Cognitive Development

Question 1

Define cognitive development

Answer 1

Cognition refers to higher order mental processes and includes constructs such as attention, memory and language.

Question 2

Outline Piaget’s cognitive development theory

Answer 2

• sensorimotor: birth to 2 years. Born with innate reflexes and perceptual abilities. Also born with capacity for learning via the processes of adaption and assimilation e.g. sucking
• preoperational: 2-7 years.
• concrete operational: 7-12 years
• formal operational: 12+

Question 3

Explain the 6 sub stages within the sensorimotor period and the milestones within.

Answer 3

• substage 1: birth to one month, innate reflexes and through assimilation interact with the environment more effectively.
• substage 2: 1-4 months. Various basic innate schemes become integrated, primary circular motions that are random movements that are associated with a pleasant sensory stimulation.
• substage 3: 4-8 months. Appearance of secondary circular reactions e.g. random behaviours which produce some pleasant outcome for the child, but not direct stimulation.
• substage 4: 8-12 months. Presence of intentional behaviour such as obstructing the infants contact with a toy and object permanence.
• substage 5: 12-18 months. Tertiary circular reactions, experimentation with actions and discover solutions by trial and error.
• substage 6: 18 months-2 years. Up until now development occurs through observing or experimenting with physical objects. This stage marks the emergence of symbolic representations.

Question 4

Explain children’s preoperational thinking

Answer 4

• symbolic representations
• symbolic play: shows development trends and starts off quite simple and then gets more complicated,
• limitations of this thought is that there are still degrees of egocentrism ad they fail to appreciate that others have different perceptions, emotions and experiences

Question 5

What are the limitations of preoperational thought?

Answer 5

• animism: belief that inanimate objects are living
• centration/egocentrism: focus on one salient aspect of a situation and neglect the other.
• conservation: understanding that something stays the same in quantity even though it’s appearance changes.

Question 6

Explain the concrete operational period

Answer 6

• can now pass conservation tasks
• advances in reasoning arise from the ability to carry out operations.
• one limitation: reasoning is limited to concrete or tangible problems.

Question 7

Define assimilation, accommodation and scheme.

Answer 7

• assimilation: new experience is incorporated into an existing scheme
• accommodation: new experience leads to the creation of a new scheme
• scheme: mental structures that capture the common properties of specific, behaviour, objects or experiences. E.g. sucking

Question 8

What is hypothetical deductive reasoning?

Answer 8

Involves starting with a general theory of all possible factors that might affect an outcome and forming a hypothesis; then deductions are made from that hypothesis to predict what might happen in an experiment.

Question 9

Explain Vygotsky’s sociocultural approach of cognitive development.

Answer 9

• developmental outcomes are influenced by a child’s own learning, that is in turn facilitated by others who are more skilled.
• proposed two levels of development.
• actual developmental level is the stage of develop,ent that has already been completed,
• potential developmental level is the stage of development that is currently evolving and it is during this stage that guidance is required.

Question 10

What is ZPD?

Answer 10

Vygotsky’s notion known as the zone of proximal development, which is the difference between the two levels of a child’s performance.