development - edexcel gcse psychology

brain

the organ in your head made up of nerves that processes information and controls behaviour.

forebrain

the anterior part of the brain, including the hemispheres and the central brain structures.

midbrain

the middle section of the brain forming part of the central nervous system.

hindbrain

the lower part of the brain that includes the cerebellum, pons, and medulla oblongata.

anterior

directed towards the front, when used in relation to our biology.

posterior

directed towards the back, when used in relation to our biology.

cerebellum

area of the brain near to the brainstem that controls motor movements (muscle activity).

medulla oblongata

connects the upper brain to the spinal cord and controls automatic responses.

involuntary response

a response to a stimulus that occurs without someone making a conscious choice. they are automatic, such as reflexes.

neural connections

links formed by messages passing from one nerve cell (neuron) to another.

building neural connections from birth

the number of neural connections rapidly increases from birth to 3 years old, with 700-1000 new connections forming every second. the brain doubles in size over the first year and reaches 80% of its size by the age of 3 years.

piaget's four stages of cognitive development

in his theory of cognitive development, he suggested we go through distinct stages of development. each stage is fairly long and our thinking abilities do not change much during these stages. a change in thinking indicates when the next stage is reached. during the transition from one stage to another, features of both stages are sometimes there in a child, and sometimes not. during each stage there is consolidation of developing abilities in preparation for the next stage. the first stage relates to the way babies use their senses and movements, while the other three bring in the idea of 'operations.'

cognitive

thinking, problem-solving, perceiving, remembering, using language and reasoning.

operations

how we reason and think about things.

sensorimotor stage

the stage (from birth to about 2 years of age) during which infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities. they learn by linking their five senses to objects they are using, for example by grasping and sucking objects. they begin with reflex actions and then learn to control their movements. at around 6 months they develop object permanence, which means they learn that objects exist even when they cannot see them. by the end of this stage the child has a sense of themselves as existing separately from the world around them. an interesting part of this stage occurs from around 4 months old, where babies tend to repeat actions, like dropping something deliberately that they first dropped by accident.

object permanence

knowing something exists even if it is out of sight.

pre-operational stage

the stage (from about 2 to 7 years of age) during which a child learns to use language but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic. there are two stages within the pre-operational stage, the symbolic function stage and the intuitive thought stage.

symbolic function stage

a substage (from 2 to 4 years old) of piaget's pre-operational stage where children start imitating others and can use objects as symbols. symbolic play involves using one object to represent different objects, such as using a box as a stool and using role play. children think in pictures and use symbols. they start to use words as symbols for objects, which is the beginning of language development. children see the world through their own eyes, not through someone else's (this is known as egocentrism). animism can also be seen where children believe objects can behave as if they are alive.

symbolic play

children play using objects and ideas to represent other objects and ideas.

egocentrism

unable to see the world from any other viewpoint but one's own.

animism

believing that objects that are not alive can behave as if they are alive.

intuitive thought stage

a substage (from 4 to 7 years old) of piaget's pre-operational stage where children start reasoning and asking a lot of questions as they realise they know a lot and want to know more. they can only consider one aspect of something complex (this is known as centration). conservation is not yet achieved - children do not realise that changing how something looks does not change its volume, size or weight. there is also irreversibility, referring to a child not being able to use thought to reverse events, such as knowing that if water from a wide glass is poured into a tall glass so it looks as if there is more water, when the water is poured back into the wide glass it will look the same as it did.

concrete operational stage

the stage of cognitive development (from 7 to 12 years of age) during which children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events. they begin to apply rules and strategies to help their thinking and use concrete objects to aid their understanding (e.g. using counters to find the answer to a sum). they have difficulty with abstract ideas such as morality. abilities in this stage include: seriation, classification, reversibility, conservation, and decentration.

irreversibility

not understanding that an action can be reversed to return to the original state.

centration

focusing on one feature of a situation and ignoring other relevant features.

