Piaget's theory of cognitive development

Children are mini scientists who learn by discovery.
1. e.g give a child a bowl of water to see what sinks or floats.
Cognitive development occurs through maturation of the brain and increasing experience with the environment
Schema Theory.
1. A schema is a pocket of knowledge.
  1. Babies are born with reflex schemas - they know to suck to feed.
2. Assimilation- when you can use a pre-existing schema to understand new info
  1. Child has a schema for addition. Given additions to do. Can use current schema.
3. Accommodation - when you change or create a schema to understand new info
  1. Child has a schema for addition. Given subtractions to do. Needs to create a new schema.
4. Equilibrium is mental ease achieved by understanding the world around you as the info fits your current schemas.
5. Disequilibrium is mental confusion because new info does'nt fit in your schema. this gives motivation to accommodate.
6. Adaptation is fitting in your environment by continually changing or creating schemas.
Concepts like accommodation are vague and difficult to prove or disprove,
Underestimates the role of adults in helping children to learn.
1. Vygotsky says children can be encouraged to learn through scaffolding.
2. Gelman tried to teach conservation to 4 yr olds. Could'nt make them do it as they were'nt cognitively ready.
Has aided primary education. Bowl of water example.
Sensory Motor Stage 0-2 Yrs.
1. Learn through movement and senses.
2. Object Permanence.
  1. Knowing that something is there even though you can't see it.
  2. Hid a toy behind a screen. Children under 8 months did not look for the toy. This shows they do not have object permanence.
3. - May develop earlier. The didn't reach for the toy as the didn't have the motor skills.
  1. Bower and Wishart turned off lights and found the children reached for toy at 3 months.
  2. Baillargeon found it is present at birth.
Pre-operational Stage 2-7
1. Ego -Centrism
  1. Being able to see another persons perspective.
  2. Three Mountains Task. Children were shown a model of 3 mountains. A doll is placed facing them. They were asked to pick the view of the doll from images. 2-7 years chose their own perspective.
    1. Hughes and Donaldson asked asked children to hide a toy from a policeman. Children of 3.5 could do it.
      1. 3.5 not egocentric.
    2. 2-7 are ego centric.
      1. Because they cant decentre (focus on more than one aspect of a situation)
2. Conservation Tasks.
  1. Being able to know that something can look different yet still be the same thing.
    1. Piaget had two equal glasses of water and tipped one into a thinner glass. Then he asked the children if they were the same volume or different.
      1. All children knew the first two glasses were the same. However children in the pre-operational stage thought the second glass had the same amount of water in it.
      2. 2-7 can't conserve.
        Because they cant decentre (focus on more than one aspect of a situation)
        Because they cannot use reversibility (be able to mentally return to what it used to look like)
  2. Didn't know why the water was moved
    1. Light et al - Told the children that the water was moved because the glass was cracked. 70% of children in the properational stage could conserve.
  3. They were asked the same question twice and so may have thought they were wrong the first time.
3. Class Inclusion
  1. Knowing things can belong to a subgroup that belongs to a whole group.
    1. Piaget had 20 brown beads and 2 white beads.
      1. Q1. Are all beads wooden?
      2. Q2 - Are there more white or brown beads?
      3. Q3 - Are there more brown beads or wooden beads.
      4. Q1 and Q2 answered correctly. Q3 wrong. They didn't realise that the subcategory of brown and white beads belonged to the category of wooden beads.
        Strange questions led to confusion.
Concrete operational stage 7-11
1. Can do class inclusion.
2. Are not ego-centric
  1. Are able to decentre.
3. Can do conservation.
  1. Can use reversibility
Formal Operational Stage 11+
1. Now have the ability to imagine.
2. Problems are approached systematically and in an organised way.
  1. Asked to work out how many colour combinations would be produced when an amount of colours were was combined.
    1. Only in the formal operational stage, could they do it.
      1. Montorano - 10% of 17 yrs could do it. Piaget overestimated peoples abilities.
General evaluation.
1. His experiments were in labs with high control and cause and effect.
  1. Low ecological validity. Recording behaviour in a lab not real life.
  2. Small samples. Can't generalise.
    1. Studied his own children. Researcher bias.

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Piaget's theory of cognitive development

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