PSY 230 Chapter Notes - Chapter 6: Deductive Reasoning, Object Permanence, Lev Vygotsky
Document Summary
Children"s theories are based on their experiences: when accommodation becomes much more frequent than assimilation, it is a sign that children"s theories are inadequate, so children reorganize them. This reorganization produces four different stages of mental development from infancy through adulthood: all people go through all four phases, but not necessarily at the same rate, stages of cognitive development: Children begin to use and can reverse mental operations to solve perspective-taking and conservation problems: in the formal operational stage, which extends roughly from age 11 into adulthood, children and adolescents apply mental operations to abstract entities. They think hypothetically and reason deductively: the ability to draw appropriate conclusions from facts is known as deductive reasoning. Conclusions are based on logic, not experience: the sensorimotor stage spans birth to 2 years, a period during which the infant progresses from simple reflex actions to symbolic processing, understanding that objects exist independently is called object permanence.
