DEP 3203 1 What are the three historical philosophical views of childhood Tabula Rasa was proposed by John Locke and believed that children start out like a blank tablet Childhood experiences are important in determining adult characteristics He advised parents to spend time with their children and to help them become contributing members of society Original Sin was advocated during the Middle Ages and believed children were perceived as being born into the world as evil beings The goal of child rearing was to provide salvation to remove sin from the child s life Innate Goodness was presented by Jean Jaques Rousseau who stressed that children are inherently good Because children are basically good they should be permitted to grow naturally with little parental monitoring or constraint Nature Vs Nurture Nature is an individual s biological inheritance stages of growth like a butterfly Nurture is environmental experiences are more important continuous growth like a tree What is the discontinuity or stage concept What is the continuity concept The stage concept assumes that change is fairly sudden rather than gradual and ongoing like those who support the importance of nature The continuity concept believes that growth is more gradual and continuous like those who support the importance nurture Phenotypes vs Genotypes Genotypes are the actual genetic make up a person has their genetic heritage Phenotypes are the way that the genotypes are physically expressed through observable or measurable characteristics Zone of Proximal development Vygotsky s term for the range of tasks that are too difficult for the child to master alone but they can be learned with guidance and assistance from someone more skilled 2 Scaffolding means changing the level of support a more skilled person teacher or peer adjusts the amount of guidance to fit the child s current performance dialogue is an important tool Piaget s Cognitive Development theory Sensorimotor infants construct their understanding through physical and motor actions Nature versus nurture debate is biggest here simple reflexes such as the rooting and sucking reflex first habits and circular reactions habits are a scheme based on a reflex that has become completely separate from the eliciting stimulus and primary circular reactions are repetitive actions attempted to reproduce an event that happened by chance secondary circular reactions are when infants become more object oriented moving beyond the self but their actions are not goal oriented or intentional vision and touch actions become more outwardly directed Infants combine and recombine schemes and develop intentionality tertiary circular reactions novelty and curiosity tertiary circular reactions are schemes in which infants intentionally explore new possibilities with objects Piaget believed this marked the starting point for human curiosity and interest in novelty coordination of secondary circular reactions the infant must coordinate internalization of schemes infants begin to use primitive symbols Preoperational cognition is free fanciful and creative represent the world with words images and drawings stable concepts are formed mental reasoning emerges and magical beliefs are constructed Limits are centration conservation and egocentrism Concrete Operational logical reasoning replaces intuitive reasoning as long as the reasoning can be applied to specific or concrete examples Classification begins Formal Operational children begin to think more abstractly and in more logical ways tendency to think about thought itself Aspects of Cognitive Development DEP 3203 3 Theory of mind refers to awareness of one s own mental processes and the mental processes of others Perceptions emotions and desires When children watch someone move a toy from one place to another and then ask where the person who hid the toy first will look first false belief test Object Permanence is the understanding that objects and events continue to exist even when they cannot be seen heard or touched Acquiring the sense of object permanence is one of the infant s most important accomplishments Egocentrism someone else s perspective is the inability to distinguish between one s own perspective and Centration is a centering of attention on one characteristic to the exclusion of all others Conservation is the awareness that altering an object s or a substance s appearance does not change its basic properties Habituation is decreased responsiveness to a stimulus after repeated presentations Dishabituation is the recovery of a habituated response after a change in stimulation Aspects of attention infantile attention of the the stimulus joint attention Intelligence Intelligence Quotient designed originally by Binet but later perfected by Stern who came up with the equation Mental Age Chronological Age X 100 IQ mental retardation has an IQ below 70 has difficulty adapting to measure of giftedness vs mental retardation everyday life and first exhibits these characteristics by age 18 There are 4 classifications Mild Moderate Severe and Profound Organic mental retardation is caused by a genetic disorder or brain damage Down syndrome and cultural familial retardation is caused by below average intellectual environment 4 Precocity marching to their own drummer and a passion to master gifted have an IQ of 130 or higher and have a talent for something Aspects of grammar phonemes the basic unit of sound that affects meaning in a language including the sounds that are used and how they may be combined morphemes a minimal unit of meaning it is a word or a part of a word that cannot be broken down into smaller meaningful parts syntax the way words are combined to form acceptable phrases and sentences semantics refers to the meaning of words and sentences pragmatics the appropriate use of language in different contexts the rules for your culture for adjusting language to suit the context Chomsky s Language acquisition device a biological endowment that enables the child to detect certain features and rules of language include phonology syntax and semantics children are prepared by nature with the ability to detect the sounds of a language for example and follow rules such as how to form plurals and ask questions Memory tools rehearsal repetition imagery creating mental images better for older children than younger children elaboration examples self reference making the information more meaningful organization if a child organizes
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