Theories & Studies Flashcards
Jean Piaget (1896-1980) Theory of cognitive Development
Described basic stages that children go through as they mentally mature.
- believed that they are actively trying to make sense of the world, rather than simply soaking up information passively.
Piaget vs. Vygotsky
Piaget - argued that children generally find out about the world alone.
- Didn’t argue for a role for social interaction in children’s development.
Vygotsky
- Argued that children learn from others who have greater knowledge than themselves.
- Collaboration, particularly between children and adults, competent peers and other children.
- Theory assumes that cognitive development co-occurs with other forms of development and all of these take place in a social and cultural context.
Sandra Scarr (1992) - Theoretical Article
Found that while heredity played a role in determining the degree of extraversion/introversion displayed by people, it played an even bigger role in determining their level of intelligence and that genetically unrelated siblings, reared from infancy to adulthood in the same family, do not resemble each other at all in IQ.
Thomas Bouchard & His Colleagues (1990)
Found sets of twins separated in infancy and reared apart.
Identical twins who had been reared apart still showed similarities to each other.
- When comparing their intelligence - intelligence quotients were not as similar as those of identical twins reared together, but they were still more similar than those of fraternal twins reared together.
Suggests - heredity makes a relatively strong contribution to differences in IQ scores.
Denise Daniels & Robert Plomin (1985)
Tested sociability vs. shyness of children adopted at 12 and 24 months to see whether they were more like their biological or adoptive mothers.
- Heredity was found to play a role in shyness.
- Mother had extreme shyness which predicted that her biological child would be shy.
- Family environment was found to be important in the development of shyness.
- Studies like there show that heredity and environment have a role to play in development.
Mildred Parten (1932)
Study of peer interactions and identified 5 categories of play among 40 nursery school children.
- Spontaneous play groups occurring during free-play hour were observed and social behaviour of each child was recorded.
Found that in preschool years there was an increase in associative and cooperative play and a decrease in solitary and parallel play.
There was a small relationship (+0.26) between intelligence quotients and the degree of social participation of individuals, although it was not clear how the former was measured in the children studied.
This study demonstrates that as children grow older they show greater awareness of other children and talk to other children as they develop their role in play activities.
Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911)
- Saw intelligence as an ability that showed itself in different ways depending on one’s environment.
- Believed it could be measured by simple tests.
Influences: Darwin’s theory of evolution
Charles Spearman (1863-1945)
- Developed a 2-factor theory of intelligence
- Considered that there was a general factor that accounted for positive relationships between scores on different tasks, but also abilities that were specific to different tasks.
Influences: Galton & Own work as statistician.
Howard Gardner (1943-)
Idea:
- Intelligence involved more than being able to solve problems.
- Involved being able to produce things that are relevant fo particular settings.
- Proposed that instead of one kind of intelligence, each of us has 7 intelligences
- Those intelligences are: linguistic, Logical-mathematical, Musical, Bodily-kinaesthetic, Spatial, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, Naturalistic & Existential
Issues:
- Different intelligences correlate w/ each other, so can be considered a single, general factor.
Salovey & Mayer (1990)
- ‘Ability to monitor one’s own and other’s feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them to sue this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.’
- EQ could be thought of as containing 4 hierarchically arranged skills.
Binte & Simon (1800s)
Worked to identify children w/ learning problems to place them in specialised learning programs.
Developed scores that ranked children’s mental functional abilities.
Lead them to determine a person’s ‘Mental Age’. - MA
William James (1842-1910)
Phrase ‘Stream of consciousness’
- Believed that our consciousness is as always changing series of thoughts that shift from one moment to the next.
Believes the conscious experiences is:
- Continuous - thoughts are not isolated, but flow from one topic to another.
- Ever-changing: is not linear, but changes as we receive new information or stimuli.
- Highly Personalised - it is our own thoughts, feelings and perceptions.
- Selective - we can focus on something and ignore others.
Active - purpose of consciousness is to allow us to function in our world.
Thibaut & Kelly (1959)
Social exchange theory
- Considers how people exchange rewards based on the level of their relationships.
Suggested four stages of relationship development, those being:
- Sampling - checking cost/benefits and comparing them to others.
- Bargaining - give and take of rewards to test true power.
- Commitment - when we focus on the other. Cost of relationship drops and enters a more predictable stage.
- Institutionalisation - development of norms that recognise legitimacy of the relationship.
Dexter Dumphy (1960s)
Conducted series of ‘participant observations’ - he followed participants within their on environments and contexts for 6 months
Created that 5 stage structure of adolescent groups:
Baron & Byrne (1991)
Country people are more likely to help someone than city folk
Suggests that this is due to the feeling of community and personal relationships between people.
