WEEK 4

Question 1

Piaget’s Core Concepts

Answer 1

• Schemes
• Assimilation
• Accommodation

Question 2

Piaget’s Stages

Answer 2

sensory motor (birth - 2 years)

Preoperational (2-7)

concrete operational - (7-1)

formal operational (11-adulthood)

Question 3

Piaget’s 6 substages of the Sensory Motor stage

Answer 3

reflex activity (birth - 1 month)
primary circular reactions (1-4)
Secondary circular reactions (4-8)
Secondary Coordination of Schemas (8-12)
Tertiary circular reactions (12-18)
beginning of thought (18)

Question 4

What is the Sensorimotor Period

Answer 4

• Object Permanence
• Goal-directed behaviour/intentionality
• Symbolic thought/representations

Question 5

what is object permanace

Answer 5

• Object permanence develops during the sensorimotor period
  – The understanding that objects continue to exist when they are not visible

Question 6

The Development of Object Permanence

Answer 6

• From 4-8 months, “out of sight, out of mind”
• By 8-12 months, make the A-not-B error
• By 1 year, A-not-B error is overcome, but continued trouble with invisible displacement
• By 18 months, object permanence is mastered

Question 7

Was Piaget right? did object permanence really develop at 18months

Answer 7

Research using Violation of Expectation approaches suggests that infants may develop at least some understanding of object permanence far earlier than
Piaget believed

Question 8

Was Piaget wrong?

Answer 8

No other other sort of notions and tests were testing slighly different things

Question 9

How do infants develop symbolic thought?

Answer 9

• Infants move from understanding the world through senses and actions toward understanding through symbolic thought
• Become capable of mental representations

Question 10

What is mental imagery?

Answer 10

– Internal representation of an external event

Question 11

Why is symbolic thought useful for langauge?

Answer 11

– language is Not just a communication system, but a
means of representing objects and events in an abstract way
–> using words to give name to things

Question 12

WHen does pretend play begin?

Answer 12

• in the second year

– Play in which one actor, object, or action symbolises
or stands for anothe

Question 13

How does pretend play develop?

Answer 13

• In the earliest pretend play, the infant performs actions that symbolise familiar activities such as eating, sleeping, and washing
• Between the ages of 2 and 5, pretend play increases in frequency and in sophistication
• Inverted U shape: nonexistent around 15 months, peaks around 5-7 years before decreasing

Question 14

What is the inverted U

Answer 14

play is nonexistent around 15 months, peaks around 5-7 years before decreasing

Question 15

What is sociodramatic play

Answer 15

Children combine their capacity for social play
and their capacity for pretense to create social
pretend play

• Play in which children cooperate with caregivers or playmates to enact dramas

Question 16

Key features of social pretend play

Answer 16

– Social pretend play is universal
– The content of play is influenced by culture
– Social pretend play emerges around 3 - 4 years, or earlier in the context of a more proficient partner such as an older sibling, mother, or father

Question 17

What important cognitive skills does pretend play connect with

Answer 17

Social referencing - when child uses another person’s response (such as mum or dad) to guide their response in an ambiguous situation
– Decentration
– Reading intentionality in others

Question 18

Whats decentration?

Answer 18

Decentration is the cognitive ability to focus on multiple aspects of a situation or object at the same time, rather than being stuck on just one feature.

Question 19

Whats reading intentionality in others

Answer 19

This means recognizing that other people have goals, intentions, desires, and emotions that drive their actions.

• Seeing oneself (and others) as intentional agents is one of the most basic elements of cognition in social contexts
• As such, intentionality underpins more complex social cognition such as Theory of Mind (which we see emerging in the next developmental stage)

Question 20

In Piagets Pre-operational Stage, what do children stuggle with?

Answer 20

Conservation
– the idea that certain properties of an object or substance do not change when its appearance is altered in a superficial way

• Reliance on perceptions and lack of logical thought means that children have difficulty with conservation

Question 21

Cognitive limitations in the Pre-operational Stage

Answer 21

• centration
• Irreversible thought
• Static Thought
• Difficulty with classification
• Egocentricsm

Question 22

What centration?

Answer 22

• Focusing on one aspect of a problem

Question 23

What is irreversible thought?

Answer 23

cannot mentall undo an action

Question 24

What is static thought

Answer 24

focus on the end state rather the changes that transform one state to another

Question 25

What is difficulty with classification

Answer 25

– Using criteria to sort objects on the basis of characteristics such as shape, color, function – Lack class inclusion, the ability to relate the whole class (furry animals) to its subclasses (dogs, cats)

Question 26

Whats egocentricm

Answer 26

a child’s inability to see a situation from another person’s point of view. The child believes that others see, think, and feel the same way they do.

Question 27

What is theory of mind?

Answer 27

the ability to understand that other people have their own thoughts, feelings, beliefs, desires, and perspectives—and that these can be different from one’s own.

Question 28

What can children do in the concrete operational phase compared to the pre-operational phase?

Answer 28

decentration - focus on two things at once Reversibility of thought - mentally undo an action transformational thought - understand the process of change from one to another seriation - able to arrange items mentally along a quantifiable dimension Transitivity - Transitivity is a logical reasoning skill that allows a child to understand relationships between objects in a serial order.

Question 29

What is morality?

Answer 29

A sense of behavioural conduct that differentiaties intentions, decisions and actions between those that are right or wrong

Question 30

What are the three basic components of morality?

Answer 30

- The affective (emotional) component - The cognitive component - The behavioural component

Question 31

What is the affective (emotional) component of morality

Answer 31

consists of the feelings (guilt, concern for others’ feelings, and so on) that surround right or wrong actions and that motivate moral thoughts and actions (moral affect)

Question 32

What is the cognitive component of morality

Answer 32

The cognitive component centres on how we conceptualise right and wrong and make decisions about how to behave (moral reasoning)

Question 33

What is the behavioural componant of morality

Answer 33

How we behave when, for example, we experience the temptation to cheat or are called upon to help a needy person (moral behaviour)

Question 34

What is moral affect

Answer 34

positive and negative feelings towards our actions can drive us to do things or not do things. Feelings of shame and guilt may stop us from doing what we know is wrong Feelings of pride and satifaction may occur when we do the right thing

Question 35

What is moral reasoning

Answer 35

- The thinking process involved in deciding what is right or wrong -

Question 36

What is moral development (Kolhber theory)

Answer 36

– Level 1: preconventional morality * Stage 1: punishment-and-obedience orientation * Stage 2: instrumental hedonism – Level 2: conventional morality * Stage 3: “good boy” or “good girl” morality * Stage 4: authority and social order-maintaining morality – Level 3: postconventional morality * Stage 5: morality of contract, individual rights, and democratically accepted law * Stage 6: morality of individual principles of conscience