EDUC 220 Chapter 2
cognitive development and culture
- a limitation of piaget's theory - his theory overlooks the important effects of the child's cultural and social group - research across cultures has confirmed that he was accurate about the sequence of stages in children's thinking, but age ranges varied - children in western countries typically move to the next stage about 2-3 years earlier than their peers in non-western societies - cross-cultural differences depend on the subject or domain tested and whether the culture values and teaches knowledge in that domain - when a context or culture emphasizes a cognitive ability, children growing up in that culture tend to acquire that ability sooner - even concrete operations such as classification may not be so basic to people of other cultures - a child's culture shapes cognitive development by determining what and how the child will learn about the eworld - cultures that encourage cooperation and sharing teach these skills early, whereas cultures that encourage competition nurture competitive abilities in their children
the trouble with stages
- a limitation of piaget's theory - some question the existence of 4 separate stages of thinking even though they agree that children do go through the changes piaget described - lack of consistency in children's thinking - in his later work, piaget himself actually put less emphasis on stages of cognitive development and gave more attention to how thinking changes through equilibration - the processes may be more continuous than they seem; changes may seem like discontinuous, qualitative leaps when we look across longer time periods, but if we watched a developing child very closely and observed moment-to-moment changes, we might see gradual, continuous changes instead - change can be discontinuous and continuous; changes that appear suddenly are preceded by many slowly developing changes, and gradually developing changes can lead to large changes in abilities that seem abrupt
vygotsky and language/speech
- he believed thinking depends on speech can we think without speech? - we have the language and knowledge to understand concepts ex: when we look at a tree, the reason why it has meaning is because we have knowledge from communicating about it with others - language is a tool that unites a specific group of people in a shared practice - he believed speech was so vital that if children were not permitted to use it, they could not accomplish a given task
underestimating children's abilities
- a limitation of piaget's theory - the problems he gave young children may have been too difficult and the questions too confusing; his subjects may have understood more than they could show on these problems - we may be born with a greater store of cognitive tools than piaget suggested - some basic understandings or core knowledge may be part of our evolutionary equipment, ready for use in our cognitive development - domains: his theory does not explain how even young children can perform at an advanced level in certain areas where they have highly developed knowledge and expertise - piaget argued that the development of cognitive operations (such as conservation) cannot be accelerated; he believed children had to be developmentally ready to learn - however, quite a bit of research has shown that children can learn to perform cognitive operations (such as conservation) with effective instruction - knowledge and experience in a situation affect the kind of thinking that students can do
growth mindset
- based on the idea of brain plasticity - when children were given problems slightly too hard for them, those with a growth mindset had positive reactions, as they understood that their abilities could be developed - fixed-mindset students reacted negatively - it is a scheme, a mental structure that affects how we interact with challenging info - when students have an understanding of how their brains work, it affects their learning and development; teaching about neuroplasticity encourages this mindset - it has a positive effect on motivation, achievement and brain activity
when assimilation and accommodation are used
- both are required most of the time - even using an established pattern may require some accommodation - whenever new experiences are assimilated into an existing scheme, the scheme is enlarged and changed somewhat, so assimilation involves some accommodation - there are also times when neither are used; if people encounter something too unfamiliar, they may ignore it - experience is filtered to fit the kind of thinking a person is doing at a given time
vygotsky vs piaget re: social interaction
- both of them emphasized the importance of social interactions in cognitive development, but piaget believed it encouraged development by creating disequilibrium that motivated change - thus, piaget believed that the most helpful interactions were between peers because peers are on an equal basis and can challenge each other's thinking - vygotsky suggested that children's cognitive development is fostered by interactions with people who are more capable and advanced in their thinking, such as parents and teachers
the brain and learning to read
