Task 1: Joe Changes Flashcards
Includes notes from Smith, Siegler, article and the lecture
Constructivist
children construct knowledge themselves in response to their experiences
Who labelled children as constructivists?
Piaget
In what way are children motivated according to Piaget?
intrinsically motivated, no need for rewards from adult s
What does nurture include?
not just the nurturing provided by parents and other caregivers but every experience the child encounters
What does nature include?
includes child’s maturing brain and body; child’s ability to perceive, act, and learn from experience
Name 2 functions central to cognitive growth in relation to motivation
- adaptation
2. organization
Adaptation
tendency to respond to the demands of the environment in ways that meet one’s goals
Organization
tendency to integrate particular observations into coherent knowledge
Name 3 sources of continuity according to Piaget?
- assimilation
- accommodation
- equilibration
Assimilation
process by which people incorporate incoming information into concepts they already understand
Accommodation
process by which people adapt their current understandings in response to new experiences
Equilibration
process by which people balance assimilation and accommodation to create stable understanding; includes three phases
Discuss the 3 phases of equilibration
- Equilibrium: Children are satisfied with their understanding of a phenomenon; children do not see any discrepancies between observations and their understanding of the phenomenon
- Disequilibrium: new information leads children to perceive that their understanding is inadequate; children recognize shortcomings in their understanding of the phenomenon but cannot generate a superior alternative
- Children develop a more sophisticated understanding that eliminates the shortcomings of the old one more stable equilibrium (broader range of observations can be understood within it)
Name 4 sources of discontinuity according to Piaget
- qualitative change
- broad applicability
- brief transitions
- invariant sequence
Qualitative change
difference in criteria for moral, children of different ages think in qualitatively different ways
Broad applicability
type of thinking characteristic of each stage influences children’s thinking across diverse topics and contexts
Brief transitions
before new stage, children pass through brief transitional period in which they fluctuate between the type of thinking characteristic of the new and the old
Invariant sequence
everyone progresses through the stages in the same order and never skips a stage
Name the 4 stages of Piaget’s Theory and the years of each
- Sensorimotor stage (birth to age 2)
- The preoperational stage (age 2 to 7)
- The concrete operations stage (age 7 to 12)
- The formal operations stage (age 12+)
Object permanence
-> when does this develop
the knowledge that objects continue to exist when out of view
-> 8 months
What can children in the sensorimotor stage mentally represent?
object they perceive at the present moment
How does the brain weight change in the sensorimotor stage?
it triples
A-not-B error
once 8-12 month-olds have reached for and found a hidden object several times in one place (location A), when they see the object hidden at a different place (location B) and are prevented from immediately searching for it, they tend to reach where they initially found the object
What are infants intelligence bound to?
their immediate perceptions and actions
Name the 6 sub-stages and the time frames of the sensorimotor stage
- basic reflex activity (0-1 month)
- primary circular reactions (1-4 month)
- secondary circular reactions (4-8 months)
- Coordination of secondary circular reactions (8-12 months)
- Tertiary circular reactions (12-18 months)
- Mental representations (18-24 months)
Basic reflex activity (0-1 month)
practice of innate reflexes (e.g. sucking, looking) and can only mentally represent objects that are present, center on their own bodies
Primary circular reactions (1-4 month)
“Primary” – made up of reflexes or motor responses
“Circular” – behavior is repeated
Center on infant’s own body, appears to be no differentiation between self and outside world
Secondary circular reactions (4-8 month)
now focus on objects, change surroundings intentionally e.g. moving a hanging toy by hitting it
Coordination of secondary circular reactions (8-12 month)
combine different schemas to achieve goals and solve new problems in situations e.g. use hitting schema to knock barrier between themselves and the toy
Tertiary circular reactions (12-18 month)
- Use trial and error methods to learn about objects (“child as a scientist”), parents see it as bad behaviour
- Increase mobility enables them to learn and explore
- Infant starts to construct fundamental concepts, like time or space, but cannot yet combine experiences from the past to the present time
Mental representations (18-24 month)
mental combination of schemas (relying less on physical trials and errors); deferred imitation and symbolic thought
Deferred imitation
repetition of other people’s behavior minutes, hours, or even days after it occurred
What does the preooperational stage (age 2 to 7) lack?
