theories of cognitive development Flashcards
behaviorism
development is controlled by environmental conditions— rewards and punishments
- behavior that is rewarded will increase, and vice versa
the active child
children shape their own development, preferences to attend to certain things (people over objects; caregivers over others)
- motivated to learn
- little experimenters e.g. dropping food
- practice language in absence of people
- engage in pretend play - actively seek our their own environment
- friends they play with, activities they engage in, places they go, books they read
mechanisms of developmental change
- effortful attention
- modeling
- something biological
diff theories of development
- piaget’s theory
- social theories (e.g., social learning, socio-cultural)
- info processing theory
- core-knowledge theory
Piaget’s stages of development
- sensorimotor (birth to 2 years)
- preoperational (2-7 years)
- concrete operational (7-12 years)
- formal operational (12 and beyond)
Piaget’s formal operational stage
- children can think about abstraction and hypotheticals
- can perform systematic experiments to draw conclusion about the world
Piaget’s conrete operational stage
- children reason logically about concrete objects and events
- difficulty thinking in purely abstract terms and in combining information systematically
Piaget’s pre-operational stage
development of language and symbolic thinking, but children are not yet able to perform logical operations.
Piaget’s sensorimotor stage
- basic motor systems, sensory/perceptual systems, learning mechanisms of assimilation accommodation and equilibrium
Piaget’s constructivist theory building
- assimilation: process by which children translate info into a form they can understand
- accommodation: process by which children revise current knowledge structures in response to new experiences
- equilibration: process by which children balance assimilation and accommodation to create stable understanding
Piaget’s strength vs. weaknesses
Strengths
- good overview of children’s thinking at different points
- appealing due to its breadth
- fascinating observations
Weaknessess
- stage model depicts children’s thinking as being more consistent that it is
- made it seem that kids are always consistent
- children are more cognitively competent that Piaget recognized
- understates contribution of the social world
- didn’t consider the influence that other people may have in shaping a child’s world
- vague about cognitive processes/ mechanisms that produce cognitive growth
- e.g. states there are changes going on in the brain, but never actually states what is going on in the brain
sociocultural theories
- adults and peers play instrumental role in facilitating learning
- other people play a role in who we end up being
- emphasized importance of play
Bandura
observation and imitation of others are mechanisms of change in this theory
- children imitate specific forms of behaviors, but more abstract idea of being aggressive towards object
Vygotsky
- cognitive development occurs in interpersonal contact
- interaction with parents, siblings, teachers, and playmate- emphasized importance of play
zone of proximal development
range between what children can do unsupported and what they can do with optimal social support
- e.g. difference between having a bad vs a good teacher: range of performance will certainly be affected
social scaffolding
more competent people provide temporary frameworks that lead children to higher-order thinking (used interchangeably with ‘guided participation’)
joint attention
intentional focus on a common referent
intersubjectivity
mutual understanding established during communication- a ‘meeting of the minds’
social referencing
children look to social partners for guidance about how to respond to unfamiliar events
core-knowledge theories
- Children have innate cognitive capabilities
- Focus on areas (such as understanding people and objects) that have been important throughout our evolutionary history
- often endorse a modularity approach
continuity
understanding that objects exist continuously over time and space, even when they are not directly perceived
- e.g., if a toy is partially hidden behind a screen, infants expect it to still be there when the screen is removed
coherence
ability to perceive objects as coherent, stable, and enduring entities. Infants learn to recognize that objects have consistent properties and remain the same despite changes in perspective or partial occlusion
contact
understanding of how objects interact with each other and their environment. Infants learn that objects do not pass through each other and that they can support or collide with one another in predictable ways
sociocultural constraints
Social = parents, siblings, teachers, friends, peers, etc.
Physical = home, school, urban vs. rural neighborhood etc.
Economic = national wealth, societal wealth, family wealth
Cultural = language, values, traditions, attitudes/beliefs, laws,
political structure, technology, etc.
Historical = influences all these other factors, e.g. traditional
practices, policies, economy, technology etc
information processing theories
children undergo continuous cognitive change
- view child as active problem solvers
- limited-capacity processing system
- Increasing efficient execution of basic processes
- Expanding memory capacity
- Acquisition of new strategies and knowledge
information processing theory basic processes
- associating events with one another
- recognizing objects as familiar
- recalling facts and procedures
- generalizing from one instance to another
- encoding: process of representing memory information specific features of objects and events
memory systems
sensory, working, and long-term memory
sensory memory
refers to sights, sounds, and other sensations that are just entering the brain
- can hold moderate amount of info for a fraction of a second, its capacity is relatively constant over much of development
working memory
workspace in which info from environment and relevant knowledge are brought together, attended to, and actively processed
- quite limited in both capacity and duration… capacity and speed of operation nonetheless increases greatly over childhood into adolescence
long-term memory
refers to info retained on an enduring basis
- can retain unlimited amount of info indefinitely, and contents of long-term memory increase enormously over development
how to improve efficiency of basic cognitive processes
- rehearsal: process of repeating info over and over to aid memory
- selective attention: process of intentionally focusing on information thats most relevant to the current goal