- brain imaging research is revealing interesting differences among skilled and less skilled readers as they learn new vocabulary - less skilled readers had trouble establishing high-quality representations of new vocab words in their brains, as indicated by event-related potential measurements of electrical activity of the brain; when they encountered the new word later, they often did not recognize that they had seen it before, even though they had learned it - poor readers underuse parts of the brains' left hemisphere and sometimes overuse their right hemispheres - after 100+ hours of intensive instruction, reading ability improved; the brains of poor readers started to function more like those of good readers and continued this functioning a year later - poor readers who received standard school remediation did not show the same changes - every brain has to be taught to read - reading is a complex integration of the systems in the brain that recognize sounds, written symbols, meanings, and sequences, and then connect with what the reader already knows; this has to happen quickly and automatically - brain monitoring systems used for reading research offer suggestive rather than completely empirical links between how the brain learns and changes - brain research can help us understand why strategies for teaching reading work - use multiple approaches that teach sounds, spelling, meanings, sequencing, and vocab through reading, writing, discussing, explaining, drawing and modelling
technical tools
- calculators, spell-checkers, etc. - the use of them has been somewhat controversial in education - research on calculators over the past decade has found that rather than eroding basic skills, calculator use has positive effects on students' problem-solving skills and attitudes toward math on simple math problems - self-generating answers before resorting to calculators, however, supports math fact learning and fluency in arithmetic
adolescent development and the brain
- changes in the brain increase individuals' abilities to control their behaviour in both low and high-stress situations, to be more purposeful and organized, and to inhibit impulsive behaviour - these abilities are not fully developed until the early 20s though - adolescents often have trouble avoiding risks and controlling impulses - their brains have been described as having "high horsepower, poor steering" because of differences in the pace of development for two key components of the brain: the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex - there are also individual differences in engaging in risky behaviours - teachers can help them devote their energy and passion to certain areas and family, school and community connections and positive belief systems can help adolescents "put the brakes" on reckless and dangerous behaviours
cultural toolkit
- developed and used by children to make sense of and learn about their world - filled with physical tools directed toward the external world and with psychological tools for acting mentally - children do not just receive the tools transmitted to them by others; they transform the tools as they construct their own representations, symbols, patterns and understandings - these understandings are gradually changed as the children continue to engage in social activities - language = most important symbol system in the toolkit according to vygotsky as it helps fill the kit with other tools
the limbic system in adolescent brains
- develops earlier - involved with emotions and reward-seeking/novelty/risk-taking/sensation-seeking behaviours - as it develops, they become more responsive to pleasure seeking and emotional stimulation; they appear to need more intense emotional stimulation than either children or adults, so they are set up for taking risks and seeing thrills - this can be positive for adolescent development as they courageously try new ideas and behaviours, and learning is stimulated, but in emotional situations, thrill seeking tends to win out over caution until the prefrontal lobe catches up in development
emotions, learning and the brain
- if students feel unsafe and anxious, they are not likely able to focus attention on academics - but if students are not challenged or interested, learning suffers too - keeping the level of challenge and support just right is a challenge for teachers - helping students learn to regulate their own emotions and motivation is an important goal for education - negative experiences can form an association between subjects/activities and negative emotions
the different areas of the cerebral cortex
- mature at different rates - the region that controls physical and motor movement matures first, then the areas that control complex senses such as vision and hearing, and lastly the frontal lobe that controls higher-order thinking processes - the temporal lobes play major roles in emotions, judgment and language and do not develop until the high school years or maybe later - have distinct functions that are quite specific and elementary; to accomplish more complex functions they must communicate and work together - certain areas affect particular behaviours
psychological tools
- number systems, language, etc. - help mediate all higher-order mental processes, such as reasoning and problem-solving - they allow children to transform their thinking by enabling them to gain greater and greater mastery of their own cognitive processes, thus advancing their own development - vygotsky believed the essence of cognitive development is mastering the use of them to accomplish advanced thinking and problem solving that cannot be accomplished without them - as children engage in activities with adults or more capable peers, they exchange ideas and ways of thinking about or representing concepts, and children internalize these co-created ideas - thus, children's knowledge, ideas, attitudes, and values develop through appropriating the ways of acting and thinking provided by their culture and by the more capable members of their group
