PSY 3105 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Stroop Effect, Critical Thinking, Pragmatism
8 Feb 2015
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Document Summary
Changes in cognitive development proceed in distinct stages (e. g. discontinuous) Each person"s cognitive abilities are organized into one coherent mental structure. His approach is known as the cognitive-developmental approach. The driving forces behind development from one stage to the next is maturation. Children seek out information and stimulation in the environment that matches the maturity of their thinking. This is in contrast with other theories such as behaviorism which views the environment as acting on the child through rewards and punishments. Cognitive development involves learning how to coordinate activities of the senses with motor activities. Capable of representing the world symbolically (e. g. language) Become more adept at using mental operations which leads to a more advanced understanding of the world. Allows adolescents to reason about more complex tasks and problems involving multiple variables. Assimilation: occurs when new information is altered to fit a existing scheme. Accommodation: entails changing the scheme to adapt to the new information.
