Piaget Lecture Flashcards
What are Piaget’s four stages of cognitive development? Ages, features
Sensori-motor: Birth-2years: relationship b/w sensation & motor behaviour
Pre-operational: 2-6years: use of symbols-internal representation
Concrete operations: 7-12 years: mastery of logic & rational thinking
Formal operations: 12 years+: abstract, hypothetical thinking
What causes movement from one stage to the next?
- maturation
- experience interacting with environment
- social interaction
- equilibrium
What is equilibrium?
process of searching for balance bw schemas and environment
What is disequilibrium (cognitive discomfort)?
when current understanding of the world is inadequate to explain experiences - requires adaption
What are the six substages of the sensori-motor stage and what do they mean?
- reflexive schemes (0-1 mth): suck, grasp etc.
- primary circular reactions (1-4 mths): repetition of actions centred on infants on body, accidentally engages in an action with an interesting outcome & repeats this action e.g. thumbsucking, playing with own hands
- secondary circular reactions (4-8 mths): highchair - dropping objects, repetition of actions = interesting outcome outside of own body e.g. shaking rattle
- co-ordination of secondary circular reactions (8-12 mths): emergence of goal directed behaviour - pushes obstacle away to grab a toy
- tertiary circular reactions (12-18 mths): trial & error exploration, problem solving, cause & effect
- symbolic or representational thought (18-24 mths): can imagine & solve problems in head
What is object permanence?
The understanding that objects do not cease to exist when they are out of sight
Discuss the development of object permanence
0-4 mths: only aware of objects in immediate perceptual field (out of site out of mind)
4-8 mths: babies can search for partially hidden objects
8-12 mths: babies search for completely hidden objects BUT search in the place where they last found object - can’t separate the object’s existence from their actions upon it
12-18 mths: babies look for object where it was last seen, not based on past search actions
18-24 mths: fully mastered object permanence - mentally represent the object and invisible movements
What are clinical applications of Piaget’s theory?
-help children with sensorimotor problems
Discuss pre operational stage
Ages 2-6 -gains in mental representation -make believe play -symbols: real-world relations limitations in thinking: pre-logical -egocentrism -centration
What is conservation in the pre operational stage?
The understanding that physical properties of an object/substance do not change when their outward appearance is altered - liquids in wide/tall glass
What are three ways that Piaget said children reason the inner world?
Animism - mistaken belief that non living things are alive or have attributes of people
Realism - attributing tangible qualities to events of the mind e.g. dreaming = movie in your head
artificialism - the belief that all natural phenomena are products of human engineering
What are some questions about semi-logical reasoning? 5 years
- What makes you grow yup?
- What makes you stop growing?
- How do people get dead?
Discuss concrete operational thought
can use operations
can use conservation
logical reasoning replaces intuitive reasoning - but only in concrete circumstances
not abstract e.g. can add up & subtract in head but not solve theoretical problems e.g. algebra
classification skills
Discuss formal operations
> 12 years
logical mental actions performed on thought/symbols as opposed to objects
abstract, idealistic and logical thinking
hypothetical deductive reasoning
thinking about thinking
reflection & questioning e.g. meaning of life, religion, hypocrisy
What are some critiques of the Formal operations stage
70% of USA adults fail Piagets formal operation tasks inconsistent across domains culture differences basic intelligence? formal schooling?
Discuss Adolescent Egocentrism
belief that others are as interested in them as they are in themselves
sense of personal uniqueness & invincibilty
Discuss Post-Formal Thought
less abstract
less absolute- more contextual
more flexible
more dialectical - integrating one’s beliefs
What are some limitations for Piaget?
- inadequate support for stage notion
- stages are less coherent than Piaget suggested, but useful points of reference
- children can be trained to reason at higher levels
- confounding competence and performance - what children can demonstrate they understand compared with what they actually can understand