concrete experiences and knowledge construction
- piaget's fundamental insight was that individuals construct their own understanding; learning is a constructive process - at every level of cognitive development, teachers will want to see that students are actively engaged in the learning process - to know an object, an event, is not simply to look at it and make a mental copy or image of it; to know an object is to act on it, modify, transform it, and understand the process of this transformation to understand the way it is constructed - students learn better when they have learned using manipulatives, but active experience should also include mental manipulation of ideas that arise out of class projects or experiments - all students need to interact with teachers and peers in order to test their thinking, be challenged, receive feedback, and watch how others work out problems - disequilibrium is often set in motion quite naturally when the teacher or another student suggests a new way of thinking about something - students should act, manipulate, observe, and then talk and/or write about what they have experienced - concrete experiences provide the raw materials for thinking
the prefrontal cortex in adolescent brains
- takes more time develop - involved with judgment and decision-making - when it catches up and becomes more integrated with the limbic system in late adolescence, risks can be evaluated in terms of long-term consequences, not immediate thrills
instruction and brain development
- teaching can change the organization and structure of the brain - several studies have shown differences in brain activity associated with instruction - one study compared students; brain activity as they learned new arithmetic operations, either by just memorizing answers or by learning an algorithm strategy - using functional magnetic resonance imaging, the researchers found that students who simply memorized answers showed greater activity in the area of the brain that specializes in retrieving verbal info, whereas students who used a strategy showed greater activity in the visual-spatial processing portion of the brain
the value of play in development
- the brain develops with stimulation, and play provides some of that stimulation at every age - babies in the sensorimotor stage, for example, learn by acting on their environments - preoperational preschoolers love pretend play, and through pretending they form symbols, use language, and interact with others -- they are beginning to play simple games with predictable rules - during the elementary school years, children like fantasy, and they are beginning to play more complex games and sports and thus learn cooperation, fairness, negotiation, winning and losing, as well as developing language - play continues to be a part of physical and social development even in adolescents - through play, children can develop language and literacy, math and science skills, and social competence
consequences of formal operational thinking on adolescents
- they often become interested in science fiction because they can think about worlds that do not exist - because they can reason from general principles to specific actions, they are often critical of people whose actions seem to contradict their principles - they can deduce the set of "best" possibilities and imagine ideal worlds, so many students develop interests in utopias, political causes, and social issues - they can also imagine many possible futures for themselves and may try to decide which is best - feelings about any of these ideals may be strong
sociocultural theory and the social sources of individual thinking
- vygotsky assumed that every function in a child's cultural development appears twice: first in the social level (between people, interpsyhological), and later on the individual level (inside the child, intrapsychological) - all the higher functions originate as actual relations between human individuals - children first use language in activities with others to regulate the behaviour of others - later, they can regulate their own behaviour using private speech - so, higher functions appear first between a child and a "teacher" before they exist within the individual child
the role of adults and peers in learning and development
- vygotsky believed that the child is not alone in the world "discovering" the cognitive operations of conservation or classification; this discovery is assisted or mediated by family members, teachers, peers, and even software - most of this guidance is communicated through language, at least in western cultures - in some cultures, observing a skilled performance guides the child's learning ex: scaffolding
sleep and changes in the adolescent brain
- we all have an internal clock that influences sleep cycles among other things - during puberty, this clock appears to be reset, delaying the time at which teens feel tired and making it difficult for them to get to sleep early - they need about 9 hours of sleep per night, but a study has indicated that most adolescents get less than that - sleep deprivation can have serious consequences (difficulty concentrating, mood swings behaviour problems, etc.)
