cognition and development - psychology

Who did research into cognitive development

Piaget

What did Piaget suggest about children’s cognitive development and what did this lead do

To realise that children do not simply know less than adults do , but that children think in entirely different ways from grownups

Based on this understanding Piaget divided childhood stages, each of which represents the development of new ways of reasoning

What two aspects did Piaget focus on in children’s learning

• the role of motivation in development

• How knowledge develops

Schemas regarding cognition and development

• a schema is a mental structure containing all the information we have about one aspect of the world

• As adults we have schemas for people (including ourselves) for objects , physical actions and also for more abstract ideas like justice and morality

• According to Piaget children are born with a small number of schemas , just enough to allow them to interact with other people

• In infancy we construct new schemas - one of these is the ‘me-schema’ in which all the child’s knowledge about themselves is stored

The motivation to learn

• according to Piaget we are motivated to learn when our existing schemas do not allow us to make sense of something new

• This leads to the unpleasant sensation of disequilibrium

• To escape disequilibrium we have to adapt to the new situation by exploring and learning what we need to know

• By Doug. This we achieve equilibration - the preferred mental state

How learning takes place

• Piaget saw the process of learning as adapting to the new situation so that we understand it

• He identified two processes by which this adaptation takes place

• Assimilation takes place when we understand a new experience and equilibrate by adding new information to our existing schemas e.g. a child in a family with dogs can adapt to the existence of different dog breeds by assimilating then into their dog schema

• Accommodation