piaget’s theory of cog dev

• piaget’s theory of cognitive development suggests that the development of cognition depends on active discovery, referring the child to a scientist
• a schema is the mental framework of our beliefs and knowledge about the world
• schemas influence our cognitive processing and provide cognitive shortcuts, avoiding sensory overload
• schemas become more sophisticated with time, allowing us to understand more complex situations
• some schemas are innate e.g. sucking and gripping
• accommodation occurs when we are exposed to new information which challenges our schema, we accommodate it by forming a new schema
• assimilation occurs when we are exposed to new information which doesnt challenge the schema, so we assimilate it into our existing schema
• the differences between accommodation and assimilation is the creation of new schemas
• AO3 of schemas:

  • unrepresentative sample - white, middle class, well-educated families - lacks ecological validity
  • comparison w/ vygotsky’s theory
  • research supporting the importance of discovery learning
  • prompted changes in education
• equilibrium is when the object fits with the schema
• disequilibrium is when the object doesn‘t fit with the schema
• research on schemas: bartlett - war of the ghosts study, participants changed parts of the story to fit their schema after a certain period of time