limitations of sociocultural theory
- we may be born with a greater store of cognitive tools than either piaget or vygotsky suggested; some basic understandings may be part of our biological predispositions, ready for use to guide our cognitive development - young children appear to figure out much about the world before they have the chance to learn from either their culture or teachers - consists mostly of general ideas -- vygotsky died before he could expand and elaborate on his ideas, pursue his research, and detail the applications of his theories for teaching - most applications of his theory described today have been created by his successors -- we do not even know if he would agree with them - some of his concepts have been misrepresented at times as a result
how private speech becomes internalized
- what adults say and the language they use is very important, as it will be internalized and become a part of children's mental structures - first the child's behaviour is regulated by others using language gestures - next the child learns to regulate the behaviour of others using the same language tools - the child then uses private speech to regulate their own behaviour, it changes from spoken to whisper speech and silent lip movements - finally children learn to regulate their own behaviour using silent inner speech - an accomplishment on the road to higher order of thinking it keeps them focused through their own words - it's goal directed and helps them solve practical tasks along with their eyes and hands
sensorimotor stage
0-2 years; involving the senses and motor activity - learns through reflexes and senses (hearing, seeing, moving, touching, tasting) - begins to imitate others and remember events - shifts to symbolic thinking - develops object permanence, goal-directed actions, learning to reverse actions -
4 factors piaget identified that interact to influence cognitive development
1. biological maturation 2. activity 3. social experiences 4. equilibration
3 ways higher mental functions can be developed through cultural tools and passed between individuals
1. imitative learning 2. instructed learning 3. collaborative learning - vygotsky
3 continuing discussions in theories of development
1. nature vs nurture 2. continuity vs discontinuity 3. critical periods and earlier vs later experiences
2 basic instincts/invariant functions found by piaget
1. organization 2. adaptation
3 general principles of development
1. people develop at different rates 2. development is relatively orderly (people have certain abilities before others - "orderly" does not mean predictable or linear, as people may advance, stay the same for a period of time, or even go backward) 3. development takes place gradually
limitations of piaget's theory
1. the trouble with stages 2. underestimating children's abilities 3. cognitive development and culture
cerebral cortex
3.18mm thick outer covering of the brain - the largest area of the brain - a thin sheet of neurons - almost 3 square feet in area for adults; to get all that area, it is crumpled together with many folds and wrinkles - accounts for about 85% of the brain's weight in adulthood and contains the greatest number of neurons - allows the greatest human accomplishments such as complex problem solving and language - last part of the brain to develop, so it is believed to be more susceptible to environmental influences than other areas - parts of it mature at different rates
assimilation - piaget
fitting new information into existing schemes - trying to understand something new by fitting it into what we already know - at times, we may have to distort the new info to make it fit
operations
actions that a person carries out by thinking them through instead of literally performing them
adaptation - piaget
adjustment to the environment - people inherit a tendency to do so - two basic processes involved: assimilation and accommodation
formal operational stage
adolescence to adulthood - can think hypothetically and deductively - thinking becomes more scientific - solves abstract problems in a logical fashion - can consider multiple perspectives, and develops concerns about social issues, personal identity, and justice - some students remain at the concrete operational stage throughout their school years, even throughout life, however, new experiences (that usually take place in school) eventually present most students with problems they cannot solve using concrete operations - the focus of thinking can shift from what is to what might be; situations do not have to be experienced to be imagined - they can consider contrary-to-fact questions - formal-operational thinking is necessary for success in many advanced high school, college, and/or uni courses
accommodation - piaget
altering existing schemes or creating new ones in response to new information - we adjust our thinking to fit the new info, instead of adjusting the info to fit our thinking
critical periods and earlier vs later experiences debate in theories of development
are there critical periods when certain abilities, such as language, need to develop? if those opportunities are missed, can the child still "catch up"? - many earlier psychologists believed that early childhood experiences were critical, especially for emotional/social and cognitive development - more recent research shows that later experiences are powerful, too, and can change the direction of development -- early experiences, especially those that have an adverse impacts, can have long-term consequences for development - most psychologists today talk about sensitive periods, not critical periods
social experiences/transmission - piaget
