LECTURES
8 AND 9
Organismic
Perspectives on Development:
- Best example is
Piaget's Cognitive-Developmental Theory
- Organism (O) is active,
acting upon the environment (e)
- Big O, little e
- Development comes
from within the organism
Organismic
Perspectives (Cont):
- Change is
discontinuous (abrupt and qualitative)
- There are distinct
stages of development related to age
- Methods: Observation
(with infants), interview
Jean
Piaget
Organismic Theorist:
- Ideas are not innate
or programmed by the environment
- Person CONSTRUCTS
new understandings of the world based on his/her experiences
- The verb construct:
to actively create knowledge of the world through one's experiences
Jean
Piaget (Cont):
- Swiss psychologist
- Began as a biologist
- Published first
paper at age 11
- Became interested in
children's reasoning
Piagetian
Method:
- Interviews
- Open-ended,
semi-clinical
- No standard
interview procedure
How
Does Intelligence Develop?
- Through two inborn
processes:
- Organization-
The tendency to combine and integrate available schemes (organized
patterrns of action or thought) into more complex systems or bodies of
knowledge
- Adaptation-The
tendency to adjust to the demands of the environment through two
complementary processes:
- assimilation and
- accommodation
- Assimilation-Interpreting
new experiences in terms of one's existing schemes
- Accommodation-Modifying
one's existing schemes to better fit new experiences
- Cognitive
development comes about through cognitive disequilibrium
How
Does Intelligence Develop?
- Cognitive
(intellectual) development passes through STAGES related to age
- In each stage, new
mental abilities are developed,
- that set limits and
determine what can be learned during that period
How
Does Intelligence Develop?
- Every child
constructs and constantly revises his/her own model of reality,
- and does so in a
regular sequence.
Piaget's
Stages of Cognitive Development:
- Order holds true for
all children everywhere
- No skipping of
stages
- "Man in the
middle" of nature/nurture debate - but is he?
Genetic
Influences on Development:
- In humans, how can
we study genetic influences on development?
- Twin studies
(identical and fraternal twins raised together and apart)
- Adoption studies
Genetic
Influences on Development (Cont):
- What characteristics
or traits are most influenced by heredity?
- What traits seem to
have little relationship to genetic endowment?
Behavior
geneticists believe that individual differences among people are influenced
by 3 factors:
· 1.
Genes
· 2.
Shared environmental influences
Experiences that individuals living in the same home environment share that
work to make them similar to one another
· 3.
Non-shared environmental influences
Experiences unique to the individual that are not shared by other members of
the family and that tend to make members of the same family different from
one other
Piaget's
Stages of Cognitive Development:
- Related to
chronological age
- QUALITATIVELY
distinct
- Each stage
represents a "great leap forward" in child's ability to handle
new concepts
Four
Stages of Cognitive Development:
- Sensorimotor stage
(birth - 2 years)
- Preoperational stage
(2 - 7 years)
- Concrete operational
stage (7 - 11 years)
- Formal operational
stage (11 years +)
Overview
of Stages:
SENSORIMOTOR INTELLIGENCE- babies organize physical action
schemes, such as sucking, grasping, and hitting, for dealing with the
immediate world
PREOPERATIONAL THOUGHT- children develop capacity to think--using symbols
and internal images--but their thinking is illogical, very different from
adults
CONCRETE OPERATIONS- children develop capacity to think systematically,
but only when they can refer to concrete objects and activities.
FORMAL OPERATIONS- young people develop capacity to think systematically
on a purely abstract and hypothetical plane
Sensorimotor
Stage
Infants use sensory information and motor responses to
learn about the world
Substages
of Sensorimotor Stage (Overview) :
- Reflexes
- Primary circular
reactions
- Secondary circular
reactions
- Coordination of
secondary schemes
- Tertiary circular
reactions
- Beginning of
representational thought
Reflexes
- Birth - 1 month
- Reflexes become more
efficient and voluntary
Primary
Circular Reactions:
- 1 - 4 months
- Repetitions of
interesting activities centered on infant's own body
Secondary
Circular Reactions:
- 4 - 8 months
- Repetitions of
responses that produce interesting results in the external world
(Insert
on) Infant DQ and IQ:
- DQ: A number that
summarizes how well or how poorly an infant performs on important
developmental milestones compared to other infants of the same age
- But, correlations
between infant DQ and later IQ are low
So what in infancy predicts later IQ?
- Speed of habituation
- Preference for
novelty (tendency to prefer a novel stimulus to a familiar one)
- quality of home
environment (measured by the HOME inventory)--especially parental
involvement with child and opportunities for stimulation
Coordination
of Secondary Schemes:
- 8 - 12 months
- Combining 2 or more
previously-mastered schemes to obtain a goal
Tertiary
Circular Reactions
- 12 - 18 months
- Purposefully varying
activities to observe results
Beginning
of Representational (Symbolic) Thought:
- 18 - 24 months
- Mentally reasoning
about a problem prior to acting (thinking without acting)
Object
Permanence:
- The idea that an
object continues to exist even though it can't be perceived
- Develops gradually,
in stages
- Basic to an
understanding of space, time, causality
Object
Permanence Development:
- 0- 1 mo. No
expectations or searching
- 1- 4 mos. Passive
expectations
- 4- 8 mos. Search
for partially covered objects
- 8- 12 mos. Search
for completely covered objects (but only where they last found it)
- 12- 18 mos.
Search following visible displacements
- 18- 24 mos.
Search following hidden (i.e., covert) displacements
END
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