morality

general principles about what is right and wrong, including good and bad behaviour.

seriation

sorting objects, such as into size.

classification

naming and identifying objects according to size or appearance.

reversibility

the capacity to think through a series of steps and then mentally reverse direction, returning to the starting point.

conservation

the principle (which Piaget believed to be a part of concrete operational reasoning) that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the forms of objects.

decentration

the ability to take multiple views of a situation (conservation relies on this).

formal operational stage

the stage of cognitive development (normally beginning about age 12) during which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts. there is control over thoughts themselves and young people can think about more than two things, such as thinking about height, age and gender when describing someone. they also have the ability to think about how time changes things, such as how as they get older they might not live in the same town. they can also understand that events have a sequence, such as moving from school to college to work. in this stage a young person can see that actions have consequences. there is also the understanding that they and others exist in the real world and separate from each other.

using piaget's stages in education

young children are egocentric and cannot understand the teacher's viewpoint so might not do as they are told because of their lack of understanding. children build their own schemas from their own experiences and so they individually build their own knowledge and understanding.

schema

mental representations of the world based on one's own experiences. the plural of schema is schemata, though schemas can also be used and is more common.

helping sensorimotor development

smells, tastes, sights, sounds and different textures can all be provided as stimulation for sensorimotor development. colour is important and bright colours are often used since they can easily be distinguished by young people. human voices are responded to, as is music and other sounds. singing and rhythm can stimulate children and help in language development.

helping pre-operational development

children must 'do' things to learn and keep building schemas, rather than just watch someone else performing actions. they need a lot of experiences to extend their understanding as they focus on just one part of a problem at a time. they are encouraged to learn by discovery through interacting with their environment, not by being told things. their individual learning must be encouraged and developed, acknowledging that different children are at different stages of development. models, objects and visual aids such as drawings and diagrams can help learning, while instructions are kept short.

helping concrete operational development

teachers can ask children to concentrate on more than one aspect of an issue. teachers can assume children can understand different viewpoints from their own, and so teachers will structure tasks accordingly.

helping formal operational development

children can discuss abstract concepts and be asked complex questions involving mental reasoning. for example, they can be asked to think about how their different roles might conflict, such as how being a son and a friend can mean they have to make a decision about a course of action. they realise they belong to different groups that have different norms and they can explore such norms to see that different people have different ideas from their own. children in this stage study different school subjects such as science and arts, and these can help them to distinguish the different ways of thinking about the world.

implications for teaching

robert slavin (2005) suggested implications for teaching that come from piaget's stages.

-there should be a focus on the child's thinking and not what they can do. it is the processes they use, rather than the right answer, that is important.

-discovery learning is required and children must be able to engage freely with their environment rather than being told facts.

-teaching should accept and acknowledge that children do not think like adults and that they develop at different rates.

-children are individuals and go through the stages in different ways, so classrooms must be managed to suit all individual children and whole-class teaching is not advised.

piaget's explanation of understanding the world

he held that children develop through adaptation - they adjust to the world as they experience new things. as they develop, babies have to understand many new things. they do this by forming ideas about how things are in the world. their ideas take the form of schemas or plans through which they represent the world, such as a schema for 'things dropping when they are let go.' often they can fit new things into their existing schemas about the world. however, as they experience more, they need to change their schemas and create new ones.

piaget's theory and the development of intelligence

the development of intelligence is about building knowledge and skills. intelligence is acquired through stages of development, such as developing object permanence and formal reasoning. intelligence is developed through building schemas via adaptation and through the four stages of cognitive development.

schemas/schemata

plans and patterns are formed about what we experience. mental structures give us frameworks to understand the world. for example, a student has a classroom schema. on entering a classroom, they would expect to see a board for writing on, some chairs and tables, a desk at the front and fire safety instructions.

adaptation

using assimilation and accommodation to make sense of the world.