as we develop, we interact with the people around us and learn from them - without this, we would need to reinvent all the knowledge already offered by our culture - the amount people can learn from this varies according to their stage of cognitive development
adolescent egocentrism
assumption that everyone else is interested in one's thoughts, feelings, and concerns - they do not deny that other people may have different perceptions and beliefs; they just become very focused on their own ideas - they spend much time examining their own beliefs and attitudes - leads to a sense of an "imaginary audience" -- the feeling that everyone is watching and analyzing them - social blunders or imperfections can be devastating to an adolescent as a result - it is linked to adolescent depression - seems to peak by age 14-15
development
certain changes that occur in human beings or animals between conception and death - not applied to all changes but rather to those that are adaptive, appear in orderly ways and remain for a reasonably long period of time - human development can be divided into a number of different aspects: personal, physical, social and cognitive
personal development
changes in an individual's personality that take place as they grow - maturation and interaction with the environment are important to it
physical development
changes in body structure that take place as one grows
social development
changes over time in the ways in which an individual relates to others - often brought about through learning as individuals interact with their environment
private speech
children's self-talk, which guides their thinking and action; eventually internalized as silent inner speech - increases when you increase the difficulty of a task - moves children towards self regulation, ability to plan, guide and monitor one's thinking and problem solving - internal verbal thinking is not stable until about age 12 - it should be encouraged in school - it peaks around age 9
reversibility
concrete operational stage; a characteristic of piagetian logical operations- the ability to think through a series of steps, then mentally reverse the steps and return to the starting point; also called reversible thinking - the student can mentally cancel out the change that has been made
seriation
concrete operational stage; arrangement of objects in sequential order according to one aspect, such as size, weight or volume -- large to small or vice versa - this understanding of sequential relationships permits a student to construct a logical series in which A < B < C and so on - the concrete-operational child can grasp the notion that B can be larger than A but smaller than C
classification
concrete operational stage; grouping objects into categories - depends on a students' abilities to focus on a single characteristic of objects in a set and group the objects according to that characteristic - more advanced classification at this stage involves recognizing that one class fits into another - related to reversibility, as the ability to reverse a process mentally now allows the concrete-operational student to see that there is more than one way to classify a group of objects
identity
concrete operational stage; the principle that a person or object remains the same over time - the student knows that if nothing is added or taken away, the material remains the same
compensation
concrete operational stage; the principle that changes in one dimension can be offset by changes in another - the student knows that an apparent change in one direction can be compensated for by a change in another
co-constructed
constructed through a social process in which people interact and negotiate (usually verbally) to create an understanding or to solve a problem; the final product is shaped by all participants - higher mental processes are first co-constructed during shared activities between the child and another person, then the processes are internalized by the child and become part of that child's cognitive development - happens in the same space between people, and the child may internalize strategies to use next time - at some point, the child will be able to function independently to solve similar problems
centring
focusing attention on one aspect; having difficulty considering more than one aspect of the situation at a time - children at the preoperational stage have trouble freeing themselves from their own perceptions of how the world appears - very young children centre on their own perceptions and on the way the situation appears to them
decentring
focusing on more than one aspect at a time
collective monologue
form of speech in which children in a group talk but do not really interact or communicate - children talk about what matters to them without taking into account the needs or interests of their listeners
hypothetico-deductive reasoning
formal operational stage; a formal-operations problem-solving strategy in which an individual begins by identifying all the factors that might affect a problem and then deduces and systematically evaluates specific solutions - the formal thinker can consider a hypothetical situation and reason deductively
maturation
genetically programmed, naturally and spontaneously occurring changes over time - many changes that occur during development are simply matters of it and growth - relatively unaffected by environment - much of a person's physical development falls under this category
concrete operational stage
