Cognitive Development - Piaget's Influence Flashcards
What are the four stages of development?
Sensorimotor
Preoperational
Concrete operational
Formal operational
When is the sensorimotor period?
0-2 years
Infancy
What are the characteristics of the sensorimotor stage?
Failure to differentiate between self and surroundings
Perception subordinate to action
Think about world through sensory information
Lack of mental imagery
Solipsism
Don’t have object permanence
What is mental imagery?
Ability to imagine the existence of things even when they are not directly accessible to the senses
What is solipsism?
Failure to distinguish between self and the rest of the universe
What is object permanence?
Understanding that things continue to exist even when we can’t sense them directly
What is the A NOT B task in the sensorimotor stage?
Associate action of reaching under A with finding toy so always reach under B
Action > perception
What happens at 18-24 months in the sensorimotor stage?
Infant understands “self” and “world”
Process through acquisition of mental imagery
Begin to see pretend play
When is the preoperational stage?
2-7 years
Early childhood
What are the characteristics of the preoperational stage?
Mental imagery without principled thought
Egocentrism
Operational intelligence
Failure to decentre
Conservation and class inclusions
What is egocentrism?
Difficulty taking another person’s perspective
What is operational intelligence?
The process of solving a problem by working through logical principles
Necessary for a child to be able to overcome egocentrism and to free them of their highly subjective and intuitive view of the world
What does it mean to decenter?
Broaden attention to the various aspects of a problem instead fixating on just one
What is conservation?
Understanding that changing form or location of an object doesn’t change that object’s mass, volume or amount
Give intuitive answer that doesn’t rely on logical thinking (operational thought)
When is the concrete operational stage?
7-12 years
Middle childhood
What are the characteristics of the concrete operational stage?
Principled thought confined to real-life problems
Give correct answer in conservation tasks and give logical justifications, but this is only confined to real-life problems
What are the justifications given in the concrete operational stage?
Compensation = shorter and fatter vs taller and thinner
Inversion = if go back to the initial, will be the same
Identity = nothing taken away or added therefore is the same
When is the formal operational stage?
12 years onwards
Adolescence and adulthood
What are the characteristics of the formal operational stage?
Principled thought applied to abstract problems
Able to think logically about real world and abstract problems
Hypothetico-deductive reasoning
Systematic logical thinking and reasoning
Abstract thinking
Who is Margaret Donaldson?
Challenged Piaget’s theory and findings
Tasks didn’t make “human sense”
When problems rephrases, children able to pass conservation tasks much earlier than previously thought
What is the naughty teddy version?
The double question problem
Ask question twice so therefore get different answer
Children think first answer wrong
Experimenter no longer made change - majority of children gave right answer
What did Rai and Mitchell (2006) find in their inference by elimination study?
Challenges Piaget’s theory
Evidence that even 4 year olds can reason logically
Shown 3 different pictures of superheroes and asked which was Murkor
Even 4 year olds appreciate unfamiliar face belongs to unfamiliar character
Suggests level of logical reasoning well beyond what Piaget would’ve expected
What did Russell found in his study on inter-cognitive conflict?
Two children facing each other, two pencils on the table
Moved one pencil further towards one person
Asked children which pencil was longer and each child gave different answer
Asked to decide together which pencil was longer
Dominance influenced pairs’ decision
But non-conserving children understood force of conserving argument
What did Vygotsky the key psychologist of?
Social transmission and social constructivism
What are the key ideas of Vygotsky’s social constructivism?
Emphasised role of environment in development
Argued cognitive abilities socially constructed (put individual in context of culture, main tool is language)
Egocentric speech (internal to external) vs private speech (external to internal)
What did Vygotsky think learning was motivated by?
Need to interact with others
What did Vygotsky think was fundamental for development?
Role of culture and language
What did Vygotsky think thinking was?
Function of language
What is linguistic relativity?
Language shapes culture and culture shapes language
Powerful tool of social transmission
How does language affect how we think?
How does language affect our perception?
How does language reinforce stereotypes?
What is the zone of proximal development?
In order to learn something, children needs to be cognitively ready
What is scaffolding?
Parent creates support structure to aid child’s learning
What does Piaget vs Vygotsky believe about how development is driven?
Piaget
- internal driven
- endogenous control
- related to child
Vygotsky
- external driven
- exogenous influences
- society, interactions, environment
What does Piaget vs Vygotsky believe about development?
Piaget
- personal discovery
Vygotsky
- processes of social constructivism
What does Piaget vs Vygotsky believe about learning?
Piaget
- child engages in active learning and searches for understanding
- driven by own curiosity
Vygotsky
- mentors (adults) aid in guiding through steps of learning
- motivated by need for social interaction
What are the strengths of Piaget’s theory?
Comprehensive account of development with strong educational emphasis
Concerned with process rather than with end result
What are the weaknesses of Piaget’s theory?
Little emphasis on social or emotional factors, or abnormal development
Underestimate children abilities
What are the limitations of developmental research?
Highly subjective - relying on subjective interpretation
Cannot assume children perceive instructions like adults
Cognition in context? - tasks too arbitrary and out of context
