Task 1 Flashcards
Developmental periods
Prenatal period( conception to birth) Infancy(birth to 2 years) Early childhood(2 years to 6 years) Middle childhood(6 to 11 years) Adolescence(11 to 18 years) Early adulthood(18 to 25 years) Adulthood( from 25 years on)
Piagets theory of cognitive development
Constructivist theory that suggests that children move through four different stages of mental development. It focuses not only on how children acquire knowledge but also in the nature of intelligence.
Fundamental Assumptions of piagets theory on cognitive development.
From birth onwards, humans are mentally active as well as physically, and their activity greatly contributes to their own development.
Children learn many important lessons on their own rather than depending on the instruction of parents or older children.
Children are intrinsically motivated to learn and do not require rewards from adults to do so.
Two basic processes of piagets theory
Organization: Tendency to integrate particular observations into coherent schemas.
Adaptation: Tendency to respond to demands of environment in ways which meet one´s goals.
Central developmental issues of piagets theory
Nature and Nurture
Sources of continuity
Sources of discontinuity
Nature and nurture
Nature and nurture interact to produce cognitive development.
Nurture being not only the care given by parents but also by every experience the child encounters.
Nature being the maturing of the brain and the body with the correspondent ability to perceive, act, learn from experiences. The tendency to integrate observations to knowledge.
Nature and nurture combo creates schemas based on internal mental activities. These schemas start being puting together with those of physical activities while kids grow older. It helps them to form more complex behavior.
Sources of continuity
Children develop cognitive abilities by continually adapting schemes through assimilation, accommodation and equilibration.
Assimilation
Interpreting new ideas or experiences to fit existing schemes.
E.g Child saw dalmatian dog and interepreted this information based on prior experience calling it doggy
Accomodation
Changing existing schemes to fit new ideas or experiences.
Child sees 4 legged animal (cow) and cals it doggy. Mother tells him that that is not a dog but a cow so the child wil have to have to change his schema about fourlegged animals
Equilibration
Balancing accomodation and assimilation to create stable understanding
Equilibrium
Disequilibrium
Advanced equilibrium
Equilibrium
Children are satisfied with their understanding of a particular phenomenon. They do not see any diifferences between their observations and understanding of a phenomenon.
Disequilibrium
New information leads children to perceive that their understanding is inadequate, but they still cannot generate superior alternative.
Advanced equilibrium
They develop sophisticated understanding eliminating shortcomings of old one. They create advanced equilibrium with broader range of observations that can be undrstood.
Sources of discontinuity
Piaget depicts discontinuous aspects of cognitive development. Each stage is a way of understanding one´s experience and each transition represents discontinuous intellectual leap from one way of understanding it to another.
Central properties of piagets stage theory
Qualitative change:Children of different ages thing in qualitetively different ways.In early stages of develoment consider morality based on consequences of behavior. In later stages they conceive it in terms of intent.
Broad applicability: Type of thinking characteristic of each age, influences childrens thinking across diverse topics and contexts.
Brief transitions: Before netering new stage, children go through a transitional period where they are somewhere between the more advanced type of thinking(new) and the less advanced one (old).
Invariant sequence:Everyone progresses through the stages i same order without skipping any of them.
Four stages of cognitive development
Each stage has children exhibit new abilities that allow them to understand the world in qualitatively different ways than before.
First Stage
Sensorimotor stage (Birth to two years)
Period within Piagets theory in which intelligence is expressed through sensory and motor abilities.
Concepts such as time,space and causality begin to be constructed
infants live largely in the here and now, their inteliggence is bound to their immediate perceptions and actions
Reflexive schemes in the first stage
Birth to first month.
Infants are born with many reflexes: Reflexes and perceptual abilities are essential tools for building intelligence.
Primary circular reactions in the first stage
1-4months
Infants begin to organize reflexes into larger behaviors, most are centred on their own bodies
Secondary Circular reactions
Hallmark of this shift
Deficiency in children thinking 7-8 months
4-8months
Infants become increasingly interested in the world around them ( people, animals, toys and othe robjects and events beyond their own bodies).
hAMMMARK OF THIS SHIFT is that children start repeating their actions on the environment producing interesting results(banging rattles)
Deficiency in children thinking from 7-8 months:
Lack of object permanence( knowledge that objects continue to exist when out of view)
“Out of sight, Out of mind”(Only able to mentally represent objects that can be perceived at the moment
Coordinationn of secondary circular reactions in the first stage
A not B error
8-12 months
Intentional and goal directed behavior e;g intentionally droppiing a spoon so our parents will give it to us. We see something and can grasp it to obtain the object(object permanence).