grade 1 to early adolescence, about 11 years old - can think logically about concrete problems - "hands on" thinking - recognizes the logical stability of the physical world; realizes that elements can be changes or transformed and still conserve many of their original characteristics - understands conservation, can classify and arrange items in series - masters identity - can reverse thinking to mentally undo actions - understands past, present and future - a student's ability to solve a conservation problem depends on an understanding of 3 basic aspects of reasoning: identity, compensation, and reversibility - the student has developed a complete and very logical system of thinking, but this system of thinking is still tied to physical reality, as the logic is based on concrete situations that can be organized, classified or manipulated - not yet able to reason about hypothetical, abstract problems that involve the coordination of many factors at once
cognitive development
gradual, orderly changes by which mental processes become more complex and sophisticated; changes in thinking, reasoning and decision making - maturation and interaction with the environment are important to it
disequilibrium
in piaget's theory, the "out of balance" state that occurs when a person realizes that ther current ways of thinking are not working to solve a problem or understand a situation - it exists if we apply a particular scheme to an event or situation and the scheme does not work, and this causes discomfort - this motivates us to keep searching for a solution through assimilation and accommodation
continuity vs discontinuity debate in theories of development
is human development a continuous process of adding to and increasing abilities, or are there leaps or moves to new stages when abilities actually change? - a discontinuous (qualitative) change would be like many of the changes that occur in humans during puberty, such as the ability to reproduce - an entirely different ability; like walking up stairs, there are level periods then you move up to the next step all at once - continuous (quantitative) change is like walking up a ramp to go higher - progress is steady
coactions
joint actions of individual biology and the environment- each shapes and influences the other
knowledge construction
knowledge = actively constructing understandings and actions, based in our activities - when animals and people do things in their worlds, they literally shape the anatomy and physiology of their brains and bodies - when we actively control our experience, that experience sculpts the way that our brains work, changing neurons, synapses, and brain activity
instructed learning
learners internalize the instructions of the teacher and use these instructions to self-regulate - through direct teaching or by structuring experiences that encourage another's learning
assisted learning
learning by having strategic help provided in the initial stages; the help gradually diminishes as students gain independence - vygotsky suggests that teachers need to do more than just arrange the environment so that students can discover on their own; more dynamic exchanges between students and teachers must occur that allow teachers to support students in the parts of the task they cannot do alone - children should be guided and assisted in their learning - aka guided participation - requires first learning from the student what is needed, then giving info, prompts, reminders, and encouragement at the right time and in the right amounts, and gradually allowing students to do more and more on their own - adapting materials or problems to students' current levels, demonstrating skills or thought processes, walking students through the steps of a complicated problem, doing part of the problem, giving detailed feedback and allowing revisions, asking questions that refocus students' attention, etc.
left hemisphere of the brain cortex
major factor in language processing
schemes
mental systems or categories of perception and experience - psychological structures that form the basic building blocks of thinking - organized systems of actions or thought that allow us to mentally represent or "think about" the objects and events in our world - may be very small and specific, or they may be more geeneral - as a person's thinking processes become more organized and new schemes develop, behaviour also becomes more sophisticated and better suited to the environment
formal operations
mental tasks involving abstract thinking and coordination of a number of variables - a mental system for controlling sets of variables and working through a set of possibilities is needed - include inductive reasoning, which is using specific observations to identify general principles - using them involves a new way of reasoning that involves "thinking about thinking" or "mental operations on mental operations" - a child using them can perform "second-order" operations on category operations to infer relationships between characteristics - the organized, scientific thinking of it requires that students systematically generate different possibilities for a given situation
concrete operations
mental tasks tied to concrete objects and situations
right hemisphere of the brain cortex
much of our spatial-visual information and our emotions (nonverbal information)
imitative learning
one person tries to imitate the other
organization - piaget
ongoing process of arranging information and experience into mental systems or categories - the combining, arranging, recombining, and rearranging of behaviour and thoughts into coherent systems - people are born with a tendency to organize their thinking and knowledge into psychological structures or schemes - these structures are our systems for understanding and interacting with the world - simple structures are continually combined and coordinated to become more sophisticated and thus more effective
zone of proximal development
