Intellectual Development: A2 Infancy and Early Childhood Cognitive Development Flashcards
What did Piaget think?
Piaget thought that intellectual development happened in stages, and that a child would only go on to the next stage once they had completely mastered the first one.
What were some of Piaget’s assumptions about children?
- 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 encouraging learning
What is the definition of nature?
Nature is maturation of brain and body; motor skills; crawl walk; the ability to perceive; learn and act.
What is the definition of nurture?
Nurture is the adaptation, children respond to the demands of the environment in ways that meet their own goals. They NEED to learn to survive.
What are the different stages of Piaget’s cognitive development?
Sensorimotor: birth- 2 years
Pre-operational: 2-7 years old
Concrete operational: 7-11 years old
Formal operational: adolescence- adulthood
What is the sensorimotor stage?
In the sensorimotor stage, the infant only knows the world via its immediate senses; sight, taste, touch, sound and the (motor) actions it performs.
The infant lacks internal mental schemata and is unable to distinguish between itself and its environment (profound egocentrism)
The infant lacks object permanence- fails to see or act on hidden objects, building knowledge through reflexes eg. Grasping, sucking, turn head to listen.
At 0-5 months an object that was visually hidden is not searched for.
At 8 months children will search for the object but will tend to search in places it has seen the object hidden before- even though the object is visually moved to a new hiding place.
What does the pre- operational stage involve?
Throughout this stage the children continues to add to or create new schemas
The child is still dominated by the sensory information they receive and this is influenced by the appearance of things; sight
They fail to be able to carry out logical operations and show centration
What is the definition of egocentrism?
Egocentrism is the difficulty in understanding that others do not see, think and feel things like you do.
What is conservation?
Conservation refers to a logical thinking ability that allows a person to determine that a certain quantity will remain the same despite adjustment of the container, shape, or apparent size.
What is the concrete operational stage?
The concrete operational stage is when the child is able to carry out the mental operations such as the liquid conserve experiment and de-centre , meaning they generally can see another person’s point of view.
The child can complete class inclusion takes and the three mountains task successfully.
However these operations cannot be carried out in the child’s head- like mental arithmetic, the physical (concrete) presence of the objects being manipulated is needed.
What is the formal operational stage?
Ideas can be manipulated in the head and reasoning deductions can be carried out on verbal statements, without the aid or visual/ concrete examples.
They can think about hypothetical (forethought imagining) problem such as planned bus journey.
Can think about abstract concepts, such as the pendulum study eg. Swinging pendulum with different sizes plasticine balls.
Consequences considered and things are planned in advance.
Approach problems in a systematic and organised way.
What are the different stages of intellectual development?
3 months: smiles, coos, gurgles and cries
6 months: begins to recognise parents, starts to ‘babble’ and puts objects in mouth
9 months: listens and copies sounds
12 months: understands simple commands
18 months: uses 20 or more identifiable words and recognises picture
2-2 and a half years: uses telegraphic speech. Names some colours and draw lines. Reasoning skills also develop.
3-4 years: counts to ten and begins to ask a lot of questions
4-5 years: enjoys jokes and riddles and talk about the past and the future. An understanding of simple rules develops.
How do children learn?
- imitating
- observing
- asking questions
- exploring
- repeating
How can parents help?
- support and praise
- answering questions
- encouragement
- explaining things
- encouraging play
