Piaget - Cognitive Development Theory Flashcards
Piaget’s definition of learning
Children actively construct knowledge as they manipulate and explore the world.
“Little scientists that constantly explore to make sense of the world”
What are the four factors that lead to cognitive development?
1) Maturation
2) Experience with the physical world
3) Experience with the social world
4) Equilibration
What is Equilibration?
Equilibration is the biological drive to produce an optimal state of equilibrium between cognitive structures and the environment.
What is adaption?
When an individual is out of equilibrium and they are working to get back to an equilibrium.
What does Piaget mean by cognitive structures?
Prior knowledge.
What must happen to reach equilibrium?
One must make revisions to prior knowledge.
Why would an individual be out of equilibrium?
Either they have misconceptions in their prior knowledge OR their prior knowledge is incomplete.
What methods are used to reach equilibrium?
There are two methods
1) Assimilation
2) Accommodation
What is Assimilation?
It is the integration of external elements into evolving or completed structures of an organism.
Layman’s terms: The integration of new information with prior knowledge. Just adding to our existing schema.
What is Accommodation?
Is any modification to an assimilatory scheme or structure by the elements it assimilates.
Layman’s terms: Is making a change to prior knowledge that is not just integrating more information with the prior knowledge, but changing the prior knowledge. Or create a new Schema altogether.
What is Maturation?
The change of an individual which is due to age.
What are the four distinct Maturation stages?
1) Sensorimotor
2) Preoperational
3) Concrete operational
4) Formal Operational
What is the age range of Sensorimotor?
From birth to 18 months.
What develops in the Sensorimotor stage?
Babies use their senses & motor skills to learn about the world. Object permanence develops between 4 - 7 months.
What is the age range of preoperational?
18 months to 6 years.
What develops in the preoperational stage?
Language skills develop, the use of symbols to represent earlier sensorimotor skills. Make-believe play begins.
What is the age range of the concrete operational stage?
6 to 12 years.
What develops in the concrete operational stage?
Reasoning becomes logical and better organized. The notion of conservation (reversibility) develops.
What is the age range of the Formal operational stage?
12 years to adult.
What develops in the Formal operational stage?
Abstract, systematic thinking to allow hypothesis formation, deduction of testable inferences to confirm or disconfirm inferences.
According to Piaget, do kids move in and out of the maturation stages?
No, according to Piaget, the maturation stages are chronological. That is one can not develop language skills until they have developed all of their sensorimotor skills.
