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?
