Theories of Cognitive Development Flashcards
How does Piaget’s theory characterize cognitive development? In this theory, how is the distinction between continuity vs. discontinuity characterized?
- learning is an active process of construction rather than a passive assimilation of info or rote memorization
- mechanisms of change are continuous, but thought undergoes qualitative change (discontinuity)
assimilation
using or transforming the environment so that it. can be placed in preexisting cognitive structures
-taking info that is compatible with what one already knows
accommodation
adjusting cognitive structures in order to accept something from the environment
-changing existing knowledge based on new knowledge
adaptation involves two sub-processes
- adaptation
- accommodation
equilibrium
the process by which children reorganize their schemes and, in the process, move to the next developmental stage
Piaget’s 4 stages of development?
- sensorimotor
- preoperational
- concrete operational
- formal operational
Sensorimotor Stage
- birth to 2
- infants progresses from simple reflex actions in response to environment which result in wider variety of responses to the outside world and gradually become symbolic processing
What is the major achievement of the sensorimotor stage?
symbolic representation …infants have purely mental representations
∗What is object permanence and how does it inform development?
The understanding, acquired in infancy, that objects exist independently of oneself
-infants do not have full understanding of object permanence
What is the A-not B error?
babies reach for an object at the first location A, not the second location B
-shows infants’ limited understanding go objects
When do infants begin to use symbols?*
18 months
Preoperational Stage
- 2 to 7
- children first use symbols to represent objects and events
What are the major achievements during the preoperational stage?
development of language, numbers, pretend play
What are the limitations in thinking during the preoperational stage?
egocentrism, animism, centration
What are conservation tasks? Why can a child in the preoperational stage not pass it?
preoperational children believe that the tall, thin glass has more liquid, an error reflecting the centered thought that is common in children at this stage
What are the primary achievements of the Concrete Operations Stage?
- mental operations (operational thought): + & - reversibly, logical, engage in deductive reasoning about familiar and concrete things
- conservation
What is acquired that would allow children in the concrete operational stage to pass the conservation task? What is the primary limitation of this stage?
- children are able to reverse their thinking (reversible mental operations)
- limitation: can’t think abstractly and hypothetically
What is the final achievement of the Formal Operations stage
abstract operational thought: think hypothetically and reason deductively
What are the primary criticisms of Piaget’s theory?
- underestimated young children’s abilities
- overestimated adolescent’s competence
- children’s thinking more variable than described
- neglected role of social world
What factors did Piaget fail to consider?
- theory is vague concerning mechanisms of change
- does not account for variability in children’s performance
- undervalues the influence of the sociocultural environment on cognitive development
How does Vygotsky’s theory characterize cognitive development?
- cognitive development occurs in and is influenced by a socio-cultural context
- most of children’s cognitive skills evolve from social interactions with parents, teachers, etc.
- children are products of their culture
What is the focus of a socio-cultural perspective?
cultural influences
intersubjectivity
mutual, shared understanding among people who are participating in an activity together
zone of proximal development …how does it relate to Piaget’s principles?
the difference btw what children can do with assistance and what they can do alone
scaffolding
a teaching style in which adults adjust the amount of assistance that they offer, based on the learner’s needs
What have cross-cultural studies taught us about parents’ scaffolding?*How does it relate to Piaget’s principles?
-parents worldwide try to simplify learning tasks for their children, but they methods they use to scaffold learning vary across cultures
private speech
comments that are not intended for other bu that help children regulate their own behavior
What is the role of language in Vygotsky’s theory? What is the development of language usage according to Vygotsky?
language is an intermediate step toward self-regulation of cognitive skills
guided participation
structured interactions between a child and another more knowledgable person; they are thought to promote cognitive growth
How does Information-Processing Theory characterize cognitive development?
a view that human cognition consists of mental hardware and mental software
- components of cognition are the same across the life span
- continuous development, no aged defined stages
- increases in efficiency of the system
What is the flow of information processing based on this model?
sensory information (large capacity, very brief) —>
working memory (limited capacity, rehearsal important) —->
long term memory ( unlimited capacity, permanent, access & retrieval important) =
= central executive (directs all activity, monitors all activity)
What changes during childhood? (name each of the relevant factors and explain how an increase in eachof them would produce a change in information processing)
- working memory capacity
- speed of processing
- increased process automaticity
- more effective executive functioning
- strategies
Is development continuous or discontinuous based on the Information-processing theory?
continuous
executive function…how do we test it
- inhibitory control (dimensional card sorting task)
- shifting (flexibility)
- updating (working memory)
How do core-knowledge theories characterize cognitive development?
infants are born with rudimentary knowledge of the world that is elaborated based on children’s experiences
-primitive knowledge preserved through evolution
What do babies have naïve theories about?
physics, biology, psychology
What do babies know about properties of objects, according to core-knowledge theorists? (remember the experiments discussed in class such as drawbridge experiment and solid/liquid experimentin the textbook). Are there alternative explanations?
- that objects move continuously on a path, not magically moving from one spot to another
- objects are solid
- that objects cannot “pass through” each other
- that one object must contact another to cause movement
- objects exist independently
What do babies know about biological principles and living objects?*
- movement
- growth
- internal parts
- inheritance
- illness
- healing
essentialism
the belief that all living things have an underlying essence that cannot be seen but that gives a living thing its identity
teleological explanation
belief that living things and parts of living things exist for a purpose
How do children understand people?
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Do infants have the capacity to understand intentions? Describe Woodward’s experiment that examined this.What could be an alternative explanation and how did they modify the experiment to test it? What did they find?
- babies behave is way that is consistent with an early discrimination of goals/ intentions
- babies pay attention to goal violations
- babies look longer at the new goal (reach for the new toy) regardless of location
- only if the agent is human
Do children respond to others’ desires? What is the developmental progress of children’s understandingof others’ desires?
- desires are mental states motivated by … physiological states, emotions
- connections btw desire and action
theory of mind
- 2 to 5
- an intuitive understanding of the connections among thoughts, beliefs, intentions, and behavior
-develops rapidly in the preschool years
when and how does theory of mind develop?
people can have different desires
- people can have different beliefs
- different experiences can lead to different states of knowledge
- behavior is based on a person’s beliefs about events and situations, even when those beliefs are wrong
- people may feel one emotion but show another
false belief task…how is it used to examine theory of mind ?
reveals children’s understanding that another person’s actions are often based on their beliefs, even when those beliefs are wrong
approaches differ in?
- the role of innate structures and what those innate structures are
- whether development is driven by general purpose mechanisms or domain-specific mechanisms
- continuity vs discontinuity
core-knowledge theories (different from other theories by..
competence is evolutionarily relevant domains
egocentrism
refers to young children’s difficulty in seeing the world from another’s viewpoint
animism
children sometimes credit inanimate objects with life and lifelike properties
centration
focusing attention on one characteristic to the exclusion of all others (narrow thought)
