EXAM TWO NOTES Chapters 5 6 7 and two sections of Psychoanalytic Theory Piaget s Theory CHAPTER 2 Piaget s theory The active nature of the child Child is active to environment rather than just reacting to it Action is a spontaneous and universal quality central to cognitive development For the species to survive the brain has to be able to adapt solve problems be explorative and curious Older children express this active quality in persistence in problem solving According to Piaget the curiosity HAS to be in your brain The most important watching you do is when you look in the mirror because you should see a curious mind Before Piaget studied infants and toddlers everyone believed cognitive development began at first grade o Paiget showed everyone it starts at infancy Optimal cognitive development requires a rich environment that can be actively explored for novelty and challenge Abnormal states rigidity of thought passivity and lack of curiosity Mental structures and adaptation Piaget said all aspects of the real world are structured entities o Ex in the infant world objects such as rattles blankets and mother s face have structure Structure the complexity of some aspect of the environment o Ex Children must solve structured math problems and engage in structured social relationships Cognitive structures the mental units that children use to represent reality to think about objects events and relationships in their experience and the strategies they use to solve problems o The way the child knows the world Adaptation process by which cognitive structures are applied to and are modified by the child s experiences o Solving a problem o Ex Blanket falls on baby at 2 months and babies is frustrated at 5 months baby can grab the blanket Two distinct processes by which adaptation occurs assimilation and Assimilation child uses an existing cognitive structure to interpret some accommodation experience o Assimilations interpret the new in terms of the old o Ex when familiar rattle is presented to infant she knows by grasping the rattle and shaking it will make a rattling noise Accommodation the child modifies an existing cognitive structure to conform to some new aspect of reality o Accommodation represents developmental change in cognitive structures an integration of the new into the old o Ex Infant begins to distinguish between rattles and non rattles Cognitive structures are always moving gradually but steadily toward better and better approximations of reality Stages of cognitive development Schema a mental plan for engaging in a specific motor behavior o They organize babies behavior to solve problems blueprint for behavior When baby is too young blanket on face example they don t have a schema yet they cant get the blanket off their face but they get more sophisticated through infancy Sensorimotor stage birth 2 yrs old o Action oriented problem solving o Beginning wired in reflexes o As newborns actively touch taste and see they develop schemas o Reflexes have to be stimulated passive schemas are active o NO schemas 0 4 weeks aka 1st month o Repeated movements 5 6 weeks we see movements that get repeated in our babies like kicking legs in rhythm o Primary circular reaction first schema that brings some organization the babies behaviors physical movement 1st schema being able to move the body in a patterned movement and then repeat it o Schema functions through assimilation repetition over and over again o Accommodation alters schema to make a better solution for a problem Brain stretches itself and tries something new to see if a small change makes a difference Ex Child plopping blocks on top of each other After the fourth one it falls the schema has to change Child needs to find a center point with gravity to place the block rather than block so it doesn t falls this called a combination o Ex At 4 5 months baby realizes hand feeling and movement when hitting the table swings arm and hits table creating pleasant sound to baby and wants to repeat it brain is curious secondary circulatory reactions o Secondary Circulatory Reactions 4 8 months brain is able to create different schemas with effects on the world o Coordinated secondary circulatory reactions new schema Single behaviors single movements 8 12 months Child can sequence or coordinate one secondary circulatory reaction with another Obstacle removal 11 months If we don t let babies remove obstacles themselves because we don t want to hear the crying when they get frustrated the we are undermining our children Problem solving and climbing Preoperational stage 2 6 yrs o Symbolic reasoning words and images o Children are no longer limited to thinking about an object in their immediate perceivable environment o Can organize mental images of events and objects both present and absent so they can solve simple problems o Centration focus on isolated parts of an event rather than seeing the whole picture Ex after meeting new teacher preschooler may be unable to remember what she looks like but can remember her earrings in great detail o Illogical thought o Irreversibility can think their way into a problem but are unable to reverse their thought process Concrete Operational stage 7 11 yrs old o Logical thinking o Understand simple math o Understand logical relationships if stick 1 is bigger than stick 2 and stick 2 is bigger than stick 3 then stick 1 must be bigger than stick 3 but they can only understand if they re looking at the sticks wont understand if there isn t a visual o Reversible thoughts o Person can reason about phenomena that does not exist in reality o Abstract thinking Ex boy likes girl and wants to meet her he thinks about what she might be thinking about him so he can plan his behavior accordingly o Not all people reach this stage Formal operational stage 12 yrs and older Freud s Psychoanalytic Theory Basis of mental illness could be found in the early development of the child particularly in the first 5 yrs of life From birth the individual is endowed with biologically sexual and aggressive instincts that unconsciously motivate everything humans think say or do in their lives The instincts are expressed in the form of libido a form of energy which drives all thinking and behavior Libido is stored in the id a place in the mind called the reservoir of libido o Id can be thought of as a storage battery that has a relentless need to discharge its energy from the moment of birth o Discharge takes the form of
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