Week 10 - Development

Question 1

Schema

Answer 1

Building blocks of knowledge
Mental structure for understanding the world
Transformed through adaptation

Question 2

Assimilation

Answer 2

Person interprets new ideas or experiences to fit existing schema

Question 3

Accommodation

Answer 3

Person changes existing schemas to fit new ideas or experiences

Question 4

What is Equilibration?

Answer 4

Force which moves development along

Piaget believed cognitive development did not progress at a steady rate but rate in leaps and bounds

Question 5

When does equilibrium occur?

Answer 5

When a child’s schema can deal with most new information through assimilation

Question 6

When does unpleasant state of disequilibrium occur?

Answer 6

When new information cannot be fitted into existing schema

Question 7

Disequilibrium

Answer 7

Encounter something doesn’t fit with existing schema
Accommodation
Restore balance

Question 8

What is four stages of cognitive development?

Answer 8

Sensorimotor stage (birth to age 2)
Pre-operational stave (from age 2 to age 7)
Concrete operational stage (from age 7 to age 11)
Formal operational stage (age 11+ - adolescence and adulthood)

Question 9

Sensorimotor stage

Answer 9

Object permanence - knowing that an object still exists, even if it is hidden
Requires the ability to form a mental representation of object

Question 10

Pre-operational stage

Answer 10

Young children can think about things symbolically

Thinking is still egocentric - infant has difficult taking the viewpoint of others

Question 11

Concrete operational stage

Answer 11

Major turning point in the child’s cognitive development
Beginning of logical thought
Child can work things out internally in head
Children can conserve number (age6), mass (age 7) and weight (age 9)
Children begin to organise objects by classes and subclasses
Perform mathematical operations and understand transformation

Question 12

Formal operational stage

Answer 12

People develop ability to think about abstract concept

Logically test hypothesis

Question 13

What is the sensorimotor sub stages?

Answer 13

Reflex Acts (0-1 1/2 months)
Primary circular reactions (1 1/2 - 4 months)
Secondary circular reactions (4-8 months)
Co-ordinating secondary schemas (8-12 months)
Tertiary circular reactions (12-18 months)
Symbolic thought (18-24 months)

Question 14

What is the Reflex act?

Answer 14

The neonate responds to external stimulation with innate reflex actions little accommodation

Question 15

What is primary circular reactions?

Answer 15

The baby will repeat pleasurable actions centred on its own body
Done intentionally - for the sake of pleasurable stimulation produced

Question 16

What is secondary circular reactions?

Answer 16

Babies repeat pleasurable actions that involves objects as well as actions involving their own bodies
Lack of object permanence
Live in the here and now

Question 17

What is do-ordinating secondary schemas?

Answer 17

Babies show ability to use acquired knowledge to reach a goal
Goal-directed action
Intentionality: means-end behaviours

Question 18

What is tertiary circular reactions?

Answer 18

The infant who once explored an object by taking it apart now tries to put it back together
Deliberate trial and error experimentation

Question 19

What is symbolic thought?

Answer 19

Babies can form mental representations of objects

Developed the ability to visualise things that not physically present

Question 20

Substage 3

Answer 20

4-8 months

Lack object permanence

Question 21

Substage 4

Answer 21

8-12 months
Active searching
A-not-B error

Question 22

Substage 5

Answer 22

12-18 months

Fail invisible displacement

Question 23

Substage 6

Answer 23

18-24 months

Pass invisible displacement

Question 24

Blanket and Ball study (A-Not-B error)

Answer 24

Aim: Piaget wanted to investigate at what age children acquire object permanence
Method: Piaget hid a toy under a blanket, while the child was watching, and observed whether or not the child searched for the hidden toy
Conclusion: children around 12-24 have object permanence because they are able to form mental representation of objects in their minds

Question 25

What did Paiget take the child’s failure to search to mean?

Answer 25

Once the object was out of sight
It was also out of the child’s mind
Since the child did not understand the toy continues to exist whilst hidden

Question 26

What are challenges to Piaget account?

Answer 26

Failure to search might indicate that child has been:
Distracted
Lost interest
Can’t coordinate it’s muscular movements to carry out the search
Infants failure to perform: lack of competence
Underestimated children’s abilities

Question 27

Bower et al (1971)

Answer 27

Designed a task that used a skill that infants acquire at much younger than 8 months: the ability to direct where they look
He found that infant would direct their gaze to other side of screen, where the train would expect to emerge

Question 28

Baillargeons violation of expectation

Answer 28

See whether young infants actually have object permenance but are unable to search for them because they do not have necessary motor abilities
Violation of expectation (VOE) paradigm
It exploits the fact that infants tend to look for longer at things they have not encountered before
Found infants spent much longer looking at impossible event

Question 29

The ‘core knowledge’ theory

Answer 29

In Piagets theory, infants acquire their knowledge of objects by interaction with world around them
It is through having experience of interacting with object that child gradually realised that things have independent existence of their own - occupy space and persist in time