Cognition And Development Flashcards
(24 cards)
What are the 4 concepts of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development?
Schemas, assimilation, accomodation, disequilibrium
What 2 things did Piaget believe that influences cognitive development?
He believed that maturation and the environment influenced cognitive development. Maturation refers to the process of biological ageing. As children get older, certain mental operations become possible. At the same time, through interactions with the environment their understanding of the world becomes more complex.
What are schemas? (4)
Schemas are mental structures the represent a group of related concepts. A schema is like a program or script that people construct in order to make sense and deal with the world, which is developed through experience. Schemas can be behavioural like grasping at an object and also cognitive like classifying an object. For example, research suggests that infants are born with the schema for human faces e.g 2 eyes a mouth and a nose which helps them to distinguish between this important stimuli from other objects in their environment.
What is assimilation? (2)
Assimilation is the process of trying to fit new information into an already existing schema without changing it. This means that the child is attempting to understand their world in terms of already existing knowledge.
What is disequilibrium? (3)
Sometimes new information cannot easily fit into existing schemas with no change, this causes us to enter the state of disequilibrium. When we enter this state, we must adapt to the new situation by exploring and learning new things. Children are biologically motivated to adapt to new information in order to once again reach a state of equilibrium which is done through assimilation and accomodation.
What is accomodation? (2)
Accomodation is the process that helps us deal with disequilibrium by adjusting or creating one or more new schemas in order to incorporate the new conflicting information. This leads to children further developing their understanding and knowledge of the world.
What is the evaluation about Piaget’s TOCD not being testable?
A weakness of Piaget’s theory is that there is little empirical evidence to support the concept of disequilibrium.
Some of Piaget’s co works for example Bärbel Inhelder et al 1974 showed that children learning was helped when there was a mild conflict between what they expected to happen and what actually happened. But Bryant 1995 suggested that this was not the sort of conflict that Piaget was referring to, Piaget’s conflict was a more major dissonance between 2 things.
Therefore, this is a general issue of Piaget’s theory as some aspects of the theory are not really testable as concepts such as assimilation are very difficult to operationalise.
What is the evaluation about Piaget’s TOCD application to education?
However, Piaget’s insights have had important applications in education.
For example, Piaget’s view was that knowledge is developed through equilibrium and this means that self discovery is an important part of learning as true understanding only occurs through making ones own accomodations. As Piaget said ‘ each time one prematurely teaches a child something he could have discovered himself, that child is prevented from inventing it and subsequently from understanding it (Piaget 1970). However, this discovery learning approach has received criticism. For example Bennett 1976 found that children taught via formal methods did better in reading, maths and english. The general lack of success for discovery learning may be due to the fact that teachers in formal classrooms spend more time focussing on core topics and so when the children are assessed on these core topics, they do better. A further reason may be that discovery learning requires much more sensitivity and experience from teachers in knowing when and how much to guide their pupils.
This suggests that Piaget’s ideas are important in education but that some topics like core topics, formal methods may be preferable.
What are the 4 key terms from Piaget’s stages of intellectual development and definitions?
- Object permanence= the ability to realise that an object still exists even when it passes out of the visual field. Acquired at around 8 months.
- Conservation= the ability to realise that quantities remain the same even when the appearance of an object changes e.g water in a short wide glass is the same in a tall thin glass.
- Egocentrism= the inability to see other people’s points of view. An egocentric child assumes that others see, hear, and feel exactly the same as they do.
- Class inclusion= understanding that an object belonging to a sub group must also belong to a larger group
What are the 4 stages of intellectual development (Piaget)?
- Sensorimotor stage- 0-2 years
- Pre operational stage 2-7 years
- Concrete operational stage 7-11
- Formal operational stage 11+
What are the features of stage 1 sensorimotor stage? (4)
- Children explore the world through co-ordinating their sensory experience (hearing and seeing) with motor actions (grasping and touching).
- Infants begin with simple reflex reactions and then begin using circular reactions where they repeat actions over and over again to test the sensorimotor relationships.
- Infants end this stage being able to distinguish themselves from their surroundings and recognising themselves in the mirror or in photos.
- Object permanence is a big part of this stage and is developed by 8 months according to Piaget’s research.
What is the evaluation/experiment Piaget used to test object permanence? (4)
- Piaget simply recorded when children started to look for a toy that had been hidden by being covered with a cloth.
- However, this was criticised by many psychologists, suggesting that the children were simply distracted by the cloth rather than thinking the toy actually disappeared.
- Other psychologists used more sophisticated ways of investigating object permanence. They hid a toy when turning off the light so the infant was left in the dark. They then used infra red equipment which showed that infants as young as 4 months still searched for the object they could no longer see.
- This suggested that Piaget may have underestimated how soon this intellectual ability occurred.
What are the features of stage 2 pre operational stage? (4)
- Children at this age have a sort of logic but it cannot be used as a basis to understand how the world really works.
- They believe that most objects are alive like the moon or a table.
- This lack of logic-based reasoning means that they rely heavily on what they see, relying on appearance over reality.
-They still struggle with conservation, egocentrism and class inclusion.
What are the 3 experiments Piaget used to test for conservation (4), egocentrism (3) and class inclusion (2)?
Conservation:
-Piaget and Szeminska 1952 originally asked a pre and post transformational question e,g whether 2 things (like a row of counters and a beaker of water) were the same or different before and after changing them.
