cog and development Flashcards
what is Piaget’s theory of cognitive development?
- Piaget saw intelligence as a process and balance; with individuals learning about the world around them and how to interact with it being achieved by an individual when they are able to deal adequately with the data before them.
- Intelligence is not a static state; it continually changes by adapting to new stimuli.
- Humans therefore adapt and construct an understanding of reality by interacting with the environment. Knowledge is actively discovered by using mental structures;
o The process of adaptation – involving accommodation and assimilation
o The process of equilibrium – swinging between equilibrium and disequilibrium
o Schemas
o Operations – strings of schema assembled in logical order
what is cognitive development
a general term describing the development of all mental processes, in particular thinking, reasoning and our understanding of the world. Cognitive development continues throughout the lifespan, but psychologists have been particularly concerned with how thinking and reasoning develops through childhood.
what is schema and what did Piaget think of them
- A schema is a mental structure that represents a group of related concepts, such as a schema for a dog - fur, four legs, wet nose
- Schemas can be behavioural such as grasping for an object or cognitive such as classifying as object
- As children develop, they construct more and more detailed and complex mental representations of the world. These representations are stored in the form of schema.
- According to Piaget, children are born with a few schemas to allow them to interact with the world and other people. schema is constructed from infancy.
- One of these is the ‘me-schema’ in which all the child’s knowledge about themselves is stored. Cognitive development involves the construction of progressively more detailed schema for people including ourselves and also for objects, physical actions and later more abstract ideas like justice and morality
what is assimilation
a form of learning that takes place when we acquire new information or a more advanced understanding of an object, person or idea. When new information does not radically change our understanding of the topic, we can incorporate it into an existing schema e.g. a child in a family with dogs can adapt to the existence of different dog breeds by assimilating them into their dog schema
what is accomodation
a form of learning that takes place when we acquire new information that changes our understanding of a topic to the extent that we need to form one or more new schema and/or radically change existing schema in order to deal with the new understanding e.g. a child with a pet dog may at first think of cats as dogs (because they have four legs, fur and a tail) but then recognise the existence of a separate category called cats. This accommodation will involve forming a new ‘cat-schema’
what is equilibration
takes place when we have encountered new information and built it into our understanding of a topic, either by assimilating it into an existing schema or accommodating it by forming a new one. Once assimilation or accommodation has taken place, everything is again balanced, and we have escaped the unpleasant experience of a lack of balance - disequilibrium
what is meant by equilibrium in terms of Piaget’s work
According to Piaget, we are pushed to learn when our existing schema do not allow us to make sense of something new. This leads to unpleasant sensation of disequilibrium. To escape this, we have to adapt to the new situation by exploring and developing our understanding. By doing this we achieve equilibrium; the preferred mental state.
Piaget’s theory evaluation
Research support - objects down a slope
P - One strength of Piaget’s theory is the research support for the individual formation of mental representations
E - Piaget’s theory of learning suggests that children will form individual representations of the world, even when they have similar learning experiences. Howe et al. demonstrated this in a study in which children aged 9-12 years were placed in groups of four to investigate and discuss the movement of objects down a slope. Following this activity all the children were found to have increased their understanding. However, their understanding had not become more similar. Instead each child had picked up different facts and reached slightly different conclusions.
E - This means that each child had formed an individual mental representation of how objects move on slopes - as Piaget would have expected
Real-world application
P - A further strength of Piaget’s theory is that it has been applied in teaching.
E - Piaget’s idea that children learn by actively exploring their environment and forming their own mental representation of the world has changed classroom teaching. Since Piaget’s ideas became popular in the 1960s, the old-fashioned classroom, in which children sat silently in rows copying from the board, has been replaced by activity-orientated classrooms in which children actively engage in tasks that allow them to take different forms. In the Early Years classroom children may, for example, investigate the physical properties of sand and water. At A level, discovery may take the form of ‘flipped’ lessons where students read up on the content, forming their own basic mental representation of the topic prior to the lesson.
