Chapter 6 Piaget s Cognitive Developmental Theory CHD 2220 Exam 2 1st stage sensorimotor stage spans the first two years of life Piaget believed that infants and toddlers think with their eyes ears hands and other sensorimotor equipment They cannot yet carry out many activities inside their heads o Schemes specific psychological structures organized ways of making sense of experience change with age Ex at 6 months Timmy dropped objects in a fairly rigid way simply by letting go of a rattle or teething ring and watching with interest By 18 months his dropping scheme had become more deliberate and creative tossing objects down the stairs or bounced off other walls Instead of acting on objects he will show evidence of thinking before he acts transition from sensorimotor to preoperational o Adaptation involves building schemes through direct interaction with the environment external world Assimilation we use our current schemes to interpret the Ex when Timmy dropped objects he was assimilating them all into his sensorimotor dropping scheme Accommodation we create new schemes or adjust old ones after noticing that our current ways of thinking do not capture the environment completely Ex when Timmy dropped objects in different ways he modified his dropping scheme to take account of the varied properties of objects o Organization a process that takes place internally apart from direct contact with the environment Once children form new schemes they rearrange them linking them with other schemes to create a strongly interconnected cognitive system Ex Tilly will relate dropping to throwing and to his developing understanding of nearness and farness 1 Reflective schemes birth 1 month newborn reflexes 2 Primary circular reactions 1 4 months simple motor habits centered around the infants own body 3 Secondary circular reactions 4 8 months actions aimed at repeating interesting effects in the surrounding world imitation of familiar behaviors 4 Coordination of secondary circular reactions 8 12 months intentional or goal directed behavior ability to find a hidden object anticipation of events and imitation of behaviors The Sensorimotor Substages A not B search error if they reach several times for an object at a first hiding place A then see it moved to a second B they still search for it in the first hiding place A 5 Tertiary circular reactions 12 18 months exploration of the properties of objects by acting on them in novel ways ability to search in several locations for a hidden object 6 Mental representation 18 months 2 years internal depictions of objects and events as indicated by sudden solutions to problems ability to find an object that has been moved while out of sight deferred imitation and make believe play Mental representations internal depictions of information that the mind can manipulate Images mental pictures of objects people and spaces Concepts categories in which similar objects or events are grouped together Deferred imitation the ability to remember and copy the behavior of models who are not present Circular reaction provides a special means of adapting their first schemes It involves stumbling onto a new experience caused by the baby s own motor activity The reaction is circular because as the infant tries to repeat the event again and again a sensorimotor response that originally occurred by chance becomes strengthened into a new scheme o Ex at 2 months accidentally smacking your lips and finding the new sound intriguing After a few days of repeating the new sound she became quiet an expert at smacking her lips Information Processing System Sensory register first place information enters where sights and sounds are represented directly and stored briefly o Ex by attending to some information more carefully than to other information you increase the chances that it will transfer to the next step of the information processing system Working or short term memory in the second part of the mind we actively apply mental strategies as we work on a limited amount of information o Ex if you are studying this book effectively you are taking notes repeating information to yourself or grouping pieces of information together Long term memory the third and largest storage area our permanent Recognition noticing when a stimulus is identical or similar to one knowledge base previously experienced Recall remembering something without perceptual support o Ex to recall you must generate a mental image of the past experience Zone of proximal development refers to a range of tasks that the child cannot yet handle alone but can do with the help of more skilled partners Language Development The Behaviorist Perspective o B F Skinner proposed that language like any other behavior is acquired through operant conditioning As the baby makes sounds parents reinforce those that are most like words with smiles hugs and speech in return The Nativist Perspective o Noam Chomsky proposed a nativist account that regards the young child s amazing language skills as a uniquely human accomplishment etched into the structure of the brain o Focusing on grammar Chomsky reasoned that the rules for sentence organization are much too complex to be directly taught to or discovered by even a cognitively adept young child o Rather all children have a language acquisition device LAD an innate system that contains a universal grammar or set of rules common to all languages It enables children no matter which language they hear to understand and speak in a rule oriented fashion as soon as they pick up enough words Cooing around 2 months babies begin to make vowel like noises Babbling around 6 months infants repeat consonant vowel combinations often in long strings such as babababa Chapter 7 Erikson s Theory of Infant and Toddler Personality Basic Trust versus Mistrust Autonomy versus Shame and Doubt o When the balance of care is sympathetic and loving the psychological conflict of the first year basic trust versus mistrust is resolved on the positive side o As a result he feels confident about venturing out and exploring it and he emerges from this stage well prepared for the challenges of toddlerhood o The conflict of toddlerhood autonomy versus shame and doubt is resolved favorably when parents provide young children with suitable guidance and reasonable choices o A self confident secure 2 year old has parents who do not criticize or attack him when he fails at new skills using the toilet eating with a spoon or
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