Piaget's theory of cognitive development

Question 1

What is cognitive development?

Answer 1

• Ways in which processes (perception, language, memory, thinking) change and develop across the lifespan

Question 2

What is schema?

Answer 2

• Mental frameworks of beliefs and expectations that influence cognitive processing

Question 3

What did Piaget say about schema?

Answer 3

• Children are born with a small number of schema- enough to allow them to interact with the world/others
• In infancy, we construct new schema
• The me-schema involves children’s knowledge about themselves
• Cognitive development involves construction of progressively more detailed schema for: people, objects, physical actions, and later more abstract ideas: justice, morality

Question 4

What is equilibrium?

Answer 4

• Occurs when we have encountered new information and built it into our understanding of a topic, either by assimilation or accomodation

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Question 5

What is disequilibrium?

Answer 5

• Unpleasant sensation
• Occurs when we are pushed to learn as existing schemas don’t allow us to make sense of something new

Question 6

What is assimilation?

Answer 6

• Form of learning taking place when we acquire new information/ a more advanced understanding of an object/ person/idea
• Adding new info to existing schemas

Question 7

What is an example of assimilation?

Answer 7

• A child adapts to the existence of different dog breeds by asimilating them into the dog schema

Question 8

What is accomodation?

Answer 8

• Form of learning taking place when we acquire new information that changes our understanding of a topic to the extent that we need to form new schema/radically change existing schema

Question 9

What is an example of accomodation?

Answer 9

• A child with a pet dog may at first think of cats as dogs, but recognises the existence of a new category= cats, so forms a new schema for cats

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Question 10

What did Fantz do in his ‘looking glass chamber experiment’ and what did he find?

Answer 10

• Showed infants 2 images (typical human face vs scrambled face) or human face vs bullseye in a looking chamber (researcher observed length of time spent looking at each image)
• 2 month olds spent 2x as long looking at human faces than at the bullseye
• Suggests very young children have prefereces for faces- some schemas developed early on

Question 11

Strength-
I- Research support

Answer 11

D- Suggests children form individual representations of the world, despite similar experiences. Howe= children aged 9-12 placed in groups of 4 to investigate and discuss movement of objects down a slope. All children increased understanding, however understanding had not become more similar. Each child picked up different facts and reached slightly different conclusions
E- Means each child formed an individual representation of how objects move

Question 12

Strength-
I- Real world application

Answer 12

D- Idea that children learn through active exploration of environment, and by forming mental representations of the world has changed classroom teaching/ 1960s classroom replaced by activity- oriented classrooms, in which kids actively engage in tasks, allowing them to construct unique understandings of the curriculum. Discovery learning takes place in different forms, e.g. early years= investigating properties, A level= read up on content
E- Shows how Piaget approaches facilitate development of individual mental representations of the world

Question 13

Limitation-
I- Lack of evidence for discovery learning

Answer 13

D- Lazonder and Harmsen found discovery learning with considerable input from teachers was the most effective way to learn, and it seems that it is the input from others, rather than the discovery, that is the crucial element to its effectiveness
E- Means discovery learning is less effective than Piaget stated

Question 14

Limitation-
I- Underestimated the role of others in learning

Answer 14

D- Piaget saw others as useful to learning, as they acted as potential sources of information/learning experiences. But he saw learning as an individual provcess, which contrasts theories in which learning is a social process. Vygotsky says knowledge first exists between the learner and expert, and only after in the learner’s mind- enhanced by interaction
E- Means the theory may be an incomplete explanation of learning

Question 15

Evaluation extra-
I- The role of motivation

Answer 15

D- Piaget sides with the nature approach, suggesting children are born predisposed to acquire new knowledge to escape disequilibrium, so the role of motivation is innate. However, he may have overstated the role of motivation in learning. There are individual differences in the desire to learn, suggesting motivation is learned (nurture). A eason for this overemphasise is that he studied an unrepresentative and highly intelligent sample who may have received more parental encouragement/ reinforcement for intellectual curiosity
E- It appears kids are born with a degree of intellectual curiosity, but perhaps less than Piaget proposed