Chapter 7 Cognition through the Life Span Flashcards
What did Piaget observe? (2) What is an example?
-studied how children think, not just what they know
-noticed similarities in the errors children made and the questions they ask
Ex. all 3 yo could not understand that +/- of magnets attract until 9 yo
What is Piaget’s definition of intelligence? How is it seen in children? What are the interactions?
- basic life function that facilitates adaptation to environments and actions
- seen with children’s interactions in the world
- knowledge, observing, investigating, and experimenting
What is Piaget’s concept of schemes? (4)
- schemes: cognitive structures are a set of rules/patterns of thought/action people construct to interpret experience
- schemes become more sophisticated with development
- more sophisticated schemas = better adaptation
- children actively create knowledge by building schemes from experiences (nurture) and using inborn (nature) intellectual functions called organization and adaptation
Piaget’s cognitive terms: organization
systematic combining of schemas into new and complex cognitive structures
Piaget’s cognitive terms: adaptation
process of adjusting to the demands of the environment using assimilation and accommodation
Piaget’s cognitive terms: assimilation
interpreting new experiences using existing schemas (squeezee world into existing schemas)
Piaget’s cognitive terms: accommodation
modifying existing schemas to fit new experiences (inventing new name or revising a concept)
Vygotsky’s sociocultural perspective
- cognitive growth occurs in a sociocultural context and evolves out of the child’s social interactions
- emphasis on role of social enviornment in cognitive development
Vygotsly’s definition of intelligence (3)
- intelligence is held by the group, not individual
- cognitive development varies with culture
- based on social interactions
Vygotsky’s theory of zone of proximal development - 2 concepts
- guided participation: learning by actively doing
- scaffolding: more skilled person gives helps but gradually less help until able to do on their own
Vygotsky’s tools of thought (2) What does he say is an important tool? (2)
- mental activity is mediated by “tools”
- if child practices and masters tools, then child will adopt tools as his or her own
- language (spoken and written) is an important tool
- language shapes thought and thought fundamentally changes once we begin to use words
Piaget vs Vygotsky on speech
- Piaget: egocentric speech an example of how pre-operational thinkers cannot take the perspective of others
- Vygotsky: egocentric speech is “private speech” that guides thought and behavior
Vygotsky’s view of private speech (8)
- not a sign of cognitive immaturity (like Piaget) but cognitive maturity
- the forerunner of silent thinking-in-words engaged by adults
- this form of regulatory speech gradually internalized
- more common when children struggling to solve a problem
- incident varies with age (3>4)
- intellectually capable children more likely to engage
- contributes to effective problem-solving
- -> private speech allows you to think through problems and incorporate own thinking with problem solving strategies learned from adults
downsides to Vygotsky’s theory
too much emphasis on social interactions at the expense of individually constructed knowledge
Piaget’s infant stage
- sensorimotor stage (0-2)
- coming to know the world via senses and actions
- development of object permanence: understanding object exists when they leave
- emergence of symbols: ability to use images/words to represent objects and experiences
-dominant cognitive structures are behavioral schemes-action patterns that evolve in which infants coordinate sensory input and motor responses
Piaget - the child (9)
- preoperational stage
- symbolic thinking
- imaginary companions
- perceptual salience: focus on the obvious object or situation leads to children being fooled by appearance although logically incorrect (ex. santa clause logically doesnt exist but think they do because of marketing)
- lack of conservation: certain properties of object do not always vary when appearance is altered in superficial way (ex. water conservation task)
- inability to engage in decentration, engage in centration instead
- older children can engage in reversibility: process of mental undoing/reversing action
- egocentrism: tendency to view world solely from one’s own perspective/not seeing other points of views
- difficulty with classification: older children can group objects by color, shape, function
Piaget - elementary aged children (9)
-concrete operational stage (7-11)
-mastering logical operations lacking in preoperational
thinkers
-logical thinking
-perform mental action on objects
-acquire conservation
-acquire decentration
-acquire reversibility of thought
-can practice seriation: mentally order objects
-can practice transitivity: relationship of objects (ex. if mark taller than sam and sam taller than james, mark must be taller than james)
Piaget - the adolescent (6)
- formal operations: can perform mental actions on objects and ideas (11+)
- abstract thought
- hypothetical and abstract thinking (can invent ideas contrary to fact)
- scientific reasoning (plan strategy and draw conclusions from observations)
- problem solving & testing hypothesis
- hypothetical deductive reasoning (general to specific)
Piaget - the adult. What are their limitations? (3) Why? (1)
- limitations in adult cognitive performance
- half of adults lack mastery of formal operations
- many do not solve scientific problems
- adults do not well on piagetian tasks because lack of advanced schooling
Is there growth beyond the formal level?
- relativistic thinking
- recognition paradox/unconventional/outside the box thinking
- dialectical thinking: mentally wrestling or trying to reconcile these paradoxical thoughts with the “norm”
Marchand’s postformal ideas
- accepting inconsistencies in life
- poor performance on Piagetian tasks does not mean regression of cognitive abilities
- training can improve performance (reactive skills)
- Piagetian tasks not relevant to everyday adult events = adults may lack motivation to solve the tasks