- They found that children below 7 or 8 often believed that:
1. Lengthening counters by spacing them out increased the number of them.
2. Squashing balls of plasticine reduced the volume.
Egocentrism:
- Children were asked to choose a picture of what a doll who was moved to different positions, was able to see.
- There were 3 mountains used with distinctive features- snow, a house, or a cross to make it easier for the children.
- Children aged 4 generally chose the cards that showed what they could see from their perspective as they struggle to understand that not everyone sees the same things as them.
Class inclusion:
- Piaget showed children 3 black cows and one white cow and asked whether there were more cows or whether there were more black cows.
- Children in stage 2 would answer incorrectly, saying there were more black cows.
What is the evaluation about Piaget’s ISOCD being different amongst cultures?
Piaget proposed that children’s intellectual development occurred through stages that are biologically driven. Because each stage is related to age, they are both invariant and apply universally.
However, some critics challenge this idea quoting cultural differences in intellectual development. For example there is research suggesting that aboriginal children develop more quickly than typical western children possibly because they needed to use survival skills earlier in life. This would suggest that intellectual development is more closely tied with the environment and experiences that Piaget originally acknowledged. However, there is generally wide support for Piaget’s ideas, this is reflected by the fact that many of the worlds education systems are organised around age suggesting that children of the same age are in a similar place intellectually.
What is the evaluation about Piaget’s ISOCD being too rigid and deterministic?
In general, Piaget’s theory is thought to be too rigid and not allowing for the fact that different children may develop at quite different rates, or going forwards and backwards between features of each stage depending on the situation they are in.
Critics state that children’s development can be made more rapid if ‘hothoused’ by parents and teachers, suggesting that Piaget may have underestimated the impact of social environment on intellectual development. His highly deterministic approach should also perhaps recognise the role of free will in intellectual development. For example, Vgotsky’s approach to cognitive development is less deterministic and recognises that children can move through a zone of proximal development where the extent of the zone varies between children. However, it is still determined by the support that the children receive through scaffolding provided by their parents, teachers and other adults.
What are the 3 components of Vgotsky’s theory of cognitive development?
- Culture and language
- Zone of proximal development
- Scaffolding
What is Vgotsky’s description of culture and language including the mental functions, semiotics and internalisation? (5)
Everyone is born with elementary mental functions like memory and attention but through influence of sociocultural environment, these are developed into more sophisticated and efficient processes called higher mental functions like mathematics and language. The role of culture is to develop elementary processes into higher processes.
Vgotsky’s believed that culture is transmitted by experts via semiotics which are signs and symbols developed within a culture. Language is a key semiotic along with maps, signs and maths.
Language begins as a shared dialogue between child and adult but then as the child develops, they internalise the language and begin to use it to form mental representations.
What is Vgotsky’s description of the zone of proximal development? (2)
The zone of proximal development is the region between a child’s current ability and their potential capabilities which is where cognitive development takes place.
According to Vgotsky, learning or cognitive development cannot take place within the area of a child’s current ability nor can it take place too far away from what a child can already independently do.
Who investigated the zone of proximal development and what did they find? (5)
Mcnaughton and Leyland 1990
They observed a group of young children working with their mothers to solve jigsaw puzzles of increasing difficulty.
The results were in line with Vgotsky’s predictions.
If the puzzle was too easy/ below the child’s zone of proximal development, the mothers did little to help.
If the puzzle was of moderate difficulty/ within the child’s ZPD, the mothers focused on helping the child solve the puzzle themselves.
If the puzzle was too hard/outside the zone of proximal development, the mothers intervened a lot.
What is scaffolding? (2)
Scaffolding is providing a framework like instructions to support a child as they move through the ZPD provided by a skilled tutor, teacher or more knowledgable other. Support is increased when the task is further outside the ZPD and gradually taken away as the learner shows more understanding of the task/topic.
What is the evaluation about Vgotsky support by cross cultural studies?
Vgotsky’s claims in the role of culture in cognitive development have been supported by cross cultural studies.
For example, Gredler 1992 pointed to a primitive counting practice in Papua New Guinea who started counting on the thumb of one hand, go up the arm and then down to the other fingers ending at 29. This system makes it very difficult to add or subtract large numbers, which ultimately results in the limitation of cognitive development within this culture.
This shows the effect of the way that cultural behaviours can shape our thinking.
What is the evaluation about evidence relating to the role of language challenging Vgotsky’s theory?
Vgotsky’s theory can be challenged by evidence relating to the role of language in cognitive development.
Vgotsky believed that at first thought and language were independent but became interdependent. He suggested that the acquisition of a new word is the beginning of the development of a new concept. This is supported in a classic study by Carmichael et al 1932 who showed participants a kidney bean shaped drawing and told them that it was either a kidney bean or a canoe. When subsequently asked to draw the shape, their responses differed depending on the label they were given. This shows the effect of words on the way we think about or remember something. On the other hand, Sinclair De Zwart 1969 showed that non conservers differed in terms of language from conservers. The non conservers used absolute rather than comparative terms like big rather than bigger and used a single term to describe different dimensions like using small to describe short, thin and few. This demonstrates how cognitive and linguistic development are very closely tied. She then also taught the non conservers the right terminology, but 90% of the children were still unable to conserve.
This finding therefore does not support Vgotsky’s views as his theory suggests that cultural tools such as language should lead to cognitive development.
