Chapter 4 Flashcards
what are the five cognitive theoretical perspectives
piaget’s theory
information processing theory
core knowledge theories
sociocultural theories
dynamic systems theories
three main beliefs/ key premises of piaget’s theory
constructivism
child as scientist
intrinsic motivation
what does child as scientist mean
kids are like scientists and experimenters, when they explore the world, they generate hypotheses about what will happen. they draw conclusions from observations and learn as they go
what does intrinsic motivation mean
kids are naturally curious and want to learn
equilibration according to Piaget
when we start to learn new things, we seek out equilibrium and balance between old and new info through assimilation and accomodation
what is assimilation
trying to make sense of new info by fitting it into what we already know
The process by which people incorporate incoming information into concepts they already understand
What are the three broader advantages of knowing about developmental theories?
- Provide a framework for understanding important phenomena
- Raise crucial questions about human nature
- Lead to a better understanding of children
What characterizes Piaget’s theory of cognitive development?
It depicts children as actively constructing knowledge for themselves to their experience through assimilation and accommodation
What are the two processes by which children learn according to Piaget?
- Assimilation
- Accommodation
What is equilibration in Piaget’s theory?
The process by which people balance assimilation and accommodation to create stable understanding
being satisfied with with an understanding or definition
What are the three sources of continuity in Piaget’s theory?
- Assimilation
- Accommodation
- Equilibration
What are the four sources of discontinuity in Piaget’s theory?
Qualitative change. Piaget believed that children of different ages think in qualitatively different ways
Broad applicability. The type of thinking characteristic of each stage influences children’s thinking across diverse topics and contexts.
Brief transitions. Before entering a new stage, children pass through a brief transitional period in which they fluctuate between the type of thinking characteristic of the new, more advanced stage and the type of thinking characteristic of the old, less advanced one.
Invariant sequence. Everyone progresses through the stages in the same order without skipping any of them.
What is accommodation?
The process by which people improve their current understanding in response to new experiences
replace old knowledge with new knowledge
What is the main focus of Piaget’s theory regarding child development?
Both continuities and discontinuities in cognitive development
according to PIaget, what two things interact to produce cognitive development?
nature and nurture
a vital part of children’s nature is how they respond to nurture.
In his view, nurture includes not just the nurturing provided by parents and other caregivers but every experience children encounter. Nature includes children’s maturing brain and body; their ability to perceive, act, and learn from experience; and their tendency to integrate particular observations into coherent knowledge.
What are the four broad stages of cognitive development according to Piaget?
- Sensorimotor stage (birth to age 2)
- Preoperational stage (ages 2 to 7)
- Concrete operational stage (ages 7 to 12)
- Formal operational stage (age 12 and beyond)
What is the sensorimotor stage characterized by?
Infants’ intelligence expressed through motor interactions with the environment
what sensoimotor intelligence develops in the sensorimotor stage
During this period, infants gain an understanding of concepts such as object permanence and become capable of deferred imitation. In the last half year of the sensorimotor stage (ages 18 to 24 months), according to Piaget, infants become able to form enduring mental representations. The first sign of this new capability is deferred imitation
What is deferred imitation?
The repetition of other people’s behavior minutes, hours, or even days after it occurred
What cognitive limitation is characteristic of the preoperational stage?
Egocentrism and centration, so they struggle to solve many problems
what do children learn to do in the preoperational stage
Children become able to represent their experiences in language, mental imagery, and thought
What is centration?
Focusing on a single, perceptually striking feature of an object to the exclusion of other relevant features
What does the conservation concept entail?
Changing the appearance or arrangement of objects does not change other key properties, such as quantity
(ex: pouring water in cups)
What cognitive abilities do children develop in the concrete operational stage?
Reasoning logically about concrete objects and events
what do children struggle to do in the concrete operational stage?
They will have difficulty reasoning in purely abstract terms and in succeeding on tasks requiring hypothetical thinking, such as the pendulum problem.
What characterizes the formal operational stage?
Ability to think systematically and reason about hypothetical situations
can think abstractly and about hypothetical situations
able to draw conclusions that differ from prior beliefs, can image and think forward, can accommodate and see other points of view
True or False: Piaget believed that not all adolescents reach the formal operational stage.
True
What are four weaknesses of Piaget’s theory?
