Piagets Theory Of Cognitve Development Flashcards
Cognitive development
A general term describing the development of all mental processes, in particular thinking, reasoning and our understanding of the world.
Schema
A mental framework of beliefs and expectations that influence cognitive processing. They’re developed from experience.
Assimilation
A form of learning that takes place when we acquire new info or a more advanced understanding of an object, person or idea that fits into existing schemas without making any change.
Accommodations
A form of learning that takes place when we acquire new info that changes our understanding of a topic to the extent that we need to from one or more new schemers and/or radically change existing schemas to deal with the new understanding.
Equilibration
Experiencing a balance between existing schemas and new experiences. It takes place when new info is built into our understanding of a topic - either by assimilating it into an existing schema or accommodating it by forming a new one.
Piaget
His theory of cognitive development changed our understanding of how thinking develops in a child. Before Piaget people believed that the difference in thinking between adults and children was that adults know more. Piaget proposed something radically different. He claimed that adults d not just know more, they think in quite a different way.
Piaget believed that cognitive development was a result of 2 influences:
- Maturation - the effect of the biological processes of ageing. As children get older, certain mental processes become possible.
- Environment - through interactions with the environment,ent, children’s understanding of the world becomes more complex
Piaget was concerned both with what motivates us to learn (disequilibrium and equilibrium) and how our knowledge of the world develops (assimilation and accommodation)
Piaget - Schema
-Piaget believed children are born with a small number of schemas - just enough to allow them to interact with other people. E.g the grasping reflex or mental rep of a face.
-during infancy we’re thought to construct new schema. One of these is the ‘me-schema’ in which all the child’s knowledge about themselves is stored.
-with time we develop schema for other people, objects, physical actions and more abstract ideas like morality and justice. This occurs as a result of interactions with the environment.
-schema can be behavioural (grasping) or cognitive (classifying objects)
Assimilation - Piaget
-a child initially tries to understand any new information in terms of their existing knowledge about the world.
-assimilation occurs when an existing schema is used on a new object.
-For example a child in a family with dogs can adapt to the existence of different dog breeds by assimilating them into their dog schema.
Accommodation- Piaget
-takes place in response to dramatically new experiences.
-the child has to adjust to these radically changing current schema, or by forming new ones.
-a child with a pet dog may at first think of cats as dogs - four legs, fur and a tail- but then they accommodate to the existence of a separate species called cat.
-this will involve altering the animal/pet schemas o include cats and forming a new ‘cat-schema’
Équilibration - Piaget
-driving force for these changes or ‘adaptions’ is the principle of equilibrium. We are motivated to learn when our existing schemas dont allow us to make sense of something new.
-the human mind strives to maintain a sense of balance ie equilibrium. If an experience can’t be assimilated into existing schemas, then there’s a state of imbalance which is experienced as an unpleasant state (disequilibrium) and the individual seeks to restore balance through equilibration.
-cognitive development is the result of adaption between the individuals existing schemas and environmental demand for changes.
Lifespan Learning
Assimilation, accommodation, equilibration take place throughout life as our experiences present us with knowledge.
-however, there are some limitations on what can be learned at different stages.
-a young child can’t always accommodate new experiences into new schemas because their mind is simply not mature enough - this links to the stages of cognitive development.
