Cognitive Development Theory

Question 1

Vygotsky’s Sociocultural theory:

Answer 1

Children = Social Creatures
- Develop ways of thinking and understanding primarily through SOCIAL INTERACTION not their private exploration
- First theorist to emphasize the following: children do not strive alone; their efforts are embedded in a social context

Apprentice in Thinking:
- Young child’s intellectual growth is stimulated and directed by older/skilled members of a society.
- learn scaffolding
- then ZPD

Question 2

Vygotsky: Children’s Thinking is Guided in Numerous Ways -

Answer 2

1. Presenting challenges for new learning
2. Offering assistance with tasks that may be too difficult
3. Providing instruction
4. Encouraging the child’s interest and motivation

Question 3

What is guided participation? (Vygotsky)

Answer 3

Guided Participation: the process by which young children, with the help of mentors, learn to think by having social experiences and by exploring their universe

Question 4

What is Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky)?

Answer 4

Vygotsky’s term for tasks that are too difficult for children to master alone but can be mastered with assistance from adults or more skilled children

Terms:
- The INNER CIRCLE of the ZPD is the level of skill reached by the child working independently
- The OUTER CIRCLE is the level of additional responsibility the child can accept with the assistance of an able instructor

Question 5

What is scaffolding?

Answer 5

Children’s learning of new cognitive skills is guided by an adult, who structures the child’s learning experience- a process called scaffolding

Question 6

How to create scaffolding?

Answer 6

To create an appropriate scaffold, the adult must:
- gain and keep the child’s attention
- model the best strategy
- adapt the whole process to the child’s developmental level or zone of proximal development

Question 7

What is the scaffolding process?

Answer 7

Scaffolding is a gradual process
- greater at the beginning of the new skill and decreases as the skill is close to being mastered

Question 8

Vygotsky - language and thoughts

Answer 8

• Children use speech not only for social communication, but also to help them solve tasks
• Vygotsky states that language and thought initially develop independently of each other and then merge.
• Children must use language to communicate with others before they can focus inward on their own thoughts

Question 9

Vygotsky Language Internal and external

Answer 9

• Young children use language to plan, guide, and monitor their behavior
  a) This use of language for self regulation is called private speech (self-talk)
  (External or internal)
• Children must communicate externally and use language for a long period of time before they can make the transition from external to internal speech
• Transition period: between 3 and 7 years of age and involves talking to oneself

children who use more private speech are more socially competent (represent early transition in becoming more social)

Question 10

What is Piaget’s theory?

Answer 10

• Described and observed children at different ages
• Broad theory of Age + Concepts
• Saw that all children seem to go through the same sequence of discoveries about their world, making the same mistake and arriving at the same solutions

Question 11

Piaget’s Assumptions About Children

Answer 11

• Children construct their own knowledge in response to their experiences
• Children learn many things on their own without the intervention of older children or adults.
• Children are intrinsically motivated to learn and do not need rewards from adults to motivate learning.

Question 12

Piaget’s schemas:

Answer 12

• an internal cognitive structure that provides an individual with a procedure to follow in a specific circumstance
• Help organize experiences - often events, objects and knowledge
• Infants create schemes to categorize things
  a) Things that can be grabbed
  b) Things you can suck on
• During childhood and adolescence, mental schemes allow us to use symbols and think logically

Question 13

How did Piaget proposed the process to explain how children get from built in schemes?

Answer 13

Assimilation and Accommodation

Question 14

What is assimilation?

Answer 14

• The process of using schemes to make sense of events or experiences

Ex: Baby - grasps a toy is assimilating it to its grasping scheme

Question 15

What is accommodation?

Answer 15

• Involves changing the scheme as a result of new information acquired through assimilation

Ex: Baby grasps a square object - accommodate their grasping scheme; so the next time they reach for a square object, their hand will be more appropriately bent to grasp it

• Therefore, this process is key for developmental change
• Able to improve skills and reorganize our ways of thinking

Question 16

What is the sensorimotor stage?

