L3 Piaget

• What is constructivism?

  • When a child constructs their own reality through the interaction between their experiences and ideas.
  • They begin in a state of adualism, and innate actions prompt them to interact with the environment
  • This tells them what is self-generated and what is world generated.
• What is the sensorimotor stage?

  • age: birth-2yrs
  • Experiences the world through movement and senses
  • Develops schemas
  • Begins to act intentionally
  • Starts to understand object permanence
• What is the pre-operational stage?

  • Age 2-6 yrs
  • Child acquires motor skills but does not understand conservation of physical properties.
  • Begins the stage thinking egocentrically but starts to understand other minds by the end.
• What is the concrete operational stage?

  • Age 6-11 yrs
  • Child can think logically about physical objects and events and understands conservation of physical properties.
• What is the formal operational stage?

  • Age adolescent to adult.
  • Child can think logically about abstract propositions and hypotheticals.
• What is assimilation?

  Assimilation is taking in new information from the world and applying it to existing schemas. An example of assimilation would be a child implementing a social rule at school that is not a social rule at home.
• What is accommodation?

  When infants revise their schemas in light of new information.
• Problems with Piaget’s theory:

  • It was largely based on the child’s inability to pass tasks e.g. the three mountains task or the Sally-Anne task.
  • However, search failure may be due to limited performance and an inability to execute the necessary actions to solve the task rather than a lack of competence.
  • Some observations show babies reaching out for objects in the dark which suggests they understand object permanence.