Week Five - Cognitive Development I: Piaget

Question 1

What is cognition?

Answer 1

The mental process of acquiring knowledge and understanding

Question 2

How is cognition gained?

Answer 2

Gained through sensing, perceiving and thinking

Question 3

What is cognitive development?

Answer 3

The HOW and WHY of progress in cognition across age.

Question 4

What are the 3 assumptions of stage theories?

Answer 4

1. DOMAIN-GENERAL DEVELOPMENT: when you improve , you improve across all domains, not just one)
2. STAGE INVARIANCE: all children go through the same stages in a specific order, no forwards or backward)
3. UNIVERSAL PATTERNS: stages aren’t dependent on anything else such as culture, they are just what everyone goes through)

Question 5

What did Jean Piaget do?

Answer 5

Observed his own children and considered whether similar patterns were representative of all children

Question 6

Piaget considered children to be?

Answer 6

Active constructor of knowledge as opposed to passive vessels

Question 7

What are Piaget’s stages?

Answer 7

Sensorimotor
Pre-operational
Concrete operational
Formal operational

Question 8

What occurs in the Sensorimotor stage?

Answer 8

0-2 years of age,

• sensory and motor
• experience and coordination
• gradually acquires object permanence
• imitates others
• symbolic thought ends infancy
• distinguish self from outside world

Question 9

What occurs in the preoperational stage?

Answer 9

2-6 years old

• language and symbolic representation (no mental operations)
• egocentric world view
• animism
• artificialism
• magical thoughts

Question 10

What occurs in the concrete stage?

Answer 10

7-12 years old

• solving concrete problems with logic
• organisation of objects into hierarchies
• concrete thinking
• class inclusion
• conservation
• classification
• seriation
• transitive inference

Question 11

What occurs in the formal operational stage?

Answer 11

12-adulthood

• systematic solving of real and hypothetical problems using abstract thoughts
• hypothetico-deductive reasoning
• propositional reasoning (statements)

Question 12

How do we progress through Piaget’s stages?

Answer 12

direct learning
social transmission
physical maturation

Question 13

What is Direct learning?

Answer 13

Where the child actively responds to new problems using schemas

Question 14

What are schemas?

Answer 14

A schema describes a pattern of thought or behaviour that organises categories of the info and the relationship between them

Question 15

What are innate schemas?

Answer 15

Simple patterns of unlearned reflexes

Question 16

What is assimilation?

Answer 16

Interpreting/responding to a new situation in terms of an existing schema

eg going from boob to bottle with sucking schema

Question 17

What is accomodation?

Answer 17

Changing an existing schema when faced with new information that doesn’t fit

Question 18

How do we use social transmission to progress through stages?

Answer 18

Out thinking is influenced by learning from others via observation and contact

Question 19

How does physical maturation help us progress through stages?

Answer 19

Because there are biologically determined changes in physical and neurological development that lead to cognitive change

Question 20

What is object permanence?

Answer 20

The knowledge that an object still exists even when out of site

Question 21

What is the A not B error?

Answer 21

Hiding toy at A, baby searches and finds it at A

Hides at B , baby still searches at A

Question 22

Diamonds conclusions on the A not B task?

Answer 22

Influence on memory over behaviour is not strong enough to hold back their habitual response - like checking your wrist for time when though you don’t’ have a watch on

Question 23

Critiques to sensory motor stage

Answer 23

infants show OP earlier, and memory affects infants performance more than piaget realied

Question 24

What is conservation?

Answer 24

The understanding that the essential properties of things are conserved, despite changes in their outward appearance - not occurring in pre-op stage

Question 25

What 3 things explain why children in pre-op stage may fail to conserve?

Answer 25

Centration: Only focus on a single aspect of the situation Reversibility (lack of): Can't see that this transformation could be reversed Identity: (lack of) awareness that an object is still the same object CHILD IS MISLEAD BY PERCEPTUAL FEATURES

Question 26

What did Piaget underestimate with children's actual knowledge in regard to conservation?

Answer 26

The role of pragmatics (unwritten roles of conversation) First answer must be wrong? Misunderstanding of question Pleasing experimenter

Question 27

What did the naughty teddy experiment provide?

Answer 27

Better understanding of conservation - got rid of pragmatic concern

Question 28

Preoperational stage children can however?

Answer 28

Acquire a real understanding of conservation

Question 29

Preoperational children do not fully grasp what?

Answer 29

How the true conventional number system works

Question 30

What does true understanding of conservation of number tasks require?

Answer 30

one-to-one correspondence (counting things only one) ordinality (saying no. in the correct order) cardinality ( last no. said = no. you have)

Question 31

What thoughts do children in the pre-op stage have that they overcome as thinking becomes more logical?

Answer 31

Animism: applying the attributes of living things to inanimate objects Artificialism: believing that naturally occurring events are caused by people Magical Thought: attributing events you can't understand to magic/fantasy

Question 32

What did Piaget's clinical method encourage?

Answer 32

Animistic and artificialism thinking

Question 33

What is egocentrism?

Answer 33

Inability to understand that another person's view or opinion may be different than their own.- preop children cannot do referenced by the 3 mountain task - choosing the mountain they can see not doll (however, could simply just be too hard of a task - findings show simpler tasks prove ego in preop people)

Question 34

What are the 3 hallmarks seen when entering concrete operational stage?

Answer 34

identity reversibility decentration: consider multiple aspects at once

Question 35

Explain the differences in conservation tasks in the CO stage?

Answer 35

Don't develop the ability to conserve EVERYTHING at once - Conservation of number tasks are easier - 6 yo - Conservation of volume tasks - 12-12yo Both individual and cultural differences

Question 36

Why are there cultural differences in conservation ability?

Answer 36

Some cultures have more ability to practice/rehearse (eg scarce water = no chance to play around with it)

Question 37

What is class inclusion (COS)?

Answer 37

Ability to simultaneously consider one thing as a member of one class and its sub-class eg red flowers and total flower

Question 38

What is classification (COS)?

Answer 38

Ability to recognise different levels of categories | - ability to reason that one person/object can belong to two categories

Question 39

What is seriation?

Answer 39

Ability to put objects in order along a quantitative dimension eg size, length

Question 40

What is transitive inference?

Answer 40

A is bigger than B, B is bigger than C, is A bigger than C? - can provide false positives though due to hearing the word 'bigger'

Question 41

What does propositional reasoning involve?

Answer 41

Manipulation of abstract thoughts, freed from the concrete thus can be based on factually untrue premises

Question 42

The transition from concrete to formal stage is?

Answer 42

A gradual process that takes some years

Question 43

Negative outcomes of formal operations stage?

Answer 43

Ability to imagine alternatives question rules become idealistic simple solutions for complex problems (eg war)

Question 44

What are some positive outcomes that occur in the formal operations stage?

Answer 44

think critically | understand other better

Question 45

Development of formal operations depends on?

Answer 45

Socio-cultural context as much as on assimilation/accommodation

Question 46

What are the two different ways egocentrism may present in adolescence?

Answer 46

Imaginary audience: differentiating too little between own thoughts and those of hypothesised audience Personal fable: differentiating too much on one's own thoughts, feelings and experiences from those of others