week 3 - theories of children's cognitive development

Question 1

Piaget’s theory is described as?

Answer 1

Constructivist.

Question 2

According to Piaget development includes what?

Answer 2

Processes of continuities, and processes of discontinuities.

Question 3

What is continuity?

Answer 3

a gradual change.

Question 4

What is discontinuity?

Answer 4

a more abrupt change.

Question 5

What is assimilation?

Answer 5

Incorporate new information into concepts already understood.

Question 6

What is accommodation?

Answer 6

Improve current understanding in response to new experiences.

Question 7

What is equillbration?

Answer 7

Process of balancing accommodation and assimilation to create a stable understanding. Equilibrium – disequilibrium – equilibrium.

Question 8

What are Piaget’s stages of cognitive development?

Answer 8

sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational thought, and formal operations.

Question 9

What happens in the sensorimotor stage?

Answer 9

age 0-2, Intelligence expressed through sensory and motor abilities.

Question 10

What happens in the preoperational stage?

Answer 10

age 2-7, Ability to represent experiences in language, mental imagery and symbolic thought.

Question 11

What happens in the concrete operational thought stage?

Answer 11

age 7-11/12, Ability to reason logically about concrete objects and events.

Question 12

What happens in the formal operations stage?

Answer 12

age 11/12 up, Become able to think about abstractions and hypothetical situations.

Question 13

When do children learn object permanence?

Answer 13

Sensorimotor stage can take up to 8 months. (Knowledge that an object continues to exist even if it cannot be seen.)

Question 14

What is “A not B error”?

Answer 14

The ability to differentiate similar things, example - hidden toy. Learned in sensorimotor stage, around year 1.

Question 15

What is Egocentrism?

Answer 15

perceiving the world solely from your own point of view.

Question 16

What is centrafication?

Answer 16

(preoperational stage) focussing on a single, perceptually striking feature of an object or event, to the exclusion of other features.

Question 17

What is Piaget’s water experiment?

Answer 17

Child sees two equal glasses of water, the water from one of the glasses is poured into a new glass with the same volume but which is skinnier and taller. The child will believe the taller glass has more water.

Question 18

What is the symbolism of child using banana as a phone in preoperational stage?

Answer 18

Child is being playful, can understand that the banana is not actually a phone.

Question 19

At the formal operations stage what can children understand?

Answer 19

abstract thought.

Question 20

At the concrete operational thought stage what can children understand?

Answer 20

logical reasoning about concrete problems.

Question 21

What are some issues with Piaget’s developmental theory?

Answer 21

Stages not as age reliant as once believed to be, children’s abilities underestimated, ignores social environment contribution, not details about how cognitive changes come about and what triggers them.

Question 22

What did Vygotsky propose?

Answer 22

Socio-cultural theory.

Question 23

According to Vygotsky what is children’s primary motivation for learning?

Answer 23

Social experiences, the desire to be like other children.

Question 24

What were Vygotsky’s views on private speech?

Answer 24

thinking and language and interlinked, thought is internalised speech.

Question 25

What are the three phases of internalisation of speech?

Answer 25

(1) adult orally produce statements on what to do
(2) child audible tells him/her self what to do or what they need to carry on with a task
(3) Eventually - non-audible instructions that the child tell him/her self.

Question 26

What is the zone of proximal development (ZPD)?

Answer 26

The distance between actual developmental level (independent capabilities) and potential development (capabilities under guidance). Not a property of the child. Describes what is needed for child to reach optimal potential.

Question 27

What is information processing theory?

Answer 27

Focuses on the cognitive processes needed for thinking. Used computer simulations to identify the steps needed during thinking to achieve a goal.

Question 28

How does Information-Processing Theories differ from Piaget’s developmental theory?

Answer 28

instead of set stages, learning and development is more gradual and continuous.

Question 29

What are the basic processes of the development of memory?

Answer 29

Associating events with one another•recognizing objects (we encode features of the objects to be able to recognise them later, e.g., features of a dog)•recalling facts.

Question 30

What are the two possible strategies for the development of memory?

Answer 30

Rehearsal (e.g., remember a phone number for only a few minutes) Selective attention (we pay attention only to the information that seems relevant to us).

Question 31

What is the overlapping waves model?

Answer 31

Children learning is about problem-solving, strategies might be applied sequential as they grow but they might also overlap.

Question 32

What solution does Piaget’s Theory and Information processing theory offer for: Why do preoperational children fail the conservation tasks?

Answer 32

Piaget - centration.

Information processing theory - limited capacity, inexperience, flexibility switching attention.

Question 33

Explain the dynamic systems theories.

Answer 33

Development is the product of emergent coherence, learn new things through repetition of other recently learned things, children’s specific actions shape their development.

Question 34

What is the explanation for the A not B error from the dynamic system theory?

Answer 34

Habit- toy is more often in hole A.
Memory - time between toy being hidden and baby getting to reach is too long.
Attention- baby’s attention was accidentally drawn to A or B making them more likely to try that answer.

Question 35

According to Piaget, the three sources of continuity of children’s development are:

Answer 35

Assimilation, Accommodation and Equilibration.

Question 36

According to the ‘Information Processing Theory’, children fail the conservation tasks because

Answer 36

they have limited memory and attention capacities.

Question 37

The audible or non-audible instructions that the child tells himself/herself when performing a task are called

Answer 37

private speech

Question 38

According to Vygotsky’s theory, when more competent people provide a temporary framework that supports the child to work at a higher level than otherwise he/she would have been able to, is called

Answer 38

social scaffolding