Week 2 - Reading Flashcards
What are the 3 broader advantages to knowing developmental theories?
- Provide a framework for understanding important phenomena
- Raise crucial/fundamental questions about human nature
- Lead to a better understanding of children (motivate new research)
What topics are explored in cognitive development?
Perception, attention, language, problem solving, reasoning, memory, conceptual understanding, and intelligence
What topics are explored in social development?
Emotions, personality, relationships, self-understanding, aggression, and moral behaviour
What are the 5 theories of cognitive development that are particularly influential?
- Piagetian
- Information-processing
- Core knowledge
- Sociocultural
- Dynamic systems
What main questions are addressed by Piagetian theory?
Nature and nurture, continuity/discontinuity, the active child
What main questions are addressed by information processing theory?
Nurture and nature, how change occurs
What main questions are addressed by core knowledge theory?
Nature and nurture, continuity/discontinuity
What main questions are addressed by sociocultural theory?
Nature and nurture, influence of the sociocultural context, how change occurs
What main questions are addressed by dynamic systems?
Nature and nurture, the active child, how change occurs
Why are all 5 theories important?
Together they allow for a broader appreciation of cognitive development than any one of them alone
What are 3 reasons for the longevity of Piaget’s theories?
- Vividly convey the texture of children’s thinking at different ages
- Exceptional breadth of theory
- Intuitively plausible depiction of the interaction of nature and nurture and the continuities and discontinuities that characterize intellectual growth
What is Piaget’s fundamental assumption?
Children are mentally active from birth and their mental and physical activity both contribute to their development
What is Piaget’s approach to understanding often labelled as?
Constructivist, depicts children as constructing knowledge for themselves in response to their experiences
According to Piaget what are the 3 most important of children’s constructive process?
- Generating hypothesis
- Performing experiments
- Drawing conclusions from their observations
What is Piaget’s view of nature and nurture?
They interact to produce cognitive development
A vital part of children’s nature is how they respond to nurture
How does Piaget view nurture?
Not just nurturing provided by caregivers, but also every experience the child encounters
How does Piaget view nature?
Maturing brain and body; ability to perceive act, and learn from experience; and their tendency to integrate particular observations into coherent knowledge
According to Piaget, what are the 3 processes of continuity?
Assimilation
Accommodation
Equilibrium
Define assimilation
The process by which people incorporate incoming information into concepts they already understand
Define accommodation
The process by which people improve their current understanding in response to new experiences
Define equilibration
The process by which people balance assimilation and accommodation to create stable understanding
What are the 3 stages of equilibration, according to Piaget?
- Satisfied with their understanding
- New information leads them to perceive their understanding is inadequate (disequilibrium)
- Develop a more sophisticated understanding