theories and history

Question 1

Piaget’s stage theory

Answer 1

interview and clinical method
-sensorimotor stage: birth to 2 years
-> construct understanding of world by coordinating sensory experience w physical action. progresses from reflective, instinctual action to symbolic thoughts.
believe infants didn’t have object permanence

• preoperational stage (before logical thinking) 2-7 years
• > child begins to represent world w words and images: increased symbolic thinking, beyond connection of sensory info and physical action
• concrete operational stage: 7-11 years
• > child can reason logicallt about concrete events and classify object in diff sets

-> emphasize children’s innate motivation to explore the environment

• formal operational stage: 11 years to adulthood
• > adolescent reasons in more abstract, idealistic and logical ways

Question 2

Vygotsky’s method

Answer 2

naturalistic and structured observation
-sociocultural theories: children are social beings and social learners, humans inclined to teach and learn from each other, dev is continuous

Question 3

social scaffolding

Answer 3

‘process in which more competent people provide temporary framework that supports child’s thinking at higher level than child could manage on their own’

Question 4

intersubjectivity

Answer 4

-mutul understanding that people shre during communication
-> foundation of human cognitive dev.
sets stage for joint attention
develop beyond infancy

Question 5

Micheal Tomasello

Answer 5

Extended Vygotsky’s theory

–> human species has unique characteristics that are crucial to the ability to create complex, rapidly changing cultures
including the inclination to teach other species and to attend to and learn from such teachings

Question 6

Spelke’s, visual habituation paradigm

Answer 6

5 months
-> children have more knowledge than expected but aren’t able to show it in explicit knowledge
recognises that object continue to exist when we can’t see them
sign of object permanence

Question 7

Elizabeth Spelke’s, core knowledge theory

Answer 7

1) knowledge emerge in early dev
2) initial knowledge domain-specific
3) initial knowledge encompasses fundamental on entities in a domain
4) initial knowledge is innate
5) initial knowledge constitutes the core of mature knowledge
6) initial knowledge is task-specific

-> emphasize early emerging competencies

Question 8

siegler, info processing theory (continuous)

Answer 8

cognitive dev arises from children in gradually surmounting their processing limitations:

• increased efficient execution of basic process
• expanding the memory capacity
• new strategies and knowledge

-> emphasize analysis of problem solving activity

Question 9

Esther Thelen-dynamic systems theory

Answer 9

• varied aspects of child function as singe, integrated whole to produce behaviour
• view how change occur over time in compext systems
• focus on relation of motor activities, attention and other aspects

Question 10

self organisation

Answer 10

dynamic system tehory :dev as a process of self -organisation
involves bringing together / integrating components as needed to adapt to continuously changing environment
organisational process: soft assembly , component and their organisation change from moment to moment and situation to destination