Psychology - Cognitive Development

A mental representative of how you see something.

A basic building block of intelligent behaviour - a way of organizing knolwedge.

They enable us to organize, store and interpret information about our experiences.

When we use our existing knowledge to make sense of new situations, and changing this knowledge when existing knowledge is inadequate.

Adaptation occurs through two processes ; assimilation and accomodation.

Assimilation - The process of incorporating our experiences into already existing schemas.

Accommodation - the process of modifying existing schemas in order to meet the demands of new experiences.

When a child has assimlated the schemas for all its experiences, it is in a stae of equilibration

However they will come across new experiences that will create an imbalance.

Born in Switzerland

Married with 3 children

Interested in childrens cognitive development

He was the first to study cognitive development.

demonstrated that children think differenlty to adults

Observation and experiment were the rearch methods used.

His research was conducted on his own children and his friends children.

Birth to Two years

Two subsections;

1 = birth to 8 months - little evidence of thinking

no awareness of past or present

Deals with the world through sensations and movements.

2 = 8 to 24 months - actions become intentional

simple pretend play

Object permanence

Aim - To identify the age at which babies devlop object permanence

Results - Babies at 10 months old continued to reach forthe toy, showing they have object permanence; those yunger than this ave not yet developed it as they didnt look for the toy.

Conclusion - By the age of ten months, babies understand that if they can no longer see an object, it still exists.

Two Sub sections - Preconceptual period and Intuitive Period

Preconceptual Period - 2-4 years

Intuitive Period - 4-7 years

Clear evidence of thinking

Thought isnt always logical

cant form mental operations

2 - 4 years

Child makes more use of symbols, e.g boxes to make train

shows 3 errors in thought ;

Egocentrism

Animism

Centration

the inability to see from other people point of view

The three mountains task.