chapter six off to school: cognitive and physical development in middle childhood
TRANSCRIPT
Chapter Six
Off to School: Cognitive and Physical Development in
Middle Childhood
Learning Objectives
According to Piaget, how do children think during the concrete operational and formal operational stages?
According to information processing theories, how do children learn to improve their learning and remembering?
How can we apply research about learning to children’s school experiences?
Piaget’s Final Two Stages: More Sophisticated Thinking
Concrete-Operational Period (7 - 11 years) Can use symbols to perform mental operations Mental operations are mental actions that produce
consistent results Can reverse thought Less influenced by appearance, immediate
perceptions, and egocentrism than preoperational children
Limitation: Thinking is bound to the concrete, here and no; cannot deal effectively with abstract or hypothetical
More Sophisticated Thinking The Formal Operational Period (11 years - adulthood)
Children can reason abstractly and hypothetically At this stage children tend to use deductive reasoning
at a higher level than concrete operational children Deductive reasoning is drawing conclusions from
facts or rules Understand that hypothetical situations may not
produce the same results as “real world” problems Ex: A feather might be able to break a glass in a
hypothetical situation even though a feather does not break a glass in “real life.”
Criticisms of Piaget’s View Adolescents who are in the formal operational
stage may not always reason at that level
Adolescents’ thinking is often egocentric and irrational
Cognitive development continues after reaching the formal operational stage; Piaget’s stages do not account for this continued development
Information-Processing Strategies for Learning and Remembering
Most human thinking takes place in working memory Working Memory - type of memory in which a
small number of items can be stored briefly
Information may be transferred to long-term memory Long-Term Memory - permanent storehouse
for memories that has unlimited capacity
Memory Strategies: A Few Highlights Gradually, children learn about their own memory
processes and evaluate them
Organization - information to be remembered is structured so that related information is placed together
Elaboration - information is embellished to make it more memorable
Metacognition—Thinking About Thinking An awareness of your own thought processes and
strategies Becomes more advanced as children age Metacognitive knowledge – awareness of one’s
own cognitive processes Metamemory – a child’s understanding of their
own memory Cognitive self-regulation – the ability to select
strategies for learning and monitor those strategies effectively to determine if they are successful
Monitoring
Monitoring is part of metacognition Gradually, children learn about their own
memory processes and begin to evaluate them
Elementary school-aged children can often identify information which they have not learned, but do not focus their attention on learning it