Answer 16

Birth to 2 Years
- The baby understands the world through their senses and their motor actions; begins to use simple symbols, such as single words and pretend play, near the end of the period
Children begin to represent the world with words, images, and drawings

• Object Permanence
• Stranger Anxiety

Question 17

What is the sensorimotor substages?

Answer 17

Substage 1: Birth to 1 Month
Building knowledge through reflexes (grasping, sucking)

Substage 2: 1 to 4 Months
Reflexes are organized into larger, integrated behaviors (grasping a rattle and bringing it to the mouth to suck)

Substage 3: 4 to 8 Months
Repetition of actions on the environment that bring out pleasing or interesting results (banging a rattle)

Substage 4: 8 to 12 Months
Mentally representing objects when objects can no longer be seen, thus achieving “object permanence”

Substage 5: 12 to 18 Months
Actively exploring the possible uses to which objects can be put: Banging a spoon or cup on high chair to make different sounds, get attention.

Substage 6: 18 to 24 Months
Able to form enduring mental representations

Question 18

What happens in the pre-operational stage?

Answer 18

2-7 Years

By age 2, the child can use symbols both to think and to communicate, develop the ability to take others’ points of view, classify objects, and use simple logic by the end of this stage.

Question 19

What are the 2 key characteristics of the pre-operational stage?

Answer 19

1) Symbolic Representations: the ability to make one thing - a word or an object- stand for something other than itself
Ex: Pretend Play

2) Egocentrism: Looking at the world from one’s own point of view

Question 20

What happens in the concrete operational stage?

Answer 20

Ages: 7-11
concrete = conservation

• Children construct schemes that enable them to think logically about objects and events in the real world
• Highly abstract thinking and reasoning about hypothetical situations still remains very difficult
• Conservation Concept: Changing the appearance or arrangement of objects does not change their key properties
• Classification: one important skills that characterizes children in the stage is the ability to classify things and to consider their relationships.

Question 21

What is the formal operational stage?

Answer 21

12 Years and Up

• Adolescents learn to reason logically about abstract concepts
• Deductive Reasoning: making conclusions from facts and reasoning based on conclusions
• Can think hypothetically and, by adulthood, can easily manage a variety of “what if” questions
• Ability to reason systematically about all different outcomes
• Ability to engage in scientific thinking

Question 22

What are the criticisms of Piaget’s Theory?

Answer 22

• Children’s thinking is not as consistent as the stages suggest
• Infants and young children are more competent than Piaget’s recognized
• Piaget understates the social components of cognitive development

Question 23

What is Montessori’s theory of principles?

Answer 23

1. Independence
2. Observation
3. Following the Child
4. Correcting the Child
5. Prepared Environment
   6.Absorbent Mind

Question 24

Independence (Montessori)

Answer 24

• Give them opportunities and allow them to figure things out independently
• Keep them safe
• Increases self-confidence, self-esteem & self-belief

Question 25

Observation (Montessori)

Answer 25

• Simply observe to see what their needs are
• If they are banging on a toy, give them a drum!
• This will create harmony as you are fulfilling their need

Question 26

Following the child (Montessori)

Answer 26

• Don’t tell people what to do, allow them to choose.
• Follow what they are doing a provide opportunities based on choice (fits well with observation)

Question 27

Correcting the child (Montessori)

Answer 27

• Make it practical! They’ll make mistakes - we just have to teach them nicely
• If the child spills, don’t yell at them rather, allow them to clean it up
• If the say a word incorrectly, don’t try and correct them - just say the word properly once and move on

Question 28

Prepared environment (Montessori)

Answer 28

The teacher’s first duty is to watch over the environment, and this takes precedence over all the rest. It’s influence is indirect, but unless it be well done there will be no effective and permanent results of any kind, physical, intellectual or spiritual.

Question 29

Absorbent Mind (Montessori)

Answer 29

Absorb by experiencing the environment and being a part of it
- No need to teach language rather, they will absorb it through their environment