Chapter 6 Terms (Piaget & Vygotsky)

Schema

Actions or mental representations that organize knowledge.

Assimilation

Using existing schemas to incorporate new information.

Ex: Kid learns that there are different types of cats…hairless cats exist. Adding that information to existing schema of what they thought a cat is.

Accomodation

Incorporating new experiences into existing schemas, or creating new ones.

Ex: “look a bird!” “No thats a plane”…adding new information.

Organization

Grouping of isolated behaviors and thoughts into a higher order, more smoothly functioning system.

Ex: A child that has a vague idea of how to use a hammer, might also have a vague idea of how to use other tools.

Disequilibrium

Child’s period of encountering inconsistencies and counterexamples to their existing schemas. (Not as comfortable time).

Equilibrium

Mechanism Piaget proposed to explaim how kids shift from one stage of thought to the next.

Sensorimotor stage

First of Piaget’s stages; birth-2 yrs, child represents world with words & images. Increased symbolic thinking and go beyond connection of sensory information and physical action.

Sensorimotor substage #1: Modification of Reflexes

0-1 months; Babies become more efficient in their reflexive behaviors.

Sensorimotor substage #2: Primary Circular Reactions

1-4 months; Repetitive actions centered on themselves (intentional).

Ex: suck thumb.

Sensorimotor substage #3: Secondary Circular Reactions

5-8 months; Repetitive actions centered on objects and people in the environment. (object permanence occurs in this substage).

Ex: Play with toys!

Circular Reaction

Repetitive actions.

Sensorimotor substage #4: Coordination of Secondary Schemas

8-12 months; Combining behaviors/coordinate behaviors. Intentional and goal directed.

Ex: crawl to a toy.

• A not B example.

Sensorimotor substage #5: Tertiary Circular Reactions

12-18 months; Trial and error exploration. Repeated behaviors slightly changing.

Ex: pushing different buttons on a toy or learning how to eat with a fork.

Sensorimotor substage #6: Invention of New means through Mental Combination

18-24 months; Think before act. Also repeating things they see (deferred imitation).

Ex: don’t throw food because they know the dog will eat it.

Preoperational Stage

Preschool and kindergarten age; symbol use develops and becomes more refined. Nonloical thinking is present/can’t reverse their thinking.

Ex: drawing…drawing a line and making a “ssss” sound, symbolizing a snake.

Ex: pretend play…use a bowl as a helmet.

Egocentrism

Self centered attitude; limitations in perspective taking, empathy, and sharing. (preoperational)

Centration

Focus on appearance rather than reality. Can focus on one aspect of an object but not two aspects at the same time. (preoperational)

Ex: Conservation of liquid; which glass has more? The tall skinny one or the short wide one? The child will think the tall skinny one has more because it “looks like it”…in reality they have the same amount.

Concrete Operational Stage

School age, can do everything they couldn’t in preoperational; Can think logically about concrete features of their environment (things they can see, touch, and manipulate).

Hands on learning and play based learning are key in this stage.

Still cannot reason abstractly or think hypothetically (ideas of love, justice, war may be beyond them).

Very simple hypotheticals are possible but complex.

Cannot solve problems systematically.

Ex: what if there was no war?

Formal Operational Stage

Can do all the things they couldn’t do in concrete operational; can solve problems systematically, can think abstractly and hypothetically.

Piaget says they have all the cognitive skills of an adult at this point.

Strengths of Piaget

• recognizes the central role of cognition.

• value as an integrative and heuristic theory (model for future research).

• discovery of surprising features of children’s thinking.

• wide-ranging scope.

• ecological validit/works in the real world.

Weaknesses of Piaget

• children’s cognitions are not as consistent as he thought (some are behind/some are ahead).

• underestimates children’s abilities.

• lack of social influences.

• mechanisms of development are not identified.

Core Knowledge Approach

Theory that infants are born with domain-specific innate knowledge systems; including space, number sense, object permanence, and language.

Operations

Reversible mental actions that allow children to do mentally what before they had done only physically.

Animism

Facet of preoperational thought; the belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities and are capable of action.

Symbolic function substage

1st Preoperational thought substage; ages 2-4, kid gains ability to represent mentally an object that is not present.

Intuitive thought substage

2nd Preoperational though substage; 4-7 yrs, begin using primitive reasoning and want to know answers to all sorts of questions.

Ex: what makes you grow up? why do leaves fall? why does the sun shine?

Seriation

Concrete operation that involves ordering stimuli along a quantitive dimension.

Ex: teacher might have kid sort sticks by length to test seriation.

Transitivity

Concrete operation where kids have the ability to logically combine relations to understand certain conclusions. A characteristic of concrete operational thought.

Hypothetical-Deductive Reasoning

Formal operational concept where adolescents have cognitive ability to develop hypotheses about ways to solve problems and can systematically deduce which is the best path to follow in solving the problem.

Adolescent Egocentrism

Formal operational concept where adolescents experience heightened self-consciousness which is reflected in their beliefs that others are as interested in them as they are themselves, and in their sense of personal uniqueness and invincibility.

Imaginary Audience

Formal operational concept; aspect of adolescent egocentrism that involves feeling that one is the center of attention and sensing that one is on stage.

Personal Fable

Formal operational concept; the part of adolescent egocentrism that involves an adolescent’s sense of personal uniqueness and invincibility.

Piaget’s Framework for Learning:

1. take a constructivist approach.

2. facilitate rather than direct learning.

3. consider child’s knowledge and level of thinking.

4. promote the student’s intellectual health.

5. turn the classroom into a setting of exploration and discovery.

Zone of Proximal Development

Vygotsky’s term for tasks that are too difficult for children to master alone but can be mastered with guidance from adults or more skilled children.

Scaffolding

Term Vygotsky used to describe the changing level of support over the course of a teaching session; more skilled person adjusting guidance to fit child’s performance level. (usually gets less and less support as you teach)

Social Constructivists Approach

An emphasis on the social contexts of learning and construction of knowledge through social interaction. Vygotsky’s theory reflects this.

Postformal Thought

A possible 5th thinking stage that is reflective, realistic, relativistic, contextual, provisional, and influenced by emottions.

Private Speech

Vygotsky; Talking out loud to self to understand and process information.

Intersubjectivity

Mutual understanding.