Neo-Piaget Flashcards
Piaget and Logic
The logical piaget defines development in terms of stages
The dialectical piaget explains the processes that general new cognitive structures
neo-piagetians discredit the stagewise emergence of logic
-instead they pick up on piagets theory of development as a coordination of schemes
Pre-operational thought
Young children respond on the basis of perceptual cues rather than by logical deduction
logic is seen by piaget as a system of mental operations that works on objects independently of the figural configuration in which they present themselves
the crucial conceptual change is for piaget in time (sequence and sorting) and space (direction vectors and measurement
Dialectical development of logical thinking
First source would be noting ones own contradictions
Second source - experience of failure
Third source is external negative feedback
Piaget’s critique of gestalt psychology
Piaget did not believe in innate perceptual judgement, but that development of judgment takes place in a social context
children of the same age would force intellectual development than being told what is right or wrong because children learn to justify argue consider and concede
Gestalt psychologists themselves saw perceptual input in need of evaluation of whether it was an illusion or could be a cue to further insight
logic degrades visual perception into an illustrative role
why is developmental theory built on logic not viable?
horizontal decalage: conservation is acquired earlier for shape than for weight as the latter is less obvious
adults do not use logic all the time, but judge according to relevance rather than logical soundness
precocious logical reasoning in children can show when a task format is changed by explicit language instructions, increased familiarity, and reduced information load
cross culteral differences
gifted and autistic children who do not show stagewise development towards logical reasoning
Experience, measurement and cognitive style
earlier or later success in a task can still be explained within Piagetian theory as long as the longitudinal trajectory shows the same development sequence of performance
we can obtain data from children which cannot be explained with piagetian theory
Individual differences can be pronounced already in children as boys more often than girls exclusively use a visual code - cognitive style
TCO - Pascual-Leone’s theory of constructive operators
The theory of constructive operators arose an integration of two lines of inquiry: the piagetian study of cognitive development and Witkins study of field dependence
Field theory was first invented by kurt lewin
It describes that people are influenced by their context and sometimes need to leave in order to gain independent thinking
Witkin’s EFT
Witkins’s embedded figures test requires the identification of a figure within a noisy visual context
EFT is often performed better by boys (Lange-Kuttner + Ebersbach)
EFT is often performed better by male participants in the autistic spectrum
Schemes
They are usually thought of as plans
In cognitive Psychology, schemes are units of thought (cogwheel)
Neo-piagetians like Pascual-Leone used the concept of schemes and elaborated it into specific set of schemes
First level schemes are experimental (subjective operators)
First order schemes can be modality-specific (auditory, visual, tactual)
Second level schemes have specific functions (metasubjective operators)
These schemes are operational within a ‘central computing space’ which is a term that is also adopted by living French speaking scientists such as Barrouillet and Dehaene
Components of schemes
Releasing component: condition that if minimally satisfied initiates the scheme’s activation
Effective component: effects of activation
Terminal component: only found in schemes with temporal sequence
Schemes are organised hierarchically
Scheme components are equivalent to weights (mathematical value) in neural networks, simulated or real
types of second level operators
C operator (Content learning) L operator (Learning, LC and LM) M operator (Mental attentional energy) I operator (Interrupt) F-operator (Field) S-operator (Space) A-operator (Affect)
Pascaul-leone
C operator
Content learning
Corresponds to Piaget’s accommodation of schemes
Accommodation occurs in expectation violation and discrimination
Example: new content activates attention as in dishabituation experiments with infants, or in drawing with school children
New content must be more specific and challenging than old content
L-operator
Learning
Is differentiated into LC (slow, gradual learning process) and LM (rapid and abrupt)
LC is driven by content (C). Analogical representations of experiential content
LM is driven by mental energy (M). Less susceptible to interference. AHA insights, sometimes with conscious learning strategies
M-Operator
M operator has the function of incrementally increasing activation of task-relevant schemes
The energising emerges from the central nervous system, not the associative cortex, in particular the reticular system
M capacity increases one scheme every two years in children
I-operator
the i-operator is the antagonist of the M-operator
where the M-operator activates, the I-operator inhibits and interrupts
typical task, stroop task, marshmallow task, negative priming, go-nogo tasks
control of saliency effects
