Stage 1 Psychology

Human Development

Piaget (1896-1980)

Piaget

• Cognitive development

(as opposed to physical, emotional, social etc)

What alters how children think?

• Interaction with the environment and maturation gradually alter the way children think

• Schema – mental files for each bit of knowledge

• Assimilation – involves interpreting new experiences in terms of existing mental structures (schema) without changing them

Dogs

Cats

Horses

• Assimilation – involves interpreting new experiences in terms of existing mental structures (schema) without changing them

Dogs

Cats

Horses

Fox

• Accommodation – involves changing existing mental structures (schema) to explain new experiences

Sensorimotor stage (0-2 years)

Gradual move to representational thought

Object permanence

Language

Da Da Da

4-8 months

Sensorimotor stage (0-2 years)

6 substages:– Modification of reflexes (0-

1 month)– Primary circular reactions

(1-4 months)– Secondary circular

reactions (4-10 months)– Coordination of secondary

schemes (10-12 months)– Tertiary circular reactions

(12-18 months)– Mental combinations (18-

24 months)

Basic reflexes• Trial and error schema

– Own body (thumb sucking)– Objects (shaking a rattle)

• Combining intentional schema (getting a toy from behind a box – pushing and grasping)

• Trial and error explorations (dropping or throwing things from different positions)

• Early attempts to mentally represent things (opening/closing a hand to rehearse getting the lid off a box)

Baby Reflexes

Age Average number of words

8 months 0

10 months 1

12 months 3

15 months 19

18 months 22

21 months 118

24 months 272

Number of Words

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

8 10 12 15 18 21 24

Months

Word

s s

Language

Preoperational thought

• Increased mental representational thought

• Intuitive logic

• Conservation

Representational thought (Let the number of cats = x)

• Language Number of Words

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5 5.5 6

Age (years)

Word

s

Age

Number of

Words

1 3

1.5 22

2 272

2.5 446

3 896

3.5 1222

4 1540

4.5 1870

5 2072

5.5 2289

6 2562

Artwork

Artwork

Artwork

Mental representation

in play

Symbolic thought in play

Intuitive logic

• Egocentrism – can’t see other’s point of view

• Animism – Inanimate objects have conscious feelings and life

• Artificialism – Natural events or objects are under someone’s control

Conservation

Concrete operations

• Reversibility

• Decentration – multiple focuses

• Dynamic transformations (not just static end point)

• Class inclusion

• Transitive inferences

Formal Operations

Ability to operate with abstract information

• If… then…

• Abstract to other times and other situations

• Mathematics and algebra

Habituation

Habituation