things we see things we taste things we hear things and then we take it to the processor and the processor in the computer is where things get kind of translated similarly our processor is our brain and our brain processes those uh sensory inputs and then produces an outcome or a [Music] analysis of a a data comes out in a sheet form from the computer so that printout or that let's say return on my search uh in the computer gives me the output and in the case of a human being the output is the action so i might smell something i take it to my brain my brain processes that as a a smell that i really do not like or it's a foul smell so my reaction would be to either move away or close my nose so this loop of feeding processing and then output is similar in a way to the way the computer analyzes information and produces output