PIAGET I. Mechanisms of Development a. Schemesi. An organization of social action that can be generalized by repetition to a variety of similar problems ii. Example: babies grasping bottlesb. Assimilationi. Focusing on part of their problem that does match what you already know how to doii. 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. Accommodationi. Change in schemasii. Actually get cognitive growth; because you have toiii. Baby figures out two handed grasping II. Sources of Changea. Heredityi. Necessary but not sufficient condition for infants ii. Child has to be biologically prepared for change to occur b. Physical Experiencei. 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 Transmissioni. What we take in, is influenced by who we already are ii. It’s a stage theoryiii. Suggests that we make these changes very abruptly rather thanincrementally d. Equilibration III. Sensorimotor Stage – birth to around 2 yrs (perception and motor behavior); stages occur in invariant sequence a. Reflexesi. Grasping ii. About 1 mo. Work on practicing grabbing voluntarily b. Primary Circular Reactionsi. About 4 mos. ii. Practicing for their own sake; their own bodyiii. Grasping; c. Secondary Circular Reactionsi. Objects outside their bodyii. Like a rattler d. Object Permanencei. 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 Reactionsi. 12 mos. f. Representational Thoughti. Marks end of infancyii. Most representations are visual, beginning to do some representations with thoughts iii. Imitating – can begin to imitate long after original model is gone IV. Researcha. Test Constructioni. Unreliable measuresii. 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 Sequencei. Invariant sequence1. 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 sequencec. Object Permanence i. Two kinds of hypotheses1. 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 itii. Lousy memoryiii. 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 tasksd. 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, imitationtasks, 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