Cognition and Development

Question 1

What did Piaget develop?

Answer 1

the four stages of cognitive development

Question 2

What is the key element of Piaget’s theory?

Answer 2

the motivation to learn

Question 3

What is disequilibrium?

Answer 3

the unpleasant sensation that occurs when new information does not fit into an existing schema

Question 4

what is equilibration?

Answer 4

what we achieve when we adapt to the new situation / adding new information to an existing schema

Question 5

what is a schema?

Answer 5

a concept or framework that organizes and interprets information

Question 6

what dies Piaget say about schemas regarding children?

Answer 6

children are born with a small number of schema, enough to allow them to interact with the world and other people
‘me schema’

Question 7

what is assimilation?

Answer 7

when we understand a new experience and equilibriate by adding new information to our existing schema

Question 8

what is accommodation?

Answer 8

takes place in response to dramatically new experiences
child had to adjust by either radically changing current schema or forming new ones

Question 9

what is the first stage?

Answer 9

Sensorumotor stage (approx. 0-2 years)

Question 10

what happens in the Sensorimotor stage?

Answer 10

babies focus on physical sensations and on developing some basic physical co-ordination
object permanence (8 months)

Question 11

what is object permanence?

Answer 11

the awareness that things continue to exist even when not percieved

Question 12

how did Piaget develop object permanence?

Answer 12

observed babies looking at objects and watched as the objects were removed from sight
noted that before 8 months, babies imeediately switched their attention away from the object once it was out of sight
at around 8 months they continue to look for it

Question 13

what is the second stage?

Answer 13

Pre-operational stage (approx. 2-7 years)

Question 14

what happens in the pre-operational stage?

Answer 14

toddler is mobile and can use language but still lacks adult reasoning ability = means they display some characteristic errors in reasoning
conservation
egocentrism
class inclusion

Question 15

what is conservation?

Answer 15

mathematical understanding that if something changes shape it is still the same quantity

Question 16

how did Piaget develop conservation?

Answer 16

• Piaget placed 2 rows of 8 identical counters side by side, children said they were the same, when the counters where pushed together pre-operational children struggled to conserve and usually sadi there were fewer counters in that row
• liquid conservation procedure = found that when 2 identical containers were placed side by side with the same contents and height, most children spotted that they contained liquid, however if the liquid was poured into a taller vessel younger children typically believed there was more liquid in the taller vessel

Question 17

what is egocentrism?

Answer 17

to see the world only from the one’s own point of view

Question 18

how did Piaget develop egocentrism?

Answer 18

Piaget and Barbel Inhelder (1956)
3 mountains task
children were dhown 3 model mountains each with different features (a cross, a house or snow), a doll was placed at the side of the model so that it faced away from a different angle from the child, the child was asked to choose what the doll would ‘see’ from a range of pictures, pre-operational children tended to find this difficult and often chose the picture the matched scene from their own POV

Question 19

what is class inclusion?

Answer 19

the idea that objects fall into categories

Question 20

how did Piaget develop class inclusion?

Answer 20

Piaget and Inhelder (1964) 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 they showed 7-8 years old children pictures of 5 dogs and 2 cats and asked ‘are there more dogs or animals’ children tended to respond to respond that there were more dogs
interpreted this as meaning that younger children cannot simultaneously see a dog as a member of the dog class and the animal class

Question 21

what is the third stage?

Answer 21

stage of concrete operations (approx. 7-11 years)

Question 22

what is the stage of concrete operations?

Answer 22

although children now have much better reasoning abilities (operations) these are strictly concrete i.e. can only be applied to physical objects in the child’s presence
children struggle to reason about abstract ideas and to imagine objects or situations they cannot see

Question 23

what is the fourth stage?

Answer 23

stage of formal operations (11+)

Question 24

what is the stage of formal operations?

Answer 24

when children become capable of formal reasoning
means that children become able to focus on the form of an argument and not be distracted by its content

Question 25

how can formal reasoning be tested?

Answer 25

• pendulum task / syllogisms
  -e.g., Smith et al: ‘all yellow cats have 2 heads. I have a yellow cat called Charlie. How many heads does Charlie have?’ The correct answer is 2
• Piaget found that younger children became distractedd by the content and answered that cats do not actually have 2 heads
• Piaget believed that once children can reason formally, they are capable of scientific reasoning and become able to appreciate abstract ideas

Question 26

what’s the difference between Piaget’s theory of cognitve development and Vygotsky’s ?

Answer 26

Vygotsky saw cognitive development as a social process of learning from more experienced others
Knowledge us intermental and then intramental
saw language as a much more important part of cognitive development than Piaget

Question 27

why are there cultural differences in cognitive development?

