Cognitive approach

• A schema is a unit of knowledge
• At birth we have a small number of schemas which allow us to interact with people
• Piaget said that the motivation to learn comes from an event where the schemas possessed by a person are not able to explain something new. This causes disequilibrium and a motivation to adapt the schemas to explain the new situation.
• Assimilation is a way of learning which is used when existing schemas have similarities to the required schemas. The existing schemas are added to in order to understand the new situation
• accommodation is a way of learning which is used when the existing schemas are not similar enough to the ones needed to understand the situation. The schemas are fundamentally changed or new ones are created in order to understand the situation
• According to Piaget, learning occurs by schemas being changed through assimilation or accomodation
• Fantz found that babies which were only a few days old preferred faces assembled in the right order to faces which were scrambled. This suggests that Face schemas are innate
• Piaget had 4 stages of cognitive development: 1. sensorimotor 2. pre operational 3. concrete operational 4. formal operational
• Piaget's sensorimotor stage takes place from 0-2 years. The focus is on physical sensation and coordination, as well as learning through trial and error. Early in this stage children struggle with object permenence
• Object permanence is the understanding that when an object is no loner visible, it still exists. Children under 8 months do not have object permanence, so when an object is hidden they lose interest.
• Object permanence is learned at 8 months old
• object permanence is developed in the sensorimotor stage
• After 8 months, a baby will look for a hidden object, showing object permemnance
• Piaget's pre-operational stage is from 2-7 years old.
• Piaget's pre-operational stage is from 2-7 years old. They are physically mobile and have early language skills. In this stage children are able to perform conservation tasks: they can understand that if the appearance of something is changed, the volume of it has not (e.g. pouring liquid into a different size container - they will understand that the volume of liquid has not changed.). Piaget said that children in this stage are egocentric (cannot take the perspective of another person). They also struggle with class inclusion.
• Class inclusion is the ability to classify objects into more than one category at the same time. Children were shown 5 dogs and 2 cats and asked "Are there more dogs or animals?". Children who could not perform class inclusion answered 'dogs' because they could not understand that dogs are both animals and dogs. Children in the pre operational stage struggle with this.
• Perner et al showed a child a smarties tube and then showed them that it was filled with pencils and not smarties. When another child entered the room the first child was asked what the other child would think was in the tube. children over 4 would say 'smarties'. Children under 4 and autistic children over 4 would say 'pencils'. This is because they are egocentric so cannot take others' perspectives.
• Piaget's concrete operations stage takes place from 7 to 11 years old. Children in this stage are much better at class inclusion and egocentrism. They have much better reasoning skills for the physical properties of objects.
• Piaget's Formal operations stage take place from 11 years upwards. They are able to follow the form of an argument and use scientific reasoning and abstract ideas.
• Vygotsky agreed with Piaget's ideas that cognitive abilities develop in a sequence and that they develop in different stages. Different to Piaget, Vygotsky thought that cognitive development was a social process of learning from 'experts'
• Vygotsky said that children learn their reasoning abilities from experts. This leads to cultural differences in reasoning abilities.
• Vygotsky had the idea of a zone of proximal development. It refers to the range of tasks which a learner cannot perform themselves but can perform with the help of an expert. He believed that performing tasks just outside of the learner's abilities with the help of an expert resulted in optimal development
• In order to help a learner perform tasks in the zone of proximal development, an expert can use scaffolding.
• The Vygotsky-Bruner model of scaffolding involves using five techniques to help a learner perform a task. 1 - Recruitment: engaging the child's interest in a task. 2 - reduction of degrees in freedom: focusing them on the task and where to start. 3 - Direction Maintenance: keeping the learner motivated to continue and complete the task. 4 - marking critical features: highlighting the most important parts of a task. 5 - demonstration
• During learning, scaffolding declines from a high degree of support to very little support.
• (go through and highlight for cognitive development)
• Baillargeon said that younger babies have a better understanding of the world than Piaget said.
• Baillargeon thought that babies might have object permanence earlier than 8 months but lack the motor skills to look for them. He designed his ‘Violation Of Expectations’ study to test his theory.
• Baillargeon’s Violation Of Expectations study. 2 events were seen by a baby: the ‘expected’ event and an unexpected event which did not fit what the baby expects to happen. 24 babies from 5 to 6 months were used. In the expected condition, a rabbit would pass behind a wall and appear at the other side. In the unexpected condition, a tall rabbit passes behind the wall. The baby expects to be able to see the top of the rabbit’s ears poking out the top but they don’t. If the child has object permanence, they would be confused at why they didn't see the rabbit poking over the wall.
• Baillargeon’s Violation Of Expectations study showed that children have better object permanence than Piaget said.
• Piaget tested egocentrism with his three mountains task. Children were shown a model of three mountains with landmarks on them, placed so that some landmarks would be obstructed from certain viewpoints. When a teddy was placed at another perspective on the three mountains, the child was asked what the teddy could see. Children in the pre operational stage would describe their own perspective and would be unable to take the perspective of the teddy bear because they are egocentric.
• Gopnik et al did a study on whether children understand the preferences of others. group 1 was children aged under 18 months and group 2 was children aged over 18 months. The experimenter would present the child with a bowl of broccoli and a bowl of crackers. The experimenter would show a preference for broccoli over crackers and ask the child to give them the one that they (the experimenter) liked. children under 18 months old would give the experimenter what THEY liked most (crackers) and children over 18 months would give the experimenter the thing that they showed a preference for.
• Wimmer and Perner told children aged 3 - 4 years old that ‘Max’ left his chocolate in the blue cupboard and his mum used some of it for cooking and left the rest in the green cupboard. When asked where max would look for his chocolate, 3 year olds would say ‘green cupboard’ and 4 year old would say ‘blue cupboard’
• Simon Baron-Cohen did the Sally Anne Task study. 2 dolls were placed in front of the child. One was called Anne, one was called sally. Sally would put a marble in her basket, when Sally wasn’t looking, Anne would move the marble into her basket. They were asked where Sally would look for the marble. The participants were 20 ASD children and 14 down’s syndrome children. They found that ASD children easily completed false belief tasks. This means that ASD cannot be explained by theory of mind deficits.
• ASD stands for Autistic Spectrum Disorder