Chapter 4 Flashcards
cognitive development
development of perception, attention, language, problem-solving, reasoning, memory, and conceptual understanding
social development
development of emotions, personality, family and peer relationships, self-understanding, and moral understanding
theories/approaches/frameworks to cognitive development
- Piagetian theory
- information processing theory
- sociocultural theory
- dynamic systems theory
- core-knowledge theory
Piagetian theory
- Constructivist theory (Emphasizes “active child” theme) - child is motivated to learn and doesn’t need rewards to do so
- Saw children as generating hypotheses, performing experiments, and drawing conclusions
- His Stage theory represents a discontinuous model
4 stages in Piagetian theory
- sensorimotor stage
- preoperational stage
- concrete operational stage
- formal operational stage
Sensorimotor stage
- Birth to Age 2 Years
- Accomplishment: increases in their ability to hold mental representations (Ex. Objects permanence and deferred imitation)
deferred imitation
the repetition of other’s peoples’ behaviour after a delay (ex. Putting on makeup when mom isn’t around); occurs around 18-24 months, evidence of persistent mental representation)
preoperational stage
- ages 2 to 7
- Accomplishment: symbolic representation – the ability to see one thing to stand for another (Ex. Pretend play (ex. using a banana as a phone), language acquisition, scale models used to test symbolic representation
- Limitations: Centration – centering attention on only one aspect of an event or problem, even when multiple aspects are important (Ex. Balance scale problem, conservation errors (ex. Which cup has more/less juice); Egocentrism – limited in their ability to take someone else’s perspective (Ex. The 3 mountain task (can your doll see the owl?), one-sided conversations)
concrete operational stage
- Ages 7 to 12
- Accomplishment: can reason logically about concrete objects and events -> understand conservation
- Limitation: have difficulty with some abstract concepts and hypotheticals; difficulty reasoning systematically (ex. Pendulum problem)
formal operations stage
- Accomplishments: begin to think abstractly and hypothetically, now capable of systematic and scientific reasoning
- Unlike the other stages, Piaget believed that
some adults never reach this stage.
3 processes (Piaget)
- Assimilation: translate new info into a form you
already have/understand (ex. seeing a dalmation and knowing it’s a dog) - Accommodation: When this new info doesn’t fit
you need to restructure your “conceptions” (ex. Seeing a wolf and being able to use accommodation to understand that it doesn’t fit into the concept of dog) - Equilibration: balancing assimilation and
accommodation to create stable understanding (When satisfied with understanding -> equilibrium. When you encounter new information that makes you realize your understanding is inadequate -> disequilibrium. This forces you to develop a more sophisticated understanding in order to return to equilibrium)
strengths and weaknesses of Piagetian theory
- Strengths: good overview of children’s thinking as different points; appealing due to its breadth and fascinating observations
- Weaknesses/criticisms: stage model depicts children’s thinking as being more consistent than it is; children are more cognitively competent than Piaget recognized; understands contribution of the social world; vague about cognitive processes/mechanisms that produce
cognitive growth
information processing theory
- View children as undergoing continuous cognitive change
- Describe how cognitive change occurs
- Mostly concerned with development of learning, memory, and problem-solving
- View children as little problem solvers
- speed of processing increases with age (both experience AND brain maturation [ex. myelination] play a role in changes in information processing)
Why don’t children plan?
- Inhibition is difficult (eg. Frontal lobe development)
- Young children are overoptimistic
- Sometimes plans fail; high failure rate leads to belief planning is “not worth the effort”
3 kinds of processes (Information processing)
- basic processes
- use of strategies
- content knowledge
basic processes
fundamental, unlearned aspects of human cognition (ex. Associating, encoding, recognizing, recalling, generalizing)