Chapter 2 Piaget s Cognitive Developmental Theory Explains how children develop knowledge of their world how they think and solve problems and how these cognitive processes change in a stage by stage progression from birth to maturity The Active Nature of the Child Portrayed the child as innately and irrepressibly active acting upon their environment rather than simply reacting to it velopment of all children a spontaneous and universal quality central to the cognitive de Action Children are by nature curious and explorative persistently seeking novelty and try to incorporate that novelty into their understanding of the world Express this by exploring every object within their reach Older children do so by persistence in problem solving and intellectual curiosity Children actively seek problems to solve ALL CHILDREN ARE INTRINSICALLY MOTIVATED TO IMPROVE THEIR UN DERSTANDING OF THE WORLD AROUND THEM Rigidity of thought passivity and lack of curiosity are considered ab normal states that require an explanation Mental Structures and Adaption Central focus is structure 1 All aspects of the real world are structured entities o Structure refers to the complexity of some aspect of the environ ment 2 Cognitive structures the mental units that children use to represent reality to think about the objects events and rela tionships in their experience and the strategies they use to solve problems o The way the child knows the world An explanation of the development of cognitive structures from infancy through adolescence and how cognitive structures facilitate adaption to the environment are modified by the child s experiences the process by which cognitive structures are applied to and Adaption o Assimilation o Accommodation a child uses an existing cognitive structure to inter pret some experience interprets the new in terms of the old the child modifies an existing cognitive struc ture to conform to some new aspect of reality developmental change in cognitive structures an integration of the new into the old Cognitive structures are always moving gradually but steadily toward better and better approximations of reality Stages of Cognitive Development Cognitive development dren think and solve problems from infancy through adolescence a series of qualitative changes in the way chil Believed that all children in all cultures progress through these stages in exactly the same sequence and that no one ever skips a stage Some children move through the stages more quickly than oth ers and those that progress more slowly may never reach the fi nal stage o Sensori motor Stage 0 24 months Action oriented problem solving Sensori motor schemas simple cognitive structures that regulate the infant s body movements and the effects of those movements on objects Grasping schema organizes the infant s voluntary open ing and closing of his or her hands and the grasping and manipulation of objects Six to eight months they can accommodate their once aimless arm to push tear lift etc By the end of the first year they use their arms and hands to manipulate simple instruments such as a fork or spoon o Preoperational Stage ages 2 6 Thought that is mediated by words and images symbolic reasoning Children are no longer limited to thinking about the ob jects in their immediate perceivable environment Ex preschoolers know what toys they own and where they are at all times and use that knowledge to organize their play Limitations A tendency to focus on isolated parts of an event rather than seeing the whole picture centration Illogical Irreversibility can think their way into a problem but are unable to reverse their thought process Fails to provide a logical systematic way of adapting to the world o Concrete Operations ages 7 11 Thinking becomes increasingly logical The new form of cognitive structure the concrete opera tion organizes thoughts into logical systems Reversible the child can think his or her way into prob lems and back out The child can deal only with real objects that can be seen and touched abstract concepts of hypothetical events and outcomes are still beyond the child s capability The ability to consider general propositions and principles and to think about hypothetical events Now able to think about thinking their own thinking and other people s o Formal Operations age 12 and beyond Critique of cognitive Developmental Theory Unclear whether his descriptions of stages hold up across children in different cultures and socio economic status Good developmental theory Strength lies in its broad view of cognitive development Some concepts assimilation and accommodation are highly abstract and difficult to tie directly to children s behavior Psychoanalytic Theory Sigmund Freud Used hypnosis to relieve some of his patient s physical pain Claimed that psychological processes rather than physiological processes were the cause of mental illness Basis of mental illness could be found in the first five years of a child s life The Structure of Personality At birth a person is endowed with biologically based sexual and ag gressive instincts that unconsciously motivate everything humans think say or d throughout their lives Libido in the id Id reservoir libido charge its energy from the moment of birth a form of energy which drives all thinking and behavior stored a storage battery that has a relentless need to dis o All of the activities of the id are unconscious we are all unaware of our instincts and their profound and virtually irresistible effects on our behavior o Discharge takes the form of investments of libido in activi ties and objects that afford pleasure by reducing tension Infants invest libido according to the pleasure principle an approach that demands instant gratification Ego intelligence to find pleasure in a world where needs are not typically met on demand the component of personality that uses conscious perception and o Reality principle living in the real world functions on the basis of this the ego recognizes the frustrations inherent in Superego emerges suddenly during the fifth or sixth year of life seat of morality formed by identification characteristics of significant per sons are incorporated into the child s personality o Conscience a collection of beliefs attitudes and rules for be havior that function as an internal standard for the appropriate ness of behavior the child unconsciously strives to become an internalized image of distinctly human form that o Ego ideal
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