Theories

• Observing children at play

  • Cognitive, language, social, and emotional development are integrated throughout their activities
• Young children involved in dramatic play or art activities


  • School-age children playing board games or involved in sports activities
• Piaget's theory of cognitive development

  Children think in an entirely different way than adults
• Piaget's view on how children learn

  Children learn by discovery - "little scientists"
• Conservation


  A higher level thinking skill: Understanding that changing the type of glass that liquid is in, for example, doesn't change the amount. Or laying out checkers differently doesn't affect how many checkers there are
• Piaget believed that children under 7 did not have the concept of conservation
• Equilibrium


  A state of balance, a result of people's need to have order in their lives
• Tendency towards organization


  Piaget believed that each person is born with the ability to organize his/her thinking processes into structures and that this tendency to adapt to the environment is inherited
• Organization


  Allows you to represent your thinking into categories to make sense of your world
• Tendency toward adaptation


  Refers to the way people adjust to their environment
• On-going interactions with the environment constantly change people as they change the environment
• Piaget's stages of cognitive development

  • Sensorimotor (0-2)
  • Preoperational (2-7)
  • Concrete Operational (7-11)
  • Formal Operations (11-15)
• Sensorimotor stage (0-2)


  • Learn primarily through the senses and through movement
  • Learns by manipulating objects
  • Begins to make use of imitation, memory, and thought
  • Begins to recognize that objects continue to exist even when out of sight (Object permanence)
  • Moves from reflex actions to goal directed activity
• Preoperational stage (2-7)


  • Begin to use symbols (e.g. a box becomes a train)
  • Egocentric: world revolves around me--has difficulties seeing another person's point of view
  • Develops use of language and ability to think in symbolic form
  • Reasoning based on actual experience and may not reflect logic
• Concrete Operational stage (7-11)

  • Able to solve concrete (hands-on) problems using logic
  • Understands conservation: physical properties may change but object conserves (keeps) most of its original properties
  • Is able to classify and seriate (put things in order)
  • Understands reversibility: what is done with objects can be reversed or undone
• Formal Operational stage (adolescence - adult)


  • Able apply logic in dealing with abstract ideas, concepts, and issues
  • Becomes more scientific in thinking
  • Able to reason about hypothetical situations
  • Develops concerns about issues and identity
• Piaget's contributions


  • Emphasis on how children learned rather than what children learned
  • Belief that the acquisition of knowledge was enhanced through experiences and activities
• New research shows that children exhibit behaviors earlier than Piaget thought
• Research also shows that Piaget may have underestimated children's cognitive abilities
• Applications of Piaget's theory

  • Acceptance of discovery learning as important for both children and adults
  • Increased awareness of the individual differences in learning and development
• Piaget was a cognitive theorist
• ID: toward fulfillment of our needs - pleasureprinciple: striving Source of our unconsciousimpulses for immediate gratification.Copyright © 2018 by Macmillan Learning
• EGO:Role of ego to mediate betweenuncontrolled demands of the id and thelimits imposed by the real world – realityprinciple: attempts to satisfy id's demands inways that recognize life as it is, not as the idwants it to be.
• SUPEREGO:Starts to develop as children begin toidentify with their parents' moral standards(around4-5) - relentless conscience: thatdistinguishes right from wrong; primeobjective is to keep id in check.
• Developing emotions


  • Birth distress; Contentment
  • Social smile (6 weeks)
  • Laughter; curiosity (3-4 months)
  • Full, responsive smiles (4-8 months)
  • Anger (4-8 months)
  • Fear of social events (9-14 months)
  • Fear of unexpected sights and sounds (18 months)
  • Self-awareness; pride; shame; embarrassment (18 months)
• Early emotions


  High emotional responsiveness; Reactive pain and pleasure to complex social awareness
• Smiling and laughing


  Social smile (6 weeks) is evoked by viewing human faces; Laughter (3 to 4 months) is often associated with curiosity
• Anger first expressed at around 6 months; Is a healthy response to frustration
• Sadness


  Appears in first months; Indicates withdrawal and is accompanied by increased production of cortisol; Is a stressful experience for infants
• Fear


  Emerges at about 9 months in response to people, things, or situations; Stranger wariness; Separation anxiety
• If separation anxiety remains strong after age 3, it may be considered an emotional disorder
• Toddler emotions


  • Anger and fear become less frequent and more focused; Laughing and crying become louder and more discriminating; Temper tantrums may appear
• Social awareness


  Influenced by context and culture; Pride; Shame; Embarrassment; Disgust; Guilt; Empathy and generosity
• Self-awareness


  Part of foundation for emotional growth; Person's realization that he or she is a distinct individual whose body, mind, and actions are separate from those of other people; Empathy and generosity emerge apart from selfish motives
• Mirror recognition experiment


  Babies aged 9–24 months looked into a mirror after a dot of rouge had been put on their noses; None of the babies younger than 12 months old reacted as if they knew the mark was on them; 15- to 24-month-olds showed self-awareness by touching their own noses with curiosity
• Temperament


  Biologically based core of individual differences in approach style and environmental response; Stable across time and situations
• Temperament vs personality


  Temperamental traits are genetic; Personality traits are learned; Temperamental traits may lead to personality differences
• Brain maturation


  • Crucial for emotional development, especially in response to others; Experience (context, ethnicity, culture) connects amygdala and prefrontal cortex; Innate reactions and caregiver actions activate and prune neurons in the moldable infant brain
• Experience and culture


  Shape functional anatomy of self-representation; Emotional social impulses directly connected to maturation of the anterior cingulate gyrus and other parts of limbic system; Related to development of preferences for specific others
• New York Longitudinal Study (NYLS) found infants manifest nine traits that cluster into four categories; only three dimensions found in future studies