Piaget Flashcards
Sensori-motor stage
Infancy: 0-2yrs
Failure to differentiate between self and surroundings
Learning to explore through their senses
Pre-operational stage
Early childhood: 2-7yrs
Mental imagery without principled thought
Trouble understanding others perspectives
Concrete operational stage
Middle childhood: 7-12yrs
Principled thought confined to real-life problems
Use logic and reasoning
Formal operational
Adolescence and adulthood: 12yrs
Principled thought applied to abstract problems
What is solipism?
An inability to distinguish between self and surroudings
What is achieved through the sub stages of the sensori-motor stage?
Object permanence
Mental imagery
Understanding symbols
What are the two primary substages of the sensori-motor stage and the ages they occur
Reflex activity 0-1month
Primary circular reactions 1-4months
Define reflex activity
No intentionality, basic reflexes e.g. grasping, sucking etc.
Define primary circular reactions
Self-initiate certain schemes
- If an object disappears the infant keeps looking for it in the same place
What is the secondary substage and what age does it occur?
Secondary circulator reactions 4-8months
Define secondary circular reactions
Infant learns to use one secondary scheme or activate another
What are the two tertiary substages and the ages at which they occur?
Tertiary circular reactions 12-18months
Symbolic representations 18-24months
Define teritary circular reactions
Can solve A not B task when object remains in the same place but not when it is moved
Define symbolic representations
Infant can solve object search with invisible displacement
Explain the A not B task
Hide rattle under cloth A so baby will remove cloth A to retrieve the rattle (repeated)
Hide rattle under cloth B
Child will still look for it under cloth A
4 months olds: A not B task
No attempt to search for partially or totally hidden objects
4-9month olds: A not B task
Visual search for objects
9+month olds: A not B task
Search for and retrieve objects but not when hidden in new positions
Inhelder and Piaget (1958)
3 mountains task:
Child sits in front of models of 3 mountains each with distinct features e.g. snow/cross etc.
Another person sits opposite the child and asks them to select the photograph of how the other person would see the mountains
Pre-operational children choose their own vantage point
Conservation of quantity
Child watches as water is poured into to short and wide jars to the same level (A and B)
Pour water from jar B into a tall thin jar (C)
Children below age 7 state that jar C has more water in it than jar A
What is ‘failure to decentre’ with regards to the water in jars study?
An intuitive answer that doesn’t depend on a principle
The water looks higher, therefore it is
What is transitive inference?
The use of another unrelated object to make judgements e.g. a stick to see which tower is taller
Class inclusion
Child’s inability to respond to subcategories:
Shown a line of 5 red bricks and 2 blue bricks
Correctly respond that there’s 7 bricks
Incorrectly respond that there are more red bricks than bricks as they answer according to the main category
Inhelder and Piaget (1958): pendulum problem
What determines the osscillations per minute?
Vary the 4 factors by keeping 1 constant and varying the other 3
It’s the method not the answer that’s important
What stage is the pendulum problem used to test?
Formal operational
What are the 3 mechanisms of development?
Schemes, assimilation and accomodation
Define schemes
Building blocks of thinking
Knowledge sequences that help us plan actions
- Using utensils to eat etc. (subset of routines that drive our actions)
Define assimilation
Taking in information using already existing mental structures
Applying schemes to novel content
How can assimilation be problematic?
If two objects are similar one may try to do the same action for both
- E.g. having just learned to use a fork, child uses the same motion for a spoon
- Needs to think of a new method due to the conflict of inforamtion
Define accomodation
Modification of mental structures to accomodate new information
Elkind’s (1956) description of adolescents
Excessively focussed on mental life Have an illusion of transparency Risk-taking Have a personal fable and private God Have an imaginary audience Are self-conscious