- Vaguely describes mechanisms of thinking
- Underestimates young children’s cognitive competence
- Understates social contributions to cognitive development
- Depicts children’s thinking as more consistent than it is
What do information-processing theories emphasize?
Precise characterizations of the mechanisms that give rise to children’s thinking and that produce cognitive growth
focus on the specific mental processes that underlie children’s thinking: they pursue goals, encounter limitations, and devise strategies to overcome limitations and achieve their goals
What are the components of the memory system according to information-processing theories?
- Working memory
- Long-term memory
- Executive functioning
What is working memory?
A system for actively attending to, gathering, maintaining, briefly storing, and processing information
What is long-term memory?
The enduring knowledge accumulated over a lifetime
What is executive functioning?
Crucial for inhibiting inadvisable actions and enhancing working memory
List the basic cognitive processes important for infants.
- Association
- Recognition
- Recall
- Generalization
- Encoding
what does acquiring of strategies and content knowledge enhance?
learning, memory, and problem solving beyond the level that basic processes alone could provide.
what are two important contributors to problem solving
the development of planning and encoding.
What is selective attention?
The process of intentionally focusing on the information that is most relevant to the current goal
What is overlapping waves theory?
Characterizes development of problem solving as involving acquisition of new strategies and increasingly efficient execution of existing strategies
why is planning difficult for children?
Planning requires inhibiting the desire to solve the problem immediately in favour of first trying to choose the best strategy.
A second reason why planning is difficult for young children is that they tend to be overly optimistic about their capabilities, believing they can solve problems without planning.
In the information-processing view, cognitive development arises from…
…children gradually surmounting their processing limitations, in particular their limited working memory capacity, processing speed, and knowledge of useful strategies and content.
What do core-knowledge theories focus on?
Early knowledge and skills in areas thought to be of evolutionary importance (Nature)
What is nativism in the context of core-knowledge theories?
The belief that infants are born with substantial knowledge of evolutionarily important domains
core knowledge at the root
already have brain pathway second nature to identify things, don’t need to be taught
What are the four core-knowledge systems proposed by Elizabeth Spelke?
- Understanding inanimate objects and their mechanical interactions
- Understanding the minds of people and animals
- Representing numbers
- Representing spatial layouts and geometric relations
What is core-knowledge constructivism?
The idea that children generate advanced theories by combining innate knowledge with learning experiences
children constructing knowledge for themselves in response to environment around them
believed children will learn naturally by exploring their environment
nature, not nurture, active child
no need for formal teaching
True or False: Core-knowledge theorists view children as passive learners.
False
What do core-knowledge theorists believe about children’s initial knowledge?
It is rudimentary and evolves through specific learning experiences
The basic understandings proposed by core-knowledge theorists are assumed to be
domain specific, that is, limited to a particular area.
What characteristics do children’s naive theories share with formal scientific theories?
- Identify fundamental units for categorizing objects
- Explain phenomena with fundamental principles
- Explain events in terms of unobservable causes
how do young children actively organize their knowledge
young children actively organize their understanding of the most important domains into informal theories
What categories do infants and young children divide all objects into?
- People
- Other animals
- Nonliving things
What do sociocultural theories emphasize in cognitive development?
Interactions with other people and products of their culture
What are two distinct features of information-processing theories?
Precise specification of complex processes involved in children’s thinking
emphasis on thinking as a process that occurs over time.
How do information-processing theorists view cognitive development? (continuous/discontinuous)
As occurring continuously, in small increments
sociocultural theorists have focused on how _____ moulds development
the social world
why do sociocultural theorists view humans as differing from other animals
due to their propensity to teach and their ability to learn from teaching.
What is guided participation in sociocultural research?
A process where more knowledgeable individuals help less knowledgeable people perform activities at a higher level
What is social scaffolding?
a process through which adults and others with greater expertise organize the physical and social environment to help children learn
What three phases in the growth of children’s ability to regulate their own
did Vygotsky describe?
- Children’s behaviour is initially controlled by others’ statements
- Then by their own private speech
- Finally by internalized private speech (thought), wehere they silently tell themselves what to do
the transition between the second and third phases often involves whispers or silent lip movements
What is intersubjectivity in sociocultural theories?
The mutual understanding that people share during communication
What is joint attention in the context of sociocultural learning?
A process where infants and social partners focus intentionally on a common referent in the external environment
What do dynamic-systems theories highlight about children’s thinking?
