learning about the physical world

Question 1

what are the properties/main thesis of Piaget’s stage theory?

Answer 1

1. children at different stages think in qualitatively different ways
2. thinking at each stage influences thinking across diverse topics
3. brief transitional period at the end of each stage
4. the stages are universal, not culture dependent, and the order is always the same

Question 2

list the 4 stages of Piaget’s cognitive development theory and at what ages they occur

Answer 2

1. sensorimotor (0-2 y/o)
2. preoperational (2-7)
3. concrete operational (7-11)
4. formal operations (12+)

Question 3

describe Piaget’s sensorimotor stage

Answer 3

ages 0-2, focus only on the present/here and now, learn about the world through movements and sensations; acting and observing the results
- 1-4 months: interact with the world through reflexes and repeat pleasurable actions, indicating interest in own body
- 4-8 months: repeat actions to ward objects to produce desired outcome, indicating interest in world
- 8-12 months: combine several actions to achieve a goal, indicating intention; object permanence emerges
12-18 months: trial and error experiments to see how outcome changes, indicating understanding of cause-effect relations
- 18-24 month olds: mental representation; fully developed object permanence indicated by deferred imitation, allows for symbolic thought

Question 4

what is the A not B error?

Answer 4

• piaget
• tendency to reach for a hidden object where it was last found rather than in the new location where it was last hidden
• evidence that initial object permanence is fragile
• this error disappears around 12 months old (sensorimotor stage)

Question 5

what is deferred imitation?

Answer 5

• piaget
• the ability to observe an action and then perform it at a later time
• appears around 18-24 months (sensorimotor stage)

Question 6

describe Piaget’s preoperational stage

Answer 6

• ages 2-7
• characterized by symbolic thought (ability to think about objects or events that are not within the immediate environment), egocentrism (inability to put themselves in someone else’s shoes), and centration (failure to do conservation tasks)

Question 7

what is symbolic thought

Answer 7

• piaget, preoperational stage
• ability to think about objects or events that are not within the immediate environment
• enables language acquisition
• ability to use symbolic representation, evidenced through their ability to engage in pretend play and drawing
• ability to think of past and future

Question 8

what is egocentrism

Answer 8

• piaget, preoperational stage
• perceiving the world solely from one’s own point of view
• eg. difficulties taking another person’s spacial perspective
• eg. egocentric speech
• engaging in arguments is a sign of progressing past egocentrism

Question 9

what is centration

Answer 9

• piaget, preoperational stage
• tendency to focus on a single, perceptually striking feature of an object or event to the exclusion of other relevant features
• difficulties with conservation concept: merely changing the appearance of an object does not change the objects’ other key properties (eg. pouring a tall glass of water into a wide glass)

Question 10

describe Piaget’s concrete operational stage

Answer 10

• age 7-12
• can reason logically about concrete objects and events; can now pass conservation tasks
• can think logically about things like reversibility, seriation, and cognitive maps, but cannot think in purely abstract or hypothetical terms or generate systematic scientific experiments to test their beliefs

Question 11

what is reversibility?

Answer 11

• piaget
• concrete operational stage
• the capacity to think through a series of steps and then mentally reverse direction, returning to the starting point

Question 12

what is seriation?

Answer 12

• piaget
• concrete operational stage
• the ability to order items along a quantitative dimension such as length or weight

Question 13

what are cognitive maps?

Answer 13

• piaget
• concrete operational stage
• the mental representation of familiar large-scale spaces, such as their neighbourhood or school

Question 14

describe Piaget’s formal operations stage

Answer 14

• ages 12+
• ability to think abstractly and to reason hypothetically
• not universal–not all adults/adolescents reach this stage
• can imagine realities that are different from the current one, allowing them to be interested in politics, ethics, science fiction, and to reason scientifically

Question 15

what is Piaget’s pendulum problem?

Answer 15

• test of deductive reasoning and a sign of achievement of formal operations stage
• requires altering only one variable (string length or weight) at a time to achieve an unbiased result
• children under 12 perform unsystematic experiments and draw incorrect conclusions

Question 16

according to Piaget, how do children learn?

Answer 16

• children actively (rather than passively) shape their knowledge of the world by performing experiments and drawing conclusions
• children learn on their own
• children are intrinsically motivated to learn

Question 17

what are the strengths of Piaget’s theory?

Answer 17

1. intuitively plausible depiction of children’s nature as active learners and how learning progresses
2. provides a good overview of children’s thinking at different ages
3. exceptional breadth; spans the lifespan and examines many cognitive operations and concepts

Question 18

how can Piaget’s theory be integrated into education?

Answer 18

• children have distinct ways of thinking at different ages, so you cannot teach calculus or philosophy to a kid in the concrete operational stage
• using hands-on learning and experiments conforms best to Piaget’s theory that children learn best by interacting with the environment

Question 19

what are the weaknesses of Piaget’s theory?

Answer 19

1. didn’t use scientific method
2. oversimplifies the consistency of children’s thinking
3. vague in terms of how kids transition from one stage to another
4. his tests were challenging, meaning he may have underestimated their cognitive abilities while overestimating their motor abilities
5. ignored social and environmental influences on cognitive development

Question 20

what is the basic concept of the nativist theory? how does it compare to that of Piaget?

Answer 20

• children have innate, specialized cognitive mechanisms that provide them with basic knowledge in domains of evolutionary importance
• (eg. knowledge of gravity and knowledge of solid objects are innate)
• suggests that infants are a lot more cognitively capable than Piaget thought

Question 21

what are the domains of evolutionary importance mentioned in the nativist view?

Answer 21

1. solidity of objects
2. understanding physical laws
3. approximate number sense
4. categorization
5. understanding the minds of people
6. language

Question 22

what is the violation of expectation paradigm

Answer 22

• part of the nativist theory
• using an adaptation of the habituation paradigm, we can test that infants look longer at an impossible event than an event consistent with the knowledge/expectation being studied
• if the infant looks longer at the impossible event, it indicates that the infant possesses the physical knowledge being studied
• eg. drawbridge study
• eg. knowledge of gravity study

Question 23

what does the drawbridge study prove?

Answer 23

• provides evidence in favour of the violation of expectation paradigm, characteristic of the nativist view
• indicates that infants as young as 3.5 months have object permanence and understand that solid objects cannot go through another solid object
• suggests that the understanding of solid objects is innate

Question 24

what are the three broad categories that 9 month olds divide things into?

Answer 24

people, animals, inanimate objects

Question 25

what are category hierarchies? when do they emerge in children?

Answer 25

• the ability to organize object categories by set-subset relations, allowing for finer distinctions among objects within each level
• 2-3 years old
• early categories are based on perceptual similarities, especially shape
• children learn basic categories before they learn superordinate and subordinate categories

Question 26

what are the criticisms of nativist view?

Answer 26

• overestimates infant’s innate cognitive understanding
• findings can be instead explained by perceptual features of stimuli (whether they are complex or novel) or their ability to learn from the environment

Question 27

what is statistical learning? what are its implications?

Answer 27

• the ability to track patterns in the environment
• implies that babies are actively interpreting the world around them and drawing conclusions
• statistical learning is innate and domain general

Question 28

what are the two ways in which children actively learn from the environment on their own?

Answer 28

• trial and error
• statistical learning (tracking patterns)

Question 29

what is the gold standard for measuring the quality of home environment? what does it predict?

Answer 29

• Home Observation for the Measurement of the Environment
• checklist reflects parenting quality (responsiveness, acceptance, involvement) and stimulation of environment (variety and presence of interesting toys)
• high scores on HOME positively predict children’s cognitive skills and development, with parenting quality being the most important factor