Cognitive Development

Question 1

Cognitive Development

Answer 1

Developmental psychology is the field of study that explores patterns of stability, continuity, growth and change that occur throughout a person’s life

Question 2

Development (physical)

Answer 2

Growth of body and its organs, the functioning of physiological systems including brain, physical signs of ageing, changes in motor abilities

Maturational changes

Evidence of physical changes from birth to death

Question 3

Development (cognitive)

Answer 3

Changes and continuities in perception, language, earning, memory, problem solving and other mental processes

Patterns of growth and change and cognitive skills

How does thinking change across life

Question 4

Development (psychosocial)

Answer 4

Changes and continuities in personal and interpersonal aspects such as motives, emotion, personality traits, interpersonal skills, relationships and roles played in the family and society

Intra and inter personal processes

What might change in personality, social relationships

How do we interact with peers, relationships, siblings

Looking how we broaden out in social world

Question 5

Piaget’s Cognitive Theory

Answer 5

Jean Piaget (1896-1980)
- children actively construct new understandings of the world based on experiences

STAGES

• sensorimotor (birth-2)
• pre-operational (2-7)
• concrete operational (7-11)
• formal operational (11-adulthood)

Question 6

Assimilation

Answer 6

New information fits into existing schemes

e.g. horse - fitting own info into new info - looking at horse and saying dog (four legs and furry)

Question 7

Accommodation

Answer 7

Changes schemes to incorporation new information or ideas

Question 8

Adaption

Answer 8

Changing thinking ways

Question 9

Sensorimotor stage

Answer 9

World is understood through senses and actions

Through coordination and motor responses that they engage in

Question 10

Object Permanence

Answer 10

Sensorimotor period

Understanding that objects continue to exist when they are not visible

4-8 - out of sight out of mind
8-12 - little sense of this
1 year - trouble with invisible displacement
18 months - is mastered

Question 11

Pre-operational stage (POS)

Answer 11

Symbolic representations and capacity

• language
• pretend play
• can refer to future and past

Focus on perceptual salience - pre-schoolers can be fooled by appearance

Troubles with tasks that require logic

Difficulties with conservation
- properties don’t change when the appearance does

Engage in centration
Irreversible thought
Static thought
Difficulties with classification
Egocentric with thinking
Extends to emotions, beliefs

Question 12

POS (cognitive limitations - centration)

Answer 12

Focusing on one aspect of a problem or object

Question 13

POS (cognitive limitations - irreversible thought)

Answer 13

Cannot mentally undo an action

Question 14

POS (cognitive limitations - static thought)

Answer 14

Focusing on the end state rather than the changes that transform one state into another

Question 15

POS (cognitive limitations - difficulty with classification)

Answer 15

Using criteria to sort objects on the basis of characteristics such as shape, colour, function

Lack class inclusion, the ability to relate the whole class (furry animals) to its subclasses (dogs, cats)

Question 16

POS (cognitive limitations - egocentrism)

Answer 16

Notion that I see world is different from how others see the world

Are there more dogs or are there more animals? - this is what they struggle with

Classification skills are not quite their yet

What could someone else see?

Sit on other side and ask them

Question 17

Egocentrism

Answer 17

Ability to attribute mental states—beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge—to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one’s own

Ability to understand that mental state is different from mine

How cognitive shifts affects psychosocial development

Question 18

Concrete Operations Stage (COS)

Answer 18

Able to perform operation

Mental actions - still limited

Concrete objections or situations

Able to do tasks - long period of time

In this stage we see a shift from understanding being driven by perceptual salience to logical reasoning

Less egocentrism

Question 19

COS (horizontal decalage)

Answer 19

Fundamental understandings before we can understand things overtime

Question 20

COS (decentration)

Answer 20

Can focus on two or more dimensions of a problem at once

Question 21

COS (reversibility of thought)

Answer 21

Can mentally reverse or undo an action

Question 22

COS (reversibility of thought)

Answer 22

Can mentally reverse or undo an action

Question 23

COS (transformational thought)

Answer 23

Can understand the process of change from one state to another

Question 24

COS (seriation)

Answer 24

The ability to arrange items mentally along a quantifiable dimension such as weight or height

Question 25

COS (transitivity)

Answer 25

Is the understanding of relationships among elements in a series

e.g. might compare blocks together

Question 26

COS (classification abilities improve)

Answer 26

Can classify objects by multiple dimensions and can grasp class inclusion

Question 27

Formal Operations Stage (FOS)

Answer 27

Takes place gradually over years

Formal operations are mental actions on ideas

They permit systematic and scientific thinking about problems, hypothetical ideas, and abstract concepts

e.g. can think about thinking

We can think in a different way - engage in systematic, scientific thinking - more abstract, creative

Responses would become more creative/abstract

Question 28

Positive effects of FOS

Answer 28

Sense of identity, complex thinking, appreciation of humour

Question 29

Negative effects of FOS

Answer 29

Confusion, adolescent idealism and rebellion against ideas that are not logical

Formal operational thought can also lead to adolescent egocentrism

Rebel against ideas that we don’t think follow the good rules of logic that we have mastered

Question 30

Piaget’s Pendulum Task

Answer 30

Ask children which factor contributes to swing of pendulum

Before this stage would change multiple things - didn’t really get anywhere and acting on utilising the objects