Cognition and Development Flashcards
what is cognitive development?
it describes the development of all mental processes, especially thinking, reasoning and understanding of the world, it continues throughout the lifespan.
what is piaget’s theory of cognitive development?
he realised that children think in different ways from adults and based on this, he proposed discrete stages in the development of a child’s thinking, he viewed cognitive development as a progressive reorganisation of mental processes that occurs as a result of both biological maturation and environmental experience.
what is a schema?
a cognitive framework (mental structure) that helps us organise knowledge and understand the world, they are developed from experience.
why is the role of a schema important?
they are ‘units’ of knowledge, each relating to one aspect of the world, including objects, actions and abstract (theoretical) concepts e.g. love, forgiveness and justice.
- they develop through a child’s experience and interaction with the physical world and as children develop, they are able to construct more detailed and complex schemas of the world.
how is learning motivated?
disequilibrium and equilibration.
what is disequilibrium?
it is what we experience as individuals when we are pushed to learn when our existing schema do not allow us to make sense of something new, an unpleasant state of imbalance.
what is equilibration?
it is used to escape disequilibrium, it is the ongoing process of balancing new information with existing knowledge (schemas) through assimilation and accommodation.
how does learning take place?
assimilation and accommodation.
what is assimilation?
it involves fitting a new experience into an existing schema.
what is accommodation?
it involves the modification of an existing schema to understand (accommodate) new information, it may involve creating a new schema altogether.
what are the strengths of piaget’s theory of cognitive development?
piaget’s theory suggests children form their own mental representations of the world, howe et al (1992) found that children came up with their own conclusions and facts about movement down a slope, increasing their understanding which provides support to piaget’s theory and showcasing the role of the schema.
piaget’s theory has been applied in teaching, the old-fashioned classroom has been replaced by activity-oriented classroom in which children actively engage in tasks allowing them to construct their own understandings, such discovery learning can take different forms which shows how piaget-inspired approaches may facilitate the development of individual mental representations of the world.
-> (counterpoint): however, there is no firm evidence showing that children learn better using discovery learning, lazonder and harmsen (2016) claimed that it seems that input from others is the crucial element of the effectiveness of discovery learning rather than just teachers which means that discovery learning is less effective than expected based on piaget’s theory.
what are the weaknesses of piaget’s theory of cognitive development?
piaget focused on what was happening in the minds of individual learners, other theories place more emphasis on the importance of other people in children’s learning e.g. vygotsky proposed that learning is essentially a social process with evidence to support which means that piaget’s theory may be an incomplete explanation for learning because it doesn’t put enough emphasis on the role of other people in learning.
what did vygotsky say the stages of intellectual development were?
he identified 4 stages - each characterised by a different level of reasoning ability, although the exact age may vary from child to child, all children develop through the same sequence of stages.
what are the 4 stages of intellectual development?
sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational.
what is the sensorimotor stage?
(0-2 years)
in this stage children are matching their senses with what they do and are developing basic physical co-ordination, they learn by trial and error and by moving around (exploration).
- one of the operations include object permanance.
what is object permanance?
usually occurs at approximately 8 months and it is being aware that objects still exist when they are out of sight.
what is the preoperational stage?
(2-7 years)
in this stage children are learning to use symbols (language) to represent objects but lack reasoning ability, operations include: conservation, egocentrism and class inclusion.
what is conservation?
quantity remains constant even when appearance of objects change.
what is egocentrism?
seeing the world only from one’s own point of view.
what is class inclusion?
a classification skill in which children begin to be able to classify objects into 2 or more categories simultaneously.
what is the concrete operational stage?
(7-11 years)
in this stage children begin to have better reasoning abilities but only with concrete ideas (physical) and they are able to conserve, however they lack abstract reasoning which means they struggle to imagine concepts/situations that they cannot see.
- concrete operations are carried out on physical things whereas formal operations are carried out on ideas.
what is the formal operational stage?
(11+ years)
in this stage children develop the ability to think about things with they have not actually experiences (hypothetical) and draw conclusions - they can focus on the form of the argument and not get distracted by its content.
