Cognitive Development I Flashcards by Mollie Dosdale

Jean Piaget dates?

1896-1980

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Who was Jean Piaget?

A Swiss developmental psychologist

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What did Jean Piaget develop?

Piaget developed a general model of cognitive development, partly through the observation of his own children.

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Piaget’s thoery influence?

Piaget’s theory has been highly influential in the field of developmental psychology

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What is Piaget’s theory?

Piaget’s theory is stage theory of cognitive development.

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What are the three main points to Piaget’s theory?

Mental abilities do not just change in a continuous, gradual fashion.
There are qualitative changes, characterised by distinct stages of intellectual ability.
And Children’s thinking is a different kind of thinking to adults.

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Is Piaget’s theory used widely?

Yes, it is the universal model of cognitive development.

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What can Piaget’s theory be applied to?

Piaget’s theory can be applied to understanding how all kinds of knowledge develop eg languages, maths etc

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What is the basic unit of thought called?

A schema

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What is a schema?

A schema is a general ‘mental description’ of an action, symbol, or thought process.

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Schema’s help us to do what two things?

Schemas help us to organise past experiences and make sense of new experiences.

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Why do children build schemas?

children build schemas in an effort to adapt to their environment.

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What is knowledge constructed from?

knowledge is constructed from action.

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Is learning active of passive?

Learning is active, not passive.

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What is adaptation in Piaget’s theory?

Adaptation involves building schemas through direct interaction with the environment.

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What two complementary activities does adaptation consist of?

Assimilation and accommodation.

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What happens during assimilation?

During assimilation, we use our current schemas to interpret the external world.

What happens during accommodation?

During accommodation we create new schemas or adjust old ones after noticing that our current ways of thinking to not capture the environment completely..

In piaget’s stages, what is the age range of the sensorimotor stage?

0-2 years

In piaget’s stages, what is the age range of the pre-operational stage?

2-7 years

In piaget’s stages, what is the age range of the concrete operational stage?

7-11

In piaget’s stages, what is the age range of the formal operational stage?

11 years +

During the sensorimotor stage, thinking is….?

Confined to sensory functions and actions.

Also Non-representational – cannot think about absent objects using mental symbols.

What abilities does the baby have during the sensorimotor stage?

The baby can sense and act on the world.

What limitations are their during the sensorimotor stage?

"Out of sight, out of mind", in otherwords, the baby can't think about things it has not yet seen or perceived. Also, object permanence gradually develops with age.

What is object permanence?

Object permanence is the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be observed (seen, heard, touched, smelled or sensed in any way).

In relation to object permanence, what happens during the sensorimotor stage?

During the sensorimotor stage, infants gradually acquire a partial understanding of object permanence as at 8 to 12 months of age, infants can retrieve an object hidden from view.

Infants make the A-not-B error during the sensorimotor stage which is where....

Infants search for an object hidden at Location A The object is then hidden in Location B Yet, infants persist in searching in Location A

What did Piaget argue about the sensorimotor stage and object permanence.

Piaget argued that infants do not fully understand object permanence.

In the pre-operational stage thinking is...

Representational. They use symbols- words and images. | They can use these symbols to think about absent things.

What abilities does the child have during the pre-operational stage?

Symbolic skills develop- from words to 'make believe' play and drawings. Also, symbols become detached from physical appearances.

What are the 3 main limitations of the pre-operational stage?

The child thinking is egocentric -they cannot take perspectives other than their own. They cannot distinguish imagination and reality. Their mental operations are rigid and dominated by physical appearance which shows an inability to conserve.

In the concrete operational stage thinking is...

No longer dominated by physical appearances - mental operations are logical and they can not pass conservation tasks. Also, logical rules can be applied to concrete objects.

What abilities does the child have in the concrete operational stage?

They can apply simple logical rules and sort things into classes and series. They can do maths- count, measure, add and subtract.

What is the main limitation of the concrete operational stage?

The child cannot reason about abstact concepts- can only reason about how the world actually is, not what it could be (transitive inference).

In the formal operational stage thinking is...

Abstract. Logical rules can be applied to abstract entities, not just concrete objects. Adult like, hypothetical thinking.

What abilities does the child have in the formal operational stage?

The child has the capacity for scientific thinking- can form hypotheses and separate the effects of different variables. The child can also reason about past, present, and future and what the world could and should be like.

What is the main limitation of the formal operational stage?

The ability to use formal operations varies across people.

So what, in general, changes across the four stages?

Over time, children's thinking becomes more logical and abstract. Thinking is also less dependent on their immediate perception of the world.

So, what are the three main conclusions from cognitive development I?

1/ Piaget's stage theory- big shifts in understanding over time. Childrens thinking is different to adults. 2/ Knowledge has its origins in action. the child learns from new or unexpected events. 3/ Children's thinking gradually separates from their perception of the physical world.

What are the four stages to Piaget's stage theory?

Sensorimotor pre-operational concrete operational formal operational