PIAGET I Mechanisms of Development a Schemes i An organization of social action that can be generalized by repetition to a variety of similar problems ii Example babies grasping bottles b Assimilation i Focusing on part of their problem that does match what you already know how to do ii Example baby focusing on what can be done with one hand the nipple of bottle iii Focusing on what works until it no longer works c Accommodation i Change in schemas ii Actually get cognitive growth because you have to iii Baby figures out two handed grasping II Sources of Change a Heredity i Necessary but not sufficient condition for infants ii Child has to be biologically prepared for change to occur b Physical Experience i For adults it would be cognitive experience ii Physical experience for infants directly manipulating the environment iii You know things differently when you ve done it iv Example homework direct experience c Social Transmission i What we take in is influenced by who we already are ii It s a stage theory iii Suggests that we make these changes very abruptly rather than incrementally d Equilibration III Sensorimotor Stage birth to around 2 yrs perception and motor behavior stages occur in invariant sequence a Reflexes i Grasping ii About 1 mo Work on practicing grabbing voluntarily b Primary Circular Reactions i About 4 mos ii Practicing for their own sake their own body iii Grasping c Secondary Circular Reactions i Objects outside their body ii Like a rattler d Object Permanence i About 8 mos ii Objects continue to exist independent of their actions iii The A not B task iv Piaget suggests that this is failure of object permanence e Tertiary Circular Reactions i 12 mos f Representational Thought i Marks end of infancy ii Most representations are visual beginning to do some representations with thoughts iii Imitating can begin to imitate long after original model is gone IV Research a Test Construction i Unreliable measures ii Interrater reliability iii First thing that had to be done was create reliable measures iv Test retest testing over and over again until they felt there were reliable measures this is difficult in infants because they change so much so quickly over time b Stage Sequence i Invariant sequence 1 Cross sectional should see that 12 mo Old should be able to do D and everything before it 3 mo Old should be doing secondary but nothing before 2 Longitudinal took a bunch of babies and followed same babies over time when done right they found support for invariant sequence c Object Permanence i Two kinds of hypotheses 1 Competence babies really don t know 2 Performance hypothesis things about Piaget s original tasks that are making demands on the babies that go well beyond the basic abilities a Ex A not B task seeing things appear and reappear i Could be forgetting you moved it ii Lousy memory iii If you have different colored cloths it helps babies remember where keys are ii Do children fail tasks when Piaget says they shouldn t yes if you use HIS tasks d Unity of Stages i If you re in one stage you should be in all the stages before it ii Within substages you see invariance language tasks imitation tasks etc iii If you were to mix together tasks across different domains it would not look invariant iv Works for sensorimotor period because most children are learning from direct experience with the world v The older the child the more advanced the stage the more important environment becomes