WEEK 4--> COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT Flashcards
Cognitive Development
- Social cognition→ children’s friendships change as their understanding of themselves, others and relationships develop
- Self concept→ organised view of ourselves, or way of representing info about the self
- Around age 8→ kids begin to define themselves based on internal, psychological attributes as much as obviously perceptible qualities/appearance
- From early childhood until age 8→ kids tend to focus on relatively simple attributes of other people (e.g. way they look, or roles they perform)
- Perspective taking→ Ability to understand other people’s viewpoints or perspectives
- Development of a theory of mind→ implicit set of ideas about the existence of mental states (such as beliefs and feelings in oneself and others)
Gender Identity
Ability to categorise - themselves and others as either male or female
Gender Stability
When children understands that their gender remains constant over time
Gender Constancy
When children learn that a person’s gender cannot be altered by changes in appearance or activities
Gender Schemas
Mental representations that associate physiological characteristics with each sex
Cognitive Development
Construction of thought processes; including remembering, problem solving, decision making from childhood through adolescence and adulthood
Piaget Overview
- Argued that children develop knowledge by constructing reality out of their own experience
- Considered child to be organism adapting to its environment and as a scientist constructing its own understanding of the world
- Interested in how intelligence changes as a child grows (genetic epistemology)
- There is an orderly sequence of cognitive development in infancy and childhood
Piaget said: All children pass through the same 4 stages in the same sequence
Hierarchical
Distinct
Invariant
Universal
Piaget Schema
- Set of linked mental representations of the world which we use both to understand and to respond to situations; the assumptions is that we store these mental representations and apply them when needed.
- Basic building blocks of intelligent behaviour/knowledge.
- E.g. sucking reflex in baby- triggered by something touching the baby’s lips→ piaget assumed that a baby has a sucking schema as a baby will suck a nipple, dummy or a person’s finger
Piaget Assimilation
The meshing of new info to existing info; original schema is changed to fit new additional knowledge; but knowledge is consistent with the existing schema and the existing schema is used to make sense of it (e.g. a child calls a horse doggie because it has four legs)
Piaget Accomodation
Modification of existing schemas to include new info; occurs when a child tries to fit new knowledge into pre-existing schema but the new info, action or experience doesn’t fit; so a new modified schema is created to fit the new info (e.g. instead of calling a horse doggie; they realise it has different characteristics so create a new schema for the horse
Piaget from assimilation to accommodation
When new info does not fit into existing schema the child experiences disequilibrium (e.g. child realises not all animals with 4 legs are doggies→ confusing and unsettling→ so child wants to return to state of equilibrium where they have a schema to explain everything
Piaget’s stages of cognitive development
Sensorimotor intelligence (0-2 years)
Preoperational (2-7 years)
Concrete operational stage (7-11)
Formal operational stage (11- late adolescence)
Piaget’s stages of cognitive development: Sensorimotor intelligence (0-2 years)
- Infants think with their senses; gather info from world around them by using their 5 senses; e.g. baby touching things and putting them in mouth
- Motor is active- exploration and movement
- Object permanence develops→ infants don’t realise that things they can’t see still exists (e.g. take you away)
Piaget’s stages of cognitive development: Preoperational (2-7 years)
- Operational= mental operations
- Thought is characterised by the representation of the world within words, images and drawings= symbolic representation
- Child influenced by how things ‘look’ rather than logic
- Involves 2 substages
1→ preconceptual (2-4)
2. → intuitive thought (4-7) - Develop and engage in pretend play
- Begin to use symbols to represent things
- Speech develops
- Egocentric→ don’t understand that others have different points of view from their own
Don’t understand conservation concept
Piaget’s stages of cognitive development: Concrete operational stage (7-11)
- Logical reasoning replaces intuitive reasoning; as long as the reasoning is applied to real, concrete objects
- Increasing ability to understand physical properties of objects to focus on more than one physical property at a time
- Primary characteristics of operation though include
- Conservation of mass, volume, number etc
- Reversibility of thought
- Classification of objects
- Mental operations
- Idea of conservation understood (e.g. experiments with glasses of water)
Piaget’s stages of cognitive development: Formal operational stage (11- late adolescence)
- Reasoning about abstract concepts
- Mentally manipulate several concepts at once
- Consequences of actions
- Use hypothetical reasoning to mentally work through a problem
- Think about the changes that come with time
- Hypothesise logical sequences of events
- Detect logical consistency or inconsistency in a set of statements
- Think in relativistic terms about self, others and the world
- Sophisticated moral reasoning begins
- From adolescence onwards, Piaget expected formal operations to dominate adult thinking and reasoning
- Marks the start of abstract thought and deductive reasoning; skills necessary for adult life
Criticism of Piaget’s theory
- Underestimated abilities of younger children
- Egocentristic has been found to be inconsistent
- It has been found that there is diversity in thinking across tasks
- Underlying cognitive processes are ignored
- Role of social factors and a child’s environment are largely ignored
Vygotsky’s- sociocultural theory of cognitive development: Overview
- Child development is a product of social interaction and cultural influences
Social interaction and cognition - Expresses a positive view of the child as learner and the role of parents and educators to provide positive learning experiences for the child to extend his/her learning
Elementary mental function in babies Memory Attention Sensation Perception
Vygotsky: Zone of proximal development
- Where children are most sensitive to instruction of guidance; transition phase to new knowledge, expand learning
- Learn by watching or being helped by others; they need to try it as well
- If task is too difficult→ they need guidance assistance
Vygotsky: Language
- Main means by which adults transfer knowledge to children (tool)
- Accelerator to thinking and understanding
- Children who engage in large amounts of private speech (out loud) helps them plan and organise- are more socially competent than children who don’t
- Language becomes internalised as we age; thought and self talk
Criticisms of vygotsky’s theory
- Lacks a strong scientific base
- Processes of learning aren’t addresses e.g. memory, attention
- Impact of emotional factors not discussed
- Underestimates the individual ‘prototype child’
Vygotsky: MKO
More knowledgeable others (MKO)
Higher level of understanding than learner (e.g. parent or teacher)
