Development Flashcards
Cognitive development
all the mental activities associated with thinking
Jean Piaget
Jean Piaget: His contributions include a stage theory of child cognitive development, detailed observational studies of cognition in children, and a series of simple but ingenious tests to reveal different cognitive abilities.
*Conducted naturalistic observation of his own children, and friends’ children.
*Followed up by cross sectional research:
Tasks designed to test different cognitive skills were given to kids of differing ages.
Schema
Concept or framework that organises and interprets information
Ie cat = furry four legged animals might think that goats are cat now
Assimilation
Interpreting our new experinace in terms of our exisiting schemas
Accomodation
Adapting our current understandings schemas to incorporate new information
Sensorimotor stage
Sensorimotor Stage: Birth to age 2, Infants use their senses and motor abilities to learn about the world around time (looking, hearing, touching, mouthing, and grasping)
Object permenance
Object Permanence: A child’s ability to understand that objects still exist after they are no longer in sight
Infants eight-months old or 10 months younger tend not to have this ability
A toy would be placed under a blanket, and a child will either:
act as though the toy has disappeared (before object permanence has been achieved).
or they will know it is there and actively seek I (after object permanence has been achieved).
Preoperational stage
Preoperational Stage: The stage (2 to 7) during which a child learns to use language but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic. Emergence of symbolic thought
Children increase their mental representation of objects, generally through make-believe play
Egocentrism
Egocentrism: Inability on the part of a child in the preoperational stage of development to see any point of view other than their own
Theory of mind, ability to infer others’ mental states
Children with autism an impaired theory of mind
3 mountain
Egocentrism: 3 Mountains Task
*Children were shown 3D display of a mountain scene, in which they were asked to choose a picture showing the scene they had observed (most could do this with little difficulty).
*They were then asked to select a picture showing what someone else would have observed when looking from a different viewpoint.
* In this task, children almost always chose the scene showing their own view of the mountain scene, which according to Piaget is because they are unable to take on another person’s perspective.
Centration
Centration: Refers to the tendency to focus on only one aspect of a situation, problem or object
During this stage, which occurs from age 4-7, the child begins to develop logic or reasoning
Animism
Animism: The belief that objects that are inanimate (not living) have feelings, thoughts, and have the mental characteristics and qualities of living things (“are just like me”)
Animistic thinking is very common in young children
Preoperational stage tasks they cannot perform
Preoperational Stage: Tasks they CANNOT perform:
Lack the concept of conservation - which holds that two equal quantities remain equal even if the appearance of one is changed, as long as nothing is added or subtracted
*Irreversibility - child cannot mentally reverse a sequence of events or logical operations back to the starting point
Concrete operational stage
Key achievement: Child can now understand conservation – understanding that an object does not change its weight, mass, volume or area simply because it changes shape.
Reversibility: child can mentally reverse a sequence of events or logical operations back to the starting point
Classification : group objects with respect to common properties such as ordering classmates from shortest to tallest.
Inability to reason abstractly or hypothetically
Formal operational stage
Formal Operational Stage: The stage of cognitive development (age 11-adulthood) during which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts
Our reasoning expands from the purely concrete (involving actual experience) to encompass abstract thinking (involving imagined realities and symbols) Formal Operational Stage:
Abstract thinking: Thinking that does not rely on being able to see or handle concrete materials in order to reason about them. Concepts like honesty, morality, possible outcomes to hypothetical problems.
Logical Thinking: develop strategies to work through problems systematically, develop hypothesis and test until solution is found.
Hypothetico deductive reasoning is the ability to think scientifically through generating predictions, or hypotheses, about the world to answer questions.
