Cognition and Development Flashcards
(92 cards)
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piaget’s theory has been applied in teaching, the old-fashioned classroom has been replaced by activity-oriented classroom in which children actively engage in tasks allowing them to construct their own understandings, such discovery learning can take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.
