Lifespan A: Development, Piaget, WEEK 3 Flashcards
1
Q
Piaget’s ideas concerning development
A
- Piaget believes children’s understanding of the world is qualitatively different to adults
- Cognitive dev involves progressing through a series of ordered, invariant and irreversible stages
- these stages are universal (everyone goes through it)
- Each stage is characterised by a distinct way of thinking about the world
- Motor actions (physical) develop into abstract thought through transactions with the EV
2
Q
Qualitative & quantitative differences
A
- Qualitative differences: differences in type > the way in which adults think about the world differs to the way a child thinks about the world
- Quantitative differences: differences in degree/amount > one person may know more about something than another but we are fundamentally thinking of the world in the same way.
3
Q
Piaget as a pragmatist
A
- Believes the child has to actively engage with the environment to develop whilst also having a level of innate readiness > the action is key to development
4
Q
Process of cognitive development
A
- Born with basic ideas about the world like reflexes such as grabbing or sucking > these schemes update as the child experiences new things through accommodation
5
Q
Equilibration by self-regulation
A
- New experience occurs which gets filtered through current knowledge and schemes in assimilation, if the experience is consistent w/ current schema, the child is at equilibrium > if the experience is inconsistent w/ schema, we change our scheme to broaden our knowledge > this is the process of accommodation
(assimilation=filtering new experience by applying current scheme)
(accommodation=changing scheme using info from new experience to learn more + apply to the world)
6
Q
Piaget’s stages of development
A
- sensorimotor stage (birth-2yrs)
- pre-operational (2-7yrs)
- concrete operations (7-11yrs)
- formal operations (12+)
7
Q
Sensorimotor stage (0-2)
A
- Lack of ‘symbolic function’ (can’t think alone) > rely on motor function and sensation (touching, looking)
- Build schema through reflexes, experiences and interpretations of perceptual info (use of senses)
- representational ability: idea of being able to hold + imagine something even if it isn’t directly in front of you begins to emerge at a basic level
- object permanence develops at 9 months
8
Q
Piaget’s test for object permanence
A
- between 5-7 months, if an object is hidden, the infant stops looking for it as if it no longer exists > between 8-9 months, the infant continues searching even if it isn’t there > shows cognitive dev
- Piaget believes the infant at 5-7mnths cannot represent the toy existing beyond their senses (visually) > infants see the world as constantly changing
9
Q
Sensorimotor stage:
A not B task > measures object permanence
A
- task where child is shown an object in location A several times, then block their vision and move the object to location B
- infants under 12 months didn’t look in location B as they associated the concept of the object itself w/ location A
- infants aged 18-24 months did look in location B as they are able to understand the object is an independent figure
- this task shows the difference in cognitive development early in the sensorimotor stage and later
10
Q
Criticisms of A not B task
A
- there are requirements of the child which may invalidate results
- Adequate motor skills are required to pick up and lift objects
- They need to be able to understand verbal language used by the researcher
- Degree of working memory is required as the researcher keeps the object out of site when swapping locations
- Amount of interest or motivation of the child > if the child is uninterested in the object they may show less effort >could be measuring the above factors, not dev
11
Q
Pre-operational (2-7)
A
- child can use language + symbols to represent objects by images + words
- is egocentric
- classifies object into certain categories using only single feature (eg: if blocks are red regardless of shapes) > lack class inclusion
12
Q
Concrete operations (7-12)
A
- can think logically about events + objects
- achieves conservation of number, mass by 7 and weight by 9
- classifies objects into categories using several features like size, colour, shape
- understands properties + relations between objects
13
Q
How do we know if a child moves from pre-operational to concrete operational?
A
- Pre-operational child has a basic representational ability > if they can pass the following tasks they moved
- conservation: change in appearance vs alteration of reality > even if appearance changes, recognise its the same object
- class inclusion: objects belong to different groups (e.g a uncle is also a brother)
- transitive inference: understanding relations between objects (e.g: John is taller than Peter, Peter is taller than Paul so John is taller than Paul
14
Q
Testing pre-operational child: conservation
A
- Conservation tasks look at conservation of number, mass, liquid and weight
- Conservation of number consists of showing for an example two rows of coins with 5 in each, asking which one has more, less or the same. Then spread out one row of coins and ask the same thing. > if they say the second row has more they have not moved to pre-operation
- Con of liquid would be shown two glasses which are tall but slim with the same amount of water & ask if the amount is the same or not, then pour one glass of water into a shorter but wider glass and ask this again.
