Constructivist and Piagetian Developmental Theories: Key Concepts and Stages

Assimilation

Piagetian process of the incorporation of new information into existing knowledge.

Accomodation

Piagetian process of adjusting schemes to fit new information and experiences.

Organization

Piagetian process of grouping isolated behaviors into a higher-order, more smoothly functioning cognitive system; the grouping or arranging of items into categories.

Sensorimotor Stage

-birth to 2 years

-infants construct an understanding of the world by coordinating sensory experiences (such as seeing and hearing) with motoric actions.

Preoperational Stage

-2 to 7 years

-children begin to represent the world with words, images, and drawings.

Concrete Operational Stage

-7 to 11 years

-children can perform concrete operations, and logical reasoning replaces intuitive reasoning as long as the reasoning can be applied to specific or concrete examples.

Formal Operational Stage

-11 to 15 years through adulthood

-individuals move beyond concrete experiences and think in more abstract and logical ways.

Object Permanence

understanding that objects and events continue to exist even when they cannot directly be seen, heard, or touched. Develop and acquire during sensorimotor stage

Make-believe play

During sensorimotor stage, Can pretend to use a phone as a phone but not a banana as a phone. During preoperational stage, can use banana as phone

dual representation

Mastered during preoperational stage. viewing a symbolic object as both an object in its own right and a symbol

Seriation

The concrete operation that involves ordering stimuli along a quantitative dimension (such as length).

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.

Abstract Thinking

thinking in terms of symbols, ideas, and concepts. Part of formal operational stage

Metacognition

awareness and understanding of one's own thought processes. Part of formal operational stage.

A-not-B error

tendency of 8- to 12-month-olds to search for a hidden object where they previously found it even after they have seen it moved to a new location.

Piaget's Pendulum Task

plan and execute a series of tests - create a pendulum that swings that fastest. Formal operational stage

Appreciate vague concepts

Love, fairness, values. Formal operational stage

Zone of Proximal Development

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

Central goal of information processing

uncover mechanisms of change → why & how

Scaffolding

the practice of changing the level of support provided over the course of a teaching session, with the more-skilled person adjusting guidance to fit the child's current performance level.

What type of approach is Vygotsky?

Social Constructivist

Fluid Intelligence

Basic information processing skills, working memory, analytical speed, relationships among stimuli

crystallized intelligence

Accumulated knowledge, experience, judgment, social conventions,

Sternberg's Triarchic Theory

analytical, creative, practical

Creative intelligence

solve novel problems, make processing skills automatic to free working memory for complex thinking

Analytical Intelligence

apply strategies, acquire task-relevant and metacognitive knowledge, engage in self-regulation

practical intelligence

adapt to, shape, and/or select environments to meet both personal goals and the demands of one's everyday world

Intelligence tests

Stanford-Binet, Wechsler (WISC), Bayley Scales

IQ

mental age/chronological age x 100

Normal Curve

68-95-99.8

Mensa

Top 2 percent of general population on an accepted standardized test

Genetics and IQ

Greater genetic similarity = greater IQ similarity

Culture and IQ

Wide genetic variation within races, minimal variation between races. Tests can be biased because of different communication styles, culture specific content, and stereotypes.

Stereotype Threat

a self-confirming concern that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype

Expectations and IQ

"Growth spurters" actually showed greater IQ gains, especially first and second graders. Effect strongest for reasoning skills.

Critiques of Pygmalion

Issues with replicability, generalizability, ethical concerns, small sample size, minority definition

Mechanisms of change

Increases in basic capacity, processing speed (automaticity), strategy construction

Computer metaphor

Brain = Hardware, Cognitive rules and strategies = software, Thinking = information processing

Encoding

How information gets into memory

Automaticity

The ability to process information with little or no effort.

Strategy Construction

Creation of new procedures for processing information.

Cognitive Resources

Capacity and speed of processing

Sustained attention

Maintaining attention to a selected stimulus for a prolonged period of time.

Selective Attention

Focusing on a specific aspect of experience that is relevant while ignoring others that are irrelevant.

Divided attention

Concentrating on more than one activity at the same time.

Executive attention

-Involves planning actions,

-allocating attention to goals,

-detecting and compensating for errors,

-monitoring progress on tasks,

-dealing with novel or difficult circumstances.

Joint attention

Individuals focusing on the same object or event

Habituation

decreasing responsiveness with repeated stimulation. As infants gain familiarity with repeated exposure to a visual stimulus, their interest wanes and they look away sooner.

Dishabituation

recovery of a habituated response after a change in stimulation

Storage

the retention of encoded information over time

Retrieval

the process of getting information out of memory storage

Executive Function

higher-level cognitive processes. Prefrontal lobe. Managing one's thoughts to engage in goal-directed behavior and to exercise self-control.

Critical Thinking

Thinking reflectively and productively, and evaluating the evidence.

Characteristics of information processing theories

development is continuous, children are problem solvers, thinking is a process that occurs over time

Language

a form of communication consisting of a system of sounds, words, meanings, and rules for their combination. Comprehension and production

Syntax

The arrangement of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language.

Phonology

the study of speech sounds in language

Morphology

units of meaning involved in word formation

Semantics

Meaning of words and sentences

Pragmatics

The appropriate use of language in different contexts.

Nativist Perspective

human brain has an innate

capacity for acquiring language

Interactionist Perspective

Native capacity + rich language environment

NATURE x NURTURE

Language Acquisition Device

a biological endowment enabling children to detect the features and rules of language, including phonology, syntax, and semantics.

Wernicke's area

language comprehension. Can produce fluid speech but in makes no sense.

Broca's area

speech production. Can understand but not produce speech effectively.

Evidence to support Nativist

Brain structure, critical periods, feral children (Genie)

Genie

Could not learn grammar and how to put sentances together. Provides some evidence for critical periods

Preverbal communication

Sense of touch, parent face to face dialogue, communicative gestures

Protodeclarative gestures

gestures or vocalizations that direct the visual attention of other people to objects of shared interest

Protoimperative gestures

gestures or vocalizations that are used to express needs

Cooing

early vowel-like sounds that babies produce. 2 months

Babbling

Consonant-vowel combination. 4-6 months

One-word stage

the stage in which children speak mainly in single words. 12 months

Two-word stage

they start uttering two word sentences. 18-24 months

Vocabulary explosion

word learning accelerates dramatically around 18 months

Overextension

the use of a given word in a broader context than is appropriate

Underextension

when children define words more narrowly than adults do

Overregularization

Applying a grammatical rule too widely and thereby creating incorrect forms.

Farrow et al.

Emphasizes important of social interaction for language development, as well as other areas of development

Child-directed speech

language spoken in a higher pitch than normal with simple words and sentences

Right from birth, infants

prefer human language sounds, distinguish between phonemes and parts of speech, prefer infant directed speech

serve and return interactions

the back and forth interactions between a parent and a child