Chapter 6 - Piaget - Vygotsky Flashcards
What are the 3 things researchers want to know about cognitive development of children?
- Chart typical course- do children all change the same or different?
- Individual differences- thought and maturity
- Mechanisms of cog dev - Genetic and environmental factors that combine to produce changes
What type of approach does Piaget’s theory take? What does he emphasize?
Constructivist Approach - children construct their own knowledge through discovery.
He emphasizes Biology.
What is the general theory of development?
All aspects of cog development is integrated and combined, work together
What are the 4 stages of Piaget’s theory?
Do they occur in any order?
Is it universal or culture specific?
What happens as children move through these stages?
- Sensorimotor (to 2 years)
- Pre-Operational
- Concrete
- Formal Operational
This all occurs in fixed order with no skipping.
The changes are universal.
Children become more abstract, as they move through the stages.
What can influence how children move through Piaget’s stages?
Individual diff. like genetic and environment affects the SPEED of how the children move.
According to Piaget, what is Schemes? When do schemes truly reach equilibrium?
Schemes are structures of the mind to make sense of experiences by relating events.
When schemes become part of a structure that can be applied to the surrounding world.
What is Adaptation? Give an example.
Building schemes through direct interaction with the environment.
ex) Child repeats an action that produces an interesting affect, like Eben dropping his toy at the table.
Assimilation? Example?
Use of current schemas to interpret current world.
ex) Child looks at an orange and thinks it’s a ball or believes all 4-legged animals are dogs because he doesn’t know better and has not ASSIMILATED new knowledge.
Accommodation and example.
New knowledge.
Creating new schemas or changing old ones.
ex) Preschooler calls a camel a lumpy horse.
What is Organization?
Once children learn new schemes, they rearrange them to link them to other schemes to create a strong interconnected cognitive system.
ex) a baby who relates nearness and farness or dropping to throwing.
What type of exploration do infants and toddlers in Sensorimotor engage in?
Sensory and Motor. They are not capable of carrying out mental activities.
What is Circular Reaction?
When a child tries to repeat an event that happened by chance, but turns it into a schema by carrying out the event with purpose to grab.
Intentional behavior occurs around when?
What is Object Permanence?
What is Incomplete at first?
8-12 months. Around when I went to see Eben.
Object Permanence is understand that objects continue to exist even when out of sight.
Incomplete at first is when Object Permanence may not be in place yet. The child looks for a toy at spot A, even when you moved the toy to B. (A not B search error).
Mental representation allows a child to do what?
To problem solve and manipulate information that enters the mind.
Images and concepts are both mental reps.
What is Deferred Imitation?
When did Piaget say this happens? Does newer research say something else?
Ability to imitate when model’s no longer present.
ex) I show Eb how to open his piggy bank by pushing the button- he imitates this the next day without me.
Piaget = 18 months New = 6 weeks (imitation of facial expression, objects, and actions).
What is Violation of Expectation?
How can this theory be wrong?
If an infant has heightened attention to an unexpected event, their surprise may indicate an understanding of physics.
Maybe they are just reacting to a novel item or maybe they have implicit awareness.
If an adult gives a toy dog a drink of water, a child will give water to a rabbit, but not a motorcycle. Why?
Categorization. Infants understand the difference in categories between events and items.
What actually shows up at the estimated time frame Piaget suggested?
Deferred Imitation and Categorization.
When is the Pre-Operational Stage and what do children show increase in?
2-7 years old.
Increase in Representational and Symbolic activities
What did Piaget believe language does?
He believed language developed from sensorimotor activities that led to internal representations and then children labeled later, with words.. He underestimated language…
What did Piaget believe Make-Believe play did?
What are the benefits of make-believe play?
How does make-believe play change as one gets older?
Practice and strengthen newly acquired schemas and representation.
The benefits - Practice schemas, emotional integration, social and language skills, intellect, imagination and creativity.
As one gets older, make-believe play becomes -
- more detached
- complex - building on each other’s ideas (during 4-5)
- less self-centered - feeding a “dog”
- more sophisticated - creation of stories
According to Piaget, what are limitations of Pre-Operation Thought?
Children in the pre-op stage cannot:
- Perform Mental Operations
- Egocentrism and Animalistic thinking- Assume others see and think the same as they do
- Cannot Conserve - appearance changes, but still the same.
- Lack Hierarchical information - Ability to organize objects into classes and subclasses
Which accounts for the change from sensorimotor to representational schemes from childhood to adulthood?
Adaptation and Organization
What is cognitive equilibrium associated with?
When children are not changing much, they assimilate more than they accommodate.
When they are in cognitive discomfort or disequilibrium, they change from assimilation to accommodation.
Why is sensorimotor stage the most complex period of development in Piaget’s theory? What does Equilibration have to do with it?
The times of greatest accommodation are the earliest ones, like sensorimotor… and as equilibration, or the back and forth between equilibrium occurs, effective schemes are produced.
Piaget based his 6 substages in this Sensorimotor stage based off which sample?
His 3 kids.
What are the 6 substages in Piaget’s Sensorimotor stage?
- Reflexive schemes (birth - 1m) Newborn - suck, grasp automatic
- Primary Circular Reactions (1-4m) ; Simple motor habits centered around infant’s own body - limited anticipation of events – simple motor habits like sucking thumb – baby cries for milk.
- Secondary Circular Reaction (4-8m) - Imitations and actions that create interesting effects in surrounding world – infants sit up
- Coordination of secondary circular reactions (8-12m) - Intentional & goal-directed behavior. Object permanence. Improved anticipation of events. Imitations are getting better. Eben’s very great imitation of what I taught him!
- Tertiary circular reactions (12-18m) -Exploration of objects by acting on them in novel ways ; Imitation of novel behavior; Accurate A-B search in several locations. – Fitting shapes through holes
- Mental Representation (18m-2 years) - Internal depiction of object and events. Solution to problems. Can find hidden objects after a while. Deferred imitation (imitate when model’s gone). Make-believe play begins.
What are criticisms of Piaget’s sensorimotor stage?
Children explore the world much quicker than he believed- much earlier than 4-8 months (secondary circ. reaction).
When searching for objects hidden in more than 1 location, 8-12 month olds make A not B search errors - but why?
They may have trouble inhibiting a previously rewarded motor response. Just the physical habit of reaching increases the A not B search error. Disruption of any cues reduces the error.
Which development of the brain aids in object search and A-B search tasks?
Frontal lobes
Lab results indicate that deferred imitation is present as early as when?
6 weeks
Mental representation is seen in infants very early - what type of deferred imitation do they show?
Retention of model behavior for months copying adult actions
copying in correct sequences and purposeful behaviors, which also help them retain information longer.
Inferring a correct social behavior (example of mommy dropping raisins out of bag, but baby does the activity by not dropping raisins out of bag).
