Psychology 2040A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Decision-Making, Developmental Psychology, Cooperative Learning

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2040A/B
• Professor: Alexander Meyer

Document Summary

Cognition: inner processes and products of the mind that lead to (cid:498)knowing(cid:499). )ncludes all mental activity such as: attending/remembering, symbolizing, categorizing, planning, reasoning, problem solving, creating, fantasizing. He follows a constructivist approach where there are 4 universal stages of cognitive development: sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operational, formal operational. Constructivist approach: the view of children as discovering or constructing virtually all knowledge about their world through their own activity. Mental representations: internal depictions of information that the mind can manipulate ex) pictures or concepts, thoughts that the mind has. Adaptation: building schemes through direct interaction with the environment. Assimilation: using current schemes to interpret the external world ex) drop something and it bounces. Accommodation: adjusting old schemes, creating new ones to better fit the environment ex) drop a glass jar and instead of bouncing it shatters tried something different and it must be changed. Picture: child calls her 4 legged pet doggy (assimilation, this is normal), she then sees a 4-legged cow.