Piagets theory of cognitive development

Cards (9)

  • what is assimilation
    > new experience understood within existing schema
    > doesn't radically change our understanding (child meets new breed of dog)
  • what is accommodation
    > new experience that requires a major schema change,
    >cant be assimilated because it is so different so a new schema is needed (child has pet cat then meets a dog and tries to encorporate it into their dog schema but has to make new schema)
  • what does piaget believe about cognitive development
    >cognitive development happens through innate abilities, environmental events and stages of intellectual development
  • what is a schema
    >unit of knowledge of how the world is represented in your mind
    >cognitive development includes the construction of detailed schema
    >children are born with few schema but construct new ones in infancy
  • what is our motivation to learn
    > unpleasant emotions associated with disequilibrium of not understanding something
    >children feel encouraged to understand and develop new schema when assimilation isn't enough
    >this results in equilibration
  • what is equilibration
    >preferred mental state of balance
    >occurs when exeperiences in the world match our current schema
  • how does piaget think knowledge is discovered
    >knowledge actively discovered through mental structures of functional variants where we have to accommodate and assimilate to swing between equilibrium and disequilibrium.
    >variant structures are how schemas change and develop as knowledge is discovered
  • strength of piagets theory
    >impact on early years development and education: classrooms focused on play and activity to discover new aspects of world to engage children and construct own understanding of world
  • limitations of piagets theory
    >limited explanation: Piaget doesn't see experts as a central role for learning which contrasts vygotsky who sees learning as a social process
    >equilibration overemphasised: not all children equally motivated to remove disequilibrium, lacks validity as equilibration was central role
    >role of language: Piaget sees language as just as cognitive ability what develops in line with other abilities, but vygotsky sees language as more important