mental operations: forms of reasoning that are part of an organized system of mental activities
Name the 2 periods of the preoperational stage and the time frames
- pre-conceptual period (2-4 years)
2. the intuitive period (4-7)
Preconceptual period
- Builds on the capacity for internal (or symbolic) thought that has develop in the sensory-motor period
- Rapid increase in language which (according to Piaget) results from the development of symbolic thought (Thought arises out of action, not language e.g. deaf children can still solve problems)
Discuss the development of symbolic representations in relation to the preconceptual period
- Use of one object to stand for another e.g. popsicle stick as a gun
- Personal symbols usually physically resemble the objects they represent
- As children develop, they rely less on self-generated symbols and more on conventional ones
- Heightened symbolic capabilities are evident in the growth of drawing e.g. hands on stick men are circles
Discuss egocentrism in relation to the preconceptual period
- Perceiving the world solely from one’s own point of view
- Difficulty in taking other people’s spatial perspectives as well as in communication
- Evident when making statements that assume knowledge that they themselves possess but that their listeners lack
- Over course of preoperational stage, egocentric speech becomes less common
Intuitive period
- Children develop the mental operations of ordering, classifying and quantifying in a more systematic way
- “Intuitive” as even though child can carry out operations, unaware of the principles that underlie the operations and cannot explain why she has done them
Discuss animism in relation to the intuitive period
everything in a child’s world is alive; before distinction between living and nonliving objects is made
Discuss centration in relation to the intuitive period
= focusing on a single, perceptually striking feature of an object or event to the exclusion of other relevant but less striking features
Conservation concept (as part of centration)
merely changing the appearance or arrangement of objects does not necessarily change their key properties
Discuss the conservation concept for children in the preoperational stage
- Preoperational thinkers center their attention on the single, perceptually salient dimension of height or length, ignoring other relevant dimensions
The concrete operational stage (7-12)
- Begin to reason logically about concrete features of the world at 7
- Able to solve many other problems that require attention to multiple dimensions e.g. balance problem – consider both distance from fulcrum and weight
- Thinking systematically remains very difficult, as does reasoning about hypothetical situations
- Children design unsystematic experiments from which no clear conclusion can be drawn
- Inductive reasoning
The formal operational stage (12+)
- Ability to think abstractly and to reason hypothetically
- Is not universal: not all adolescents (or adults) reach it
- For those who reach it, formal operational thinking greatly expands and enriches their intellectual universe
Deductive
Name 4 issues associated with Piaget’s legacy
- The stage model depicts children’s thinking as being more consistent than it is
- Infants and young children are more cognitively competent than Piaget recognized
- Understates contribution of the social world to cognitive development
- Vague about the cognitive processes that give rise to children’s thinking and about the mechanisms that produce cognitive growth
Discuss how Vygotsky is different to Piaget
development takes place through direct interactions between children and people (interpersonal context), who want to help children acquire the skills an knowledge valued by culture
-> instruction = heart of learning
Guided participation
process in which more knowledgeable individuals organize activities in ways that allow less knowledgeable people to engage in them at a higher level than they could manage on their own
Cultural tools
the innumerable products of human ingenuity that enhance thinking
o Symbol systems (e.g. language to convey thoughts) o Artifacts (e.g. toys, instruction sheet) o Skills (e.g. proficiency in language to communicate) o Values (e.g. culture’s approval of parents interacting with their children in the way that Sadie’s mother does and of young girls’ learning mechanical skills)
Private speech
- > discuss 3 phases
- > when is it most prevalent
- Children’s behavior is controlled by other people’s statements
- Children’s behavior is controlled by own private speech, in which they tell themselves aloud what to do, much as their parents might have earlier
- Children’s behavior is controlled by internalized private speech (thought), in which they silently tell themselves what to do
- > 4-6 years
- > Children generate a considerable amount of overt private speech when they first encounter a challenging task, but the amount decreases as they master it
Discuss the 2 unique human characteristics according to Tomasello
- Inclination to teach others of the species
- > Emerges around 2 (e.g. 2 year old’s spontaneously point to and name objects to call other people’s attention to what they find interesting) - Inclination to attend to and learn from such teaching
Zone of proximal development
refers to the tasks that children can complete with the guidance and assistance of adults ore more-skilled children; ZPD is between the actual development level and the level of potential development
Discuss the differences (if any) of processes and content across cultures
Processes producing development e.g. guided participation are the same across societies
Content e.g. symbol systems, values, artifacts vary shaping children’s thinking
Discuss Vygotsky’s intersubjectivity
- Mutual understanding that people share during communication
- Effective communication requires participants to focus on the same topic, and also on each other’s reaction to whatever is being communicated
Define joint attention in relation to intersubjectivity
infants and their social partners intentionally focus on a common referent in the external environment, increasing child’s ability to learn from other people
-> evident at age 1
Discuss social scaffolding according to Vygotsky
More competent people provide a temporary framework that supports children’s thinking at a higher level than children could manage on their own. Framework includes:
- Explaining the goal of the task
- Demonstrating how the task can be done
- Helping the child with the most difficult parts of the task
- > First it needs extensive support, then less and less and eventually none
- > Through this process, children become capable of working at a higher-level than if they had received no help
- > Compared to guided participation, scaffolding involves more explicit instruction while guided participation involves adults organizing tasks so children can take increasingly active and responsible roles in them
Define autobiographical memories
explicit memories of events that took place at specific times and places in the individual’s past
Define development
all the physical and psychological changes that an individual undergoes in a lifetime
Define developmental psychology
the scientific discipline that attempts to describe and explain these changes
Name the 8 developmental periods
- Prenatal period: conception to birth
- Infancy: from birth to 2 years
- Early childhood: from 2 to 6 years
- Middle childhood: 6 to 11 years
- Adolescence: from 11 to 18 years
- Early Adulthood: from 18 to 25 years
- Adulthood: 25+
- Older Adulthood: 65+
Differentiate between physical and cognitive development
Physical (hardware): body development but brain development in particular
Cognitive (software): functional brain development i.e. perceptual, emotional, language, social and moral
Does the child play an active or passive role in development? Relate to Vygotsky and Piaget
Active - piaget
Passive - vygotsky
Differentiate between the 2 types of physical development
Cephalocaudal direction (head downward)
Proximodistal direction (center outward)
What is the peak-a-boo fascination related to?
object permanence
