Theories of Cognitive Development (Piaget)

Question 1

Who Founded the filed of Cognitive Development?

Answer 1

Jean Piaget

Question 2

What did Jean Piaget do?

Answer 2

• Moving beyond Behaviorism
• Broad theory to account for the changes in children’s thinking, Piaget is an empiricism

Question 3

Constructivism? 2 things

Answer 3

1. Children ‘construct’ knowledge on the basis of their experiences with the world

“Laurent [Piaget’s infant child] is lying on his back… He grasps in succession a [number of objects], stretches out his arm, and lets them fall. He distinctly varies the position of the fall. When the object falls in a new position, for example, on his pillow, he lets it fall two or three more times on the same place, as though to study the spatial relations”

2. Children proceed though stages of development, discontinuity -. Abrupt changes

Question 4

Constructivist theory of building Assimilation?

Answer 4

A process by which children translate information into a form they can understand.
“Dog”

Question 5

Accommodation?

Answer 5

A process by which children revise current knowledge structures in response to new experiences.
“Dog” = 4 legged creature that barks

Question 6

Equilibration?

Answer 6

A process by which children balance assimilation and accommodation to create stable understanding.

Question 7

Stages of development?

Answer 7

Sensorimotor
Preoperational
Concrete operational
Formal operational

Question 8

Preoperational (2-7 years)?

Answer 8

1. Toddlers begin to represent experiences in language, imagery, and symbolic thought
2. Cannot perform “operations” (reversible mental activities)
3. Focus on a single, perceptually-salient aspect of an event (centration)

Question 9

Preoperational failure of conservation?

Answer 9

• Conservation of liquid quantity
• Conservation of solid quantity
• Conservation of number

Question 10

Preoperational failure of transitivity

Answer 10

Red > Blue
Blue > Grey
Red ? Green -> Kids cannot see this logic

Question 11

Preoperational failures of egocentricity

Answer 11

• Communications game, (Descivbe it so that your friend can pick the blue square)
• “It’s this one”
• (Pointing randomly) “This one?”
• “Yeah”
• Mountain problem
• Cannot understand people see things from different angels/perspectives.
• “What the other person sees is different from what I see.
• False belief
• “Where will Sally look for her ball?”
• Whatever knowledge the child has they think that other people share that knowledge

Question 12

• Preopreational failures of appearance vs. Reality

Answer 12

• What is it? Sponge
• What does it look like? Rock
• What is it really? Rock
• How to refer to the gender if the person look counter stereotypical -> their perception is heavily based on what things look like

Question 13

Concrete operational (7-12)?

Answer 13

• Children can reason logically about concrete objects and events
• However, they have difficulty thinking in purely abstract terms in combining information systematically

Question 14

Concrete operational failure systematic testing?

Answer 14

• Swining pendalum, which works
• Test randomly vs. Systematic approach

Question 15

Formal operational (12 and beyond)?

Answer 15

1. Children (and adults) can think about abstractions and hypotheticals
2. Can perform systematic ‘experiments to draw conclusions about the world

Question 16

• Problems with constructivism?

Answer 16

• Poverty (little/few) of experience
• When there is a lack of opportunity to have an experience yet the child still understands

Question 17

Problems with Piaget, Competence / Performance Distinction?

Answer 17

• Failure of the child just means that the child does not understand the concept
  -> Competence
• Not always the case
• Something you’re just not able to show what you know, maybe changing the procedure would show that the kids do understand the concept -> Performance

Question 18

• Problems with Piaget’s stages?

Answer 18

• Inconsistency of the timeline
• Some children show abilities that they should not be able to to at their age/Piaget’s stage

Question 19

Infants know A LOT about the physical world before they are capable of operating on it, provide 3 examples?

Answer 19

1. Continuity -> Core knowledge: Object Continuity
2. Coherence -> Two objects can’t pass though each other
3. Contact -> One ball can push another

Question 20

How can motivation make a difference when researching small children? + ways to improve the testing

Answer 20

Ex. Changing coins to candies
Children do not always behave egocentrically, changing the framing of the question to a yes/no question make them more likely to succeed
Measures that don’t require verbal responses, ex pointing had better success rate

Question 21

False consensus effect?

Answer 21

Adult errors of egocentricity, thinking that everyone sees things from your perspective

Question 22

Strengths of Piaget’s theory?

Answer 22

• A good overview of children’s thinking at different points
• Appealing due to its breath
• Fascinating observations

Question 23

Weaknesses/Criticism of Piaget’s theory?

Answer 23

• Stage model depicts children’s thinking as being more consistent than it is
• Children are more cognitively competent than Piaget recognised
• Understates contribution of the social world
• Vague about cognitive processes/mechanisms that produce cognitive growth