Lecture 6 - Cognitive Development: Piaget

Question 1

What are the key ideas of stage development?

Answer 1

• Children mature through a succession of stages
• Ages are an approximation
• No stage can be missed
• Stage order is invariable.

Question 2

What are the basic ideas behind Piaget’s stage theory?

Answer 2

• Infants aren’t born with any innate knowledge of the world - it is gradually developed.
• Children show different levels of comprehension and reasoning at different stages.
• Each step reflects qualitatively different ways of thinking, and reasoning becomes increasingly complex and sophisticated.

Question 3

What is the development period of sensorimotor development?

Answer 3

0-2 years

Question 4

What are the main characteristics of the sensori-motor stage?

Answer 4

• Failure to differentiate between self and surrounding (solopism)
• Infant has sensory and motor experiences.
• Develop through sub-stages to fiinally achieve object permanence, mental imagery and understanding symbols.

Question 5

What are the sub-stages of the sensori-motor stage?

Answer 5

Reflex activity, primary circular reactions, secondary circular reactions, coordination of secondary circulation reactions, tertiary circular reactions, symbolic representation.

Question 6

What is the development period of the pre-operational stage?

Answer 6

2-7 years

Question 7

What are the main characteristics of the pre-operational stage?

Answer 7

• Mental imagery without principled thought.
• Can’t problem solve with logic
• Egocentrism (visual and conceptual)
• Failure to conserve quality, length, mass and number.
• Have trouble with class inclusion.

Question 8

Describe the 3 mountains task by Piaget and Inhelder (1958)

Answer 8

Children asked to select the photograph that represents another person’s view of the mountains. Pre-operational = select own view.

Question 9

When children fail to conserve quantities, what do they not do?

Answer 9

Decentre - use an intuitive answer (or one from experience) rather than a principle.

Question 10

What is the development period of the concrete operational stage?

Answer 10

7-12 years

Question 11

What are the main characteristics of the concrete operational stage?

Answer 11

• Principled thought confined to real-world (concrete) problems.
• Reasoning is organised, flexible and goal directed.
• Application of logic is revealed by justifications.
• Have conservation and class inclusion.
• Can understand transitivity.

Question 12

What is the development period of the formal operational stage?

Answer 12

12+

Question 13

What are the main characteristics of the formal operational stage?

Answer 13

• Principled thought can be applied to abstract problems

- Advanced problem solving, abstract thinking and systematic thought.

Question 14

What did the pendulum task determine (Piaget and Inhelder, 1958)?

Answer 14

Problem-solving method - had to manipulate one variable at a time. Formal operational children could.

Question 15

According to Piaget, how do cognitive structures develop?

Answer 15

Through the addition of information to schemas by assimilation and accommodation.
Each stage has an underlying category of schemas.

Question 16

What is assimilation?

Answer 16

Taking in information using already existing schemas, applying a schema to a novel content, e.g. using cutlery.

Question 17

What is accommodation?

Answer 17

Modification of schemas to accommodate new information and adapt to new application.

Question 18

According to Piaget, how do new categories of schemas emerge?

Answer 18

Through equilibration - conflicting beliefs cause cognitive conflict which must be resolved.

Question 19

According to Elkind (1966), in what ways are adolescents cognitively distinct?

Answer 19

• Excessive focus on mental life (own and others’)
• Illusion of transparency (belief sharing)
• Personal fable and private God (strong feelings = privileged status)
• Risk-taking
• Imaginary audience
• Self conscious.

Question 20

What are the educational implications of Piaget’s development theory?

Answer 20

• Learning is individualised
• Child-centred active learning provides a deeper understanding
• Discovery methods - independent discovery :)
• Concerned with process rather than end result.