Child Psychology - Cognitive Development and Education (Cognitive) Flashcards
Background;
Jean Piaget developed a theory of cognitive development which proposed that children are born with basic mental structures upon which all other knowledge and skills were built. Piagets stages of cognitive development involve; Sensori-motor stage, Pre-operational stage, Concrete operational stage, and Formal operational stage.
His stages have helped increasingly in education as it made people understand that children may be able to learn and understand some information at different ages.
On the other hand Vygotsky has argued that although children are born with basic cognitive senses, they need interaction with their environment to further develop those skills. He has advocated for teachers to pair children with more knowledgable others (MKO). This has led the education system to include group activities so the children are able to bounce ideas off of one another further developing their cognitive abilities.
This ZPD model is closely related to the method of ‘scaffolding’ introduced by Wood et al. in which the MKO is helping the child just enough for the child to be able to achieve set task. AS the child learns the MKO will provide less support until the child is able to achieve the task by themselves.
Key Research;
The key research by Wood et al. has aimed to investigate how children of
different ages react to tutoring. They have used a sample of 30 children from USA. Equal number of 3, 4 and 5 year olds and equal ratio of male to female. The procedure went like this; Pyramid blocks – 5 mins to play with no instruction. Then tutor used standardised instructions and 1-2-1 help if necessary to show child how to put the blocks together. Child asked to do the same. The results shoed that the Youngest: needed more help - the tutor has to show them how to complete task, more likely to go off task, needed more motivation. Middle: needed tutor to prompt and correct mistakes, needed the most verbal help. Oldest: needed least help, only needed tutor to confirm that what they were doing was correct. The conclusions that we can draw from that are that it Shows that scaffolding is effective. Smaller children need more direct support whereas older children need less.
Applications;
Mnemonics - This is a strategy that allows the student to remember a large amount of information in what is called a ‘Cognitive shortcut’. There are different types of Mnemonics such as visual and auditory.
When talking about visual Mnemonic some may think about the ‘method of loci’ dating back to ancient Greece. It involves visualising a place that the person is familiar with like their home or a classroom. Each object or feature in this space works as a piece of information you need to memorise. By identifying a list of concepts with a location that they are more familiar with, the person should be able to recall the information more easily.
Acronyms are also a well known Mnemonic. Acronym is where you take the first letter of word in a phrase and create a new word with them. Additionally when a string of words needs to be remembered in order, a common techniques is to replace the words with simpler ones.
Another way to be able to learn more effectively according to Grant et al. is to study in the same space the examination is going to take place. This way the recall of words has been proven to be much easier when the examination takes place in the same context as the studying.