assimilation

incorporating new experiences into existing schemas. for example, a young child develops a schema for birds flying and, seeing an aeroplane, calls it a bird.

accommodation

a schema no longer works and has to be changed to deal with a new experience. the child will see that birds are alive and aeroplanes are not, and so they will need to change their 'everything that flies is a bird' schema.

equilibrium

when a child's schemas work for them and explain all that they experience, the child is in equilibrium. they are in a state of mental balance. for example, the 'bird' schema is changed. aeroplanes are included, and the child understands that they are metal and carry passengers, thus moving from disequilibrium to a state of equilibrium.

strengths of piaget's theory

piaget's work has practical applications, thus strengthening the theory. discovery learning draws on piaget's ideas about focusing on the individual child's stage of development when helping their learning. when children are allowed to discover things at their own pace, they are able to build knowledge using schemas and can work according to their stage of development. another strength is that piaget's work has generated a great deal of research, including experiments, to show the existence of the stages and how children build knowledge through creating schemas. research results often support his ideas (like the three mountains task).

weaknesses of piaget's theory

other studies have found that children can do things earlier than piaget thought, challenging his ideas. he also did not look at the influence of social interactions or cultural setting, which can affect the development of patterns of thought. pierre dasen (1994) found that aboriginal children developed the ability to conserve at a later stage than piaget's swiss sample did. this suggests that culture may affect cognitive development. another weakness is that his data came from interviews and observations with children. as a result, his interpretations of situations and events may have been subjective, leading to some bias in his findings. another weakness is a lack of validity in his studies; other studies using similar methods but in more realistic settings produced different findings.

subjective

based on personal opinion or feelings.

validity

when the results of a study represent the situation they are testing in real life.

dweck's mindset theory and the effects of learning on development

mindset theory suggests that children who think they can improve will continue to put in effort, whereas those who think they do not have a particular ability tend to stop trying. mindset theory tells us that children with a fixed mindset can change to a growth mindset.

mindset

a set of beliefs someone has that guides how someone responds to or interprets a situation.

ability

what someone can do, such as maths ability or ability to play tennis. dweck suggests ability can be seen as either fixed and innate or as able to be improved.

effort

when you try to do better using determination.

fixed mindset

believing your abilities are fixed and unchangeable.

growth mindset

believing practice and effort can improve your abilities.

how praise affects mindset theory

according to american psychologist, carol dweck, praise affects children's development. being praised for being good at something can lead a child to believe that ability is fixed at birth, and not praising them can lead them to assume they do not have that ability and that it is pointless to work hard to achieve it. for this reason, it is better to praise children for effort, as they can then believe they can achieve something by trying their best and putting in the work.

key points of dweck's mindset theory

children can develop a fixed mindset about a particular ability they think they do not have and give up since they think they won't be successful. with a fixed mindset, a person can become depressed and stop trying. a growth mindset allows for the idea of effort bringing success. challenges become worthwhile and feedback is taken notice of. teachers also have fixed or growth mindsets. a teacher with a fixed mindset can see children as lacking a particular ability, whereas a teacher with a growth mindset sees that a child can improve with perseverance.

experimental evidence for dweck's mindset theory

in one of dweck's experiments (mueller and dweck, 1998), it was found that praising students' ability led them to a fixed mindset and they were vulnerable to issues such as coping with setbacks. in contrast, praising effort or use of strategy taught a growth mindset, leading to students persevering more. in another study by yeager and dweck (2012) of more than 1500 students, it was found that low-achieving students who learned to use a growth mindset did better compared to a control group who did not have that learning.

strengths of mindset theory

it has practical applications. teachers and parents can focus on praising effort rather than ability to encourage children. the theory itself is positive - it shows that change is possible, which helps society. another strength is that there is evience to support mindset theory. for example, yeager and dweck's (2012) study found that adolescents could deal better with not fitting in if they had a growth mindset. believing that people can change led to better school performance.