phase at which a child can master a task if given appropriate help and support - at any given point in development, there are certain problem a child is on the verge of being able to solve, they need structure, clues, reminders, encouragement etc. - area between the child's current development level and the level of development they could achieve through adult guidance or in collaboration with peers - the area where instruction can succeed--"the magic middle" between what the student knows and what they are not ready to learn - Vygotsky believed that learning is an active process that does not wait for readiness, learning is a tool in development because it pulls development up to higher levels
egocentric
preoperational stage; assuming that others experience the world the way you do - preoperational children tend to see the world and the experiences of others from their own viewpoints - they assume everyone else shares their feelings, reactions, and perspectives - research has shown that young children are not totally egocentric in every situation; even at age 2, children will describe more details about a situation to a parent who was not present than they will provide to a parent who experienced the situation with them, so they do seem quite able to take the needs and different perspectives of others into account in certain situations
semiotic function
preoperational stage; the ability to use symbols - language, pictures, signs, or gestures - to represent actions or objects mentally - the first type of thinking that is separate from action involves making action schemes symbolic - the child's earliest use of symbols occurs during pretending - children who are not yet able to talk will often use action symbols, such as pretending to drink from an empty cup, showing that they know what each object is for - this behaviour also shows that their schemes are become more general and less tied to specific actions
reversible thinking
preoperational stage; thinking backward, from the end to the beginning - involved in many tasks that are difficult for the preoperational child, such as the conservation of matter - very difficult for the child to think backward in this stage; the developing ability to think about objects in symbolic form remains somewhat limited to thinking in one direction only, using one-way logic
conservation
principle that some characteristics of an object remain the same despite changes in appearance; the amount or number of something remains the same even if the arrangement or appearance is changed, as long as nothing is added and nothing is taken away
equilibration
search for mental balance between cognitive schemes and information from the environment - organizing, assimilating and accommodating can be seen as a kind of complex balancing act - the actual changes in thinking take place through this process - people continually test the adequacy of their thinking process in order to achieve this balance - it exists if we apply a particular scheme to an event or situation and the scheme works - the level must be just right or optimal
goal-directed actions
sensorimotor stage; deliberate actions toward a goal - separate lower-level schemes have been organized into a higher-level scheme to achieve a goal
object permanence
sensorimotor stage; the understanding that objects have a separate, permanent existence and that they exist in the environment whether they perceive them or not - the beginning of the important ability to construct a mental representation - research suggests infants as young as 3-4 months may know an object still exists, but they do not have either the memory skills to "hold on" to the location of the object or the motor skills to coordinate a search
piaget's 4 stages of cognitive development
sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, formal operational - piaget believed that all people pass through them in exactly the same order - generally associated with specific ages, but these are only general guidelines, not labels for all children of a certain age - individuals may go through long periods of transition between stages and a person may show characteristics of one stage in one situation, but characteristics of a higher or lower stage in other situations
scaffolding
support for learning and problem solving; might include clues, reminders, encouragement, breaking the problem down into steps, providing an example, or anything else that allows the student to grow in independence as a learner - often done through questioning, guiding students towards the goal - children use the help for support while they build a firm understanding that will eventually allow them to solve the problems on their own
true
true or false: there are many popular neuromyths about the brain, such as "you only use 10% of your brain" and "brain damage is permanent"
jean piaget and cognitive development
swiss psychologist who studied the thinking behind children's answers - COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT - believed cognitive development is much more than the addition of new facts and ideas to an existing store of info - according to him, our thinking processes change radically, though slowly, from birth to maturity because we constantly strive to make sense of the world - he devised a model describing how humans go about making sense of their world by gathering and organizing info - believed certain ways of thinking that are quite simple for an adult are not so simple for a child - went beyond the nature/nurture debate by stating that knowledge is created as we try new things and make mistakes; we are continually structuring and restructuring our knowledge -- it is not something that can be found, copied, observed or imitated
plasticity
