PSY 2114 - Notes.docx - Infancy to Preschool: Cognitive and...

Infancy to Preschool: Cognitive and Language
Cognitive Development
Piaget’s Theory
 children understand the world with schemes, psychological structures that organize experience
 believed that children naturally try to make sense of their world – they construct their own
knowledge
Criticism to Piaget’s Theory
o underestimates cognitive competence in infants and young children
 behaviour – what the child shows us in a test/task, what we can observe
 competence – the true underlying ability the child we’re interested in
o vague concerning processes and mechanisms of change
o doesn’t account for variability in children’s performance
o undervalues the influence of the sociocultural environment on cognitive development
How Children Learn the World
Assimilation
o taking in information that is compatible with what one already knows
Accommodation
o changing existing knowledge based on new knowledge
Equilibrium
o the process by which children reorganize their schemes to return to a state of
equilibrium when disequilibrium occurs (disequilibrium – much more time
accommodating and much less time assimilating)
Period of Development Age Range
Sensorimotor period Infancy (0-2 years)
Preoperational period Preschool and early elementary school years (2-7
years)
Concrete operational period Middle and late elementary school years (7-11
years)
Former operational period Adolescence and adulthood (11 years and up)
Sensorimotor Period
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