Lecture 3- Cognitive Development and Memory

Question 1

What was Piagets definition of constructivist?

Answer 1

Piaget saw the development of the child as being an active learning, rather than passive.
Children construct knowledge
through interaction with the environment

Question 2

What was Piagets definition of schemes?

Answer 2

organised ways of making sense of
experience that change with age
▪ Initially action-based (motor patterns) then related to mental activity

Question 3

Piaget: how do schemes change? (2 processes)

Answer 3

1. Adaptation:
   * Assimilation: Use current schemes to
   interpret the external world (equilibrium)
   * Accommodation: Adjust old schemes to
   better fit environment (disequilibrium)
2. Organisation
   * Rearranging and linking schemes to form an interconnected system

Question 4

What were 4 stages that Piaget developed?

Answer 4

he thought that children progress through qualitatively different stages & that the stages are universal and invariant. (cant do previous stage)

▪ Sensorimotor Birth – 2 years
▪ Pre-operational 2 – 7 years
▪ Operational 7 – 11 years
▪ Formal Operational 11 years & up

Question 5

What is the Sensorimotor stage?

Answer 5

-Building schemas through sensory and motor exploration
-6 substages (including reflexes; circular reactions- )
-important milestones
▪ Object Permanence - once an object has gone out of direct perceptual context u still know it exists (8-12 months) –>less than 8 months they will act as if object never exsisted

▪ A not B’ task (12-18 months)

Question 6

What is the pre-operational stage?

Answer 6

Achievements
▪ Massive increase in mental representation
▪ Make-believe play
▪ Drawings develop from scribbles to pictures
▪ Symbolism (~ 3 years)

Question 7

What are the limitations of the pre operational stage?

Answer 7

Egocentrism
▪ Failure to understand others’
viewpoints may differ from own
▪ Inability to conserve
▪ Difficulty with hierarchical classification

Question 8

What is the concrete operational stage?

Answer 8

Achievements
▪ Ability to conserve
▪ Ability to classify and categorise
▪ Seriation possible – ordering by length or weight
▪ Spatial reasoning (e.g., maps, directions)
▪ Understanding of second-order false belief
Limitations
▪ Poor abstract thought

Question 9

What is the former operational stage?

Answer 9

▪ Capacity for abstract thought
▪ Scientific thinking
▪ Thinking about theories, isolating variables & seeking
evidence for confirmation
▪ Hypothetical reasoning
▪ Start with general idea and rule out possibilities
▪ Propositional thought
▪ Evaluate the logic of statements without needing real-world
scenario

Question 10

What are the strengths of Piagets theory?

Answer 10

▪ Influence on education
▪ Children active participants in development
▪ ‘readiness’ of children to learn tasks
▪ Rich description of how children develop
▪ Provided ‘platform’ for future research

Question 11

What was Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory?

Answer 11

▪ Cognition is based on social interaction &
language
▪ Focus on the role of culture (values, beliefs, customs, skills of social group)
▪ Agreed with Piaget about infants constructing knowledge but thought that cognitive development was socially mediated

Question 12

What were Vygotsky’s key concepts?

Answer 12

Private speech
▪ Language as basis for higher cognitive processes
Scaffolding
▪ Adjust support relative to performance
Guided participation
▪ Shared endeavour between expert and novice
Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
▪ Range of tasks possible only with help
of others

Question 13

Strengths & Weaknesses of Vygotsky’s theory?

Answer 13

▪ Highlights role of culture
▪ Highlights value of teaching

weak
▪ Vague in explanation of change

Question 14

What is memory?

Answer 14

The ability to encode, store, and retrieve information

Question 15

What is working memory?

Answer 15

▪ Our mental note-pad
▪ Limited Capacity
▪ Storage and processing of information over very short
durations (seconds)

Question 16

What is LTM?

Answer 16

▪ Declarative – conscious recall
▪ Semantic memory – knowledge about the world
▪ Episodic memory – information specific to a time or place
▪ Procedural – unconscious recall (Motor skills)

Question 17

Memory: how do we store info?

Answer 17

Through using diff strategies:

Rehearsal
* Children <7 years do not use spontaneously
* Initially use less effectively, e.g, word list

Organisation
* From ~ 8 yrs
* Young children use everyday associations
* Older children use taxonomic categories, e.g., ‘vehicles

Question 18

Memory: how do we retrieve info?

Answer 18

Fuzzy-Trace Theory (Brainerd & Reyna)

• Verbatim vs. Gist memory
• Verbatim memory decays faster
• Younger children rely more on verbatim, older children rely more on gist

Question 19

How is memory related to knowledge?

Answer 19

Chi (78)
* Tested children and adults on digit span task and memory for chessboard positions
* Children were experienced chess players

Question 20

Eyewitness testimony

Answer 20

• Children increasingly appearing in court
• Compared to older children, young children’s free recall of events is as accurate but less complete

However, several factors can compromise
accuracy, especially in younger children
* Misleading questions
* Repeated questions
* Source monitoring errors
Importance of training
* Achieving Best Evidence – Police Guidelines