Piaget Flashcards
first psychologist to systematically study ________
cognitive perspective (focus on changes in thinking rather than changes in behavior)
Piaget’s main theory
cognitive stages of development
Cognitive Stages of Development overview
- posits that development happens on its own via maturation (as get older, ability to understand world increases)
- disagrees that intelligence = fixed trait
- focused on development rather than learning
- only looks at children
main goal of cognitive stages of development theory
explain how infant, then child, develops into individual who can reason and think using hypotheses
3 basic components to this theory
- schemas
- adaptation processes
- stages of cognitive development
schemas
“building blocks of knowledge” – how organize knowledge in the brain
adaptation processes (3)
- equilibrium
- assimilation
- accommodation
equilibrium
- force that moves development along
- occurs when can assimilate all new information (if can’t, disequilibrium will occur until accommodate all info)
assimilation
using existing schemas for new things
accommodation
changing an existing schema to deal with something new
stages of cognitive development (4)
- sensorimotor
- preoperational
- concrete operational
- formal operational
sensorimotor stage
- 0 to 18-24 mos
- goal = object permanence
preoperational stage
- 18-24 mos to 7 yrs
- goal = symbolic thought
concrete operational stage
- 7 to 11 yrs
- goal = logical thought
formal operational stage
- adolescence to adulthood
- goal = abstract thought