weaknesses of mindset theory

many of the studies that look into mindset have been experiments and so have artificial settings. this is a weakness because the results may not represent real life. this means that the data may lack validity. one exception is gunderson et al. (2013), who used a natural environment when gathering their data on parent praise, giving the findings validity. another weakness is that studying the mindset of a child may result in the child becoming the focus if there are problems with their progress, rather than the quality of what is being taught and how teaching is done. this can affect the usefulness of the theory. similarly, studies testing mindset theory tend to ignore the effects of giving feedback without any judgement about the child or their ability, such as telling a child to 'add a conclusion' to an essay. the way many studies are done leads to the 'type of praise' being seen as an important variable, but there is a need to consider behaviour where praise does not feature.

willingham's learning theory and the effects of learning on development

daniel willingham is a cognitive scientist who studies thinking and brain activity. his work can be applied to the classroom and to other situations. in his work, he explains not only his own ideas but also problems with the ideas of others, including piaget and his 'three mountains' task. some questions willingham considers are: can teachers increase a student's self-control? does practice make perfect? what will improve a student's memory?

factual knowledge precedes skill

knowing facts helps when building the skills of problem-solving and reasoning. an issue with learning and developing skills is that previous knowledge is often needed. knowledge can also free up space in our working memory to allow us to use mental skills such as problem solving. willingham suggests that what someone already knows leaves them more processing power to solve a problem and aids understanding.

working memory

a cognitive system with a limited capacity that can hold information temporarily. it has different parts for processing information coming in from our senses, including visual and sound data and also involves a decision-making part.

the importance of practice and effort

willingham emphasises that practice and effort enable us to master knowledge and skills. it is important to practice enough to be able to do things automatically. this is necessary in order to leave enough working memory for learning new things. practice is not the only thing that's important - a skill must be repeating many times and kept up.

importance for building knowledge

short-term memory involves rehearsing what is to be remembered. what is learned then goes into the long-term memory where material has to be reviewed and practiced in order to remember it. when there has been enough practice and effort, the material is fixed in the long-term memory so well, that it is much less likely to be forgotten.

short-term memory

our initial memory store that is temporary and limited.

rehearse

repeat information over and over to make it stick.

long-term memory

a memory store that holds potentially limitless amounts of information for up to a lifetime.

importance for building skills

problem-solving and creative thinking are skills a student needs to learn and these skills use working memory. skills need to be developed so that they become automatic and use little space in working memory. for example, reading becomes automatic once there has been enough practice and effort.

strategies to support development

willingham proposed teaching strategies to help students learn and aid cognitive development. he also believed that practice and effort would improve physical development, such as muscle movements (motor skills). he related muscle movements to brain processing to give suggestions for learning. his focus on practice and effort even gave rise to ideas that teachers can use to help improve social development.

motor skills

actions that involve muscles and brain processes, resulting in movement.

cognitive development

-use problems that are new and within a student's ability but that also require some effort.

-understand a student's likely stage of development when planning activities.

-remember that a student's abilities are variable and can change from day to day.

-consider factors other than developmental level. for example, the student might not understand the task.

physical development

-focus on what movements will be suitable and in what order they need to be carried out.

-practice the movements in that order enough times to make the muscle commands automatic (to build a skill set)

-use conscious effort. for example, make changes in order to develop the motor skill, such as raising the bar when developing jumping skills.

social development

-demonstrate appropriate social behaviour. the child will use social learning where children imitate the behaviour of others in certain circumstances.

-help a child to stop impulsive behaviour and to think about consequences more. once a child develops more suitable responses in social situations, they will be able to build friendships more easily.

-encourage practice, which requires self-regulation. children need self-regulation because there are often other things they would rather do. willingham refers to both nature and nurture in this respect. self-regulation can come from genes. it can also be influenced by the environment, such as parents giving a child emotional support.

