piaget & vygotsky lec 2

Question 1

what was piaget?

Answer 1

(1896 - 1980) he was an epistemologist - an expert in the philosophical theory of knowledge.

Question 2

what was piaget interested in?

Answer 2

fascinated by how children learned about the world and developed innovative methods to test this

Question 3

tenets of piaget’s theory: interactionism

Answer 3

interactionism: learning is influenced by the interplay between “nature and nurture”

Question 4

tenets of piaget’s theory: constructivism

Answer 4

constructivism: children play an active role in constructing their own knowledge through interacting with the environment

Question 5

tenets of piaget’s theory: knowledge is neither…

Answer 5

innately hardwired nor a copy of reality that is encoded exactly as it occurs or is experienced

Question 6

tenets of piaget’s theory: schemas

Answer 6

babies are born with simple “skills” that enable them to interact with their environment which are called schemas and enable them to explore and develop more knowledge/skills.

Question 7

importance of schemas

Answer 7

through these schemas they are testing their understanding and theories about the world - their actions on the environment provide data allowing them to modify the existing schemas and create new ones

Question 8

how do infants modify and create schemas?

Answer 8

assimilation = taking new info, or a new experience, and fitting onto an existing schema
accommodation = creating new schemas, or modifying existing ones to fit new info
both are forms of adaptation (or learning)

Question 9

equilibrium

Answer 9

when understanding aligns with reality, the infant is in a state of equilibrium

Question 10

disequilibrium

Answer 10

when new info is experienced, understanding may misalign with reality, causing disequilibrium

Question 11

piaget’s developmental stages

Answer 11

sensor motor stage, pre-operational, concrete operations, formal operations

Question 12

piaget’s developmental stages: sensori-motor stage

Answer 12

0-2 yrs - intelligence in action: child interacts with the environment by manipulating objects. learn to differentiate themselves from the environment, begin to understand causality in time and space and develop the capacity to form internal mental representations - object permanence is learnt

Question 13

piaget’s developmental stages: pre-operational: preconceptual period

Answer 13

2-4yrs - thought arises out of action, egocentrism, symbolic understanding, language aquisition, pretend play but thinking is illogical and is influenced but appearances

Question 14

piaget’s developmental stages: pre-operational: intuitive period

Answer 14

begins to develop mental operations of ordering, classifying and quantifying in a more systematic way. difficulty in conservation tasks

Question 15

piaget’s developmental stages: concrete operational stage

Answer 15

thinking becomes more flexible - no longer have tendency to just focus on one aspect of a problem, can consider different aspects of a task at the same time. - succeed on conservation tasks

Question 16

piaget’s developmental stages: formal operations stage

Answer 16

adult style thinking, abstract logic, systematic problem solving

Question 17

evaluating piaget

Answer 17

most of his findings have been replicated, ppts were from well educated western-european families which applies bias to his results and limits generalisability, tasks were abstract, lacked meaning and placed high demands on children’s language skills - underestimating children’s understanding of the world, many argue that cog development is a continuous process (not systematic as proposed by piaget), criticised for putting too much onto the child’s failures rather than successes

Question 18

vygotsky

Answer 18

(1896-1934) - was a Russian psychologist who proposed that social interaction has a fundamental role in cog development and that children’s development can’t be understood without reference to the social and cultural context in which it is embedded

Question 19

tenets of vygotsky’s theory

Answer 19

development is culturally-mediated, learning occurs through social interactions, the “zone of proximal development”, language + cog development are inter-related

Question 20

v = cultural learning

Answer 20

infants are born with ‘elementary mental functions’ to begin learning about the world. through interaction within the infant’s socio-cultural environment, these skills develop into more sophisticated effective ‘higher mental functions’. the development of higher mental functions is supported by ‘tools of intellectual adaptation’, which vary from culture to culture

Question 21

v = social learning

Answer 21

children are actively involved in their own learning but v placed greater emphasis on others’ influencing children’s development. most important learning occurs through social interaction with a ‘more knowledgeable other’. a more knowledgeable other may model behaviours or provide verbal instructions for the child in a collaborative dialogue. the child tries to understand the actions and then internalises the info, using it to guide their own behaviour.

Question 22

zone of proximal development

Answer 22

explains the difference between what a child can learn independently and what they can achieve with social guidance. jigsaw puzzle example

Question 23

according to v how is language acquired?

Answer 23

through social interactions

Question 24

according to v what 2 vital roles does lang play in cog development?

Answer 24

(1) it is the primary means through which adults transmit info to children (+ vice versa) (2) lang itself becomes a very powerful tool for intellectual adaptation

Question 25

3 forms of lang according to v

Answer 25

social speech, private speech and inner speech

Question 26

social speech

Answer 26

from 2 yrs - external speech, used to communicate with others. lang and thought are separate systems

Question 27

private speech

Answer 27

from 3 yrs - external speech, directed to the self. signposts merging of speech with thought - talking to themselves. acts as a tool to facilitate cog processes, overcome task obstacles, engage in representational thought, plan activities and strategies, and self-regulate beh. start to use lang to scaffold their learning

Question 28

inner speech

Answer 28

from 7 yrs - internal speech, directed to the self - speak in their heads. provides representational meaning to the external world and incoming stimuli. mediates self-regulation and most conscious cog processing

Question 29

evaluating v

Answer 29

v’s theories laid the foundations for current + widely popular social-cultural accounts of development. v’s claims have been criticised for a lack of testable hypotheses. the zpd lacks specificity in terms of how children’s learning actually occurs or their precise needs at any given time. doesnt provide a full explanation for individual differences or developmental disorders