Week 3 - Chapter 4

Question 1

Why do we use theories of development?

Answer 1

They provide a framework for understanding important phenomenon
They raise crucial questions about human nature
They give us a better understanding of children

Question 2

Piaget’s theory

Answer 2

Cognitive development involves 4 stages - sensorimotor, pre operational, concrete operational, formal operational
Infancy to adulthood
Examines conceptualization of time, space, distance, number, language use, memory, understanding others perspectives, problem solving, scientific reasoning

Question 3

Views of children’s nature

Answer 3

Piaget - mentally active from moment of birth
Children may learn important lessons on their own
Children are intrinsically motivated to learn and do not need rewards to do so

Question 4

Constructivist approach

Answer 4

Depicts children as constructing knowledge for themselves in response to their experiences - generating hypotheses, performing experiences, drawing conclusions
Action based approach to understanding world

Question 5

Central development issues - nature and nurture

Answer 5

Interact to produce cognitive development
Nurture includes every experience of the child
Nature includes the child’s brain, ability to perceive, act, learn from experience

Question 6

Sources of continuity

Answer 6

Assimilation, accommodation, equilibration

Question 7

Assimilation

Answer 7

Incorporating information into concepts they already understand - saw a man that looked like a clown (had the hair) and decided he was a clown

Question 8

Accommodation

Answer 8

Improve current understanding in response to new experiences - told kid he wasn’t a clown as he was missing other parts of being a clown

Question 9

Equilibration

Answer 9

Balancing assimilation and accommodation to create stable understanding

Equilibrium - people are satisfied with their understanding of a particular phenomenon
Disequilibrium - new information leaves them to perceive their understanding is inadequate
More advanced equilibrium - develop a more sophisticated understanding within which a broader range of observations can be understood

Question 10

Sources of discontinuity - central properties

Answer 10

Qualitative change - children think differently qualitatively at different ages - early conceives morality in terms of consequence, later as intent

Broad applicability - type of thinking applies across diverse topics

Brief transitions - in between stages fluctuate between new and old thinking

Invariant sequence - everyone progresses through stages at same order without skipping any

Question 11

Sensorimotor stage

Answer 11

Birth to age 2
Early sensory and motor activity - reflexes are components of more complex behaviours
6 months - repeated actions that are interesting
Late first year - search for objects that disappear - object permanence
1 year - start to explore how objects can be used
18-24 months - enduring mental representations - repeating peoples behaviour way after it happened

Overall - activities centre on own bodies, early goals concrete, later are more abstract, form ability to from mental representations

Question 12

A not B error

Answer 12

Infant sees object be placed under A many times and then B, but will still reach for A

Question 13

Pre operational stage

Answer 13

Age 2-7
Symbolic representations - one object can stand for another - as they age symbols get more conventional
Egocentrism - perceive world from their own POV, talk past someone
Centration - focus on one feature of an object - ignore distance from fulcrum and focus on weight - conservation of liquid

Question 14

Concrete operational stage

Answer 14

7-12
Understand the conservation of objects properties
Design basic experiments but no conclusions can be drawn - don’t consider that multiple factors (strong size, weight of object) can all contribute to a hypothesis - pendulum problem

Question 15

Formal operational stage

Answer 15

Age 12 up
See that any variable might influence something and that each variable needs to be tested
Not all adolescents or adults reach this stage

Question 16

Piaget’s weaknesses

Answer 16

Theory is vague about mechanisms that give rise to children’s thinking and that produce cognitive growth - doesn’t emphasize process that changes thinking

Infants and young children are more cognitively competent than Piaget recognized - without a delay a 3 months old can pass the A not B test

Theory understates social world impacting cognitive development
Stage model depicts children’s thinking being more consistent than it is

Question 17

Sociocultural theories

Answer 17

Emphasize that other people and the surrounding culture contribute to children’s development

Cognitive development takes place in interactions with other people

Cultural tools - symbols systems, manufactured objects, skills, values

Question 18

Guided participation

Answer 18

More knowledgeable people organize activities for less knowledgeable

Question 19

Social scaffolding

Answer 19

More competent people provide a framework that supports children’s thinking at a higher level

Done in zone of proximal development

Question 20

View of children’s nature - Vygotsky’s theory

Answer 20

Social learning intertwined with others, intent of participation in activities prevalence in the specific time and place they live
Gradual continuous changes
Language and thought - internalized speech process
1 - behaviour controlled by other peoples statements, children’s behaviour controlled by their own speech, then by private internalized speech

Question 21

Children as teachers and learners

Answer 21

Inclination to teach others in the same species
Inclination to attend to and learn from teaching

Question 22

Products of culture

Answer 22

Processes that produce development are the same but the content learned is different

Question 23

Central development issues - socio cultural

Answer 23

Intersubjectivty - communication requires participants to focus on same topic as well as others reaction to that topic
Joint attention - infants and social partners focus on a common referent in the external environment

Question 24

Dynamic systems theories

Answer 24

Development of actions in complex systems over varying time periods - fractions of seconds up to years

Individual differences impact how fast children develop

Development is a process of constant change - dynamic

Each child is a system in which subsystems (perception, action, attention, memory etc..) work together

Question 25

View on children’s nature - dynamic systems

Answer 25

Children innate motivation to explore - Piaget
Precise analysis of problem solving activity - information processing
Formative influence of other people - socio cultural
Infants and toddlers are capable- core knowledge