-delay giving a reward for a task to encourage a child to keep working at it, which requires them to have self control.

willingham vs piaget on social development

one of willingham's suggestions for teachers is to build on a child's ability to take the view of someone else. willingham disagrees with piaget's view that children cannot see things from someone else's viewpoint until they are about 7 years old; he thinks this can occur nearer to 18 months. in practice, piaget himself later changed his view of egocentrism and decentration and agreed that during the first 18 months, children can see other viewpoints. once able to take another's viewpoint, a child can behave in helpful ways. this is the start of forming social relationships with others.

social learning

learning by observing and copying others.

self-regulation

limiting and controlling yourself without influence from others.

nature

explanations of behaviour that focus on innate factors (the things we are born with).

nurture

explanations of behaviour that focus on environmental factors (things that happen to us).

strengths of willingham's learning theory

it has practical applications because it can be applied to education and other situations to promote a child's development in a positive way. another strength is that there are other studies that support willingham's work and his arguments against piaget's view that development is in stages. for example, betty repacholi and alison gopnik's (1997) study provides experimental support, showing that young children were not as egocentric as piaget thought. experiments control everything that might affect a study's results, allowing researchers to make deliberate changes to see the effect these have on something. experimental evidence is therefore a strength because experiments are carried out in a controlled way.

weaknesses of willingham's learning theory

experimental evidence can also be a weakness because they might not reflect reality, so the results may lack validity. willingham also did not really emphasise the importance of individual differences for learning, though some features of his theory relate to genes. for example, he suggested that self-regulation and impulsivity are, to some extent, inherited. though the theory gives strategies to help development, such as children getting emotional and cognitive support from their parents, what is in someone's genes cannot be changed easily using strategies. his theory aims to give universal strategies for change even though he acknowledges genetic contributions. his ideas come from many areas of cognitive science, including neuroscience (the role of the brain in muscle movements), memory theory (the role of working memory), and cognitive development. drawing on his evidence from other theories can be a strength, but it does mean his ideas are not really one singular theory that can be tested by gathering data.

piaget and inhelder (1956) 'three mountains' task

according to piaget's cognitive development theory, a young child in the pre-operational stage sees the world from their own viewpoint and cannot see someone else's view of the world. piaget called this inability egocentrism. piaget and inhelder wanted to look at: the extent to which children of different ages were able to take the view of another person, and children's overall system of putting together a number of different views of what they see.

procedure of the 'three mountains' task

in total, 100 children were studied. children under 4 years old were not involved in the study as they were considered too young for the task. there were 21 children from 4-6.5 years, 30 from 6.5-8 years, 33 from 8-9.5 years, and 16 from 9.5-12 years.

four main pieces of equipment (three mountains task)

the study involved building a model of three mountains using sheets of paper pasted together to form card. the model was one metre square and ranged from 12 to 30cm high. the lowest mountain was green and had a house on top, and the next highest was brown with a red cross on top, and the highest, which was grey, had a snow-covered top. the smaller green mountain had a path winding down it while the middle-sized brown mountain had a stream coming down it. these were the important features of the model. 10 pictures of the three mountains model were taken from different positions around it. the pictures were taken so that the features and colours were clear and visible. there were three pieces of card the same colour as the mountains which the child could arrange to represent the mountains according to a certain viewpoint. there was a wooden doll, around three cm tall, with no facial features.

ways of questioning the child (three mountains task)

the child was asked to use the cardboard shapes to show how the mountain scene looked from different viewpoints. they were asked to place the shapes to show the view they themselves were looking at, and then to place the shapes to show what the doll, positioned by the researcher, could 'see'. the child was shown 10 pictures of the model and asked to pick out the picture that represented what they could see from different positions, and also what the doll could 'see' from its position. the child chose a picture and then had to position the doll so it could 'see' that viewpoint.

results of children in the pre-operational stage

children can only show their own view and cannot position the doll to view a certain viewpoint. the older children in this stage start to see that there are more views other than their own, but overall, they show egocentrism.

