week 3

Question 1

Key aspects of Piaget’s theory

Answer 1

4 stages: travel through by organising our experiences and adapting to new environmental demands
Tries to explain cognitive development changes
Created tasks to measure changes via stages
Ends around the time children reach 12 years

Question 2

Schemas

Answer 2

mental representations that organise knowledge. Assimilation-use exiting schemas to deal with new information and experiences
Accommodation- adjust schema to take new information into account

Question 3

Object permanence

Answer 3

marks the end of the sensorimotor stage of development
Objects are now seen as separate from the baby and they exist permanently
Objects continue to exist even when they can not be heard or touched

Question 4

A-not-B error

Answer 4

younger infants make this common mistake
Infants inclination to search for an object in a familiar location rather than new one
If a toy is hidden twice, initially in location A and subsequently in location B
8-12 month-old search correctly at A initially

Question 5

Drawbridge experiment

Answer 5

Violation of expectations paradigm
5 month olds looked longer at the impossible event than possible event

Question 6

Preoperational substages
Substage 1

Answer 6

symbolic function substage a child gains ability to mentally represent an object that is not present

Question 7

Egocentrism

Answer 7

the inability to distinguish between one’s own perspective and someone else’s perspective

Question 8

Animism

Answer 8

Inanimate objects have lifelike qualities: the sidewalk made me mad

Question 9

Intuitive thought substage

Answer 9

The intuitive thought substage children begin to use primitive reasoning and want to know the answers to all types of questions

Question 10

Limitations of preoperational thoughts

Answer 10

centration-the focusing of attention on one characteristic to the exclusion of all others
Lack of conservation- the concept that an object’s or substance’s basic properties stay the same even though its appearance has been altered

Question 11

Conservation

Answer 11

the ability to see that quantity stays the same despite a change in container, shape, or apparent size
Or the to recognise what changes and what stays the same in an object
Failing the conservation of liquid task is a sign that children are the preoperational stage of cognitive development

Question 12

Liquid task

Answer 12

the experimenter shows the child 2 identical glasses of coloured water-child is asked if glasses contain the same amount of water
Liquid from one glass is then poured into a smaller thinner container- A child is asked whether there is still the same amount
A child who is not at the concrete operational stage yet will say that the taller thinner container has more liquid in it now. They do not understand conservation

Question 13

Concrete operational stage

Answer 13

child has developed logical thought now
Characterised by thinking rationally and solving problems logically
Can’t think abstractly

Question 14

Form concrete to formal

Answer 14

Starting point must be real to extend thoughts to potentials
In formal operations young people can begin with any hypothetical or contrary to fact proposition and derive answers

Question 15

The formal operational stage

Answer 15

Divided into substages
Almost full formal function (11/15), Full formal function (14/15)

Question 16

Pendulum problem

Answer 16

What determines the speed of a swinging pendulum:
Heaviness of weight, Length of string, height from which it is dropped. Force with which it is dropped
Children test ideas random adolescents are more systematic, isolating variables

Question 17

Formal operational thought

Answer 17

use inductive reasoning to think critically and systemise their ideas
Hypothetico-deductive reasoning= used by full formal individuals

Question 18

Problems for Piagetian theory

Answer 18

Operationalisation of terms
stages may be inaccurate

Question 19

Other problems

Answer 19

Culturally specific
unscientific

Question 20

Neo-Piagetian approaches

Answer 20

aim to overcome one or some of weaknesses

Question 21

Neo-Piagetian researchers Fischer

Answer 21

instead of one ladder each child climbs there are alternative developmental pathways
Tries to account for non-universality of stages

Question 22

Robbie case

Answer 22

Mind is modular
this allows for a stage theory like Piaget’s
There is a central conceptual structure. Domain specific modules contain knowledge and experiences regarding specific skills

Question 23

Influence today

Answer 23

understanding many phenomena

Question 24

Nutrition intervention for children

Answer 24

Nutrition intervention created to increase nutritional knowledge
To make successful: developmentally appropriate concepts, activity based, study administered by nurse familiar with Piagetian principles

Question 25

Schema theory

Answer 25

Theories about how children gain from fantasy play
Children set up new schemas as they play and master experiences
Fantasy play enables children to rehearse pre-existing scripts and assimilate them into pre-established schemas

Question 26

Gesture

Answer 26

Measures a Piagetian task and incorporates a behaviour Piaget overlooked gestures
Both gesture and actions on objects facilitate learning gesture

Question 27

Children’s gestures

Answer 27

Gesture-speech match= When a child portrays the same information in speech and gesture
Gesture-speech mismatch= When child portray different information in speech and gesture