Chapter 4: The Emergence of Thought and Language Flashcards
What are Piaget’s schemes, assimilation, and accommodation?
Because children are curious the learn from their environment by creating schemes–psychological structures to organize experience–based on events, objects and knowledge. These schemes are used throughout development. Children assimilate new experiences into existing schemes and accommodates (modifies) schemes when new experiences do not fit old
What are Piaget’s periods of cognitive development?
Approximate
- Sensorimotor: infancy (0-2yrs)
- Preoperational: preschool & early elementary school years (2-7yrs)
- Concrete operational period: Middle and late elementary school years (7-11yrs)
- Formal operational period: adolescence & adulthood (11+yrs)
What are the aspects of sensorimotor development?
1) adapting to and exploring the environment, the infant lives by reflexes then recreates sensations with initiation, then deliberate, the intentional behavior (means to an end), then becomes active experimenters and learning
2) learning object permanence: exist independent of thoughts and actions
3) talk/gestures as symbols and play: understand consequences of actions
What are the characteristics of thinking in preoperational phase?
1) Egocentrism: believing their point of view is the only POV also animism: animating inanimate objects
2) Centration “tunnel vision”: focusing on one aspect of problem and ignoring all others
3) Appearance as reality: appearance shows what object really like
What are Piaget’s strengths?
Implications for cognitive growth: best when child discovers for themselves, must be able to interpret (discover slightly ahead of current level) and allow children to discover own errors and inconsistencies
What are Piaget’s weaknesses?
Underestimates infant and young children competence and overestimates adolescents (young more rapid), vague key aspects (accommodation/assimilation) cannot be scientifically tested not allows for variation (more sophisticated in some areas and more naive in others) and under values sociocultural influences (not lone scientist)
What is the basis of the information processing?
People have mental hardware–mental and neural structures that are built and allow the mind to operate–and mental software–mental “programs”–the basis for performing particular tasks and combination allow for particular tasks and becomes more complex with development
What is the infancy and childhood aspects of information processing?
1) Attention: what requires additional processing. Orientating response: startle reflex - fix eyes and change in HR and brin activity or Habituation: diminished response as stimulus becomes more familiar and both useful infants, children can learn to focus attention helped by play and programs
2) Learning: classical conditioning - stimulus and response, operant conditioning (consequences), imitation
3) Memory: infants can remember four days or weeks, can forget, and can recall with stimulus. Autobiographical memory of events and experiences of own life, children not certain where information came from–will think own memory.
- Counting shows learning in memory: infants understand 1-3 specifically, more than four in groups. three years understand one-to-one (# & object), stable-order (same progression), cardinality (last # = # of objects), older count more and more
What is the zone of proximal development?
The difference between what a child can do on their own and what they can do with help/guidance (comes from Vygotsky’s basic principle- development first social setting then under child’s independent control)
- Scaffolding: enough assistance to match learner’s needs (not everything, little by little)
- Private speech: adults coach self with thoughts, children speak through it.
