Cognitive Development Piaget & Vygotsky

Question 1

Who is Piaget

Answer 1

• Theory was widely accepted in the 60s
• Constructivist, learning through interacting with the world and theories
• Interested in the mistakes children make to understand processing

Question 2

Piaget Key Principals (influences on development)

Answer 2

• Maturing, biologically changing
• Children are always learning from the environment and this is how they develop
• Socially, learning from others
• Equilibration, when something doesn’t follow our way’s of thinking we readjust to understand

Question 3

Piaget’s Stages of development

Answer 3

• All children goes through the same stages in the same order although the rate at which children develop through the stages varies

Sensorimotor 0-2 years
Preoperational 2-7 years
Concrete operational 7-11years
Formal Operational 11years+

Question 4

1) Sensorimotor

Answer 4

• Building sensory and motor exploration
• Child builds on basic reflexes
• Develops Object permanence

Question 5

Sensorimotor Task

Answer 5

A not B task, child still looks in the same place for the object even when it’s not there

Question 6

2) Preoperational

Answer 6

• Language development
• Limited appreciation of others perspectives

Question 7

Preoperational Task

Answer 7

• Child can’t recognise basic properties or change in appearance
• Centration, only focuses on dimension also lack of reversibility, can’t reverse mental processes

Question 8

3) Concrete operational

Answer 8

• Logical thinking
• Reversibility
• Can transform objects in the mind

Question 9

4) Formal Operational

Answer 9

• Can make predictions
• Can test these predictions

Question 10

What is Piaget’s pendulum problem

Answer 10

• Understanding what determines the pendulum speed
• Concrete operational child will vary factors such as length of string and weight of the object randomly
• Formal operational child will do this systematically and one factor at a time

Question 11

Piaget Critical Evaluation

Answer 11

Constructivist view:
- Experiences help children to learn, they come up with their own opinions
- Development follows qualitative shift stages
- Uses observation and clinical interviews to investigate cognitive development
- Can describe explain and predict behaviour
- Kohlberg agrees that development is stage like
Differentiation with cultures

Question 12

Piaget Critical Evaluation - contributions to school

Answer 12

• Listen to children and understand their thinking processes
• Set up situations with hypothesis testing

Question 13

Vygotsky: Some Key Principals

Answer 13

Socio cultural theory, social interactions are important
- Mediators, art
- Elementary Mental Functions, basic attention
- Higher Mental Functions, problem solving

Question 14

Private Speech

Answer 14

• When children explain their actions and thoughts
• Talking to themselves
• Vital in driving development
  Piaget called it egocentric speech
• Basis for higher cognitive processes i.e. problem solving
• Allows children to reflect
• Helps to guide difficult tasks
• More private speech leads to better task performance
• Children with learning and behavioural problems use private speech for longer rather than internalising (Ostad & Sorensen, 2007)

Question 15

Zone of proximal development

Answer 15

• A level at which children can understand on their own
• A level which can be reached when given the correct support
• The zone of proximal development is the difference between these two
• Social interactions are important for us to reach our potential so the level which we can reach on our own then increases

Question 16

Importance of Social interactions

Answer 16

• Intersubjectivity, start the task at two different levels and finish at the same.
• Scaffolding, adjusting task for children to better understand for example, breaking task down
• Guided participation (Rogoff, 2003), less formal teaching settings i.e. helping each other through play

Question 17

Zone of Proximal development in research

Wertsch et al. (1980)

Answer 17

Wertsch et al. (1980): Problem solving with parent/ Mother
- As age increased children were less likely to need prompts or specific gazes to help them complete the puzzle
- Therefore, roles within this problem solving situation vary with age

Question 18

Zone of Proximal Development in research
* Rogoff, Ellis and Gardner (1984)

Answer 18

• Mothers pay more attention to difficult tasks like maths rather than house hold chores
• Encourages children

Question 19

Make Believe play

Answer 19

• Really important for cognitive development and social development
• Self regulation as the children aren’t responding to external stimuli, they are coming up with their own ideas.

Question 20

Vygotsky Critical evaluation

Answer 20

• Underestimated the role of nature and how this impact learning
• Guide learning (what people can achieve is not as significant on their own)
• Children learn from each other collaborative
• Individual differences amongst children is really important - Vygotsky, sociocultural experiences
• Because of individual differences, important to tailor tasks - different difficulty chunks for different abilities

Question 21

Piaget and Vygotsky Comparison

Answer 21

• Piaget has more of an inevitability, on how children develop whereas Vygotsky focuses on how the environment shapes children
• Piaget focuses what children can do on their own however, Vygotsky looks at what can be achieved when children work together and recieve support
• We don’t live in isolation, social context is important

Question 22

Recent theoretical developments

Answer 22

• Movement towards nativism, criticism of Vygotsky as he may have neglected the role of nature
• Elizabeth Spelke’s research focuses on the role of nature, early childhood.

Question 23

Life after Piaget and Vygotsky

Answer 23

Information processing theories: Siegler, (1996)
input -> processing -> output
- Focus on memory and attention
- slow to include biology and evolution
Neuroconstructivism: Karmiloff-Smith (1992)
- Genetics and environment
- Worked with Piaget, nature and nurture together
- Brains of children and adults as they develop as a result of the environment

Question 24

Example Questions

Answer 24

How has Piaget’s work contributed to our understanding of cognitive development?
* How has Vygotsky’s work contributed to our understanding of cognitive development?
* How are the approaches of Piaget and Vygotsky similar?
Different?
* How has theory developed since Piaget and Vygotsky?