Lecture 8 - Piaget's Approach Flashcards
Jean Piaget
- swiss biologist and psychologist
- studies the development in children
- 4 stages to his theory
Constructivism
- actively constructing their view of the world based on experiences
Stage theory
- discontinuous, qualitative change
- assume periods of equilibrium interrupted by large changes
- domain general change - understanding in one area will generalize in all areas
Schemes
organized patterns that people use to interpret their experiences
- become more complicated w experience
Equilibration
beliefs are equal with experiences
Assimilation
modify scheme to fit new experience
Accommodation
- modifying or constructing new scheme
Two YO Molly sees a man who is bald on top of his head and has long frizzy hair on the sides. To her father’s horror, Molly loudly shouts, “Clown, Clown!”
Is this assimilation or accommodation?
assimilation, she’s moving the man into her scheme
Molly’s father explained that the man was not a clown and that even though his hair was like a clown’s, he wasn’t wearing a funny costume and wasn’t doing silly things to make people laugh. With this new knowledge, Molly was able to change her mind about what makes someone a “clown”.
Is this assimilation or accommodation?
accommodation, she is changing and modifying her original scheme
Sensorimotor stage
- ~birth - 2 years
- experience through senses and automatic motor responses
- trial and error learning
- 6 sub-stages
Simple Reflexes
- 1st substage of sensorimotor stage
- 1st month of life
- various inborn reflexes, some begin to accommodate infant’s experiences (EX: how they feed from bottle vs. how they feed from breast)
- ## how they begin to explore the world
Primary Circular Reactions
- 2nd substage of sensorimotor stage
- 1-4 months of age
- coordination of separate actions into integrated activities
- gaining voluntary control
- addidental motor behavior (sucking thumb) -> repeated for pleasure
Secondary Circular Reactions
- 3rd substage of sensorimotor stage
- 4-8 months of age
- begins to act upon outside world by repeating behaviors due to external stimuli
- chance behavior (baby coos) -> repeated for pleasure (baby sees smiling face)
Coordination of Secondary Circular Reactions
- 4th substage of sensorimotor stage
- 8-12 months
- goal directed behavior
- no object permanence
- A-not-B error - doing the same thing over and over w/ the same result
Tertiary Circular Reactions
- 5th substage of sensorimotor stage
- 12-18 months
- variation of actions that brings desirable consequences (changing the means to get the same response)
Beginning of Thought
- 6th substage of sensorimotor stage
- 18 months - 2 yrs
- mental representation of symbolic thought
- causality
- language
- ability to pretend
- imitation
Preoperational Period
- 2-7 yrs
- no longer driven by own action
- symbolic representation - use of one obj for another, personal and conventional symbols
Egocentrism
- tendency to perceive the world solely from your own point of view
- spatial egocentrism
- egocentric communication
Conservation
- lack critical mental operators like compensation, reversibility, and identity
Centration
- excessive focus on one dimension, ignoring others
Concrete operational period
- ages 7-12
- no longer egocentric
- limited to things that are easy to imagine - not good at scientific method
- counter factual reasoning
Pendulum task
- children in the concrete operational period struggle with this
- systematic testing of each variable of a pendulum to see what works
- will test via trial and error w/o forming a hypothesis
In order to get from the concrete operational period to the formal operations period, what must occur?
education
Formal operations
- 12 and up
- hypothetical-deductive reasoning - capable of asking what if and become better at arguing
- indecisiveness
- questioning parents/authority figures
Does Piaget say that the formal operations period is the highest level of sophistication?
no
What was proposed by Piaget’s followers after his death?
- Post formal thought period
- characterizes adulthood and draws upon past experiences to solve problems
- deal with moral and emotional complexities - problematic for formal operations period
Labouvie-Vief
- post formal thought
- nature of thinking changes qualitatively during adulthood
- cognitive development continues past 12 y.o.
- adults are able to accept contradictions
Perry
- post formal thought
- understanding the feasibility of multiple perspectives
- teens struggle with this
- much more nuanced, able to consider the grey btwn the black and white
Summary of Piaget’s legacy
- discontinuous qualitative change
- domain general development
- constructivist
What were the issues with Piaget’s approach?
- modern studies contradict his results regarding ages
- didn’t do any cross-cultural studies, believed that white western teens and adults were more sophisticated
