PSYC 3509 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Epistemology, Relativism, Pragmatism

• School: Carleton University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 3509
• Professor: Anne Bowker

Document Summary

Cognitive foundations (chapter 3) psyc 3509 lecture 5. Looking for universal patterns of intellectual growth and knowledge. Interested in the thinking of how people made errors. Cognitive equilibrium: generally understanding the world around you, consistently being challenged. Key part of his theory: people act upon their environment. Goal of organization adaptation to the environment. Accommodation: have to accommodate your existing structure. 1 sensory-motor (0-2 years: coordinating sensory input with motor capabilities, fairly helpless in their environment. 2 pre operations (2-6 or 7 years: emergence of symbolic thought, language, pretend play, classification and conservation. Concrete operations (7-12: conservation, classification children can articulate why, relational logic, transitivity. Formal operations (adolescence)(the last stage)(starts around 12 years: abstract thinking, thinking about possibilities, if-then thinking, relativism, meta-cognition more time thinking about themselves then things around them. Level of thinking varies, depending on context. Concrete operational thinking is sufficient for most daily tasks. Pragmatism: adopting logical thinking to the practical elements of real-life situations.