The variability of children’s thinking, even from moment to moment
How do dynamic-systems theories view change in development?
As the one constant, with no period of stability. these theories propose that there is no period in which substantial change is not occurring.
what do Dynamic-systems theories view each person as
a unified system that, in order to meet goals, integrates perception, action, categorization, motivation, memory, language, and knowledge of the physical and social worlds.
potent motivators for development
observing other people, imitating their actions, and attracting their attention
What is soft assembly in dynamic-systems theories?
A process where components integrate to adapt to a continuously changing environment
What influences children’s selection among alternative approaches to problem-solving?
- Relative success of each approach
- Efficiency of the approach
- Novelty of trying something new
True or False: Dynamic-systems theories propose that development is governed by rigid stages.
False
What is the role of thought and action in dynamic-systems theories?
Thought shapes action, but action also shapes thought
What do dynamic-systems theories propose about cognitive development?
It is a self-organizing process that integrates attention, memory, emotions, and actions
at all points in development, thought and action change from moment to moment in response to the current situation
Fill in the blank: Dynamic-systems theories view development as a process of _______.
[self-organization]
and of constant change
Piaget
main metaphor for child
main themes
main change mechanisms
child as scientist
nature/nurture
continuity/discontinuity
active child
assimilation
accommodation
equilibration
information processing
main metaphor for child
main themes
main change mechanisms
child as active problem solver
nature/nurture
how change occurs (continuous)
basic processes
strategies
content
knowledge
sociocultural
main metaphor for child
main themes
main change mechanisms
child as social learner
nature/nurture
sociocultural context
how change occurs
intersubjectivity
guided participation
joint attention
core knowledge
main metaphor for child
main themes
main change mechanisms
child as well adapted product of evolution
nature/nurture (nature)
continuity/discontinuity
domain specificity
innate knowledge
theories
dynamic systems
main metaphor for child
main themes
main change mechanisms
child as self organizing system
nature/nurture (nurture)
active child
internal motivation to learn
actions in and on environment
sensorimotor new ways of knowing
Infants know the world through their senses and through their actions. For example, they learn what dogs look like and what petting them feels like.
preoperational new ways of knowing
Toddlers and young children acquire the ability to internally represent the world through language and mental imagery. They also begin to see the world from other people’s perspectives, not just from their own.
concrete operational new ways of knowing
Children become able to think logically, not just intuitively. They now can understand that events are often influenced by multiple factors, not just one.
formal operational new ways of knowing
Adolescents can think systematically and reason about what might be, as well as what is. This allows them to understand politics, ethics, and science fiction about alternative political and ethical systems, as well as to engage in scientific reasoning.
what is disequilibrium
definition no longer fits, something missing/error
three equilibrium stages
equilibrium
disequilibrium
advanced equilibrium
what is advanced equilibrium
creation of new, better definition, more sophisticated
common error in sensorimotor stage
A-not-B error
symbolic representation (preoperational stage)
using one object to represent another (ex: banana phone)
according to piaget, what stage do kids start to think about the future? (but still literally)
concrete operational stage
do the information processing theories see cognitive development as continuous or discontinuous
continuous
think kids will learn and grow gradually
according to the information processing theories, how do children arrive at solutions or way of thinking
identify goals
remember prior knowledge
consider potential solutions
think about obstacles (more for older kids)
domain specificity in the context of core knowledge theories
kids are born with both broad general abilities and specific domains that are key to evolution and human survival
core knowledge theories: two schools of thought for how cognitive development occurs
nativism
constructivism
who founded the sociocultural theories
Vygotsky
according to sociocultural theories, how does cognitive development occur?
guided participation
social scaffolding
cultural tools
intersubjectivity
social scaffolding: three levels of difficulty for tasks and the ideal level for social scaffolding
out of reach zone : can’t do task, even with guidance (anxiety zone)
zone of proximal development (ZPD): can do tasks with guidance (learning zone)
zone of actual/achieved development (ZAD): can do tasks on their own (comfort zone)
ideal: zone of proximal development
key premises of dynamic systems theories
constant change (always learning and changing)
child as part of well integrated system
internal motivation
action focused (thinking shapes actions, actions shape thinking)
in the dynamic systems theories, how does cognitive development occur?
self organization (soft assembly)
mechanisms of change (variation/ different strategies to achieve same goal, selection)
