AP PSYCH 6.3 Cognitive Development in Childhood

Schemas

Schemas are mental representations of what we know
We build schemas to be a placeholder for a concept
- We all have an idea of what a pencil is, or a dog, or even abstract concepts like friendship and love
- We expect real life examples to resemble our schemas in some way-- after all, we built the schema around what we feel is the best broad representation of that idea
Little children don’t have complex schemas like teens and adults to
For example, a child may have a schema of a dog as “animal with four legs”
- We’ll assume that at this stage in their development, it’s the only animal they’ve seen up close and frequently
- When introduced to a cat, they see “animal with four legs,” and they put it into the dog schema
- This is schema assimilation, when they fit new stimulus into what they already know

The parent will presumably correct the child, and as they learn more, they edit their schemas to be more accurate
They are confronted with a discrepancy in their own thinking that they need to resolve
- A child will alter (accommodate) their existing schema for dogs and create a new one for cats (also accommodation)
They now know that dogs have four legs and bark, whereas cats have four legs and meow

The child sees a cat and hears it meow
They can correctly identify it as a cat
The schema has now ‘settled,’ or assimilated, into their mind
We are constantly judging and interpreting out environment using existing schemas, which is the process of assimilation

What is the relationship between these two phenomena?
Let’s use the original scenario
- A child calls a dog a “dog” and is praised by their parents
- The child sees a cat and calls it a dog
- That is where generalization occurs: the child saw something that fit their schema and generalized something incorrect into it
They’ve generalized the stimulus of anything with four legs as a dog

When discrepancies between what we know and what we discover appear, we must accommodate our schemas
When the child understands that the dog and cat are different, and belong to different schemas, they are now employing stimulus discrimination
Returning to the situation, the child calls the cat a “dog” and is not reinforced
- The child is corrected and so their schema is accommodated
- They can now call cats “cats” and dogs “dogs”
They know that the stimulus of a four legged animal is not always a dog, only if it barks is it one, so they are discriminating between stimuli

There is some criticism of this theory, stating that the ages may be underestimated
The theory is still pretty valid in terms of what stage follows which
- Understand that the ages may be a little off but the general principles are still sound

This stage focuses on object permanence, or the understanding that things continue existing when outside of awareness

The child starts this stage egocentric, meaning they are unable to see another person’s opinion or point of view
- Obviously this is not intention
This stage sees the development of empathy, or a sense of what others are thinking and feeling
- A child is beginning to infer the emotional state of people around them and react differently
- Previously, they had no concept of what other’s may be thinking and only acted in self-interest
- They will now begin to consider others

Children are speaking but not reading or writing at the beginning of this stage
- They start putting letters together into words
- They are realizing that symbols can create different things when put together
Objects also have a single idea or meaning
- This is the time where “pretend” or symbolic play emerges
- Objects and ideas can represent “stand-ins”
They also begin to draw coherent pictures in this stage

This stage has to do with logic
Logic contains a couple components
Reversibility is the idea that numbers or objects can be changed and then returned to their original condition
- Four minus three is one, plus three is four again
- You can freeze water into ice, but it can also melt and become water again
Conservation is the realization that objects maintain the same properties in spite of their appearance
- Conservation of mass, in a way, is beginning to be understood
- Breaking a cookie in half doesn’t remove any cookie, it just separates it
- The understanding that two glasses look different but hold the same amount of water
Classification, the ability to group objects based on multiple properties
- Recognizing shared qualities and being able to sort by that characteristic
Seriation, arranging objects in an order based on a specific classification