Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development Flashcards
Who is Piaget?
He produced an influential theory of cognitive development
He realised that children think in entirely different ways to adults
He divided childhood into different stages and they all represent development
What is a Schema?
A schema is a mental framework of beliefs and expectations that influence cognitive processing which is developed by processing
Me-Schema = all the child’s knowledge about themselves is stored
The motivation to learn
Piaget says we are pushed to learn… but our existing schema doesn’t make sense of what we learn when its new
Equilibrium = learning new information and building it into your understanding - everything is balanced
How learning takes place
Assimilation takes place when we understand a new experience and equiliberate by adding new information to an existing schema
Accomodation takes place in response to dramatic new experience - radically changing a current schema or forming new ones
