Cognitive Development Flashcards
Understand what is meant by cognitive development
Theories that explain that goes on connectively during periods of life, what are the advances and limitations in thinking during childhood and adolescence.
Define schemes, assimilation and accommodation
Basic building blocks of the way we understand the world are mental structures called schemes, organized patterns of functioning that adapt and change with mental development. First schemes are related to physical or sensorimotor, and as children develop they move on to reflect thought and mental processes. Give baby a book they will bag it put in mouth etc give to adult and they will read it they have different schemas.
Assimilation is the process by which people understand an experience in terms of their current stage of cognitive development and way of thinking, when a stimulus or event is acted upon, perceived and understood in accordance with existing patterns of thought.
Accommodation, when we change our existing ways of thinking, understanding or behaviour in response to encounter with new stimuli or events.
First schemes are reflexes such as sucking and rooting and infants begin to modify almost immediately through assimilation and accommodation in response to their exploration of the environment.
what is the sensorimotor stage?
birth- 2 years is the first cognitive developmental stage. Though the order of the substages stays the same piaget did agree that the timing variation does vary between children
what is stage 1 of the sensorimotor stage?
simple reflexes- first month of life, various reflexes are at the center of a babys physical and cognitive life, determining interactions with the world. Eg sucking everything placed on lips, sucking provides information to the baby about the object- paving way to next stage.
what is stage 2 of sensorimotor stage?
first habits and primary circular reactions- 1-4 months infants coordinate what were separate actions into single, integrated activities. Might combine grasping an abject with sucking on it. Things that interest the baby, may repeat the thing over and over agin for the sake of it, this repetition of chance motor events help the baby to start building cognitive schemes, know as circular reaction. Primary circular reactions reflect infant participating in repeating enjoyable actions, just for sake of it, it is primary because it involves infants own body. (repentantly sucking thumb).
stage 3 of sensorimotor stage?
secondary circular reactions; are more purposeful, 4-8 months, infants begin to act upon the outside world. Engages in secondary circular reactions, are schemes regarding repeated actions that bring about desirable consequences, major difference is that instead of relating to body they relate to outside world. Infants come to notice if they make noises other people around them will respond with noises of their own.
Stage 4 of sensorimotor stage?
coordination of secondary circular reactions- 8-12 months, before this interactions and repeated behaviour was by chance now, they begin goal directed behaviour, in which several schemes are combined and coordinated to generate a single act to solve a problem. Begin to anticipate upcoming events, their ability to use means to attain particular ends this is due to there development of object permanence, knowing objects and people exist event when they cannot see them.
Stage 5 of the sensorimotor stage?
Tertiary Circular Reactions; 12-18 months infants developed schemes regarding the deliberate variation of actions that bring desirable consequences. Rather then just repeat enjoyable activities, the infants appear to conduct mini experiments to observe the consequences. Eg dropping toy from all different angles to see how it falls.
Stage 6 of the sensorimotor stage?
18months- 2 years Beginnings of thought; major achievement is the capacity for mental representation, or symbolic thought. A mental representation is an internal image of a past event or object. This stage infants can imagine where objects might be that they cannot see, predict where objects will be. Also mental representation allow ability to pretend, deferred imitation, when a person eho is no longer there is imitated later, after they have witness such scenes they can imitate driving car, feeding doll etc. deferred imitation provided clear evidence that children form internal mental representations.
what is involved in the preoperational stage?
2-7, childrens symbolic thinking grows, mental reasoning emerges, and use of concepts increases. Eg seeing moms keys may prompt question ‘go to store?’ grow less dependent on the use of direct sensorimotor activity to understand the world around them. The key of preoperational thought is symbolic function, the ability to use a mantal symbol, a word, or an object to stand for or represent something that is not physically present. Eg in this stage they can use a mental symbol for a car (the word car) they understand that a small toy car is representative of the real thing. Also huge language development occurs, at the heart of this is symbolic reasoning, the use of language also allows children to think in past and future.
what are some limitations of the preoperational stage?
A key limitation is centration, is the process of concentrating on one limited aspect of a stimulus and ignoring other aspects. Pre-schoolers are unable to consider all available information about a stimulus. They focus on superficial, obvious elements that are within their sight, these external elements come to dominate pre-schoolers thinging, leading to inaccuracy in thought.
Children at this age have not mastered conservation, the knowledge that quantity is unrelated to the arrangement and physical appearance of objects. (water in glass senareo).
Limitation; transformation is the process in which one state is changes into another, adult understand as a pencil falls in goes thought step thought the air but children in preoperational stage are unable to envision or recall the succeive transformation tha the pencil followed in moving unright to horizontal.
Limitation: egocentric thought, is thinking that does not consider the viewpoints of others, they don’t understand that others have different perspective from their own. 2 forms; one is lack of awareness that others see things from a different physical perspective and the failure to recognise others may hold thought, feeling and points of view that differ from theirs. 3 year old child might hold pillow over face, thinking I cant see them so they cant see me. Intuitive thought, primitive reasoning, constantly seek answers to wide variety of questions, wanting correct and final answers.
Lack ability of; largely egocentric, lack ability to organize, formal, logical mental processes
what is the concrete operational stage?
stage: occurs between 7-12 charactorised by active and appropriate use of logic. There cognitive and logical reasoning improves and they no longer rely on the appearance to answer questions. They are no longer egocentric and can take the viewpoints of others, making multipul aspects of a situation into account, an ability known as decentering. Children shift back and forth between theses stages.
When concrete operational thinking is fully engaged, they understand, reversibility, the notion that processes transforming a stimulus can be revered, returing it to its original form (8+3=11 same reversed). Also understand relationship between time, speed and distance comprehending.
limitations of the concrete operational stage?
they remain tied to concrete, physical reality. They are unable to understand truly abstract or hypothetical questions or one that involve formal logic.
what is the formal operational stage?
12 to 15; is the stage at which people develop the ability to think abstractly. People reach it at the start of adolescence. can hypothesise and systematically solve problems, they are able to consider problems in the abstract rather then only concrete terms.
Use hypotheticodeductive reasoning, in which they start with a general theory about what produces a particular outcome and then deduce explanations for specific situations in which they see that particular outcomes.
Propositional thought; uses abstact logic in the absence of concrete examples ( all men are mortal/Socrates is a man/ therefore, Socrates is mortal).
Some people reach this stage later and some evidence suggest some people don’t reach this stage at all.
consequences of the development of formal operational stage?
before they may have unquestioningly accepted rules and explanations for them, then they begin to question thing and parents authority, become more argumentative and use abstracts reasoning to poke holes in other explanations