E - This shows how Piaget-inspired approaches may facilitate the development of individual mental representations of the world.
Counterpoint
Piaget’s theory has certainly influenced modern practice in teaching and learning. However, there is no firm evidence showing that children learn better using discover learning. In a recent review, researchers concluded that discovery learning with considerable input from teachers was the most effective way to learn, but it seems that input from others, not discovery per se, is the crucial element of this effectiveness. This means that discovery learning is less effective than we would expect if Piaget’s theory of learning was correct.
The role of others in learning
P - One limitations of Piaget’s theory is that he underestimated the role of others in learning.
E - Piaget saw other people as useful to learning in the sense that they are potential sources of information and learning experiences. However, he saw learning itself as an individual process. This contrasts with other theories in which learning is seems as a more social process, supported by more knowledgeable others. In particular, Vygotsky saw knowledge as existing first between the learner and the more experienced other and only then in the mind of the learner. There is strong evidence to support the idea that learning is enhanced by interaction with others, and this is perhaps better explained by alternative theories.
E - This means that Piaget’s theory may be an incomplete explanation for learning because it doesn’t put enough emphasis on the role of other people in learning.
What are Piaget’s stages of intellectual development
Sensorimotor Stage (0-2 years)
Pre-operational Stage (2-7 years)
Stage of concrete operations (7-11 years)
Stage of formal operations (11+)
what is the sensorimotor stage?
- A baby’s early focus is on physical sensations and on developing some basic physical co-ordination
- Babies learn by trial and error that they can deliberately move their body in particular ways, and eventually that they can move other objects
- The baby also develops an understanding during the first two years that other people are separate objects and they acquire some basic language
- They have no internal representation of objects, and therefore when an an object is not being perceived on acted upon, it no longer exists – the infant has no object permanence
Object permanence
* By around 8 months the baby is capable of understanding object permanence.
* This is the understanding that objects still exist when they are out of sight
* Piaget found that before 8 months, babies immediately switched their attention away from the object once it was out of sight.
* However, from around 8 months they would continue to look for it
* This led Piaget to believe that it was from around this age that babies understood that objects continue to exist one removed from view
what are the three parts of the pre-operational stage
conservation, egocentrism and class inclusion
outline conservation
- The basic mathematical understanding that quantity remains constant even when the appearance of objects changes. Piaget demonstrated this in several situations. In his number conservation experiments, Piaget placed two rows of eight identical counters side-by-side. Even young children correctly reasoned that each row of counters had the same number. However, when the counters in one row were pushed closer together, pre-operational children struggled to conserve and usually said there were fewer counters in that row.
- In his liquid conservation procedure Piaget found that when two identical containers were placed side by side with the content sat the same height, most children spotted that they contained the same volume of liquid. However, if the liquid was poured into a taller, thinner vessel, younger children typically believed there was more liquid in the taller vessel.
outline egocentrism
- This means to see the world only from one’s point of view.
- This was demonstrated in the three mountains task, in which children were shown three model mountains, each with a different feature – cross, a house or snow.
- A doll was placed at the side of the model so that it faced the scene from a different angle from the child
- The child was asked to choose what the doll would ‘see’ from a range of pictures
- Pre-operationalised children tended to find this difficult and often chose the picture that matched the scene from their point of view.
outline class inclusion
- Early in the pre-operational stage children begin to understand classification – the idea that objects fall into categories.
e.g., most pre-operational children can classify pugs and Labradors as dogs - However, Piaget and Inhelder found that children under the age of 7 struggle with the more advanced skill of class inclusion, the idea that classifications have subsets.
- So, when a 7–8-year-old child was shown pictures of 5 dogs and 2 cats and was asked ‘are there more dogs or animals?’ children tended to respond that there were more dogs.
- Piaget interpreted this as younger children cannot simultaneously see a dog as a member of the dog class and the animal class.
what is the stage of concrete operations
- Piaget found that from the age of around 7 most children can conserve and perform much better tasks on egocentrism and class inclusion.
