Cognition and Devlopment Flashcards
What is cognition and how does it relate to development?
The mental processes involved in acquiring knowledge and understanding, we need to understand how cognition develops in order to establish the best means of educating children and how it develops in early life
What was piagets theory ?
Piaget theorised that cognitive development occurs though the interaction of inborn abilities and environmental events that occur though a a series of stages of intellectual development intelligence is therefore a process of equilibrium with our schemas
What is a schema ?
A schema is a unit of knowledge or a framework or mental structure we have of information or the world
What kind of schemas do adults have ?
Adult have more complex schemas
Eg. Of people or objects and actions as well as abstract concepts like justice
What did Piaget theorise about children and innate schemas ?
Children are born with just enough schema to interact with people and develop a schema as they experience the world - for example face schema - they know who’s who by face and what a face is innate schema
Piaget - what is equilibrium ?
The balance when our schema and experience match when they don’t motivation to learn and achieve this balance of our scehmas.
Piaget - how does this motivation to learn come from (equilibrium) ?
The motivation to learn occurs when out existing schema does not allow us to make sense of something new. This leads to a disequilibrium.
Piaget - What is a disequilibrium
Disequilibrium is when our existing schema doesnt make sense of or help us to understand new information and in fact contradicts it disequilibrium leads to an unpleasant feeling and in order to get rid of this unpleasant feeling new learning and exploring must take place to make sense of information and achieve equilibrium
What two process of adding to existing schemas does Piaget outline ?
Assimilation
Accommodation
Piaget - What is assimilation?
The process of adding new information to an existing schema - remember it like a robot “assimilation adding new informatin”
Piaget Example of assimilation?
‘ four legs and fur =dog ‘ - child then learns the are more breeds ?
Piaget - What is accommodation ?
Radically changing a schema or adding a new one
Piaget - example of accommodation?
“Four legs and fur = dog” - child introduced to a cat doesn’t fit with their schema so pet schema has to be radically changed or a new cat schema is added
Piaget also outlined stages of intertelltual development
How many stages are the and what’s the theory behind them ?
The are 4 stages of intellectual development the theory is that children progress though these 4 stages with a different level of reasoning and finally reaching adult reasoning
Piaget - Name all 4 stages of intellectual development ?
- Sensorimotor stage
- Pre - operational stage
- Concrete operation stage
- Formal operational stage
Piaget - What is the first stage of intellectual development?
Sensorimotor stage
What ages does the sensorimotor stage occur between ?
0-2 years
Piaget - Key terminology for sensorimoter stage ?
Object permanence
Piaget - What happens in the sensorimotor stage ?
Basic coordination and object permanence develops at or around 8 months and language skills develop over the two years - though trial and worries babies acquire physical coordination.
What is object permanence?
Before objet permeance children fail to understand that when objects are not in their sight they still exist after/when object permanence occurs children understand that objects exist even when not visible
When did Piaget say object permanence occurs ?
At or around 8 months
What did Piaget do that lead him to believe object permanence developed around 8 months ?
He did a study - when objects where removed before 8 months babies would immediately stop looking for it however after 8 months they continued to look for it - leading him to believe that children understood objects continue to exist when removed fro, veiw
What is piagets second stage of intellectual development ?
Pre operational stage
What ages does the pre operational stage occur between?
2-7 years
What are the 3 Key ideas of the skills that develop or are had in the pre operational stage ?
- Egocentrism
2.conservation - Class inclusion
What happens in the pre operational stage ?
Children are still influenced by how things seem rather then logical principles or operations hence why it’s called Pre operational
