EXAM 2 STUDY GUIDE 1 Piaget constructionist adaption assimilation accommodation before Piaget kids were seen as passive Baby assimilates incoming information to the limited array of schemes she is born with looking listening sucking grasping and accommodates those schemes based on her experiences He argued that cognitive development occurs in stages fixed sequences stages represent a fixed sequence steps in an infant s understanding of the world child becomes more proficient and efficient stages are qualitatively different 1st Stage Sensorimotor Stage 1st two years of life Piaget s first stage of development in which infants use information from their senses and motor actions to learn about the world period during which infants develop and refine sensorimotor intelligence responding to whatever stimuli are available Substage 1 birth 1 month early beginning of concepts and reflexes understand world through reflexes behavioral schemes grasping sucking Substage 2 1 4 months senses more coordinated primary circular reactions baby now looks toward a sound and sucks on anything he can reach and bring to his mouth but the baby does not yet link his body actions to results outside of his body Primary circular reactions phrase to describe baby s simple repetitive actions organized around the baby s own body the many simple repetitive actions seen at this time each organized around the infant s own body EXAMPLE baby may accidentally suck his thumb one day find it pleasurable and repeat the action Infants ability to coordinate senses hear something and turn to look at it able to take thumb and put thumb in mouth coordinate touching and tasting infants engaged in repetitive actions that involve own body Substage 3 4 8 months infant moves from own body to repetitive actions from outside world infant may take a rattle for some effect secondary circular reactions Secondary circular reactions repetitive actions oriented around external objects and people baby repeats some action in order to trigger a reaction outside her own body EXAMPLE baby coos and Mom smiles so the baby coos again to get Mom to smile again Substage 4 8 12 months baby begins to understand casual connections infants will begin to take objects and use objects to get something that it wants infant will take an object and use it to produce some effect coordination of secondary schemes Means and behavior purposeful behavior carried out in the pursuit of a specific goal ability to keep a goal in mind and devise a plan to achieve it EXAMPLE baby moves one toy out of the way to get to another the end is the toy they want the mans to the end is moving the other toy A not B error infant s tendency to look for an object in the place where it was last seen Position A rather than in the place to which they have seen it moved to Position B Substage 5 12 18 months exploring the environment infant now engaged in exploration infant will try out different activities to see what happens baby takes ball and throws it from different levels or may kick it then do all of this with another object baby s behavior has a purposeful experimental quality tertiary circular reactions Tertiary circular reactions the deliberate experimentation w variations of previous actions baby doesn t merely repeat the original behavior but tries out variations EXAMPLE baby may try out different sounds or facial expressions to see if they will trigger Mom s smile Substage 6 18 24 months mental image representation solves problems in head kids have the capacity to form mental images and can clearly solve problems important developments at this age include deferred imitation manipulate mental symbols such as EXAM 2 STUDY GUIDE 2 words or images generates solutions to problems without thinking about them like in stage 5 if infant wants a cookie they will try to get past any obstacle in their way counter fridge Object permanence the understanding that objects continue to exist when they cannot be seen infant s full understanding of the behavior objects and their connections to the places in which they appear and can possible appear doesn t emerge until near the end of the second year of life SPECIFIC EXAMPLES PAGE 123 4 Deferred Imitation a child s imitation of some action at a later time sticking tongue out Challenges to Piaget s Work PAGE 125 6 Piaget appeared to underestimated the cognitive capacity of infants Infants who are not able to explore still develop normal cognitive functions object permanence and deferred imitation occur much earlier than he thought Activity kids need to engage in their environment kids with disability can t interact with environment Theliminide babies theliminide takes away morning sickness in mothers for the first three months found to have serious impact on infant babies born without limbs These babies can t interact act with the environment but they have cognitive skills Object permanence he said 18 month or 2 year but there is evidence that kids who are 5 months old have this skill Researchers use computer technology to keep track of how infants eyes respond when researchers move objects from one place to another Researcher moves ball from one side to another moving it behind an object in the middle but the baby still expects to see that ball come out the other side Deferred Imitation he argued we don t have this skill till 18 months but research shows that babies can learn this skill at 9 months Infants imitate some facial gestures in the first weeks of life sticking out tongue Perspectives on Language Development PEOPLE Behaviorist learning B F Skinner based this theory on assumptions rather than observations not accurate Operant conditioning children utter sounds these sounds are either reinforced or not if they sound like the unit of sound of that language EXAMPLE Parents respond to infants babbling and correct grammar with praise and reinforcement When they correctly label a word kid are reinforced for being grammatical Argued that if you have someone outside the critical period to help you then you just have a delayed learning capacity Communication Pressure Hypothesis kids feel pressure to communicate more and more clearly More clearly they speak more they sound like English more likely they are reinforced and vice versa Nativist Biological Chomsky argued that children acquire grammar rules before they master the exceptions to them language is biologically based biologically programmed to learn language we have a set of specially