- Egocentrism declines, with children increasingly able to see things from the perspective of others – a process called decentring.
- However, although children now have better externally-verifiable reasoning abilities – what Piaget called operations – these are strictly concrete, i.e., they can be applied only to physical objects or situations they cannot see.
- Children develop an understanding that objects can belong to two or more categories simultaneously – a pointer being a dog and a mammal at the same time.
- They still struggle to reason about abstract ideas and to imagine objects or situations they cannot see.
what is the stage of formal operations?
- Piaget believed that from about 11, children become capable of forming reasoning
- This means children become able to focus on the form of an argument and not be distracted by its content
- Formal reasoning can be tested by using the pendulum task
e.g.
‘All yellow cats have two heads. I have a yellow cat called Charlie. How many heads does Charlie have?’ The correct answer is ‘two’. Piaget found that younger children became distracted by the content and answered that cats do not really have two heads. Piaget believed that once children can reason formally they are capable of scientific reasoning and become able to appreciate abstract ideas.
piaget’s stages of cognitive development evaluation
Conservation Research
P – One limitation of Piaget’s conclusions about conservation is that the research was flawed.
E – Children taking part in Piaget’s conservation studies may have been influenced by seeing the experimenter change the appearance of the counters or liquid. Why would the researcher change the appearance and then ask them if it was the same? McGarrigle and Donaldson set up a study in which the counters appeared to be moved by accident. In one condition they replicated the standard Piaget task with 4-6-year-olds, and, like Piaget, they found that most children answered incorrectly. However, in another condition a ‘naught teddy’ appeared and knocked the counters closer together, and now 72% correctly said there were the same numbers of counters as before.
E – This means that children aged 4-6 could conserve, if they were not put off by the way they were questioned. This in turn suggests that Piaget was wrong about the age at which conservation appears.
Class inclusion Research
P – Another limitation is that findings on class inclusion are contradicted by newer research.
E – Siegler and Svetina showed that children were in fact capable of understanding class inclusion. They gave 100 five-year-olds ten class-inclusion tasks, receiving an explanation of the task after each session. In one condition they received feedback that there must be more animals than dogs because there were 9 animals but only 6 dogs. A different group received feedback that there must be more animals because dogs were a subset of animals. The scores across the sessions improved more for the latter group, suggesting that the children had acquired a real understanding of class inclusion.
E – This means that children under seven can in fact understand class inclusion – contrary to what Piaget believed. So, Piaget underestimated what younger children could do.
Egocentrism research
P - A further limitation is lack of support for Piaget’s view of egocentrism.
E – Hughes tested the ability of children to see a situation from two people’s viewpoints using a model with two intersecting walls and three dolls, a boy and two police officers. Once familiarised with the task, children as young as 3 ½ years were able to position the boy doll where one police officer could not ‘see’ him 90% of the time and four-year-olds could do this 90% of the time when there were two officers to hide from.
E – This means that, when tested with a scenario that makes more sense, children can decentre and imagine other perspectives much earlier than Piaget proposed. This again suggests that Piaget underestimated the abilities of younger children and that his stages are incorrect.
what is Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development?
- Influenced by Piaget’s work
- Agreed on many of the basics of cognitive development
Agreed that children’s reasoning abilities develop in a particular sequence, and that such abilities are qualitatively different at different ages, with a child typically capable of particular logic at particular ages. - Major difference - Vygotsky saw cognitive development as a social process of learning from more experienced others - experts. Knowledge is first intermental, between the more and less expert individual, then intramental, within the mind of the less expert individual.
- Vygotsky also saw language as a much more important part of cognitive development than Piaget did.
- Died before he could finish all his research - so others continued it whereas Piaget studied his in great depth
what were the main aspects of Vygotsky’s theory?
the cultural level, the role of language, the role of others, the zone of proximal development and scaffolding