A not B error: Tendency to reach for a hidden object where it was last found rather than in the new location where it was last hidden.
Tertiary circular reactions
1_18 years old
Infants begin to actively and avidly explore the potetntial ways in which objects can be used.
–“child as a scientist”: Their actions are the beginning of scientific experimentation.
Mental representations
Deferred Imitation
Infants become able to form enduring mental representations. They also acquire deferred imitation.
Deferred imitation: Repetition of other people´s behavior a substantial time after it originally occurred
Stage 2
Preoperational stage 2-7 years
Period in which children become able to represent the world through language, mental imagery, and symblic thought.
Stage 2 Highlights
Children are able to think about things symbolically (3-4 years)
Language use becomes more mature
Develop memory and imagination ( allows them to understand time and engage i make-believe
communication and thought are still inflexible and limited
children are unable to perform mental operations
Limitation of the second stage
Egocentrism- Inability to take someone elses perspective Three mountain task
animism: belief that inanimate objects have feelings as the young child has. They consider this objects as having emotions motives intentions thoughts and desires
No conservation: No capacity to infer knowledge that you understand from what is happening
Conservation- Capacity to infer knowledge that you undestand from what is happening.
Stage 3
Concrete operational estate (7 TO 12 years)
Period in piagets theory in which children become able to think logically and not just intuitively. They can now classify concrete objects and understand events influenced by more than one factor.
Highlights of stage 3
Children reason logically about concrete features of the world.
Most children can solve conservation tasks and many problems requiring attention to multiple dimensions.
Abstract and hypothetical thinking are not yet developed
pendulum problem
Stage 4
Formal operational stage(12 years and beyond)
people in piagets theory in which adolescents thik systematically and reason about what might be, as well as what is. It allows them to understand politics, ethics and science fiction, as well as to engage in scientific reasoning.
Staircase model
Example of piagets theory with sharp and regular transitions from ohase to phase with no ovzrlap or hierarchical system
Discontinuous/ stepwise change when one phase neds the next begins
not ocnstantlly developing
Weaknesses of piagets theory
Infants and young children acquire cognitive abilities earlier than piaget thought
stage transitions are not as sharp as expected
theory emphasize individual processes at the expense of social and cultura influences.
Alternative theories
Information proccessing theories(KLAHR)
Sociocultural theories
Information processing theories(khlar)
Memory system
strategies that enhance learning ad memory
Class of theories focusing on structure of cognitive system and mental activities used to deploy attentio and memory to problem solving.
Memory system= working memory long term memory and executive functoning
rehearsal and selective attention
overlapping waves theory
Information processing approach that emphasizes that individual childrne use multiple strategies to solve the same type of problem.
Sociocultural theories
Approaches that emphasize that other people and the surrounding culture contribute greatly tochildrens development.
Emphasizes the developmebntal importance of children´s interactions with other people.
Emphasizes cultural tools for cognitive development
Difference of socioultural theories with infromation processing theories and piagets theory
They dont tak eo naccount othe rpeople and focus on child sown efforts to ndesrtand the world
Vygotskys theory
Vigotsky portrayed children as social learners, involved with people who are willing to help them gain skills and understanding.
Internalization of thought proccess
A thought is internalized through speech and it originates a statement parents and adults make to children.
Proccess of internzlizing speech:
1 Childrens behavior is controlled by others statements
2 Childrens behavior is controlled by own private research (teel themselves what their parents told them)
3 Children´s behavior is controlled by internalized private speech, though
They tell themselves what tod do
More prevalent between ages 4 and 6
Weakness of vigotskys theory and the internalization thought proccess
It doesnt specify when it comes to age related changes
Central developmental issues
specific ideas about how change occurs through social interaction
Intersubjectivity
Social scaffolding
Zone of proximl development
Guided participation
Intersubjectivity
Joint attention
mutual understanding that people share during communication
Proccess in which social partners intentionally focus on common referent in external environment
Social Scaffolding
Providing temporary framework that supports children thinking at higuer level thatn children could manage on their own
Zone of proximal development
Tasks that a child can complete with the guidance of an assitance of an adult or older childrne
Guided participation
Organizing activities in ways that allow chuldren to engage in them at higher level than they could manage on their own
Educational Implications
According to social constructivism, education should be aimed at deep understnding, with learning to be a cooperative activitiy, in whih learning makes a little one want to learn more.