theories

Schema = mental structures used to organise past experiences and provide a way of understanding future experiences e.g. how to ride a bike

Operation = process of working something out in your head. Young children have to act and try things out in the real world to understand things e.g. counting on fingers - older children & adults do more in their heads

Assimilation = existing schemas have to be modified to fit new situations. Existing schemas are expanded or new ones are created e.g. baby uses it's innate feeding schema to **** on all ******* (mother's or baby bottles)

Equilibrium = new experience can easily be understood using existingschemas e.g. child can deal with the world

New Situation = novel situation/stimulus the child has not yet experiencede.g. baby encounters a drinking beaker for ther first time

Disequilibrium = a new experience cannot be easily understood usingexisting schemas e.g. baby's ****ing schema is not appropriate - big mess made!

Accommodation = new situations are understood in terms of the schemas the child already possesses. World is 'fitted' into what the child alreadyknows

• Constructivist approach - child constructs a mental representation of the world, through development of schemas using assimilation & accommodation
• Independently expore world and learn what it needs to know without assitance/instruction from others - 'little scientist'
• Cognitive development is limited by maturational processes
• Language only appears when child is at a sufficient stage of development - language is a result of C.D rather than a driving force
• They are universal - all children pass through them
• Sequence of stages remains the same for all children - they areinvariant.
• Age at which a child passes through any stage can vary

Sensorimotor - Birth > 2 years Childs understanding of world is restricted to sensations &movements Cognitive system is limited to motor reflexes at birth

• Begin to act intentionally e.g. shaking a rattle to make a noise
• Achieves object permanence - things continue to exist when no longer present
• Learning takes place via assimilation & accommodation
• Period of 'trial-and-error' beings
• Thinking is egocentric Preoperation - 2 > 7 years Preconceptual Period - 2 > 4 years - make use of symbols/words/images e.g. pretend a row of blocks is a series of carriages in a train, show characterisitc errors in thought- egocentrism & centration, dominated by perception Intuitive Period - 4 > 7 years - child can class things more generally Concrete Operational - 7 > 11 years Can think logically about objects & events Achieves conservation of number/mass/weight

Object Permanence = a child knows how to react to the disappearance of an object they knew was previously there e.g. a baby loses it's teddy, won't look for it, but won't forget it - 'out of sight out of mind'

Conservation = ability to understand that changing the appearance of a material, does not affect it's mass etc e.g. changing the shape of modelling clay does not change it's mass etc

Egocentrisim = when a child cannot see the world form anyone else's point of view e.g. hiding behind hands, 'you can't see me can you?' - 'if i know you know'

Centration = child can only deal with one situation at a time e.g. box of blue triangle & squares - only able to concentrate on the shape or colour, not both (decentering = opposite)

Abstract Thought = ideas & concepts that you cannot see, but know is there e.g. religion

Object Permanence Research -

• Observed infants looking at attractive object when removed from sight
• From 8 months, actively look for the object e.g. pushed behind a screen, infants would push screen away
• Prior to 8 months, unable to understand existence of object when out of sight, O.P not developed
• Sometimes when O.P. has developed, may look wrongly even when seen object before - multiple steps involved Conservation Research -

• Liquid experiment (tall/short glasses)
• Number of counters experiment (rows pushed together/spaced apart)

Alternative - McGarrigle + Donaldson > children did understand there were the same amount of counters, assumed Piaget wanted them to say there were fewer; Piaget condition 16% were correct, exp. condition ('naughty teddy') 62% were correct = Piaget's methods were flawed, what the adult's want to hear

Samples small and unrepresentative few participant details given & often used his own children Task Difficulty

In tasks easier than Piaget's children had ability much earlier than he suggested May have confused children Research Methods Clinical interviews = too subjective & liable to lead child in certain direction - valid method, comparison of data maybe difficult

Observations = detailed & very extensive

• Failure To Successfully Complete task
• Object permanence may occur earlier than he believed
• Other possible reasons for failing to search for object - loss of interest
• Does not imply child is unable to successfully complete task

• Culture, social interaction & language are fundamental to C.D
• Child actively constructs it's own knowledge, which is socially & culturally determined by interaction with parents, peers and more experienced others
• 'Child as apprentice'

• Learning emerges in a social context e.g. mothers and children interacting, where the mother is modelling behaviour
• Child learns by watching and working with others
• The behaviours learned determined by society and culture of individual

Research Evidence - Wertsch etal (1980)

• Mothers and children ages of 2 and 4 given task of building a truck so it looked like a model they could refer to
• When the Mothers of the younger children looked at the model, this was followed by their children looking at the model on 90% of occasions
• Older children 'looking' behaviour was much less influenced by what their Mother's were doing
• Social factors in form of Mothers 'looking' behaviour had much more impact on younger children

• Speech is social in nature & a form of social interaction/emotional expression
• Language & thought are seperate functions in children under 2 years
• Language used to control behaviour as the child becomes older, often speak aloud to direct actions
• From 7 years +, it becomes internalised & inner speech develops - language can now direct/control thinking
• Inner speech greatly improves our powers of problem solving

Research Evidence - Berk (1994)

• Vygotsky argued that private speech diminishes + becomes more internal as performance levels improve
• Berk discussed a study where 4/5 year old children made lego models 3 sessions
• As predicted by Vygotsky the childrens speech became increasingly internalised from session to session as their model-making performance

• ZPD is the difference between a child's current & potential abilites
• It refers to abilities that have not yet developed, but are in the process of maturing
• Potential is achieved with the guidance of 'more experienced' others

Research Evidence - Wood etal (1976)

• Found that on a construction task with 4 and 5 year olds, different mothers used different instructional strategies of varying levels of specificity - ranged from general verbal encouragement to direct demonstration of a relevant action
• No single strategy guaranteed learning, but the most efficient maternal instructors were those who combined general + specifc interventions according to the child's progress
• Factors; interst, simplifying task, motivation, emphasising relevant aspects and giving correct solution to problems

• Theory is sketchy and unclear in places due to lack of empircal evidence- this resulted in limited negative criticism
• This may be because it focuses on the process of C.D rather than the outcome, there is however a growing amount of evidence to support the theory
• The importance of social interaction & environment is over emphasised - does not allows for individual differences such as motivation and an interest in learning

• Rejects the idea of developmental stages
• Concerned with how knowledge was represented
• Bruner suggested the idea of scaffolding - where adults 'scaffold' the children's behaviour, acting as a support by providing a framework for the desired behaviours
• He also showed the idea of 'spiral curriculum' - where the basic outline of a subject is taught, this is then built upto finer details through the years as the child gets older

Enactive - birth > 1 year

• Child represents the world through actions (motor events)
• Corresponds to Piaget's sensorimotor stage

Iconic - 1 > 7 years

• Uses sensory images, sounds/smells which resemble those associated with the real situation they represent
• Involves using mental images of experiences - icons
• Corresponds to the last 6 months of the sensorimotor stage & the whole of the preoperational stage

Symbolic - 7 years +

• Child uses symbols to represent things
• Child is freed from immediate context

• Bruner's ideas have been extremely useful in education - 'spiral curriculum'
• Strong support for the idea that as children mature they become capable of different types of mental representation
• The idea of scaffolding plugs the gap between the work of Vygotsky and the role of adults in relation to ZPD
• If logical thought is linked to language aquisition, then surely children should be capable of advanced logic once they have mastered language efficiently