Theories of cognitive development Flashcards
week 2
Plato argues
we are born with knowledge; nativist
Aristotle argues
knowledge is learnt through experience; empiricist
John Locke
Tabula rasa: emphasized nurture and importance of early strict parenting with progressive freedom
Rousseau
emphasis on nature: innately good. children learn through interactions rather than instruction
What influenced the study of child development? 19-20th C.
social reform movement and child labor laws; Darwin’s theory of evolution and his diaries abt childhood.
Freud’s influence on developmental psychology
Unconscious desires that influence development; importance of early years
G. Stanley Hall’s influence
earned 1st PhD in psyc; founded APA; wrote textbook on adolescence and formalized the study of development.
John Watson’s influence
founded behaviorism; study of observable behavior; reward and punishment shape the emergence of any phenomena. Knowledge develops as product of experience and contribute to all aspects of development (nurture).
Principle of operant conditioning
Behavior that is rewarded will increase; behavior that is punished or not rewarded will decrease.
underlying cognitive processes (changing and growing)
can determine our ability to learn and how we gain knowledge from experience.
contraints on development
social
cultural
economical
historical
physical (environment)
cognitive (capacity for thinking in different stages)
cognitive maturation
substantial changes across development in how children process information
Piaget funded…
field of cognitive development; constructivism (empiricist)
assimilation
process that children translate new information into an existing schema
accommodation
children revise current knowledge structures in response to new experiences
equilibration
the balance of assimilation and accommodation for stable understanding
Piaget’s stages of development
(discontinuous)
- sensorimotor (0-2)
- preoperational (2-7)
- concrete operational (7-12)
- formal operational (12-beyond); not everyone reaches this stage
problems with Piaget
- competence/performance distinction
- evidence for knowledge even in the absence (poverty) of experience
- inconsistence with the timeline of stages
false consensus effect
(Piaget) adult errors of egocentricity
Piaget’s mechanisms for learning
assimilation, accommodation, equilibration
key difference between Piaget and Vygotsky
Piaget: children trying to understand the world on their own.
Vygotsky: children as social beings, intertwined with others who are eager to help them learn and gain skills
zone of proximal development describes
social scaffolding
guided participation; more competent people provide temporary frameworks that leads children to higher-thinking capabilities
elements of Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory
zone of proximal development; social scaffolding; joint attention; intersubjectivity; social referencing.
is sociocultural theory continuous or discontinuous?
continuous
is information processing theory continuous or discontinuous?
continuous
3 main points of information processing theory
- increasing efficient execution of basic processes
- expanding memory capacity
- acquisition of new strategies and knowledge
basic processes (information processing theory)
the simplest and most frequently used mental activities
2 biological processes important for faster processing
myelination & increased connectivity of brain areas
increase in speed of processing with age is…
domain general
memory system components
sensory, working, long-term
sensory memory
can hold moderate amount of information for fraction of a second. capacity constant over development
working memory
workspace where information about environment is attested to and actively processed. capacity and speed increase into adolescence
long-term memory
information retained on enduring basis. can retain unlimited information and indefinitely
memory strategies
rehearsal & selective attention
object cognition
continuity, coherence, contact