- con of mass would be showing two balls of clay + asking if its the same amount, then rolling one ball out & ask again > weight is the same just with a scale
- Pre-op child will assume the object has changed due to changing appearance + don’t understand the nature of the object hasn’t changed > child fixates on appearance after not before
15
Q
Criticisms of conservation task
A
- requires linguistic skills which child may not understand nor possess which blocks the child from expressing what they truly mean
- working memory required as child must remember how the object looked before changing the look of it
^ these factors skew what Piaget is trying to measure
16
Q
Why do pre-operational children make mistakes in the conservation task? (conservation errors)
A
- make conservation errors due to
1. egocentrism: child cannot see object from other perspectives
2. centration: fixates on one point of the event and cannot shift back from it
3. reversibility: inability to mentally reverse a series of actions or events - in order to move to concrete ops, these limitations must be overcome
17
Q
Formal operations (12+)
A
- Individual shows abstract thinking about things which may not even exist or have not seen > Also develop logic, reasoning and problem solving skills
- Piaget says they should be able to have scientific reasoning + think like a scientist at the end of cognitive dev
18
Q
Formal operations:
pendulum task
A
- child is asked how can we make the pendulum swing faster? would have to vary weight, length of string, height of drop + initial force.
- Younger kids are more haphazard + try random lengths, push things etc. > whereas older kids think systematically + test things to get an answer
19
Q
Criticisms of the pendulum task
A
- Lacks ecological validity: Piaget + Inhelder are highly educated Europeans + middle class > this experiment is culturally bound + expects too much making it difficult to generalise > not everyone will develop like this
- Performance on the task will vary depending on schooling + culture
- these limitations suggest this is not a universal stage of development, rather a product of education
20
Q
Challenges to Piaget’s conception of what develops?
A
- Piaget’s theory is domain general (acquired concepts applies to all areas) but some researchers argue it is domain specific with dev occurring in clusters relating to a specific domain of cognition
- Goldschmid (1967) found that if children had the idea that when appearance of an object changes, the nature doesn’t, we expect them to pass conservation tasks > yet children performed at different levels across tasks even though it measures the same underlying idea
- Piaget responds saying it is horizontal décalage (uneven performance)> within one stage, children have different levels of mastery but this is temporary
- Still challenges Piaget as if a concept it mastered, it should apply to all domains
21
Q
A not B task re-visited
Marcovitch & Zelazo (1999)
A
- Did a meta analysis of 118 studies on infants aged 7-47mnths
- Found older children do better in this task (age eff)
- things like length of delay between showing location impact performance (long delay=poor performance), when there were more A trials, performance dropped and when there was a small distance between locations, they also performed more poorly
- the task isn’t measuring just cognitive ability but other things like working memory or executive function
22
Q
Conservation re-visited
McGariggle & Donaldson (1974)
A
- argue the experimenters non-linguistic behaviour (moving counters) clashes with linguistic behaviour (repeating question) > deviates from normal conversation
- conducted a naughty teddy exp > naughty teddy accidentally moves counters (exp group) > found 65% of kids passes in the experimental condition while only 16% pass in the standard condition
23
Q
Object permanence re-visited
Baillargeon (1987)
A
- argues the A not B task if too difficult as the infant needs a lot of physical coordination they don’t yet inhabit
- Baillargeon got 4 month old infants to learn about a drawbridge + watched it for a few secs > half of the group then watch the possible event where the drawbridge gets stuck on an object (knowledge consistent) > other half watch the impossible event where the drawbridge goes through the object (knowledge violation)
- Found children were looking longer in the KV condition than in the KC condition > shows infants have a basic understanding earlier than Piaget says
24
Q
Challenges: if infants do have object permanence, why do they fail Piaget’s A not B task
Diamond (1990)
A
- Diamond argues modifying aspects of the task like delay impacts performance > longer delay means younger kids perform worse than older kids as they can tolerate longer delay > thus Diamond argues A not B measures working memory
- Diamond also studied human infants + primates who show developmental progression in length of delay tolerated (the older the more you tolerate) > primate studies show lesions to the PFC hindered A not B performance. (part of brain associated to memory)
- Also argues children are better at A placement indicating they were better at inhibition (executive function) correlates to primate study > task tests ability to overcome tendency to do something + WM
25
Q
What do Piagetian tasks measure?
A
- Some argue that they measure the growth of executive function like inhibition + working memory in addition to other logical concepts
26
Q
Piaget’s contribution to developmental psychology
A
- Piaget has been significant in mapping the field of cognitive development > he identified what dev psych is concerned with which allowed other people to research too
- Researchers are still expanding on Piaget’s research many years later
- Made child friendly tasks which are still relied on now
- Despite the criticisms, the underlying logic + approach is helpful for current research