the brain's tendency to remain somewhat adaptable or flexible; its capacity for constant change in neurons, synapses and activity - the brains of young children show more of it because they are not as specialized or lateralized as the brains of older children and adults - in children, when a part of the brain is damaged, different areas of the brain take over the functions of the damaged area - cultural differences in brain activity provide examples of how interactions in the world shape the brain through plasticity - thanks to it, the brain is ever changing, shaped by activity, culture, and context - we build knowledge as we do things, manipulating objects and ideas mentally and physically - has led to debate between educational advocates of brain-based education and skeptical neuroscience researchers who caution that studies of the brain do not really address major educational questions; suggestions may oversimplify
self-regulation
the capacity to have self-control, focus, and pay attention on purpose - half of learning is motivation/desire to learn - it has a huge effect on achievement, learning, and later life outcomes - involves persistence: a desire to keep trying and put in effort
cultural tools
the real material tools (computers, scales, etc.) and psychological tools such as symbol systems (numbers, language, graphs) that allow people in a society to communicate, think, solve problems, and create knowledge - play important roles in cognitive development ex: the number system is a cultural tool that supports thinking, learning, and cognitive development and is passed from adult to child and from child to child through formal and informal interactions and teachings - guide our interactions with the world, play a role in ideas you hold, and come from cultures = we all think about things a little differently based on where we are and who we grew up around
lateralization
the specialization of the two hemispheres (sides) of the brain cortex - an aspect of brain functioning that has implications for cognitive development - each half of the brain controls the opposite side of the body - for most left-handers and females on average, there is less specialization altogether - differences are more relative than absolute; one is just more efficient than the other in performing certain functions ex: they process language differently, but simultaneously - nearly every task, particularly complex skills and abilities, require simultaneous participation of many different areas of the brain in constant communication with each other
maturation - piaget
the unfolding of biological changes that are genetically programmed - parents and teachers have little impact on it, except to ensure that children get the nourishment and care they need to be healthy
sociocultural theory
theory that emphasizes the role in development of cooperative dialogues between children and more knowledgeable members of society; children learn the culture of their community (ways of thinking and behaving) through these interactions - lev vygotsky - have provided alternatives to many of piaget's theories - vygotsky believed that human activities take place in cultural settings and cannot be understood apart from them - one of his key ideas was that our specific mental structures and processes can be traced to our interactions with others; they are more than simple influences on cognitive development, they actually create our cognitive structures and thinking processes
a disadvantage of stage theories
they normalize a pace and rate of development, and a trajectory of tasks and abilities, making it easy to label children as normal or abnormal
sensitive periods
times when a person is especially ready for or responsive to certain experiences - new pathways can be created to learning; students can "catch up"
true
true or false: brain activity is a perfect example of nature and nurture working together
true
true or false: the brain is a muscle
the most significant moment in the course of intellectual development according to vygotsky
when speech and practical activity converge - previously, they were completely independent lines of development - to him, this was the origin of complex thinking
preoperational stage
when the child starts talking to about 7 years old - develops language and begins to use symbols to represent objects - thinks in present - can think through operations logically in one direction - has difficulties understanding the POV of others - not yet mastered mental operations but is moving toward mastery - at the end of the sensorimotor stage, the child can use many action schemes, however, as long as these schemes remain tied to physical actions, they are of no use in recalling the past, keeping track of info, or planning -- for this, they need OPERATIONS - semiotic function, conservation, emerging reversible thinking, centring/decentring, egocentric - rapid development of language occurs; between 2 and 4, most children enlarge their vocab from about 200 to 2000 words
collaborative learning
where a group of peers strives to understand each other and learning occurs in the process
nature vs nurture debate in theories of development
which is more important in development: the "nature" of an individual (heredity, genes, etc.), or the "nurture" of environmental contexts? - scientific explanations have swung back and forth between them - today, the environment is seen as critical, but so are biological factors and individual differences - some psychologists assert that behaviours are determined 100% by biology and 100% by environment - they cannot be separated (coaction) - either/or debates about nature and nurture are of less interest to educational and developmental psychologists now; the more exciting questions involve understanding how both processes work together
activity - piaget
with physical maturation comes the increasing ability to act on the environment and learn from it - as we act on the environment, we explore, test, observe, and eventually organize info, which means we are likely to alter our thinking processes at the same time
