Development Flashcards
Early brain development, development of:
- When the foetus is 3 or weeks old, a long tube develops in the brain. It forms 3 distinct sections. Forebrain, Midbrain and hindbrain. By 5 weeks old, the forebrain and hindbrain have split into two (anterior and posterior parts). Anterior: front part of the brain, Posterior: back part of the brain
- At 6 weeks old the cerebellum develops as well as the medulla oblongata.
Cerebellum
Area of the brain near to the brainstem that controls motor movements (muscle activity).
Medulla oblaganta
Connects the upper brain to the spinal cord and controls automatic responses.
Neural connections development
From birth to three years old is a time of rapid brain development! There is an increase in the amount of neural connections. With 700-1000 forming every second. The brain doubles in size in the 1st year and reaches 80% of its size by three.
Involuntary response
response to a stimulus that occurs without someone making conscious choice. Are automatic such as reflexes.
Neural connections
Links formed by messages passing from one nerve cell (neuron) To another.
Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development
Stages of Cognitive Development:
- Birth-2 years: Sensorimotor
- 2-7 years: Pre Operational
- 7-11 years: Concrete Operational
- 11+ years: Formal operational
Sensorimotor stage
Infants explore the world using their senses. They learn through smell, hearing and touch. At 6 months, they develop object permanence and often repeat actions such as dropping items.
Object permanence: They know that an object exist even when it is out of sight.
Pre-operational stage
This stage is divided into two aspects: Symbolic Stage and Intuitive Stage.
Symbolic Stage is when children use symbols to represent objects. Animism can also be seen and children are egocentric.
Animism: believe that all objects are alive e.g. children talk to their teddies and dolls
Egocentric: Only see the world from their own view.
Intuitive Stage is when children use reasoning to understand the world. Children can only focus on one aspect of a situation. This is known as Centration. There is also Irriversibility. This is when a child is not able to use thought to reverse an event such as knowing that if water from a wide glass is poured into a tall glass so it looks as if there is more water, when the water is poured back into the wide it will look the same as it did.
Concrete operational stage
Children can apply rules and strategies to aid their understanding and thinking.
Abilities in this stage include:
Seriation: Sorting objects, such as into size
Classification: Naming and identifying objects
Reversibility: can reverse actions
Conversion: Understanding quantity and length stay the same
Decentration: Taking multiple views
Formal operational stage
Children’s thinking has more control. They can understand abstract though, understand time and how it’s changed and can examine consequences.
Strengths and weaknesses of Piaget’s stages of Cognitive Development
Strengths:
- Real work application: Piaget’s work has practical applications and can be used in education to help children to develop into the next stage.
- Research support: Research shows the existence of the stages which increases the validity of the theory.
- Useful: Piaget’s data came from interviews and observations with children which means there is a lot of in depth data which increases the validity of the theory.
Weaknesses:
- Lack of research support: Some studies show children develop earlier than Piaget thought which reduces the validity of the theory.
- Not useful: Piaget’s theory did not look at the influence of social interactions or cultural setting which could impact on a child’d development.
Not useful: Piaget’s data came from interviews and observations with children. The children may have lied or provided socially desirable responses and the observations may be subjective to the interpreter.
-Lack of research support: Repeating Piaget’s research in a more natural setting produced different results therefore the theory is not reliable.
Schema development
Equilibrium: Children experience the world around them and the schemas work for them. For example, a child sees an animal with four legs and calls it a horse this is their schema. Therefore, every four legged animal is a horse = equilibrium
Disequilibrium: As they experience new things in life, new information is added which does not make sense in terms of their schema. E.g. A child sees a zebra, it has four legs but its not a horse??? = disequilibrium
Assimilation: Children need to incorporate new information into their schema to accommodate new info. E.g. A child learns about new animals = assimilation
Accommodate: when new information or experiences cause you to modify your existing schemas
Piaget and Inhelder (1959)
Background: Children in the pre-operational stage sees the world from their own viewpoint. Understanding there are other viewpoints is something that develops. This helps move into the concrete operational stage where they ‘decentre’.
Aims: The extent to what ages do children take the view of another person and children’s system of putting together different views of what they see.
Procedure: 100 participants took part between the ages of 4-12
-4: 6.5 years = 21 children, 6.5: 8 years = 30 children, 8: 9.5 years = 33 children, 9.5: 12 years = 16
Materials:
A model of three mountains including a house, red cross, snow and a path
10 pictures the three mountains from different positions
Pieces of card in the shape of mountains to represent the mountains
A wooden doll
Ways of questioning:
Place the shapes to show how the mountain looked for them and the doll
Pick out of 10 pictures what they could see and the doll could see
Choose a picture and position the doll to see that view
Findings:
Pre-operational stage (4-6.5 years): Chooses pictures and shows picture for what they can see.
Concrete operational stage (7-9 years): Start to understand that others see the model differently. Children 9-10 years old understand the doll has a different view.
Conclusions:
- Children up to 7 were egocentric
- Older children were non egocentric
- The ‘three mountains’ task supports Piaget’s stages of development
Strengths and weaknesses of Piaget and Inhelder (1959)
Strengths:
- Validity: Piaget provided a lot of detail about children’s development. We know when children stop being egocentric.
- Reliability: Piaget used careful controls in his study. The same mountain was used every time.
- Validity: Piaget used qualitative data. Data is in detail and from the individual which makes it valid.
Weaknesses
- Validity: Piaget’s study did not have a realistic task. Children were asked to look at mountains so the study lacks mundane realism.
- Validity: Piaget used qualitative data. Participants may give socially desirable responses which reduces the validity.
- Generalisability: Piaget did not have a range of cultures. He only used Swiss children.