results of children in the concrete operational stage

from 7 to 9 years old the child starts to understand that others looking from a different position can see the model differently. by 9 to 10 years old, children can understand that the doll has a different view if in a position that is different from their own. as part of the experiment, piaget and inhelder gathered qualitative data and included observations about individual children in their report.

conclusions of the three mountains task

children in the pre-operational stage did not have the understanding of viewpoints yet and overall displayed egocentrism. older children were non-egocentric and were able to see viewpoints other than their own. the three mountains task provided evidence for piaget's stages of development.

strengths of the three mountains task

they provided a great deal of detail about what was done and the results. they wrote about individual children, giving qualitative data that was rich in detail and had depth. in addition to counting the number of errors, they looked in detail at the errors and what each child did and said. this meant they could show that as a child neared the next stage of development, they could achieve elements of that next stage. they also used experimental methods, meaning careful controls were in place, such as using the same questions and model for each child. this allowed comparisons to be made between the results from different children, thus adding strength to the findings. repeating the study with many children, moving the doll and using different ways to get the child to show what they saw meant there was reliability in the findings.

weaknesses of the three mountains task

the results suggest that children develop thinking ability progressively as they age, rather than in distinct stages. piaget acknowledged that there was a period of transition between stages when performance of a task tended to be inconsistent. however, evidence shows that stages are not as decisively 'different' as the term 'stage' suggests, meaning there is a weakness in his use of 'stage' to explain cognitive development. another weakness is that other studies, using perhaps more realistic scenarios, had different findings. it is generally thought that the situation in piaget and inhelder's study was not sufficiently understood by the children. however, the children were from switzerland, and would have been familiar with mountainous scenery so this may not have been the case.

helen borke (1975)

helen borke (1975) changed piaget and inhelder's task to make it more appropriate for younger children. borke used the puppet character grover from sesame street and let the children turn the model of mountains that she used by putting it on a turntable. she found that 3 year olds could give grover's viewpoint correctly more than 79% of the time, and 4 year olds did this 93% of the time. borke suggested that the 'three mountains' task was too hard for the younger children; it was not that they were egocentric.

repacholi and gopnik (1997)

willingham used betty repacholi and alison gopnik's (1997) study to criticise piaget's stages of development. repacholi and gopnik, in a study similar to that of the 'three mountains' task, found that children of 18 months could show non-egocentric behaviour. in their study, children tasted crackers, which they liked, and broccoli, which they did not like. then they saw the experimenter show dislike of the cracker taste and liking of the broccoli. later, the experimenter placed a bowl of crackers and one of broccoli on the table and asked the child to pass one of the bowls to the experimenter. the 14-month-old children passed the experimenter the food they themselves liked, indicating egocentrism, but children aged 18 months passed the broccoli because that's what they believed the experimenter liked.

gunderson et al. (2013) parent praise to 1-3 year olds predicts children's motivational framework 5 years later

research has shown that parental praise can affect young children's later beliefs and behaviour. for example, it is found that praising effort instead of ability can lead to the framework that working hard can change achievements. many studies have used experiments to show this. elizabeth gunderson et al.'s (2013) study set out to see whether looking at parent's praising children in the home - a natural setting - would support these experimental findings.

framework

a basic understanding of ideas and facts that is used when making decisions.

person and process praise

parents can praise a child personally (person praise) or they can praise a child's behaviour (process praise) or they can use a different type of praise.

person praise

praising the individual rather than what they are doing. this seems to lead children to believe (not consciously) that they are born with or without an ability, leading to fixed theory, known as entity theory or entity motivational framework.

process praise

praising behaviour and effort - praising what is being done, not the individual. this appears to lead children to see a link between effort and success. they are likely to see ability as changeable and are more likely to keep trying to do better. this change theory is known as incremental theory or incremental motivational framework.

entity theory/motivational framework

a belief that behaviour or ability results from a person's nature.

incremental theory/motivational framework

a belief that effort drives behaviour and ability, which can change.