Theories of Development Flashcards
What is Vygotsky’s scaffolding?
How adults and older children try to advance the younger children’s abilities
e.g. correcting language, encouraging them to do their homework
What is Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development?
When we find a task difficult to do but with help from a parent we are able to complete it
Without help from the people around us as children, we are only able to develop our abilities so far
What are the theories of a nativist?
Nature
Maturational unfolding of innate knowledge and abilities
What are the theories of a empiricist?
Nurture
Our environment and upbringing determine our behaviour
All knowledge and abilities are learned
Where do the approaches in psychology lie on the nature - nurture scale?
Nature: biological and psychoanalysis
Nurture: humanism and behaviourism
Cognitive is in the middle
What is Piaget’s constructivism?
Children must engage actively with the world to construct knowledge
Innate endowments are necessary but not sufficient
What is Piaget’s schema?
Interpretation of the world through mental schema
Schemas are the basic components of intelligence
What is Piaget’s equilibrium and disequilibrium?
equilibrium: harmony between schemas and experience
disequilibrium: conflict between schemas and experiences
What is Piaget’s assimilation and accommodation? When do we use these?
When faced with disequilibrium we use accommodation to reach equilibrium
assimilation: use existing schema to interpret new experiences
accommodation: modifies existing schemas or creates new schema to fit reality
These are the 2 mechanisms of adaptation
What are Piaget’s stages of cognitive development?
Sensorimotor 0 to 2 yrs
Pre-operational 2 to 7 yrs
Concrete operational 7 to 11 yrs
Formal operational 11 + years
What occurs during the sensorimotor stage?
Infants learn through senses and actions
Innate reflexes become deliberate actions on objects to learn how they work
Looking, sucking, grasping, listening
Child develops object permanence, trail and error, hand-eye coordination
Mental representations
What is object permanence?
Occurs during sensorimotor stage
Understanding an object exists even though it cannot be seen or heard
What are mental representations?
Occurs during the sensorimotor stage
This is an internalised image or word that represents something
What can be done physically can also be done mentally, so know the infant can think before acting
What occurs during the pre-operational stage?
Schemas are fully representational
Children learn through imitation and play
Improvements in memory
Draw pictures, pretend play
Have full object permanence
Begin to use language that represents objects and ideas
Egocentric
Lack of conservation
What is conservation?
Lack of it during the pre-operational stage
There’s no awareness that altering a substances appearance doesn’t change it’s basic properties
What is egocentrism?
Egocentric during the pre-operational stage
The child has an inability of viewing the world from another perspective than their own
What occurs during the concrete operational stage?
Logical reasoning replaces intuitive reasoning
Thinking is more flexible and organised
Ability to conserve
Thinking is concrete, not abstract
Children can perform a coordinated set of mental representations
Simple maths operations, ability to sort and classify objects
What occurs during the formal operational stage?
The ability to hypothesize and test/re-evaluate the hypothesis
Think about abstract concepts
Problem solving
Learn to be more flexible, rational and systematic
What is the pendulum problem?
Task where you compare the motions of larger and shorter strings with lighter and heavier weights attached
Children below the age of 12 draw the wrong conclusions from performing unsystematic experiments
Adults perform systematic experiments one at a time, and draw more correct conclusions
What are the issues with Piaget’s work?
Underestimates the cognitive abilities in children (object permanence can be found in infants as young as 3.5 yrs old, concrete operational thinking before 7)
Overestimates the cognitive abilities in adults (small % of adults passed Piagetian tests of formal operational thinking)
Many of his methods were overly complex
Underestimates the role of cultural, social influences and educational influences on cognition
Although he got what develops right much of the time, he got when it develops wrong in many cases
What are the strengths of Piaget’s work?
Comprehensive theory
Revolutionary theory
Introduced countless new research methods and new concepts
Continuity between Piaget’s ideas and modern cognitive psychological development
What is Vygotsky’s social constructivism?
Knowledge is constructed through social interactions
What are Vygotsky’s elementary and higher cognitive functions?
Children start off with elementary cognitive functions and through social interactions develop higher cognitive functions
Social interactions with people who are more knowledgeable than themselves
Elementary: innate, not unique to humans, involuntary and unconscious e.g. attention, perception, memory and sensations
Higher cognitive: unique to humans, socially constructed and voluntary/conscious
What is Vygotsky’s internalisation?
Reformulation of social functions into psychological functions
What is Vygotsky’s language as a tool of thought?
At first, thought and language are independent (social speech)
At 3 years old, thought and language start to converge (private/egocentric speech)
At 6-7 years, children start thinking in speech (inner speech)
What are the strengths of Vygotsky’s work?
Helps explain cultural variations
Implications for education
What are the weaknesses of Vygotsky’s work?
Little biological influence
Doesn’t fully explain how processes are internalised
Minimises contributions of the individual
What are the similarities between Vygotsky and Piaget?
Both theories are developmental
Both consider constructive processes
Both emphasise the importance of qualitative changes
Both recognise the social influences on development
How are the developmental processes different between Vygotsky and Piaget?
Piaget: development occurs as a result of processes within the individual
Vygotsky: development involves the internalisation of processes that originally occurred between individuals
How are the adult/peer influences different between Vygotsky and Piaget?
Piaget: peers have a greater influence that adults
Vygotsky: adults have a greater influence than peers
How is the cultural influence different between Piaget and Vygotsky?
Piaget: culture has minimal influence on cognitive development
Vygotsky: culture has a massive influence on cognitive development
How does language and thought differ between Piaget and Vygotsky?
Piaget: cognitive development is largely independent of language
Vygotsky: language is critical for cognitive development