- tested with syllogisms.
what are syllogisms?
a form of reasoning in which a conclusions is drawn from 2 given or assumed propositions.
what are the strengths of piaget’s stages of intellecutal development?
there is real-world application, knowledge of these stages of development can help guide curriculum designs in schools and can help children through the stages within education suggesting that his theory has practical application.
what are the weaknesses of piget’s stages ofintellectual development?
there are criticisms of piaget’s methods which suggests children can do tasks earlier than piaget suggested, mcgarrigle and donaldson (1974) set up a study in which counters appeared to move by accident, in the ‘naughty teddy’ condition children were able to conserve earlier than originally shown which means that piaget was possibly wrong about the age in which conservation appears, research on egocentrism and class inclusion variations were also conducted and similar contradictions were found.
-> (counterpoint): however, this does not undermine the entire stages theory but questions the age at which each stage occurs.
vygotsky placed more emphasis on social learning than piaget did, he focused on the role of others in learning - observation, group tasks and experts guiding the children, strong evidence to support the idea that learning is enhanced by interactions meaning piaget’s theory could be considered as an incomplete explanation.
what is vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development (1934)?
he was influenced by piaget’s work and agreed on many of the basics of cognitive development but the major difference between their theories was that vygotsky saw cognitive development as a social process of learning from more experienced others; role of others in learning.
- saw language and culture as an important part of cognitive development.
how are there cultural differences in cognitive abilities?
if reasoning abilities are acquired from the more experienced individuals that the child has contact with, then the child will acquire the reasoning abilities of those people meaning that there may be cultural differences in cognitive development, with children picking up the mental ‘tools’ that will be the most important for life within the physical, social and work environments of their culture.
what did vygotsky identify?
he identified a gap between a child’s current level of development (what they can understand and do alone) and what they can potentially understand after interaction with more expert others - which is known as the zone of proximal development (ZPD).
what did vygotsky say about the ZPD?
expert assistance allows a child to cross the ZPD and understand as much of a subject/situation as they are capable of - they are still limited by their developmental stage.
what did vygotsky also believe?
that children develop a more advanced understanding of a situation, so the more advanced reasoning abilities are needed to deal with it by learning from others.
- believed that higher mental functions could only be acquired through interaction with more advanced others.
what is scaffolding and who came up with it?
the process of helping a learner cross the ZPD and advance as much as they can, given their stage of development - wood, bruner and ross (1976).
- expanded vygotsky’s theory after he passed away.
what did wood et al note about scaffolding?
they noted the particular strategies that experts use when scaffolding.
- as a learner crosses the ZPD, the level of help given in scaffolding declines from level 5 (most help) to level 1 (least help).
- an adult is more likely to use a high level of help strategies when first helping and then gradually withdraw the level of help as a child grasps the tasks.
what are the strengths of vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development?
there is research support for the ZPD, roazzi and bryant (1998) had children aged 4-5 years estimate the number of seeets in a box in 2 conditions: working alone and working with help, they found that children gave better estimated when they worked with an older child (help) which supports the role of the ZPD - children can learn more with the help of others.
there is real-world application, his theory has been applied in education and helps raise expectations of what children can do with the help of others - TAs, tutoring etc, children tutored made more progress in reading than those not tutored showing that his theory is useful and has value in real-world settings.
-> (counterpoint): liu and matthews (2005) point out that in china, classes of up to 50 children learn very effectively in lecture-style classroom with very few individual interactions with peers or tutors meaning that vygotsky may have overestimated the importance of scaffolding in learning.
what are the weaknesses of vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development?
vygotsky’s theory covers interactional learning but this may not always be the case - children often only learn when they are ready to as much as their brain allows, however, if social learning is the essence of cognitive development then learning would be faster; vygotsky also ignores the biological aspects that aid or restricts cognitive development such as the development of the brain and maturation, therefore piaget’s theory of cognitive development might be a better explanation.
what is baillargeon’s theory of cognitive development?
criticised piaget (object permanence) because babies don’t have the motor skills to do so or they are easily distracted.
- other research methods have shown that babies as young as 3 months have object permanence so they have a better understanding of the world.
- also proposed that babies are born with the physical reasoning system and with the ability to learn quickly from new experiences - understanding of the world becomes more sophisticated with each new experience.
what is object persistence?
an object remains in existence and does not spontaneously alter in structure.
