PSY 302 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Information Processing, 18 Months, Mental Representation
14 Jun 2018
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CHAPTER 4: THEORIES OF COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
JEAN PIAGET
- Most famous cognitive-developmental theorist
- 1896-1980
- Born in Neuchatel, Switzerland
- He taught in France alongside Albert Binet (famous for developing an intelligence test)
- Father of cognitive thought
THEORY:
- Children are inquisitive and seek to understand their world (mini scientist)
- They form theories and test them out
- Children create hypothesis and test them in the real world → That’s ho the iterat ith the real ord
(Piaget thought)
TWO QUALITIES OF THINKING:
- Organization – the tendency for our thinking processes to become more systematic and coherent
- Organize thoughts, put thinking into meaningful patterns and sequences
- As ou get older it’s gettig etter ad better
- You incorporate new knowledge into pre-existing information
- Adaptation – the ability and tendency to adjust to our environment
- Children are constantly interacting with the environment and learning from it
SCHEMES/SCHEMAS
- Templates on how to behave or think during a particular situation in response to particular stimuli
- It’s a lue prit that tells ou hat soethig is or aout ho to do soethig
- As you interact with the environment ou are uildig our shee’s ad orgaizig the
Assimilation
- When you are present with new info you assimilate it, and use previous knowledge to figure out how to
go about this situation
- Example: You have a cat and now you have a Dog. How will you act with the Dog?
- Steps below for noveal stimuli exposure
Accommodation
- Pre-existing schema is modified to deal with the novel stimuli or you create a new one from scratch
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
2
Equilibration/Equilibrium
- This one is more about the motivation of doing stuff → your system wants equilibrium and the stimuli
throws you off and you use assimilate or accommodation to achieve that
- You find a way to adapt to it
- Children are doing this more than adults eause the’re exposed to this stuff a lot more
STAGES
- It’s a stage theor → it’s a step futio → discontinuous
Stage 1: Sensorimotor
- Birth until 2 years
- Emerging cognitive structure: Sensory and motor actions including reflexes → Main focus is REFLEXES
- Example: Grasping, Sucking, Hand Eye coordination and Basic problem-solving skills
SUB STAGES IN STAGE 1
Circular motions ea’s repeating the same actions because its pleasurable.
- Reflex activity
- Simple reflexes → Innate refle’s (Focus of Cognitive Function)
- This shapes how you interact with the world
- You adapt to the environment and your reflexes adapted to it
- Kids who are breast feed and bottle feed develop different sucking techniques
- Primary circular reactions
- Specific to the infants own body
- Infants are repeating a pleasurable act to the body
- Example: Thumb sucking
- 1 – 4 months
- Secondary circular reactions
- The focus is still irular reatio ut o it’s the seod aspet →No it’s about the
environment around the infant rather than their bodies
- Example: Playing with a toy
- This technique is a huge marketing strategy
- 4 months – 8 months
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find more resources at oneclass.com
3
- Coordination of secondary schemes
- This the start of goal directed behaviour
- The infant is pulling together different schemes and actions and coordinating them towards a
goal
- The infant is also crawling at this point
- Object pre-eminence is starting to come in → The infant begins to realize that if something is
seen it does’t ea that it does’t existed
- Example: Taking a pen and hiding it (Children under 1 are fooled by this)
- After pre-eminence they will still find it if they want it
- 8 – 12 months
- Tertiary circular reactions
- Repeating pleasurable and joyful behaviour
- At this stage children start to vary their actions to see if there is a different outcome (mini
scientist kicks in)
- Pagient gave his son a spoon and he noticed how his son would throw it in different ways to see
the outcomes
- 12 – 18 months
- Mental representation
- Beginning of thoughts
- The ability to use mental representations
- Example: Ask a child about their favorite toy and they can visualize it in their head
- They can now understand causality (A causes B)
- They can pretend act now
- They can differ imitation → immediate (kids can repeat it later like 3 days later)
- Object pre-eminence must be in place to promote a child to stage 2
- 18 months – 2 years
Stage 2: Preoperational
- Emerging Cognitive Structure: Understand symbols/thoughts influenced mostly by physical
appearance
- Starting to use mental skills and use logic → Kids become obsessed about certain things ad the it’s
usually wrong (errors in problem solving but its common amongst everyone)
- 2 to 7 years
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
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