Piaget’s Cognitive Development

Question 1

What is cognitive development?

Answer 1

-development of all mental processes
-thinking, reasoning and understanding of the world

Question 2

What were the 2 aspects that Piaget looked at children’s learning in?

Answer 2

1. Role of motivation
2. How knowledge develops

Question 3

What is the association that Piaget made?

Answer 3

-children don’t just know less than adults
-they just reason differently

Question 4

What is constructivism?

Answer 4

-children construct their own reality through interaction with the environment

Question 5

What is self discovery?

Answer 5

-children are instrumental in their own learning

Question 6

What is development the result of?

Answer 6

1. Maturation - cognitive development is biological
2. Environmental - with interactions, our understanding of the world becomes complex

Question 7

What are schemas?

Answer 7

-mental framework of beliefs + expectations that influence cognitive processing

Question 8

What are the 2 types of schemas?

Answer 8

1. Behavioural
2. Cognitive

Question 9

What are behavioural schemas?

Answer 9

-grasping an object

Question 10

What are cognitive schemas?

Answer 10

-classifying objects

Question 11

What was the assumption made by Piaget about schemas?

Answer 11

-children are born with a small number of schemas
-enough to allow them to interact with the world

Question 12

What is equilibrium?

Answer 12

-takes place when we have encountered new info + built into our understanding of a topic
-by assimilating it into an existing or new schema

Question 13

What is assimilation?

Answer 13

-takes place when we acquire new info or more advanced understanding of an object

Question 14

What is accommodation?

Answer 14

-acquire new info that changes our understanding of a topic
-the extent that we need to form new schema in order to deal with new understanding

Question 15

What is disequilibrium?

Answer 15

-pushed to learn when our existing schema doesn’t allow us to make sense of something new

Question 16

How does the motivation to learn happen?

Answer 16

-disequilibrium- unpleasant sensation
-to escape we have to adapt to new situation by exploring + developing our understanding
-achieving equilibration

Question 17

How does new learning take place?

Answer 17

-assimilation when we experience something new
-add it to a schema
-accommodation - response to dramatically different experiences
-so we have to adjust the schema

Question 18

What is research support to Piaget’s theory?

Answer 18

-evidence for the individual formation of mental representations
-theory suggests that children form individual representations of the world despite similar learning experiences
-Howe’s research supports this

Question 19

What is Howe’s support research into Piaget’s theory?

Answer 19

-children aged 9-12 years in 4 groups
-discuss movement of objects down a slope
-all kids had increased understanding
-picked up different facts + conclusions
-each child formed individual mental representations

Question 20

What is a counter point to Piaget’s theory?

Answer 20

-equilibration is overemphasised
-he believed that removal of its discomfort was a motivating factor
-not all children are equally motivated
-he studied middle class = may have been more motivated
-weakens validity

Question 21

What is an alternative to Piaget’s theory?

Answer 21

-underestimated the role of other people
-teachers are important for setting up discovery situations
-Vygotsky - emphasised the role of more knowledgable
-limited in its cognitive validity

Question 22

What is a practical application of Piaget’s theory?

Answer 22

-children actively engage in tasks that construct understanding
-eg. in early years’ classrooms learning is focused around play and discovering new aspects of the world
-positive impact directly on education

Question 23

What is an issue + debate to Piaget’s theory?

Answer 23

-developed a nomothetic approach of cognitive development
-he argues every child has these same factors in cognitive development
-could be considered a weakness as every human is slightly different
-universal approach can not account for those individual and cultural differences
-limiting its applicability