Class notes
Developmental Psychology Study Guide 2
- Course
- Developmental psychology
- Institution
- Washington University In St. Louis
Study guide/ class notes for developmental psychology
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COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT:Video: interplay between cognition and motor development
Babbling
Locomoting - mom puts ball purposely out of reach to get her to move
Piaget: "Epistemologist Extraordinaire"
Studied children to understand the origin of knowledge and how knowledge is
represented, published when he was 11 years old because he classified so well
Methodology:
Observation - children from infancy onward
Classification - of phenomena, make sense and order of the observations
Clinical interview skills - his observation of children involved interviews with
children
Patterns of test errors - interested in Simon & Binet's intelligence tests (different
cognitive tasks that typical kids of different ages should be able to do)
o believed a lot of information can be found out through the reasons why
children can't complete the tasks, reflection of child's thinking and
cognitive development at that time
Theory = Stage Theory:
Qualitative change happens during each stage of development, each is
qualitatively different from the prior stage (staircase)
o Very discontinuous
Broad applicability - the type of thinking during each stage of cognitive
development applies to everything they do, approach all cognitive problems in
the same sort of way, consistency in thinking
Brief transitions - happens suddenly
Invariant sequence - everyone does it in the same order
Fundamental Assumptions:
Schemes = mental structures for organizing experiences in the world, each stage
represents different schemes
child as "scientist" = human infant comes into the world naturally curious and
ready to explore their environment, learn things through exploration
Intellectual adaption involves:
o Assimilation - when a new experience can be easily integrated and
incorporated into an existing scheme
, oAccommodation - when assimilation doesn't work and you need to modify
your scheme for a new experience to fit
Equilibrium: assimilation and accommodation are working fine
Disequilibrium: schemes don’t work anymore and you can't even modify your
scheme anymore - you have to throw out an entire scheme and build an entirely
new one which propels the child into the next stage of development
Stages of Development:
1. Sensorimotor = birth --> 2 years
o Substage 1 (birth - 1 month)
Reflexes as building blocks of cognitive development, change/become
more coordinated with experience
o Substage 2 (1-4 months)
Different processes tied to larger behaviors based on experience
with the world
Scanning allows reaching and grasping
Primary circular reactions: actions repeated over and over
An infant does something by accident (puts hand up by face) but
then will do it intentionally all the time (sucking) - focused on
infant's own body as opposed to the external world
o Substage 3 (4-8 months)
Secondary circular reactions: repeated actions are now related to the
external world/done on an external object (banging or throwing
objects)
Object permanence (about 8 months) - if you cover object, they don't
know its there until 8 months of age
o Substage 4 (8-12 months)
Coordinated secondary circular reactions - intentionality
A-not-B error illustrates that they don’t have a complete
understanding of object permanence until the end of this
sensorimotor stage
Hide things in "well A" many times, cover both A and B, and
infant learns to take off the cover for "well A."Then switch and
put the object in "well B" and even though infant watches you do
it, they’ll take the blanket off of "well A"
o Substage 5 (12-18 months)
Tertiary circular reactions = intentional variations of actions
"experimentation" with different actions to see what's going to
happen
o Substage 6 (18-24 months)
, Symbolic representations - waving goodbye, LANGUAGE, etc.
Whole new way of interacting with world so schemes of
sensorimotor isn't need and child is propelled into the next stage
Deferred imitation - occurs later in time, memory of mental
representation is held and then imitated
2. Preoperational = 2 --> 7 years
o Use of symbols (language)
o Imaginative play (shows understanding of symbols)
o Egocentrism = inability to see/think about something from someone else's
perspective
Mountains, interviews about 2 week old brother, etc.
o Conservation = doesn't have the ability to understand that an object stays the
same even when its physical appearance changes
Liquid in two glasses, but child says taller one has more
o Centration = children will hone in on only one aspect/dimension of a
problem/situation and ignore the other relevant dimensions
Often perceptually salient
o Classification Abilities: more dogs than animals (3 dogs and 2 cats) even
though they were just able to tell you there were 3 dogs and 5 animals
o Appearance vs. Reality:
"5 year old Sally is given a baby rattle and is smiling to be polite"
All will tell you that Sally looks happy, but 4 year olds have difficulty
telling you that Sally is really sad
o Shrinking Room Study:
Symbolic representation of scale models
Hide troll doll behind sofa pillow, then take child outside of room and
have a scale model of the same room, but 2.5 year olds have trouble
finding it again
By 3.5 they can
Told children they had a magical shrinking machine, put doll in front
of shrinking room, leave room and machine makes noises and place
smaller troll in its place
Then did same experiment again, tell child they're going to
shrink the actual room
Children usually found Terry in the "shrinking room," but rarely in the
standard condition
3. Concrete Operations = 7 --> 11/12 yrs
o Use logic and mental operations
o Reversibility (2 + 4 = 6, 4 + 2 = 6)
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