Answer 27

because if reasoning abilities are acquired from the more experienced individuals with whom a child had contact, it follows that the child will acquire the reasoning abilities of those particular people

Question 28

what did Vygotsky develop?

Answer 28

the zone of proximal development (ZPD)

Question 29

what is the Zone of Proximal Development?

Answer 29

a gap between a child’s current level of development and what they can potentially understand after interaction with more expert others

Question 29

what does expert assitance allow a child to do?

Answer 29

cross the ZPD and understand as much of a subject or situation that they are capable

Question 30

what did he believe about higher mental functions?

Answer 30

that they could only be acquired through interation with more advanced others

Question 31

what is scaffolding?

Answer 31

all kinds of help adults and more advanced peers give a child to help them cross the ZPD

Question 32

who researched scaffolding and what is it sometimes called?

Answer 32

Jerome Bruner
the Vygotsky-Bruner model

Question 33

what did David Wood, Jerome Bruner and Gail Ross (1976) note about scaffolding?

Answer 33

the particular strategies that experts use
in general the level of help given in scaffolding declines from level 5(most) to level 1(least)
an adult is more likely to use a high level of help strategies when first heping, then to gradually withdraw the level of help as the child grasps the task

Question 34

what are the levels of scaffolding?

Answer 34

5= demonstration
4= preparation for child
3= indication of materials
2= specific verbal instructions
1= general prompts

Question 35

whats the research support for ZPD?

Answer 35

Antonio Roazzi and Peter Bryant (1998)
- gave children aged 4-5 years the task of estimating the number of sweets in a box
- one condition the children worked alone and in another they worked with the help of an older child
- in expert help condition the older children were observed to offer prompts, pointing the younger children in the right direction
- most 4-5 years recieveing this kind of help successfully masterred the task

Question 36

what does this support show?

Answer 36

that children can develop additional reasoning abilities when working with a more expert individual
suggests that the ZPD is a valid concept

Question 37

what is the research support for scaffolding?

Answer 37

• Roazzi and Bryant
• David Conner and David Cross (2003)
• used a longitudinal procedure to follow up 45 children, observing them engaged in problem-solving tasks with the help of their mothers at 16, 26, 44 and 54 months
• distinctive changes in help were observed over time - the mothers used less and less direct intervention and more hints and prompts as children gained experience
• mothers also increasingly offered help when it was needed rather than constantly

Question 38

what does this support mean?

Answer 38

adult assitance with childrens learning is well described by scaffolding

Question 39

what is the support in practical application in education?

Answer 39

• have been highly influential
• raised expectations of what children should be able to achieve
  social interaction in learning (through group work, peer tutoring and individual adult assistance) has been used to scaffold children through their ZPD
• Hilde Van Keer and Jean Pierre Verhaeghe (2005)
• found that 7 yr olds tutored by 10 yr olds (as well as whole-class teaching) progressed further in reading than controls who just had standrad whole-class teaching
• Alborz et al. (2009) reviewed the usefulness of teaching assistants - concluded that teaching assistants are very effective at improving the rate of learning in children

Question 40

what is the counterpoint of this?

Answer 40

• may not be universal
• Charlotte Liu and Robert Matthews (2005)
• pointed out that in China, classes of up to 50 children learn very effectively in lecture-style classrooms with very few individual interactions with peers or tutors
• should not be possible according to Vygotsky
• means Vygotsky may have overestimated the importance of scaffolding in learning

Question 41

what did Baillargeon suggest?

Answer 41

that young babies had a better understanding of the physical world than Piaget sugegsted

Question 41

what is one of Baillargeon’s technique’s?

Answer 41

Violation of expectation VOE

Question 42

what is the VOE used for?

Answer 42

used to test object permanence

Question 42

what is the VOE research?

Answer 42

• Baillargeon and Marcia Graber (1987)
• showed 24 babies aged 5-6 months a tall and a short rabbit passing behind a screen with a window as it fits our expectations of object permanence
• two conditions = one expected event, one unexpected event
• a baby with object permanence should show surprise when shown the unexpected event

Question 43

what did Baillargeon and Marcia Graber find?

Answer 43

-babies looked for 33.07s on average at the unexpected event compared to 25.11s at the expected event
-interpretered this as the babies being surprised at the unexpected condition
-demonstrates a good understanding of object permanenece

Question 44

what is Baillargeon’s theory of infant physical reasoning?

Answer 44

an infants understanding of the physical world and the ability to learn more details easily

Question 45

what do we intially have and what does it become?

Answer 45

a primitive awareness of the physcial properties of the world and this becomes more sophisticated as we learn from experience

Question 46

when does occlusion take place?

Answer 46

when one object blocks the view of another

Question 47

why does the unexpected event capture the babies attention?

Answer 47

because the nature of their physcial reasoning system means they are predisposed to attend to new events that might allow them to develop their understanding of the physical world