Week 4: Early Cognitive Development: Piagetian and Vygotskian Perspectives

Question 1

What was behaviourism like before the Cognitive Revolution?

Answer 1

John Watson: The central thesis is that adults can mold children’s behaviour by carefully controlling stimulus-response associations.
BF Skinner: The frequency of a behaviour can be increased by using a wide variety of reinforcers (eg. food, drink, praise) or decreased through punishment (eg. disapproval or withdrawal of privileges)

Question 2

What was Jean Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory?

Answer 2

He viewed children as discovering and constructing virtually all knowledge about their world through their own experience. Human infants do not start out as cognitive beings. Out of their perceptual and motor activities, they gradually build and refine their cognitive structures.

Question 3

What are the stages of Jean Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory?

Answer 3

Sensorimotor Stage (birth - 2 years) -> Preoperational Stage (2 - 7 years) -> Concrete Operational Stage (7 - 11 years) -> Formal Operational Stage (11 years onwards)

Question 4

What are schemes?

Answer 4

Internally organised ways of making sense of our experience. Started with sensorimotor actions.

Question 5

What are mental representations?

Answer 5

Internal depictions of information that the mind can manipulate eg. of objects, people, space etc

Question 6

What is assimilation?

Answer 6

We use our current schemes to interpret the external world

Question 7

What is accomodation?

Answer 7

We create new schemes or adjust old ones after recognising that our current schemes do not fully capture the workings of our environment.

Question 8

What happens in the sensorimotor stage?

Answer 8

Gain voluntary control over their actions. From simple, repetitive motor behaviours to more goal-directed, intentional behaviours.

Question 9

What is the infant’s understanding of object permanence?

Answer 9

Findings of 2.5 and 3.5 month old infants suggest that they had some awareness that an object moved behind a screen would continue to exist. As they grow older, they have a better understanding of object permanence.

Question 10

What is deferred imitation?

Answer 10

The ability of copy or mimic the actions of others, some time after they have seen these actions - which requires representational ability.

Examples:
- At 6 weeks, infants who watched an unfamiliar adult’s facial expression imitated it when exposed to the same adult the next day
- 6 and 9 month old infants who were taught a novel series of actions with a puppet, could imitate the learned actions a day later
- At 14-18 months, they try to imitate the target’s behaviour when intention wasn’t fully realised.

Question 11

Evaluation of Piaget’s Claims about The Sensorimotor Stage

Answer 11

• In many areas, infants do exhibit their early cognitive capacities earlier than what Piaget predicted in his time
• Unlike Piaget who thought infants construct all mental representations through sensorimotor activity, most contemporary researchers argue that there may be some built-in, innate cognitive equipment for making sense of their experience

Question 12

What happens during the preoperational stage?

Answer 12

A remarkable increase in representational, symbolic activity

Question 13

How do children grow with make-believe play?

Answer 13

Through pretending, children can practice and strengthen their newly acquired mental representations. After age 2, young children can engage in pretend play with less realistic objects. Pretend play becomes less self-centered with age. As pretend play involves more complex mental representations and roles, there are gains in social competence, logical reasoning, creativity, language skills and perspective taking.

Question 14

What is categorisation?

Answer 14

At the preoperational stage, young children can understand categories, not only based on appearance features, but also based on shared traits (ie. cold blooded)

Question 15

What is ego centric thinking?

Answer 15

A tendency to perceive the world solely from one’s own point of view. Children at the preoperational stage assume that other people will perceive and think about the world in the same way they do. The child is shown a model of three mountains and asked to choose the view that would be seen by a doll in a different location from themselves. The preoperational child typically fails to choose the view from other’s perspectives.

Question 16

What is the conservation task?

Answer 16

The ability to understand that certain changes in appearance do not alter fundamental physical properties of the objects.

Question 17

What causes the inability to conserve?

Answer 17

1. Centration: Focusing on one aspect of a situation (eg. height of the cup) while neglecting other important features. (ie. width of the cup)
2. Reversability: The ability to imagine a series of steps in both forward and reverse directions (ie mentally pouring the water back to the original cup)

Question 18

What happens during the Concrete Operational Stage?

Answer 18

Thoughts become far more logical, flexible and organised. As evident in the school-age child’s cognitive performance on a wide variety of Piagetian tasks like Classification, Spatial Reasoning etc

Question 19

What happens during the Formal Operational Stage?

Answer 19

Adolescents develop the mental capacity for abstract, systematic and scientific thinking. ie. Hypothesis-driven reasoning, deductive reasoning etc. Can operate on operations (not just on reality).

Question 20

What are the characteristics of Adolescent Cognitive Changes?

Answer 20

1. Imaginary audience: Adolscents’ belief that they are the central focus of everyone’s attention and concern
2. Personal Fable: Adolescents develop inflated views about their own importance and uniqueness - a feeling that they are very special and unqiue.
3. Idealism and Criticism: Adolescents can imagine alternative realities (eg. different family, school); often form grand visions of the world

Question 21

What is the core knowledge perspective?

Answer 21

Infants begin life with innate, special-purpose knowledge systems referred to as core domains of thought. These “prewired” understandings permits a rapid grasp of new, related information and support early, rapid development of cognitive capacities. Each core domain is believed to have evolutionary origins and its value for survival. Children are viewed as “naive theorists”. Have an innate understanding of objects, numbers, space etc

Question 22

Evaluation of the core knowledge perspective

Answer 22

Offers a coherent evolutionary account of why certain cognitive skills emerge early and develop more quickly.

Criticism:
- Does not offer clear explanations on what children do to revise their innate cognitive structures
- It remains unclear which experiences are most important in each domain of core knowledge and how these experiences advance children’s thinking
- It pays little attention to the social learning processes

Question 23

What is Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory?

Answer 23

Emphasised the profound effects of rich social and cultural contexts on children’s development of thinking. Rejected the Piagetian perspective - that is, the biology driven, individualistic views of the developing child. Thinks that human cognition is inherently social and language-based. Language development allows for the child’s participation in social dialogues with more knowledgeable individuals (eg. teachers)