cognitive development

Question 1

organization (piaget cog)

Answer 1

the process of combining existing schemes into new & more complex intellectual schemes

e.g. infant who has ‘gazing’, ‘reaching’ & ‘grasping’ reflexes - organizes into a more complex structure: visually directed reaching

equilibrium –> assimilation –> accommodation –> organization

Question 2

adaptation (piaget cog)

Answer 2

process of adjusting to the demands of the env

occurs through 2 complementary activities: assimilation & accommodation

Question 3

assimilation (piaget cog)

Answer 3

process of trying to interpret new experiences in terms of their existing models of the world
- child tries to adapt to novel stimulus by constructing it as something familiar

e.g. child sees horse for the first time, tries to assimilate it into one of their existing schemes for 4 legged animals = may think of creature as a dog

Question 4

accommodation (piaget cog)

Answer 4

process of modifying existing structures to account for new experiences

e.g. child may notice that the ‘dog’ (horse) makes a different noise and has different feet = may seek a better understanding of their observations

Question 5

Piaget’s stages of cog development

Answer 5

sensorimotor: birth - 2 years
pre-operational stage: 2-7 years
stage of concrete operations: 7-11 years
stage of formal operations: 11-

Question 6

sensorimotor stage

Answer 6

birth - 2 years
- rely on behavioral schemes as a means of exploring & understanding the env

1. reflex activity
2. primary circular reactions
3. secondary circular reactions
4. coordination of secondary reactions
5. tertiary secondary reactions
6. inner experimentation / symbolic problem solving

Question 7

sensorimotor - reflex activity

Answer 7

birth - 1 month

actions are confined to innate reflexes, assimilating new objects into these reflexive schemes & accommodating their reflexes to these novel objects

Question 8

sensorimotor - primary circular reactions

Answer 8

1-4 months

a pleasurable response, centered on the infant’s own body, that is discovered by chance and performed over & over
e.g., sucking thumbs

will not search for objects hidden from view

Question 9

sensorimotor - secondary circular reactions

Answer 9

4-8 months

a pleasurable response, centered on an external object, that is discovered by chance & performed over & over
e.g., squeezing a rubber duck to make it quack

retrieve toys that are partially concealed or placed beneath a semitransparent cover, but not if it is completely concealed

Question 10

sensorimotor - coordination of secondary reactions

Answer 10

8-12 months

infants begin to coordinate 2 or more actions to achieve simple objectives. This is the first sign of goal-directed behavior
e.g. lifting a pillow that is on top of a toy & grabbing the toy

• object permanence appears but not complete
• A not B error = looking for a hidden object where they previously found it even after seeing it being moved somewhere else
• imprecise imitation

Question 11

sensorimotor - tertiary circular reactions

Answer 11

12-18 months
an exploratory scheme in which the infant devises a new method of acting on objects to reproduce interesting results
e.g. throwing, stepping on & dropping a rubber duck to see if this will have the same effect as squeezing it

reproducing actions in different ways
improves object permanence & A not B error
inferred imitation

Question 12

sensorimotor - inner experimentation/symbolic problem solving

Answer 12

18-24 months
the ability to solve simple problems on a mental/symbolic level without having to rely on trial & error experimentation

can mentally represent invisible displacements & use these mental inferences to guide their search for objects that have disappeared

fully understand object permanence
deferred imitation

Question 13

pre-operational stage

Answer 13

2-7 years
marked by the appearance of the symbolic function = the ability to use symbols (e.g. images & words) to represent objects & experiences
- understand representational insight & dual representation
- display animism & egocentrism
- incapable of conservation because they lack decentration & reversibility

Question 14

deferred vs inferred imitation

Answer 14

deferred = temper tantrum is imitated when other child is doing it too but also without their presence

inferred imitation = imitation of behaviour directly in front of you

Question 15

egocentrism

Answer 15

the tendency to view the world from one’s own perspective while failing to recognize that others may have different points of view

makes it nearly impossible for them to distinguish appearance from reality

Question 16

animism

Answer 16

a mistake of attributing life and lifelike qualities to inanimate objects

Question 17

conservation

Answer 17

the recognition that the properties of an object/substance do not change when its appearance is altered in a superficial way

Question 18

decentration & reversibility

Answer 18

decentration = the ability to concentrate on more than one aspect of a problem at the same time

reversibility = the ability to mentally undo or negate an action

Question 19

representational insight & dual representation

Answer 19

representational insight = the knowledge that an entity can represent something other than itself

dual representation = the awareness that an object can have a symbolic meaning & be an object in its own right

Question 20

stage of concrete operations

Answer 20

7-11 years
rapidly acquire cognitive operations & apply these new skills when thinking about objects & events that they have never experienced
- are capable of mental seriation
- understand concept of transitivity
- some forms of conservation (mass) understood much sooner that others (volume) = horizontal decalage

Question 21

mental seriation

Answer 21

the ability to mentally arrange items along a quantifiable dimension like height or weight

Question 22

transitivity

Answer 22

the ability to recognize relations among elements in a serial order

e.g., if A=B &B=C, then C=A

Question 23

horizontal decalage

Answer 23

a child’s uneven cog performance; an inability to solve certain problems even though one can solve similar problems requiring the same mental operations

Question 24

stage of formal operations

Answer 24

11 onwards
begins to think more rationally & systematically about abstract concepts & hypothetical event

thinking is no longer tied to the factual or observable – can reason logically about hypothetical processes & events that have no basis in reality
- hypothetico-deductive & inductive reasoning

Question 25

hypothetico-deductive vs inductive reasoning

Answer 25

HD reasoning = a formal operational ability to think hypothetically
- not restricted to thinking about previously acquired facts – can generate hypotheses – what is possible is more important than what is real

inductive reasoning = the type of thinking that scientists display, where hypotheses are generated and then systematically tested in experiments

Question 26

criticisms of piaget’s theory of cog development

Answer 26

• culture & upbringing can have a greater influence than P thought
• one phase can be thought of at the level of another phase = there are no strict boundaries between the phases – development is more of a continuous process
• some cog skills come earlier & other come later than P thought
• used a very small sample on which he based his theories

Question 27

Vygotsky’s cog development theory

Answer 27

emphasizes the socio-cultural influence & assumes nurture
children learn through interaction with adults or more skilled peers
focus on language - when young children talk to themselves, they use language to regulate their behavior and to study or guide themselves

• zone of proximal development
• scaffolding

Question 28

zone of proximal development

Answer 28

• the amount of help a child needs helps us determine where they are in their development
• the gap between being able to do something alone and how much they need help
• discovering things themselves is crucial to development

low limit of ZPD = the child’s level when working alone – what they can do independently

high limit = how much extra help the child can accept

Question 29

Vygotsky’s theory criticisms

Answer 29

-puts too much emphasis on language
-not specific in age & development
-says little about bio contributors
-does not describe the different contributions to cog development