Question 26

Motivators of development

Answer 26

Children internally motivated to learn about world - persist in practicing new skills
Infants attend to faces instead of anything else
Observing others, imitating actions, attracting attention

Question 27

Centrality of action

Answer 27

Actions contribute to development
Reaching for objects helps infer goals of other peoples reaches
Action influences categorization - children will group objects together based on easily they move
Action effects vocabulary acquisition and generalization

Question 28

Central development issues- dynamic systems

Answer 28

Self organization, mechanism of change

Question 29

Self organization

Answer 29

Integrating attention, memory, emotions, actions as needed to adapt to a changing environment - soft assembly

A not B - previous reaches produce a habit of reaching there, tapping before selection drawn an infants attention there

Question 30

Mechanisms of change - Dynamic systems

Answer 30

Changes occur through mechanisms of variation and selection that are analogous to those that produce biological evolution
Variation - different behaviours to produce same goal
Selection - frequent choice of behaviours that are effective in meeting goals
Relative success - as children gain experience they rely on approaches that produce desired outcomes - rely on efficiency, but there’s always novelty of trying something new

Question 31

Core knowledge theories

Answer 31

View children as having innate knowledge in areas of evolutionary importance
Domain specific learning mechanisms help us acquire additional information for those domains

Question 32

Core knowledge vs Piaget

Answer 32

Core - specialized abilities, children are evolutionary products

Piaget - general ability, active child

Question 33

View of children’s nature - core knowledge

Answer 33

Nativism
Infants have innate knowledge in evolutionary important domains
- language, spatial layout, numbers, telling difference between inanimate and biological objects

Core knowledge constructivism
- children have specialized learning abilities that are built upon - this knowldge is rudimentary
Children have simple core theories about people and biological processes that are built upon with age and experience

Question 34

How change occurs - socio cultural

Answer 34

Guided participation - collaborative
Social scaffolding - teaches
Joint attention

Question 35

Socio cultural theory vs Piaget

Answer 35

Socio - learn with other people, learn what is prevalent in a time and place, gradual and continuous changes, thought and language intertwined

Piaget - learn on own, master specific subjects, abrupt qualitative changes, thoughts and language separate

Question 36

Information processing theories

Answer 36

theories that focus on the structure of the cognitive system and the mental activities used to deploy attention and memory to solve problems
• Task analysis - identifying goals needed to perform a task, obstacles preventing the goal, prior knowledge, potential strategies
• Emphasis on thinking as a process that occurs over time

Question 37

View of children’s nature- information processing

Answer 37

development is continuous in small increments

Question 38

Central development issues
Development of memory

Answer 38

• working memory
  • actively attending to, maintaining and processing information
  • Limited in capacity and in length of time for which it can maintain information without updating

Long term memory
• knowledge accumulated over the lifetime
• Factual knowledge, conceptual knowledge, procedural knowledge, attitudes

Question 39

Executive function

Answer 39

control behaviour and thought processes
• Inhibition - resisting temptations
• Enhancement of working memory - through use of strategies
• Cognitive flexibility - imagining someone else’s perspective
• ability of executive functions to control thinking and action - enabling appropriate responding instead of impulsivity increases during preschool and early elementary years - increased flexibility in shifting goals

Question 40

Explanations of memory development

Answer 40

Basic processes
Strategies

Question 41

Basic processes

Answer 41

associating events with one another, recognizing objects, recalling facts and procedures, generalizing from one instance to another
• Encoding - the representation in memory of specific features of objects and events - people in code information that draws their attention
• Improved speed of processing plays a key role in the development of memory, problem solving and learning - myelination and increased connectivity in brain

Question 42

Strategies

Answer 42

between ages 5-8 children start to use memory strategies
• Rehearsal - repeating of information multiple times
• Selective attention - intentionally focusing on information that is most relevant to the current goal
• Content knowledge - increased general knowledge improves recall of new material - improved encoding if you already know about the subject

Question 43

Development of problem solving

Answer 43

Overlapping waves theory
Planning

Question 44

Overlapping waves theory

Answer 44

• individual children use a variety of approaches to solve a problem
• 5 years - show use of 3 strategies - will sometimes reason the longer row has more, sometimes know that the number of objects doesn’t change, sometimes counts them
• At younger ages children use more simple strategies more often
• Cognitive growth evident in single digit addition - children
will learn better strategies and use different strategies for
different difficulties of addition

Question 45

Planning

Answer 45

• children often fail to plan in situations that would help their
problem solving
• requires inhibiting desire to solve problem immediately vs
waiting to try the best strategy
• children tend to be overly optimistic about their abilities

Question 46

Object permanence

Answer 46

Knowledge that objects continue to exist even when you cannot see them

Question 47

Core knowledge vs Piaget

Answer 47

Piaget - children enter world with general learning abilities, child is an active scientist contributing to their own development

Core knowledge - enter enter world equipped with specialized learning, children are products of evolution

Question 48

Socio cultural theory vs Piaget

Answer 48

Socio cultural - children are social learners intertwined with others, participant in activities that are prevalent in a specific time and place, gradual and continuous changes, thought and language are intertwined

Piaget - children understand world on their own, intent on mastering physical, mathematical, logical concepts, abrupt qualitative changes in thinking, thought and language as separate