Development

• Brainstem


  Connects to the spinal cord and autonomic nervous system
• Thalamus


  Relays sensory information to the cerebral cortex
• Cerebellum


  Coordinates movement and balance
• Cerebral cortex


  Outer layer of the brain where higher mental functions occur
• Nature and nurture


  • Biological (such as genes/evolution) and environmental (such as learning) influences on the brain while it grows
• Accommodation


  Adding new information to existing schemas or creating a new schema
• Piaget's stages of cognitive development

  • Sensorimotor stage
  • Pre-operational stage
  • Concrete operational stage
  • Formal operational stage
• Egocentricity


  Only being able to use the world from your own point of view
• Conservation studies


  • Hughes Paceman Doll Study
  • McGarrigle & Donaldson Naughty Teddy Study
• Fixed mindset


  Believing that your abilities are innately set and can't be changed, leading to giving up easily after failure
• Growth mindset


  Believing that abilities can be improved with effort, leading to persisting through failure
• Praise


  A reward, when someone receives praise for something they have done
• Self-efficacy


  Our belief in our own capability
• Verbaliser


  Learning style of someone who processes information through words and sounds
• Visualiser


  Learning style of someone who processes information through pictures or diagrams
• There is no scientific evidence for learning styles, so teachers shouldn't use them
• Willingham's Learning Theory looks at what cognitive psychology and neuroscience studies have found to help us know how to prevent forgetting
• Neural structures


  Simple structures in the nervous system that start to develop a week in the womb
• Early brain development


  1. Sperm fertilises egg

  2. Single cell divides into two

  3. Two cells divide into four

  4. Cells keep dividing but no neural structures

  5. Cells arrange into tube-like shape (future brain and spinal cord)

  6. Head starts growing around tube-like structure

  7. Brain and spinal cord develop further
• Cortex


  • Divided into two hemispheres (left and right)
  • Responsible for all thinking and processing
  • Not fully developed at birth, develops throughout lifetime
• Thalamus


  • Located deep inside the brain
  • Acts as a hub, receiving signals from other areas and sending signals
• Cerebellum


  • Means 'little brain'
  • Located near top of spinal cord
  • Main responsibility is balance
  • One of the last parts of the brain to reach maturity
• Brain stem


  • Responsible for automatic functions like breathing
  • Carries motor and sensory functions between brain and body
  • Most highly developed part of the brain at birth for survival
• Nature


  Things you inherit from your genes, present from the moment the first cell is formed (e.g. skin colour, hair colour)
• Nurture


  Influences from our family, friends and environment (e.g. what we eat, nicotine exposure)
• Smoking when pregnant


  Slows down brain growth and affects the baby's body, leading to smaller babies
• Mother contracts rubella in first 20 weeks of pregnancy


  Can cause brain damage to unborn babies
• Babies appear to recognise their mother's voice immediately after birth, showing the brain is changing before birth in response to external stimuli
• Cognitive development


  The way a person's thinking, knowledge and intelligence changes as they get older
• Schemas


  Mental frameworks of information based on knowledge and past experience
• Piaget's theory of cognitive development

  • Understanding of schemas and how these are formed and developed
  • The four stages of development
  • Egocentrism and conservation
  • How this can be applied to education
• Piaget said that children's cognitive abilities develop in four stages (sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operational and formal operational)
• Schemas develop through

  1. Assimilation

  2. Accommodation
• Assimilation


  When a child acquires new information that is a small change, adding to an existing schema
• Accommodation


  When a child acquires new information that is a big change, creating a new schema
• Egocentrism


  A person's tendency to only see the world from their own point of view
• Decentred


  The ability to see from another person's point of view
• Three mountains task


  • Shows that young children are egocentric, they describe what they can see not what the doll can see
• Conservation


  The ability to understand that quantity can remain the same even if the physical appearance changes
• Piaget said that children under the age of 7 do not have the ability to conserve