Lecture 3: Piaget and Vygotsky

Question 1

Discontinuities in piagets theory

Answer 1

Hierarchial stages

central properties

Qualitative change

Broad applicability- applies to different examples of the same process

brief transitions

invariant sequence - cannot skip or go back a stage

Question 2

4 stages of cognitive development

Answer 2

Sensorimotor

Preoperational

Concrete Operational

Formal Operational

Question 3

Object permanence

Answer 3

The knowledge that objects continue to exist even when they are out of view, typically emerges about 8 months.

A baby will search for a hidden object

Question 4

Stage 1: Sensorimotor stage

Answer 4

birth to 2 years

Infants get to know the world through their senses and through their actions.

critical cognitive achievements and errors include:
1. object permanence
2. A-Not-B error
3. start to form mental representations. The first being deferred imitation

Question 5

deferred imitation

Answer 5

the repetition of other people’s behaviour a substantial time after it occurred

Question 6

A-Not-B error

Answer 6

the tendency to reach to where objects were found before, rather than where they were last hidden until about 12 months

Question 7

Piagets A-not-B task

Answer 7

This infant has already found the toy under the left cloth(A) on a number of trials.

When the toy is hidden under the cloth on the right (B), the infant returns to location (A)

Suggests that the child mentally represents the object after it has disappeared from view – but this representation is fragile

Question 8

Stage 2: Pre-operational stage

Answer 8

2-7 years

Toddlers and young children start to rely on internal representations of the world based on language and mental imagery

A mix of impressive cognitive acquisitions and equally impressive limitations

• A notable acquisition is symbolic representation, the use of one object to stand for another, which makes a variety of new behaviours possible

-A major limitation is egocentrism, the tendency to perceive the world solely from one’s own point of view

-Pre-Operational children also make conservation errors, where they incorrectly believe that merely changing the appearance of objects can change their quantity

Question 9

Symbolic representation

Answer 9

Egocentrism

Piaget and Inhelders (1956) three-mountains task

Conservation (liquid and number)

Question 10

Procedures used to test conservation

Answer 10

Liquid quantity
Solid quantity
of number
the balance scale

-errors due to centration

Question 11

Stage 3: Concrete operational stage

Answer 11

7-12 years

Children begin to reason logically about the world

They can solve conservation problems, but their successful reasoning is largely limited to concrete situations

Thinking systematically remains difficult

Pendulum problem

Question 12

Inhelder and Piagets pendulum problem

Answer 12

The task is to compare the motions of longer and shorter strings, with lighter and heavier weights attached, in order to determine the influence of weight, string length, and dropping point on the time it takes for the pendulum to swing back and forth

Children below age 12 usually perform unsystematic experiments and draw incorrect conclusions

Question 13

Stage 4- formal operational stage

Answer 13

12+ years

Cognitive development culminates in the ability to think abstractly and to reason hypothetically

Individuals can imagine alternative worlds and reason systematically about all possible outcomes of a situation

Piaget believed that the attainment of the formal operational stage, in contrast to the other stages, is not universal - Instead depends on environment and quality of education, and attainment is more common in industrialised societies

Question 14

Critique of piagets theory

Answer 14

he stage model depicts children’s thinking as being more consistent than it is (but e.g., conservation of number vs. solid-quantity)

Infants and young children are more cognitively competent than Piaget recognized

Piaget’s theory understates the contribution of the social world to cognitive development (what about the role of other people in the child’s development?)

Piaget’s theory is vague about the cognitive processes that give rise to children’s thinking and about the mechanisms that produce cognitive growth (what are the processes that lead children to think in a particular way? Piaget doesn’t really elaborate…)

Question 15

Interpreting adult intentions

Answer 15

Light, Buckingham & Robbins (1979)

By providing a clear reason for making the change of glass, many more children pass this version of the task

Question 16

Task difficulty

Answer 16

Hughes (1975)
Children 3-and-a-half-, to five-years old
90% passed
Even with more walls and a third policeman, 90% 4-year-olds (preoperational) passed

Question 17

Lev Vygotsky- Socio-cultural approach

Answer 17

Parent of sociocultural approach to child development

His theory presents children as social beings, intertwined with other people who are eager to help them gain skills and understanding

His work didn’t reach the attention of western psychologists until the 1960s

Subsequent psychologists (such as Jerome Bruner) extended and developed Vygotsky’s work by adding interpretations

Question 18

Sociocultural approaches

Answer 18

Focus on the contribution of other people and the surrounding culture to children’s development - likely to emphasise guided participation

Emphasise guided participation, a process in which more knowledgeable individuals organise activities in ways that allow less knowledgeable people to engage in them at a higher level than they could manage on their own

Present interactions as occurring in a broader sociocultural context that includes cultural tools, the innumerable products of human ingenuity that enhance thinking

Question 19

Vygotskys theory

Answer 19

Piaget considered children to be “little scientists” trying to understand the world on their own - who construct ideas of the world

Vygotsky portrayed them as social beings, shaped by and shaping their cultural contexts.

Children develop and learn by interacting with other members of their society

It sees development as continuous, with change as quantitative rather than qualitative- a quantitative. Not discontinuous with stages

Question 20

Mental functions

Answer 20

Lower mental functions are regarded as elementary mental abilities closely tied to biological processes that are innate and involuntary, and involve simple perception, memory and responding directly to the environment

Higher mental functions are regarded as consciously controlled transformations of lower functions that are developed through cultural mediation, and involve voluntary attention, conceptual thought and logical planning

Question 21

Childrens private speech

Answer 21

“egocentric speech”

Vygotsky viewed it as foundation for all higher cognitive processes. Indeed that language. and thought are integrally related

Helps guide behaviour

Used more when tasks are difficult, after errors, or when confused

Gradually becomes more silent

Children with learning and behavioural problems use it for longer

External-to-internal develops with age, but also experience

Question 22

Behaviour regulation

Answer 22

1. Children’s behaviour is controlled by other people’s statements
2. Children’s behaviour is controlled by their own private speech
3. Children’s behaviour is controlled by internalised private speech

Question 23

Products of culture

Answer 23

The content that children learn varies greatly from culture to culture and these differences shape children’s thinking accordingly

English/ chinese counting systems - decade followed by digit
Brick counting

Question 24

4 Processes that produce development

Answer 24

Intersubjectivity

Zone of Proximal Development

Social Scaffolding

Guided participation

Question 25

Intersubjectivity

Answer 25

The mutual understanding that people share during communication - Serves as the foundation of human cognitive development

Joint attention: A process in which social partners intentionally focus on a common referent in the external environment

Social referencing: The tendency to look to social partners for guidance about how to respond to unfamiliar or threatening events

Question 26

Joint attention

Answer 26

Infants between 9-15 months can increasingly follow the gaze of their social partners and adjust where they look if their partner’s gaze turns towards a new object (e.g., Adamson et al., 2004)

The younger the age at which infants begin to show joint attention, the faster their subsequent language development (Carpenter et al., 1998)/ earlier language development

Question 27

Zone of proximal development

Answer 27

Refers to the range of performance between what children can do unsupported and what they can do with optimal support

Vygotsky: “What a child can do with assistance today she will be able to do by herself tomorrow”

Question 28

Social scaffolding

Answer 28

A process in which more competent people provide a temporary framework that supports children’s thinking at a higher level than children could manage on their own (into the ZPD)

The quality of scaffolding that people provide tends to increase as people become older and gain experience – Adults and older children provide higher quality social scaffolding through guided participation than peers do through play